Do you think he is ready to be told he has autism?

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He is ready. He must be told as soon as possible.

You may not be in a position to tell him but you should definitely tell his parents that he needs to know. If they aren't sure about how to approach the situation, tell them to give him a book about HFA/AS and wait for him to figure it out. My parents did this and it only took me five minutes and it saved a lot of unnecessary stress for my parents.

If they refuse even to give him a book or article about Autism because they personally don't feel ready, they are obviously very selfish people.

His parents should be the ones to tell him, because if they aren't, he'll feel as though they have betrayed him. My parents did that to me--they didn't tell me and I had to find out from an independent psychologist. I still feel somewhat resentful. If they had told me earlier, I could have understood more about myself and addressed my problems more effectively instead of being convinced that somehow I was defective.

This kid is nine years old. He deserves to know. A five-year-old deserves to know, for that matter. Talk to his parents. Stress how important it is for this kid to be clued in. They may not want to "label" him, but trust me: He's going to get a label no matter what they do. And he would be much better off with the label "autistic" than with things like "stupid", "bad behavior", "rude", or "lazy". Autistic is okay. There's nothing wrong with being autistic. The sooner he learns why he's different and why it's okay to be different, the better.

Bring his parents here if you can. We can explain to them why we would want to have been told; those of us who weren't told can explain what that was like, and those of us who received the information early on can explain how we dealt with it and what we did with it.

From what you have described of his attitude based on his differences I think he needs to be told, or at least made aware of as soon as possible. The longer he goes without knowing the real reason why he is the way he is the more and more he will feel like a failure. He will not understand why he has such a hard time doing things that comes naturally to everyone else, and will get extremely depressed in his teen years and may even become suicidal. All for the reason he has no idea why. All of this happened to me because I never knew what it was.(except I wasn't "suicidal" although there were instances where I thought it was better if I was never born in the first place).

There wasn't as much info on Asperger's when I was a child/teen and although my mom knew I had something on the Autistic spectrum she never had a sit down chat with me about it at a young age. I really wish she did because it would have explained everything and I would have stopped feeling like such a failure in life. Part of the reason the chat never happened though was because she was going through rough patches in her life as well. My middle school/teen years weren't exactly happy family times for me.

My idea would be not to straight up tell him yourself, because as has already been stated you could get into massive trouble by doing it, but possibly bend the rules a little by pointing this boy in the right direction. Find some articles on Asperger's or stimming and show them and just say something like "You aren't the only person who stims, check these out."

I can't comment except to say that I find the whole idea of keeping a child's autism a secret from that child horrifying. If I had been told at age 9 that I was autistic and my parents had known all along and hidden it from me, it would have ruined my relationship with my parents and probably resulted in severe depression.

Now, if I'd found out because I was actually only diagnosed at that age, my reaction would have been relief. After years of wondering whether I was stupid, a bad person, insane, etc. I would have an explanation. That is how I did feel. But to find out that people have been allowing me to wonder when they knew - hiding the truth from me because they considered me too stupid to wonder or too weak to handle it? That would have been traumatic as hell.

Not helpful in this situation since he's already been deceived for far too long imo, but I had to say that.

I cant imagine keeping it from my child ? My daughter was dxed a few weeks ago. She is only 5, but we aren't hiding it. What would be the point? It is bizarre to me to not tell a child something like that. It would be like giving them glasses and then not telling them they need the glasses because their vision needs a little help.

You are all missing the point. It's not her position to tell a CHILD something of this magnitude. It's the parents responsibility.

Should she also tell him there's no such thing as God? It's NOT her place. If the parents are not able or willing to tell their child this information its NO ONE elses business.

Did you actually read the comments? Most people are saying exactly that: it is not her place to tell him.

However, what we are saying is that we think the parents should tell him, and why we think they should. That's all.

Thanks everyone for your input on this! I know I shouldn't tell him myself and would never do such a thing, but it just hurts me to see how badly he must want the information and that his parents don't want to tell him. He has had a diagnosis singe age 4, so they have known for 5 years now.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how to encourage his parents to tell him, without making it sound like I'm being judgmental about their parenting decisions or that I'm telling them what to do? A few of you have given some great ideas on this already, but I'd love to hear from more of you too. I've dropped some hints to his mom about it, and I think his mom knows what I'm getting at --and I think she even realizes that he needs to be told--, but she is just hesitant to tell him for whatever reason. How can I help her step over the edge?

