Attention, shouting & everything in between

When’s a good time to have The Chat with your autistic child? No, not the birds and the bees. That fun comes later.

A hot topic of discussion between myself and Greg right now is when might be an appropriate time to discuss, with our son, how his brain works in a way that may sometimes be different to his friends’. Obviously we know that with most really quite important questions in life like ‘do fish have a thirst for water?’ or ‘why is taking a dump not called leaving a dump?’, there’s no simple answer.

Will it be freeing for him? Will it springboard him in to further anxiety? Will he do what he does with most important conversations and start telling me his hair is cold/walk off disinterested in search of something more captivating? I guess the main thing is that we’re prepared for however he views it and, right now (thanks to his age), we’ll only be dipping our toes in anyway and I don’t believe there’s much need for him to hear the label ‘autism’ yet. I doubt it would serve much purpose other than totally confusing him because while he has an understanding of what it means already, it starts and stops with the knowledge his cousin has it. The two of them behave entirely differently so to suggest to him that they exist under the same umbrella, would render him baffled.