Should I or shouldnt I tell my son he has autism?

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Everyone is looking at this personally. This boy is not you. He may or may not be in the situation you were as a child.

I guess I wasn't bullied, just seen as weird.

No one really knows how this will pan out. To know would imply you can see into the future.

I'm sorry you guys went through such a hard time but not everyone will. This woman needs to make an informed decision on what is best for her son. The intelligent, high functioning, mild AS children who are given a network of support will fare better, especially with all this awareness.

So as hard as it is you need to look beyond your personal experience. I'm sorry if this offends but I've learned to see that people are different than me, have different experiences.

I'm not even telling the OP what to do. It's up to her.

People gave up on me in my childhood, called me dim witted but still that's not going to make me exclaim 'TELL HIM' because knowing would have made my life easier.

Again, I'm sorry if you find this as a personal insult. I'm just trying to see how it is for her son, taking examples from high functioning intelligent children I've met.

If you are inquisitive about his default behavior regularly, he probably is already quite aware that he is different from you or you are different from him either one. Because some kids are more tolerant at his age, he's able to get by for now.

I would tell him, but it makes a world of difference how one is told of it. And definitely before puberty. He may be getting along very well with people and school right now-- I did very well when I was his age minus my dysgraphia (handwriting disorder), I had all sorts of people who were friendly to me, but social norms/rules change when you're around 12, and I had a lot of bullying in my life to make it pure hell from then to when I left for college.

Personally, I don't want him to be like me, I found out about AS by going back through history on the family computer because I forgot to bookmark a site, only to chance upon my mother's search leading to 7 sites and me going "erp? um, what's asperger's syndrome? let's have a look" and sitting there crying at the computer, at the description because it fit me and all the issues I was having but didn't want to address (I was 16 at the time but it still hurt bad to come across it that way-- I felt like such a freak/animal that my parents didn't really discuss it with me much-- until I was 17 and they were essentially stammering with shamed anxiety when they eeked it out what my diagnosis was about, but that's them and their ways-- never said that communication was their strong suit and I always felt like they wanted me to be normal so bad that it pains me).

I can see where this topic can get intense, and I am finding a bit difficult to decide. I talk to him everyday about school life and at the moment he loves his school, he loves his teachers and his classmates. Ive asked if anyone has ever picked on him or said anything that has made him feel bad but Ive only gotten typical amswers (this year he says everyone is really nice). Last year one kid "bothered" him but I asked if this kid bothered anyone else and the answer was yes. So it was not geared towards him it was just a kid with his own issues.

At the moment he thinks he is just like any other kid, hes happy with life and always has a smile on his face. Do I want to give him that information now? How will he handle it? He is a sensitive kid so I dont know what will come from it.

My mom told me, but not everything. Almost like they gave me the product without the instruction manual.

Don't just tell him. Discuss it with him.

Help him to identify the strengths and weaknesses of his condition and how to use those strengths and mitigate those weaknesses.

Pretty much what the rest of the posters said. You might get away with not telling him for a few more years but, if he hasn't already, he is gonna figure out that he is quite different from his peers once he leaves primary/elementary education. It's not fun growing up knowing that there is something fundamentally different about yourself compared to the people around you and having no idea what it is that makes you different.

You have added some new information that shows why you are reluctant to tell him. Maybe you can treat it like sex education. Give him a little information at a time. It sounds like he is open and honest with you and you have a good relationship with him. What do the teachers say? You can discuss how each of us is unique with strengths and weaknesses. At some point, however, he will sense the alienation and difference that aspies feel and when he begins to ask himself why he feels different from others he needs to know. I spent my entire life trying to figure out why I had trouble making friends, why I did not communicate well and why people kept their distance from me. My son has aspergers and it bothers him that he has it. I have aspergers and it bothers me that I never knew why I felt different from everyone else. I spent decades in therapy trying to "fix" my behavior to fit into the NT world. Some of my therapists were very helpful and I learned to do stuff that was difficult but never escaped the gnawing sense that there was something elusive beyond my understanding that could not be overcome. At age 63 I was diagnosed and finally, looking back, it all made sense, I understand and accept it thankfully. I get it and have changed in the short three months since my diagnosis. I know that my brain works differently than the NT brain and accept that there will always be a chasm of understanding between us. That fact frees me to be myself and accept the reactions of others as a normal condition of the distance that exists between us. I communicate better with NTs knowing they are operating with a different rulebook. I spent decades slugging it out determined to fit in. I was successful, sort of, but it was costly emotionally and exhausting.

Put it this way, speaking as a lately diagnosed adult If i'd known about my autism aged 9 I wouldve been posting this from a far different (and in likliehood better) position than I am in now.

Feeling different to society and not being able to attribute a name or explanation to your difference is such a disadvantage.

Exactly. Although, if you haven't already done so, try hard to instill in him a positive attitude to being different before telling him that he is Autistic. In society, different often equals bad to many people and because of this, some kids misinterpret Autism as an inherently bad thing. I'm not trying to suggest that this will happen to your son but it can happen.

