Possibility of a school assembly on Autism

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My principal and I are working on a presentation for the entire school, and he put me in charge of generalizing Autism in a slide show. He's also got the local Autism specialist geared up to help me out if I need anything. I'm still working on it, but I'm about ready to finish. There's only one thing I'm really thinking seriously about.

Should I participate in the assembly, and open up about my diagnosis?

I have a feeling that sharing my experiences will help gain further understanding from my peers. Also, I'm not afraid of expressing who I am, and anyone who makes fun of me or says anything in regards to my Aspergers can go screw themselves. I just don't know if that would be a good idea.

Any thoughts, suggestions?

They can also beat you up

Do you think it's really going to add to the presentation? Can you tell just some specific people? You can only speak for youself anyway. Sorry, I don't want to sound negative. Just playing devil's advocate

So good of you to bring up your dilemma and the whole issue of the ASD closet. I think about it every day and hope Wrong Plant teens will want to share their experiences with disclosure vs. pretending to be normal.

My 14 year old son, Mars, wavers back and forth on this one. He has his own Autism heroes--Alex Plank and Temple Grandin and Stephen Shore who make him proud one day. Then the next he doesn't want anybody to know--he tries to pass.

I respect his wishes. But I am the inclusion facilitator at his music conservatory which is, I am so happy to say, 100% positive and successful in including ASD students into all of their classes and activities. But I don't blog about my son on the conservatory website or do anything public like that out of respect for his wishes. Yet very discretely and very selectively, I will disclose his ASD to other parents when I think it might be helpful to them.

Mars is a youth orchestra's keyboardist. This spring he will be traveling with 20 neurotypicals to compete with other youth orchestras in another town. He will share a hotel room for two nights with three neurotypical boys and a chaperone, compete against other youth orchestras, receive with the group a judge's critique of the performance, attend an awards dinner and tour tourist spots. Mars has never even had a sleepover. He struggles tremendously with conversation and a bit with getting to sleep at night even in his own quiet room. I am struggling with his need for independence and staying in the closet while adapting to challenging new environment. For now, I've decided to leave it up to him.

Makayla, I would love it if you could get a thread going about teens coming out of the closet vs. the kind of "Don't ask. Don't tell" policy Mars has. It would be great to learn about good and bad consequences for teens coming out of the closet from you and others.

They'd have to be pretty strong bullies to do that, I'm pretty strong for a girl.

To Ha, That thread does sound like a good idea. But I don't know how many teens would actively participate in a thread like that (I know a lot of them are very conservative about their diagnosis). I'll keep it in mind.

Tell your son that Autism is a part of him, he has no reason to be ashamed of it.

I feel like theres ways to do this the "right" way and get across to the students. But still, this is highschool, you might not want to take that risk. Perhaps it would be ok if you did that after u graduated and coming back to educate people on autism. Perhaps you can advocate but dont open up about your diagnosis.

If you feel you have some understanding classmates, I would open up about it. A lot of teenagers that I've met recently are really open about it, and it certainly helps their peers understand more where they are coming from. Besides, you are not just standing in front of the school telling an ignorant bunch that you are on the spectrum--the assembly will make them informed about what autism is and hopefully remove any of those terrible prejudices before you tell them.

Also, I know I am older than you and university is different from high school (but ignorant people are still ignorant people whether they are in high school or university). I haven't told EVERYBODY about it yet, but those that I have told have not treated me any differently or have discriminated against me in any way. I told a group I was put into in one of my classes (via email) because I was excused from the end of semester group project and not one of them (6 other people) stopped talking to me or acted differently around me.

I did have one bad experience: a boss who found out at the end of a work term said "yeah, I knew there was SOMETHING wrong with you!" That was one person out of many though, and everyone else has been the same both pre- and post- autism revelation. I wouldn't worry that everyone is going to treat you different, unless you know you have a bunch of jerks as classmates.

Most of my peers are very understanding people, so I'm not too worried. I've got nothing to hide about myself, and this is a way to prove it.

If you think you should, go for it! People need to know how rad Aspies are.

I'd say wait a couple of years, go to college, tell people there.

I'd say wait a couple of years, go to college, tell people there.

You could try the old I have a friend and they think this approach?