Reply to Sharing an ASD dx with child when you're not sure if you buy it

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]A lot of parents in this thread are saying it's fine to wait to tell.

Our daughter was diagnosed at 11 yo and because we were not sure we agreed with the diagnoses and because it was during a weird time with covid, we waited a year to tell her.

Our daughter is still upset with us over this because she feels the diagnosis explains a lot of things about herself that she was blaming herself for.  It gave her a certain freedom and acceptance of herself.  My daughter says, "it really affects your perception of yourself and allows you to be easier on yourself, to know the diagnosis.  And it's not the sort of information you can keep to yourself -- it profoundly impacts the experience of your child.  The longer you wait, the worse it will be -- for yourselves and for your child -- when your child does find out.  It is your child's right to know, and you should tell them now, you're not doing yourself or your child any favors by keeping it a secret.  It's a very common experience for people getting an ASD diagnosis to feel a weight lifted off your chest, to know that you're not weird or deficient, but there's an explanation for your experience and feelings."

Just to go against the grain of all the other parents in here -- from a kid's perspective, my middle schooler would have preferred to know when we knew.[/quote]

Just re-posting my daughter's take on this, again, quoted above.  My daughter was attributing her lack of control over her emotions to a failing within herself, something other kids were able to manage but that she was deficient in.  She was released from this by knowing of her diagnosis and no longer blamed herself for having greater than usual difficulty in managing her emotions.  She read about ASD and saw where she fit into some parts of the spectrum and didn't fit into others.  Some things clicked for her.  If your kid is having emotional behaviors that fall outside what a lot of other kids are experiencing, it's possible that they are blaming themselves for these behaviors and see themselves, quietly, maybe without even telling you, as a big failure.  I don't want that for anyone's kid.  Sorry for taking the thread so personally, but it is a personal issue to my family given the experience we have had, and it's weird seeing so many people in this thread talk about actually having received both ADHD and ASD diagnoses for their kids and sharing the ADHD diagnosis but withholding the ASD diagnosis.  I see it as resulting from the internal stigma we as parents feel from the diagnosis, whereas for our kids it is actually helpful, freeing information.  But as we've all seen, ymmv.[/quote]

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