To tel or not to tell my teenager that he has AS?

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Hello, i am new here on the forum, NT mum with a 14 years old Aspie boy.

I need to explain: we are Italians, and until a few years ago very few physicists actually knew about the syndrome and still most don''t. The same with teachers.
I always knew (or suspected) my little boy was on the spectrum, and through the years I had him tested three times (at 3, at 9 and again at 13) and only the last time did I receive an Asperger diagnose, although at 9 I had insisted on it but no one listened to me.. No surprise to me, but a confirmation. and all the pieces of the puzzle going in place... I guess you know the feeling.

The thing is, i am not sure i want to tell him, and i am going to explain why.

My now teenager has had all the typical problems through his school years (acting and feeling very different, difficulty to socialize, bulliyng, constant fight with a teacher who just hated him, you name it).
At 13 ho got very depressd. Wanted to be accepted, to be like other teenagers, to socialize.

And, HE DID! Last year he challenged himsef by going on an intercultural trip to Brazil for a month, without knowing anyone. Right now he is in UK on a 3 week English learning vacation. He wanted very much to go, although it takes a big effort on him, being with unknown people 24 hours.
At school ho stopped being worried by the bullies. He made several friends. O course he has a limited social life, it is not like he is going out every day with other people, but he sometimes does e people actually call for him.
At shool he does quite well, although being a little on the lazy side and being very lucky with his formidable memory.

My conclusion, at the moment is this: he very much wants to be like other people, is there any use for me to tell him, od his future teachers? I think not.

What do you tink? I am very much interested in other parents opinion...

I think it depends what he thinks about why he was just being seen. He probably has an idea, so I might just tell him I talked with the evaluators and we could discuss any time as he would like, so he knows you're willing. Maybe ask them about it as he may know more than he lets on to you.

If the evaluation was months ago and you don't think is on his mind there's no rush. And I would not in these circumstances deliver the news to a teenager trying to be normal like it's news from God, he's entitled at his age and needs his own view of himself. I don't believe in secrets either, though. I think maybe I would get books and articles and let him see me reading things, I would let him see that I knew Aspergers existed and he could pick up and look at things if he liked. So it wasn't adults forcing a label on him, more casual.

Thanks...
The evaluation took place last autumn, and the diagnosis was delivered to us in december. The evaluator actually also recommended not to tell him about it, for the very reasons I explained. The reason the evaluation started is that he got very depressed at the time.
Yes, the idea to let him have casual glimpses about AS I already had, and sometimes I leave an opened page on our computer. I have several books (one I read when he was only 3!) but I did not leave them around, so far.

It would be very nice if he found out by himself, thanks for the idea, it is nice to have a confirmation that my intuition was not so bad...
A kid I know actually found out at 15 when another Aspie joined his classroom.... it was a sort of revelation to him, I was told.

You probably will need to tell him, but I would hold off right now. If he starts expressing concerns, again then I think that is the time.

He has a right to know, and you will need to tell him eventually. My son is younger, and I held off for other reasons. Now that most of those reasons have been neutralized, I still cannot b/c he does not see himself as different b/c he is not socially cognitive enough to know or care. You are in the opposite situation, but I would wait until you have an opening that makes sense.

I am undiagnosed, and I am relieved to have figured it out. I would not have been happy to hear it during my "fitting in" stage of my early teens, but at I would have been mad if my parents knew and never disclosed it to me. Knowing helps things in ones life fit together and make sense. There is a certain peace in knowing.

Don't do it yet.

He managed to find his place on Earth, he is probably feeling more happy than he ever was in his life. He doesn't care about being bullied anymore, learned to deal with it, he got friends, he is finally accepted... Don't destroy it! This is the worst moment to say it to him. He either would deny it or it would be a serious hit in his hard gained self-confidence if you told him this at this moment.

I first heard about Asperger when I was in similar situation as him. After years of being bullied, having no friends and desperately trying to fit in I finally made my life straight and got accepted by some peers. And then my grandma told me she suppose I have Asperger and sent me to an assessment. I did everything to deny the assumption and I ended up without any diagnosis - because I didn't want to believe there is something wrong with me anymore. I would be happy to hear it when I was a depressed 12-13 year old, when I was looking for explanations (I even figured out I must be a demon and thats why people hate me xD, honestly Asperger diagnosis would be a relieve then). But not when I was a happy 14-18 year old living a decent life.

There will be a time when he will be happy to hear it - probably when he finish school and realize he is doing worse than his friends in fields of work and relationships. He will look for an answer "Why? What is wrong with me?". It will be the right moment to tell him.

I went through a similar thing at about the same age and was successful enough at trying to reinvent my social being that I made friendships and developed the romantic relationship that really made the rest of my life possible.

I don't think there is any particular value in the label itself. There is enough uncertainty and disagreement about what it means and how to define it that I find it a hard to take on as an adult. But I think it would be hugely valuable to point out what the testing showed in terms of core strengths and weaknesses.

