What's in a Name? Or at least in a diagnosis......

"Autistic Spectrum Disorder" or "Autism" or "ASD" (doesn't everything have an acronym nowadays?)

What would you say if you received that as a diagnosis for your child? (After having a few initial goes asking questions like "what is it?"  which might be your natural response, and fair enough )

I think that people attempting to answer the question above are divided into two camps:

Firstly, and broadly, those who do not care for or know quite well a child with any special education needs.  They are sympathetic, imagining distress, grief, shock, anxiety, anger.  And those things are probably all present to a greater or lesser degree - but what surprises this first category is the following emotion that I and Mr Life After Law (aka The Man Of The House) felt at the crucial consultation (with a panel of four autism experts who had spent hours carrying out and repeating official assessments and weighing endless reports and feedback from an even bigger pool of relevant people):

Relief.  


So far out of all my friends relations and acquaintances the only ones who really resonate with the relief of the diagnosis are those who also live with it (my not-at-all-sweepingly-generalised second category).  This is not to ignore the amazing love and support of all the friends and relations who empathise deeply and sincerely with our position.  It's just that I don't think you really understand in your bones why there is a sense of relief unless you have been through it.

I haven't met many parents of children with ASD who have had that diagnosis fall like a bolt out of the blue.  On the contrary, many have spent months or years, even, getting to the point where the experts agree on a diagnosis.  Some have had to fight against all kinds of discouragement, criticism and lack of resources to get the appropriate assessments carried out, and to arrive at a conclusion.

And so, certainly for us, there was at the meeting at which we officially were pronounced "autistic" an overwhelming sense of relief.  We are not imagining it.  We are not inadequate parents.  Our child is not "difficult" or "defiant".  We are not hopeless or helpless.  We are not being weak in finding things challenging. We can make a difference. We can open up opportunities and there are lots of ways forward now.

I haven't blogged for a while - and you may now understand why.  We've been thinking about other stuff.  And I will undoubtedly talk about the trials and triumphs of Life After Law in relation to ASD.  It will be apparent that my decision to quit my career in law is related to the additional needs of our family.

But we have two children, not one - and we are a family unit of complex unique individuals.  Some of us really like to watch WWII war films for the 60th time, some of us think that everything can be improved by the addition of pink glitter, some of us will only eat one brand of baked beans, one of us (and I'm pretty sure it is me) really likes to listen to people sing about dying and/or love in a foreign language. While disguised as a boy/servant/swapped at birth. Preferably in a massive frock. And wig.

So I will continue to blog about Life After Law and "giving it all up" (stares nobly into middle distance) and parenting.  And blogging about ASD will be part of that, but it isn't the whole story, not by a long shot.  And I look forward to sharing snapshots of the next few chapters with you.