Do you agree with parents who know, but don't tell?

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My mom knew i was aspergers since i was 7, but didn't tell me until now (i'm 15) because she didn't think i could handle it. I know this isn't that uncommon. Do you agree with the parents who do this, or not?

Maybe if the kid is really young. But once the kid is old enough to understand, they should be told there diagnosis. When that age is, it varies amongst the kid. My guess is roughly between 6 and 10. I dont know if you ever complained to your parents about not fitting in before you knew. Once that starts happening, and the kid knows their different, they should be told.

Leaving a kid grappling in the dark when you could shed some light on why they're having troubles is cruel.

Why the hell wouldn't you tell your child something about themselves they need to know and understand? The whole reason my own life was so much hell is because I had no idea, but neither did my parents, so they can't be blamed. I would have KILLED to know what the hell was going on. I knew I was fundamentally different from other kids, and had no idea what it was. Knowing would have given me an advantage. An advantage I would NEVER deny my own kids.

Parents: TELL YOUR KIDS!

Incidentally, I told mine the moment I suspected it, and once they were actually diagnosed. They are already gaining advantages from knowing. And they're only 12, 13 and 15. They've known since the youngest was 7.

Kids deserve the truth, no matter what it is.

EDIT: "A lie of omission is still a lie."

My mom had a sister one year older than I. Born in 1959 with Downs Syndrome. She knew by the time she was six, and could even explain what it was in simple terms. If SHE could handle it in the 1960's, what makes anyone think a child with Autism couldn't?

I believe a child is always old enough to know the name of something that contributes to who they. Especially when this something can often cause problems and frustrations throughout childhood. Not knowing about autism does not change the fact that that child will often feel different and excluded, and they have the right to know about it, so they can understand it. Had my parents found about my autism when I was younger, I would have wanted to know--even if the word is meaningless to a child at the age of 3 or 4 or 5, I still would have wanted to have been introduced to it.

If they are having trouble, yes. If they are doing relatively well...I'd never tell, until they found out.

Everybody thought I was "doing relatively well". But that was because when I lived at home, people did stuff for me. Mom got mad at me when I couldn't clean my room, and then just stepped in and did it for me. She got mad that I couldn't remember to take a shower, so she stood outside the bathroom door and ordered me until I got in, and then ordered me to get out. People thought I was just rebellious. Mom knew I was autistic but she thought it was just a fad diagnosis... Of course, when I left home, I crashed and burned. I hadn't been doing fine at all.

If I'd known, if I'd gotten some help earlier on, I could've understood myself better. However well I did as a kid, however much I learned, I'm pretty sure that I could have done better if I had known. Sure, I got A's in school; but if I had been given a bit of help on organizing my schoolwork and focusing on things and whatnot, could I have gotten A's in AP classes instead? And yes, I learned about how to have a conversation by nine years old; but if I'd gotten help, maybe I could've learned by six, and been on to colloquial speech and conversational flow by nine.

The thing about not telling someone is that you keep a very important piece of information about themselves from them. You don't let them take control of their own treatment and their own education; and that self-directedness and self-advocacy is one of the most important skills they can learn. Even at a very young age, a child should know about themselves. A five-year-old can understand, "Sometimes I get really upset because the lights are too bright," and respond with, "I should wear sunglasses on bright sunny days so that doesn't happen." And that lets the five-year-old learn to handle his own overload, so that by the time he's a teen he's handling most meltdowns on his own, and by the time he's an adult he's independent in doing it. If you don't give him the information about how his own mind works, he's not going to be able to do that.

No. No, no, no, NO NO! WHY would ANYONE not tell their child?! ! This is the kind of attitude that makes people think Asperger's Syndrome is about the children's parents and not about the actual PEOPLE who have it! These people disgust me and are stupid beyond all reason. If you KNOW there's something about your child that's different, you need to TELL that child so that child can help itself! How can someone help a child if the child can't help itself?

...yeah, you pretty much just said what I was being too polite to say.

Tell your kids, people. Seriously, leaving them out of their own lives is not cool.

callista,

i, too, am an information addict, if you can call having curiosity as my dominant personality characteristic being an information addict. of course, i like some subjects like health, music and politics more than others like history.

here's to information addicts!