I wish I had known at 13 what I know today about my difficulty in perceiving other people's inner states and social meanings. I wish I had known about the dynamics of my "special interests." I wish I had known that the mysterious difficulty I have in organizing things and the trouble with schedules etc, was part of a pattern of executive function disorders and that I could use compensatory strategies to overcome or minimize the impact of those problems. That's a big one for school, as study becomes increasingly self-directed. I wish I had known that there were medical origins to the sensory issues that troubled me and I wish that I had known that simply "making friends" (my paramount goal in those years) was not somehow going to remove the difficulties I have in connecting and communicating--but that there are ways of living and being that can support me in living a great life and being happy.

I was briefly retrospectively angry with parents for minimizing the efforts of the specialists who we did see to help me with these issues. There was no aspergers diagnosis then and autism was understood in a more restricted way, so they could not give me the label, but the approach my parents took seems to me to have just denied that there could be any problem--and not acknowledging it meant not talking about it or looking for ways to make life better for me. Maybe they were doing those things and just chose not to tell me, I'll never know.

In any case, my suggestion would be: tell him if he asks but do deal with the issues energetically, regardless of whether he asks or not. Work with the specialists to do that well. Tell him: "here's what all that testing discovered: you are like this, and you are like that, so knowing that and given what you want to do, you could try this approach to relationships and this approach to school, and here are techniques for dealing with this and this and this. You need tools to make the most of your life, and knowing these things about yourself will help you to be act more skillfully. "

There is some sense that the label is this heavy, heavy thing. But the details of finding better ways to communicate and strategies for dealing with executive function problems, etc. are very light. Just practicing new skills. The reality of autism is less oppressive than the ideas people have about it and it sounds like he is doing very well in finding his own workarounds.

Good luck!

He has the right to know. He may resent you later for not telling him.

My husband and I are from two different continents. I have noticed (and have also read from other Aspies) that it is sometimes easier to make friends and "pass" for normal in a foreign country. People will often attribute social mistakes and unusual body language to cultural differences. In other words, they expect you to be a little weird because you're foreign. When there's a language barrier as well, that's one more layer of disguise.

As someone who was hit with a family revelation (unrelated to autism but still a lot to deal with), I will say beware of the decision to keep it to yourself while hoping maybe he figures it out and then discovers you guys knew all along.

There can be a HUGE explosion of resentment and feeling of a breach of trust in that.

It hurts, a LOT, to find out that important information about yourself was known yet withheld for years. Be careful about that plan.

I feel that you should have told him as soon as you heard it yourself, but now I dont know what would be a good time. I'm not thinking years though. This should have been out there a long time ago.

You need to bring it up asap. It doesn't have to be a heavy conversation. The label doesn't change the fact that he's doing great at the moment.

I speak as someone whose parents withheld sh!t and the mess of negativity that came busting out when I had to find out myself is still with me.

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I like this suggestion a lot.

My first reaction seeing the title of the post was, "of course you tell him!" But, I understand why you hesitate. Adamantium's suggestion seems like a reasonable middle path to me. Your son WILL have areas that are extra difficult for him, and he should know why and how to work around the issues. He has will and determination so he will be able to achieve anything he wants; he just needs to understand that sometimes when something seems hard, it really IS hard, but that is OK - he can still overcome, but it will never be for him like it is for some other people.

Same here, DW a mom.... I myself found quite a few AS traits in me,, but I am dfinitely more on the NT side, although having had some difficulties as a child, and my son is like me in very many ways. But much, much more on the AS side, let's say 80% (if ever that can be evaluated).


I want to thank all of you for the very valuable advice, and the ersonal experiences you report.
You understand that for me nothing can compare to the experience of who has been all through this.

I certainly want to tell him, at some point, and consider that the official diagnosis is only 7 month old, although I always "knew".
I will wait the right moment, bearing in mind that I cannot wait too long.
And I will have to tell him the right way.

I still did not bring myself to reveal the story to his older sister with whom he has a difficult relationship.

Your son sounds a lot like me when I was young. I also went through school somewhat lazy, didn't have to put much effort in because of good memory. Maybe that has to do with AS as well?
I only found out about AS as an adult. I was reading the wiki page about Asperger and that was a revelation to me at the time. It explained to much. I do not know how it will be for someone of 13.
If he has the maturity to understand the diagnosis, it might be useful to know what your own strengths and weaknesses are. Sometimes you cannot talk about your own difficulties if you don't know the words for it, such as anxiety, overstimulation etc. It needs a name first.

He probably lucked out with the weather in England. I'm Dutch, and at that age I learned a lot of English from reading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I had English and Dutch copies so I could look up what I didn't understand.

This is why the idea of not telling him concerns me a bit. I'd agree that the particular label doesn't really matter, but if your son is working hard to compensate for his differences without understanding what they are, that could be significant.

