Expert: Trey McGowan - 2/21/2008

Question
my grand son is 12 almost 13 and is in main steam school.  (grade 6) he was
establish as a 2.5 on a scale of 10; My question is , when does his parents  
(divorced) talk to him about his autism? He is doing ok to good in school but
he knows he is a little different than other kids, he will at times say "I know I
weird".
What do you think? An we would never step on the parents authority.
Richard

Answer
Hi there, Richard!

I understand that you don't want to step on the parents' authority. This is an excellent way to keep the parents settled about the matter. However, this is also a situation where the longer the child goes without some explanation, the more he may start coming up with his own reasons for why he is different. Those reasons may involve that he's stupid, that he's crazy, that he's retarded, or that he's weird and has to force himself to change. Imagine how you would feel if the doctor refused to tell you what was wrong with you.

Really, my best suggestion is to take the parent(s) aside and explain this viewpoint a bit. As an autistic child, he may very well be surprisingly insightful and understand what's being said, more than even his age would suggest. While 'It's a neurological syndrome' might go over his head, telling their son 'Your mind is wired differently than most people, and that's why...' will generally make some sense.

Above all else, I strongly believe that he should be made aware that what he has isn't some horrifying secret that he needs to keep from himself and the world. He has autism, and while autism is not going to make life easy (in fact, it will make it extremely difficult; there's no getting around that), it's not some huge, terrifying death-knell that you can pretend isn't there and make go away. The sooner he learns that this isn't a deep dark family secret to be ashamed of, the sooner he will likely start to adapt and learn to work around his disability.

Hopefully that helped sum everything up! If not, send all follow-ups, questions, feedback, or whatever my way and we'll see if we can't get things straightened out for you!

Trey