Of course, the child also needs to know what Asperger's even is. I was diagnosed at 8 and was present when the diagnosis was confirmed, but all I knew about it was that people with Asperger's often don't like sports, are highly intelligent, and that Albert Einstein might have had Aspergers. It would have helped me a lot if I actually knew what Asperger's was. It didn't help when shortly afterward we were reading a book in the Gifted English where one of the character's seems to have confused Asperger's syndrome for classic Autism and thinks that Autistic people are mentally ret*d. That pissed me off, and later when I was moved into the districts program for people with Aspergers (it might have been Autism too, I'm still no entirely sure what was going on) I felt greatly ashamed and embarrassed, especially since I was only barely in the program; in the school district I was in the gifted program was just put on top of normal work, and I stubbornly refused to do the normal English work (I didn't like the physical labor of writing, I felt it was pointless to do both, and I didn't want to follow the stupid writing prompts they had), so in the fourth grade I was put in the classroom for the kids who were bad at reading, but I wasn't actually a part of the class, so I just sat in the corner and drew stuff, pretending that I was actually doing work and writing a story, and it was during that time were I drew my first notebook for video ideas. In the fifth grade I was moved into the school with the official program for Autistic children, and while the other two autistic boys followed a special curriculum I was in normal classes for everything except for social skills, until I had a few meltdowns in English, then I was sort of moved into the special English and sort of not, and I was still in gifted English, my memory on that period is fuzzy as I've been doing my best to blot it out, and after voicing my opinion that I wanted to learn Algebra and after getting an unheard-of-ly high score on the prerequisites of Algebra test I was moved out of gifted math into an Online Algebra class, which I only half finished that year as I started it in the middle of the year. In middle school I went to a middle in the district that wasn't the one for my geographic area, and my older brother went to the designated high school, and the separation hurt me as I always looked to my older brother for guidance and he was the only person I really felt comfortable talking to. I went to the school for two reasons; it was the only middle school in the district that offered Geometry and it was the middle school with the special ed program. I was in all normal classes and the middle school gifted program, but one elective was taken away for a social skills class, which I hated as I found it shameful, and it was the only class that I found even the slightest bit hard. I also had to ride the "short bus" (there was actually two or three of them for this school), and that scared me for life as the kids who were mentally ret*d were scary, and there was this one kid who wasn't mentally ret*d on the bus who called me ret*d and abused me until I got my father to chew him out. I still had no idea what Asperger's syndrome was except it was like mild autism, whatever that was, had something to do with difficulty in communicating and I was convinced that I did not have it as I wasn't stupid, the social skills classes and short bus were too shameful. Halfway through 7th grade I got out of social skills classes and that pleased me, but I still had no idea what was even wrong with me in the first place. Then my dad unexpectedly got accepted into what may be the most selective non-appointed nor elected government job on the first attempt and we moved to a new place with a new school system, where gifted students such as my self had a separate curriculum only special ed thing I had was occasionally the counselor came and spoke with me. I still had no idea what Asperger's Syndrome was and the only problem that I knew I had was that I pronounced th as f, which may have been do to me breaking one of my front teeth in a fight, and then mentally associating th as f because ph was f. I still don't treat th correctly, though I usually make the correct sound now. That's why I sometimes write "does" instead of "those". It wasn't until the middle of 9th grade, where I was now living in Brazil and had no special education things whatsoever even though I still have an IEP, where I finally figured out what Asperger's Syndrome actually was. I went through far to many years of psychological damage before I finally had my mind put at ease. Elementary school was hell. Middle school was purgatory. I'm sorry for getting off topic, I really needed to get that stuff off my chest.

No, I don't think that withholding the truth from a child about a disability is the right thing to do.

No, I do not. But my husband and I believe in not telling lies to our daughter, and most parents lie to their children all the time, so... We talked to our daughter as soon as we got the diagnosis. She was 8 back then. She did understand. She was a little afraid, but we told her about the good things of having AS (the superior intelligence, great memory, big people in history who we now suspect had AS, etc.), and she felt better. I do believe children are capable of understanding a lot of things. You just need to provide the information in terms they understand.

By the way, our child was told we give her the presents in Christmass, the tooth fairy does not exist, etc., etc., etc. Some people called us mean, but telling the truth has its price... specially when the rest of the world believes do much in lying.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s[/youtube]

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My godson has high functioning autism diagnosed at 5 and his parents didn't tell him until this year - he's 16. His dad has ASD and does very little parenting. The mom tried (started) to tell my godson at various times but he always shut down before she did. That's how she put it.

He wasn't ready to hear it until now.? Whereas I agree with you all; perhaps it's not always possible to tell a kid at any given time?

I wish that I would have been told at the age of 10, when I was at my worse in my opinion. If I knew at the age of 10, I wouldn't have been going on and on about my special interests and getting yelled at for doing so and than having those suicidal feelings at the age of 14, because I was an embarrassment to my mum.