I had compensated to the point where I had some friends and a social life in high school (not a great one, but at least I wasn't alone and bullied like I was in middle school) Even with the compensating, I didn't understand WHY EVERYTHING WAS SO HARD. After a while, it felt like life just wasn't worth living, and I couldn't understand how anybody could be happy if everything was this hard all the time.

I think that having a frame to understand what was going on might have helped me as much as appropriate supports.

Two other caveats: DS has a particular developmental trajectory that's gotten us in trouble many times. He will stay "stuck" at one developmental level for several years, and then suddenly catch up to his peers. Problem is, he stays stuck at the next level for several years and eventually his peers move past him again. In the past, this was devastating for him, because he (and we) took the developmental jumps to mean he'd finally figured things out and it WAS "just a phase" - and then the game changed suddenly and he didn't understand why.

Also, because of this particular developmental trajectory, WE didn't know what was going on until he was 10 or so (we had a diagnosis when he was much younger, but it didn't make sense to us at the time - in large part because it wasn't explained well.) Without the frame of asynchronous development, sadly, we treated his behavior as misbehavior. So did his peers and teachers. More importantly - he did, too: he thought he was a bad person because he didn't have the levels of control, social sophistication and awareness that his peers had.

To my son, it was a huge relief to find out that he had a difference that was real and measurable (for a long time, we focused on AS as a difference instead of a disability - which had consequences of its own, but was a good place to start.)

Not saying you should automatically disclose or change your mind, but you might want to carefully check that your son's self-image is accurate. Many times kids come up with an explanation for their difference that is significantly worse than the reality.

From a son's perspective...

I am still not sure if my Mom knew and just didn't tell me...or if she really didn't know. But either way - I pursued answers on my own as an adult. But I never even heard the term aspergers until my mother brought up that she thought my son was on the spectrum...and that is when my journey for answers as to why I always felt different shifted...with a bit more focus.

For me, if I had known why I felt so different at a young age, it would have helped me out immensely. I would have had a totally different lens to view life through - a lens that provided a reason for the madness I felt (and still feel). Knowing doesn't fix things, but it does help. And it led me here - to a community where I can discuss all my strange behaviors (and find others that have very similar behaviors).

But I still can't help but wonder if my Mom knew and just didn't tell me. She is a counselor and has worked with lots of kids on the spectrum. But either way, what it has done and seed distrust in my relationship with her...placing distance between us.

I did not have the information as a teenager.

I never know if I wish I had had it, or if I am grateful that I did not.

Given the social climate surrounding the diagnosis in the US-- first that people with AS can't learn social skills, shouldn't try, should just accept being alone and on disability insurance for life, and now that we're all mass murderers waiting for something to set us off-- in that social climate I would be very glad that I did not know. I probably would have given up.

Instead, I tried. I tried to learn to fit in, and I tried to learn to fit in, and I tried to learn to fit in. Of course, I never did learn to THINK like other teenage girls, but I did for a while at least try to ACT like them (make-up, clothes, boyfriends, et cetera). It was, on the whole, a truly miserable experience. It led to allowing myself to be sexually harassed, allowing myself to be used and to become a toady, allowing a lot of things to happen that I really didn't like, and self-abusing in an effort to condition out undesirable behaviors.

If I could have had that information-- a little more insight and understanding into how my own mind worked, and WHY-- I would have wanted it. DESPERATELY.

I guess you have to weigh the value of the information-- and there is A LOT of information available now, in books and such not just from professionals, even if a lot of it is primarily published in English-- against the potential damage of the stigma (don't know what that's like in Italy at all).

And-- just because HE knows, doesn't mean OTHER PEOPLE have to know. You can do what someone else suggested-- "He struggles with this and this and this, and excels at that and that, and I've found that it's best to deal with it this way and that way"-- and, if they "connect the dots," that's up to them.

I'm in the "don't hide it, but don't put it in front of him if he doesn't need it" camp on this...

The "there is a name for why I act like this" revelation is cathartic... but if I had ever had a "successful" period in my teens, it would have been confusing and could have thrown me off my path.

My son will know by the time he's 10... whether I tell him or not, eventually he'll search Google for symptomology at some point and then come explain it to me. That's just how he rolls...

He'll likely suss it out before he does the research though: he's toeing the line of integration and extended classroom (which is modern school adminstration speak for "special ed daycare" near as I can tell)... so he'll either realize he's in a class with kids with various other issues, or that he's the only one in his regular classroom with his own grown up.

Also: Foreignness is a FANTASTIC cover... I spent my early twenties in Japan... I'm a squid in a china shop really, EVERYTHING I do is some manner social faux pas... but the Japanese have a very beautiful and strictly constructed social code... and if I hung out with a group of Americans, I often ended up being the LEAST noticeably foreign. Its fun!