I guess this is the best place for my question!

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My wife and I have a young daughter who recently got diagnosed with sensory processing disorder. SPD is very common among people who have autism but you can have SPD and not be autistic. The first question my daughter's doctors asked us was, "does anyone in your family have autism?" We said no. We shared all of this information with my mother in law.

Last week my mother in law told me privately that my wife had been diagnosed autistic as a child. But my wife had never been told because the doctors back then said that she should never know. My mother in law wanted me to know because it could be part of the problems that my daughter is having. I told her on the spot that she had to tell my wife about the autism diagnosis or I eventually would. She agreed to by New Year's Day.

So a lot of issues here. Should my wife know she was diagnosed autistic? What can I expect when she finds out? Should I wait on my mother in law to tell her?

I've already informed my daughter's doctors. They haven't seen my daughter since this came out so I have no update if she might be autistic.

Wow. What a predicament. I guess it's hard to know what your wife's behavior would be once she hears the news.

She can say, "Really. No wonder I behave like this and that. That explains it."

or

"What do you mean I'm autistic? You're crazy! You're making that up!"

I'm a firm believer that the truth should always be known, but that's me. Good luck with whatever you decide.

I believe that your wife has the right to know.

Expect some drama and/or depression.

In my opinion you should give your MIL until the stroke of midnight, and then tell your wife.

Good luck.

She suffers from anxiety and is taking medication for that. Per Wikipedia, autism anxiety is best treated with cognitive therapy, not medication. This could impact her treatment if I understand this right.

Then perhaps you should discuss this with her medical practitioner first, before telling her anything.

I'm with the others. She should know.

I practice what I preach, too, and have informed close friends/family of their Autistic traits in the most tactful way possible. I'm still waiting for my closest friend to read the 20 pages I wrote months ago informing him of all of this about himself. I am a bit nervous about how he's going to react, but I feel his life will be better for knowing even if there's an "adjustment period," of stress that he goes through.

Once she's over the initial shock of the news, I highly recommend she reads "The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome," by Dr. Tony Attwood. You should probably read it yourself, too, as it's a nearly complete crash course in all of this. You'll learn a lot and save a lot of time and frustration.

This is all very odd. In a way, the least odd thing is that your mother-in-law was advised by doctors not to reveal a diagnosis, and did what they told her. That was just the way of things until not so long ago.

One thing I find odd is that you make no mention at all of your wife having any behaviours which might suggest autism. This isn't like finding out that she was adopted. Autism is observable - that's how it's diagnosed, and it usually causes difficulty which lead to assessment or diagnosis.

The other thing, is that your daughter has be assessed and diagnosed with SPD. You seem to think that the news that your wife was diagnosed with autism as a child may mean that your daughter will receive a diagnosis of autism. If she wasn't diagnosable as autistic before then her mother's childhood diagnosis doesn't make her diagnosable now.

How your wife responds to the news will depend on a whole lot of factors.

Yeah, I was thinking something similar. When I first found out, it was due to a aside by somebody who was talking about their newly diagnosed son and how I should understand since I was also autistic..

My response: "I am not autistic.."

Normally it is pretty observable... everybody around me knew. On what grounds was your wife diagnosed?

It is odd for me to!

While I would describe my wife as "no drama" I would never have said autistic. She's a scientist who doesn't talk about emotions much. But she has them.

From my research on SPD, there is a huge overlap between ASD and SPD. And the doctors sometimes confuse the two. Which is why they asked us early on if anyone in our family was autistic.

A similar thing happened to me. I was diagnosed when I was 12 or 13, but I was never told this by anyone. My parents thought that the doctor didn't know what he was talking about and that I was just a little shy. Fast forward 10 years, and I was still having a lot of social struggles so my parents decided to tell me. Ironically enough, just before they told me, I had been seeing another doctor who also diagnosed me with mild Aspergers.

In the end I'm really glad that they mentioned it to me, it is much better than keeping secrets.

Does your wife show any signs of autism?

Yes you can have SPD and not be autistic and you can be autistic and not have any family members with it.

I was 15 when my mom told me a doctor thought I was autistic when I was a year old. I don't know of it was one doctor or more because my mom keeps saying they and then saying it was only that one doctor and I saw it in my old records when another doctor said he was concerned about autism. I wonder what I was even doing that made the doctor think I was autistic if my mom had just brought me in his office and he didn't even know my medical history before giving his opinion.

Would it change things if you were in your mid 30's?

>Does your wife show any signs of autism?

She's a female geek who doesn't like to talk about feelings. But I know she has them. She shows love for me and the kids. But she has a hard time in social situations and isn't great at making friends.

To other people, even her own family, she can seem unfeeling. But I know that's not the case, she just doesn't know how to express herself to them.

I'm inside the loop, or I understand her better. To me she seems pretty normal. But outside that circle and people have a hard time understanding her. If that makes sense.

I know you weren't asking me, but: Yes. For the better. I didn't know until I was almost 29 going on 30. Then learning about it, reading the book I recommended etc, helped make sense of e v e r y t h i n g in my life up until that point & gave me the knowledge and tools to navigate life a whole lot better since.

Further to that, figuring out & treating the root cause of my neurological differences over the last several months has made things infinitely better than just knowing about them in the first place. Reducing/eliminating symptoms is far better than knowing about them and having to put up with them forever, IMO.




That makes perfect sense since those are all pretty common traits of someone on the higher functioning end of the ASD spectrum.

>Further to that, figuring out & treating the root cause of my neurological differences over the last several months has made things infinitely better than just knowing about them in the first place.

I'm worried about a few things:

1-this will destroy the fragile relationship she has with her mother. Her mother expressed this concern as well
2-she will relapse into a depression - she has struggled with that in the past but it currently alright.

1) Maybe, maybe not. Maybe in the short term & not in the long. IMO, it's a risk worth taking. Once she learns all of these things her life will be forever changed for the better for it. Being ignorant isn't bliss. It just makes things frustrating and difficult without having an explanation as to why. Also, seeing as she's a scientist & probably extremely logical as we tend to be, she should see the logic in her non-medical professional mother following the advice of the doctor(s) who told her it was best not to inform he daughter. Most people aren't going to go against the advice of an expert, so even if she feels her mom should have, she should understand why she didn't.

2) Maybe, but again, if so it should be temporary vs. the permanent benefits of knowing. It's worth the risk and possible costs. Personally, figuring these things out for myself wasn't depressing - it was freeing.. to finally have an answer, to know, to be able to read a book that was essentially a "user manual," for how my brain has operated my entire life. It was a massive leap forward vs. a setback. There's the possibility that, after the initial shock, that her reaction to all of this may be like that instead of getting depressed at all. You won't know until it happens.

PS The bit of my post you quoted above is in reference to the diet & herbal treatments I've been using over the last several months to treat myself and my symptoms with tremendous success. The rough draft hard-to-read story is in the link in my signature. People here think I am lying or playing an elaborate hoax, but neither could be further from the truth & I do believe that many of us here have these neurological symptoms being caused by the same root digestive cause and that it's entirely treatable. Feel free to read it & message me about it if you like.