Tell her you know how intimidating it can be to talk to your child about something so important, and offer to help her have the discussion--schedule a meeting with her and her son together, and you'll offer moral support and answer questions. That way she's the one to tell him, but she has backup if she gets confused or doesn't know what to say.

At least he's not a teenager yet. Usually, the younger a child is when you explain something like that, the less it upsets him. At five, most kids will go, "Oh, okay, that makes sense," and go off to play again. A nine-year-old might have more questions, might have to resolve a few more issues like "Does this mean I'm stupid?"--but it's not going to be extreme. Not until the teens and older have you really absorbed a lot of that "disabled is inferior" stuff.

I can practically guarantee you that this will be a lot more intimidating for her to explain to him than it will be for him to learn about. Maybe to his mom, autism is a big scary thing; but for him, it's his normal everyday life. All that changes now is that he'll have a name for it. Having a name for why you're different can be significant. It means that this is a known problem that other people have dealt with before you; so you're not the only one. "Autism" means it's a neurological glitch, not a moral failing, and you're not a bad child for being different. It means that you're now better equipped to learn about yourself and your differences. It might be scary at first, but the younger you are when you find out, the more easily you deal with it--especially if your parents emphasize by how they act that they love you the way you are--that you don't have to justify your existence or earn their love--that they love all of you, including your differences, and that nothing you do can change that.

this right here is one of the problems in this situation,

people actually think that parents haver a right to single handedly dictate the thought process and information of their children, they have free will and that gets broken when treated like that.

I would be very surprised if any autistic child did not know he / she was different. I just watched a video about a British girl who self diagnosed at age 8 (followed by a professional diagnosis). Imagine you knew you were different but were not told why. What would you think? There was a thread here a few years ago asking what people thought before they knew. Some answered that they thought they were ret*d or insane. Autistic children can come up with strange alternative explanations and coping methods if they are not told, or escape too much into fantasy. Some of the alternative theories the child has can be more harmful and devastating to the child than the truth. Tony Attwood has written about this at the beginning of his book The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome. He has them sorted into groups. Here, I will just list them, with a few little excerpts from the expanded ideas that follow. this can be found starting on p. 23 of the book. I have plucked some things out at random.


Compensatory and Adjustment Strategies to Being Different
"... children who internalize thoughts and feelings may develop signs of self-blame and depression .. some psychological reactions can be constructive while others can lead to significant psychological problems."

- A Reactive Depression
"The child, sometimes as young as seven years old, may develop a clinical depression as a result of insight into being different and perceiving him- or herself as socially defective."

- Escape Into Imagination
"The escape into imagination can be a psychologically constructive adaptation, but there are risks of other people misinterpreting the child's intentions or state of mind ... the person may be considered as developing delusions and being out of touch with reality .. this could result in a referral for a diagnostic assessment for schizophrenia."

- Denial and Arrogance
"When such children are confused as to the intentions of others .. the resulting 'negative' emotion can lead to the misperception that the other person's actions were deliberately malicious." (so this one can lead to conduct issues)

- Imitation
"They are developing the natural ability to be a natural actor ... there is a veneer of social success but, on closer examination, the apparent social competence is not spontaneous or original but artificial and contrived."


and one of the things he says in conclusion: "The advantage to the child of having a diagnosis is not only in preventing or reducing the effect of some compensatory or adjustment strategies, but also to remove worries about other diagnoses, such as being insane."



Also, it is not about what is best for the parents. It is what is best for the child. Maybe you are not in a position to disclose to the child, but if you work with children with autism you must also have a lot of contact with their parents, and you could explain to them why you think it is best. I frequently delve into the parents section here to observe how parents cope with their children and I sometimes find the parents fairly well absorbed in how the child's behavior affects them. It can't be easy raising a child with a disability, but ultimately it is the child who is bearing the disability. Part of the role of a parent is to help the child cope, psychologically, with this burden. Withholding information from the child is unfair, especially a precocious child who hates when people lie (a description that applies to a lot of children with Asperger's Syndrome).

i wish someone told me at that age and more to the point offered any form of assistance

I think there is absolutly no problem telling children what there disorder is.

Younger children also very often ask themselfs what's wrong with them and can handle a diagnosis even very often much better.