ds1 (11) has Asperger's, Tourette's and generalised anxiety. He goes to a mainstream school (private, academically selective) where he has a statement and a LSA. He's a competitive swimmer and actually pretty fast for his age, although his psychology gets in the way and prevents him from doing as well as he could physically - he gets v anxious, is easily distracted, gets psyched out by other swimmers etc He loves swimming and competing (he shouldn't really love the galas but weirdly he does) but has recently been getting very frustrated as he's not been doing as well as he feels he should. This leads him into a vicious circle as the more frustrated and anxious he gets, the worse he swims, the more frustrated and anxious he gets etc ...
anyway, his swimming coach has just called me to say she'd like to enter him for a disability gala in a couple of weeks' time. She says there will be lots of kids on the spectrum there and ds will be one of the fastest there so she hopes doing well there might boost his self-confidence. I'm not sure how to broach this with ds - he hates thinking of himself as being 'different' although he knows about his diagnosis etc. He often says whatever comes into his head without thinking it through so I shudder to think of the incredibly inappropriate comments he might come out with if he were surrounded by children who were obviously different to him either physically or mentally. I'm also not sure whether or not on some level it's cheating - ds is absolutely perfect physically and in some ways it doesn't seem quite right to be asking for special treatment for him
sorry i've rambled on at great length but I'm in a bit of a quandary about this and would appreciate hearing other people's views