I don't know if you read my reply but I am of the opinion that as long as he isn't yet aware that there is a difference between him and other children then you probably have a little more time to play with. If not before it will probably be around the time he leaves elementary/primary and goes to whatever the next level of education is where you are. The social rules are a lot different and more complicated in secondary education and for the first time in a number of years he will not be one of the older children at his school but one of the younger. For me all of these things brought into stark contrast the fact that I was quite different from everybody else and, as children do, the other kids picked up on those differences and bullied me harshly for it. I was a very sensitive young boy like your son so by the time I was 13 this all resulted in a pretty self-destructive depression (the details are irrelevant but it was messy). As someone else said everyone is different and your son's experience could easily be quite different but, the way I see it, he needs to know eventually and that with the distinct possibility that moving on to the next level of education could cause some problems if he isn't prepared to deal with it he should learn about it before that possibility has a chance to happen. So, basically, I think that you might have something in the order of a year or two to not tell him if you think that is best. I really think he needs to know before he heads into the next level of school though so he can begin to be taught ways to cope with his differences and the inevitable difficulties that such a huge transition will entail for an autistic child.

Or worse, without a knowledge of their own autism, their difficulties and differences at school and in later life can be misinterpreted by himself and by his peers as stupidity, lack of ability etc. This was what happened to me, and it really damaged my feelings of self worth and social mobility.

If my parents had known when I was that age, I would have wanted to know.
I think they may have had an idea that something was a bit off with me.... I was in a special class for a couple years in grade school. I was never told why I was in those classes.

One of my best friends (who has a doctorate in OT and worked with autistic kids) thought for years that I was on the spectrum, but never said anything until I brought it up. I really wish she had said something years ago!

I'm starting to suspect my mother knows something she isn't telling me. I'm waiting until formal diagnosis is complete before telling her I have Aspergers as to not bias her if they ask to interview her although I know 100% I have it. Most likely a Dr. told her many years ago I might have ADD, OCD or something similar because I remember spending enough time at doctors and hospitals. If I were to ever find out she hid this from me I would never forgive her for hiding it from me because as many have stated, it's pure torture being run down daily, knowing your different, knowing kids outright hate you but having no understanding why. If I knew I was autistic it would have been a lot easier to understand it wasn't my fault, I didn't deserve that treatment and I'm different and slow to develop socially/fast to develop intellectually, NOT defective. I had a very angry outburst at my mother recently when she insulted me and told me I should have fought back using my superior size instead of just standing there when my 'friend' next door suddenly attacked me with a hockey stick. Now I understand it was because I was so overwhelmed and in shock I completely shut down and was unable to move or speak, not because I was a wimp.

To the OP, yes, your son says everything is fine and I said the same thing to my mother. At the same time, I was hoping I would be crushed by a truck since I couldn't take my own life because boys realize very quickly that they aren't allowed to cry or show emotion and complaining to authorities in useless at that age most of the time because almost nobody except me takes children seriously. These problems can slowly appear to the point where they get out of control very quickly. I'm not going to play the victim card but I can assure you my life would have been much easier had I known 20 years ago what Aspergers was and told what to expect. It was quite a shock to me to have 'friends' jump me and beat me senseless with no apparent warning. If I knew I might have been able to spot the warning signs and get out of trouble. I'm not trying to say just because I experienced this everyone will but my research indicated my experiences are much more common than I ever imagined.

I would encourage every parent to explain what Autism, Tourette's, Down Syndrome, Blindness/Deafness and other such 'problems' are and explain in full detail what they are and how to understand and treat someone with those conditions. Unfortunately, experience has taught me that parents are usually much worse than their kids.

tell him, he probably knows something's "wrong" with him..

Yes, he deserves to know. It will make a high school/his adolescence a lot easier for him if he understands why he is like this, not that it's going to be totally easy.

If I had been diagnosed at 9 with AS, and everyone at school found out, I would have committed suicide in the fourth grade. Tell him he has a non-specific "learning disability". He'll only end up being ridiculed for his behavior, not his diagnosis. Seriously, it's like a kiss of death for your social life, I never, ever admit it unless someone flat out asks me, because they will suddenly start treating you like you're the dumb one failing the class, not them. Learning disabilities though, everybody knows somebody who's dyslexic or bad at math. Also, the word "aspergers" is inherently funny to certain NT's with fetal alcohol syndrome, and he WILL be called an "ass burger", which will hurt his feelings way worse than he knows it should. Being diagnosed at 15 was a horrific existential ordeal that made me question everything about myself and about the concept of human identity. A 9 year old shouldn't have to deal with that. Maybe he's a stone-cold kid with a heart of steel or something, though. If you do tell him, for the love of god tell him it's important not to tell other children because they will think it's funny and laugh about it in a way that will make him feel bad, and that he doesn't need to tell his teachers because you already did. I guess there are support groups he could attend to find friends nowadays as functional as him too. When I was 15, though, I just kept meeting progressively more annoying and less functional people with louder and louder voices who were more and more obsessed with dragonball z. (Somehow they were obsessed with it before it was ever available in English, I don't know why since they were all monolingual)

I guess I'm torn. I made my first friends when I was 9. I don't think they would have ever been my friends if they had heard I had a funny sounding condition. If that had happened and I was totally friendless through elementary school, if I were alive today, I would be in a much, much worse state.