On telling my son he's autistic

This week on dispatches from the frontlines of parenting a neurodivergent child, I massively put my foot in it. With my son, to be specific.

It’s one thing, as a parent, to absorb and process the information that your child is autistic — that their feelings, behaviours, and idiosyncrasies can be understood through a particular framework. We’re adults. Our brains are fully formed. We can grasp nuance, the wide spectrum across which autistic experiences are lived. And even then, it’s not always easy.

It’s another thing entirely to introduce that idea to your child — the one person who arguably needs to know more than anyone. And it’s something I’ve been quite anxious about, for fear of getting it wrong or giving him any reason to negatively self-identify as an autistic person.

But I’m so new to this. I have no script. I’m also relatively new to parenting. I haven’t had to have these kinds of conversations with five-year-olds heretofore. Invariably, I’m going to stumble along the way.

I’d heard from parents who are a few years ahead of me, and from autistic adults whose autism was never addressed in childhood, that it’s really important for kids to have that information early — before it becomes a thing. It shouldn’t be whispered around them, as though there’s fear or shame attached. It should be normalised, casual, no big deal.

And for a lot of kids, it probably is.

But for a child who wants clarity — who asks follow-up questions, who wants to know why, and who else, and what that means — you need to have some sense of how you’re going to frame it from the get-go.