My son wont accept my grandson is Autistic

Gorki, thank you and I wish your grandson and your family well. I'm sure your daughter will find the right time to explain his condition to your grandson. Autistic conditions are generally better understood these days and help is there but sometimes it's a struggle to get it.

I am glad you mentioned it. I would like to read it and will try and get a copy . Other people's experiences are always helpful. I am so pleased the future is looking bright for your grandson. That is encouraging.

My grandson has ADHD and mild autism, and although diagnosed eventually, was badly let down by the education system. Fortunately he is now in a special school which is marvellous and at 15 his future is looking positive. My daughter has written their story, as she hopes to help other parents with children on the spectrum. "The Boy From Hell: Life with a Child with ADHD" by Alison Thompson, available from Amazon in paperback and Kindle. I hope it's OK to mention it on here, I am very proud of her and think the book will be helpful to a whole range of parents and grandparents, and may help some parents to recognise aspects of their child.

Yes, it would be lovely to be able to wave a magic wand.

Yes I think the hardest thing for us as grandparents is seeing how difficult it is for our children when everything is such hard work. Even harder when you live a very long way away and can't do anything practical!

I totally agree about the timing .Yes, he is very lucky with his TA. She is a granny herself and she can see that my daughter sometimes gets a bit down because she(DD) compares him to other children so she always says something positive even on a bad day and you can see she really enjoys being with him. She has helped him a lot with imaginative play.

Be grateful for the one to one support! In Spain there is no support in school at all; the therapist is a private one from the Asperger's Association. I think there is no one right time to tell them though, so much depends on the individual and the circumstances.

Thanks for your thought Mamie .It is probably a bit early yet then for my grandson. Like yours , ours is desperate to make friends and is over-exuberant and noisy. However , he invades their personal space and is unable to sustain a conversation with them and so they tend to snigger a bit . Fortunately there is one boy in his class who is very similar to him and they get on like a house on fire and have been to play at each other's houses .Sadly , I think the school is going to separate them next year as the teacher , although an excellent one only in her first year of teaching, finds them a bit much even though my grandson does have one-to-one support.. Understandably, in mainstream she has got to consider the rest of the class.

My son discussed it with my seven year old grandson a few weeks ago. He wasn't very interested. This was after discussion about the right time to tell my grandson, with his therapist. I guess it will be one of those things to be revisited from time to time, with a bit more understanding each time. I don't think being autistic, per se, would make him unhappy, but the fact that he finds it so hard to make friends certainly does. He is atypical though as he actually wants to make friends. Oddly the Spanish school system works well for him as he has to learn and regurgitate facts. He is coping well in a mainstream school and is of broadly average intelligence, though he has problems with areas of learning around knowledge and understanding of the world.

I wonder when is the best time to make someone aware they have a problem. I dread the time when my daughter has to tell my grandson that he is autistic. At the moment he is blissfully unaware and a very happy child. He is 5.

Nelliemoser - you have all of my sympathies. Living with someone who is not self aware of their condition is very hard, and there is no-one so resistant as a high functioning "Aspie" (that is my daughters term, and preferred choice of description,not mine!) because they are always right!

<thinks about adding a smile and concluding its not really a smiling issue>

Equally, they don't 'do' guilt. There is a Forum online which I found quite supportive in the early stages of DD's diagnosis - they have a very active, high functioning, married chap on the Board who is very self aware and does much to explain behaviours and suggest solutions ....it might be worth a look? (there is another for wives of, but it is very top heavy on divorced whose approach is : leave, it will destroy you! probably not helpful.

Truly you have my empathy; and today's bunch of flowers :-) .....its a ;long haul.
B x

Inthefields I have picked the wrong poster to reply to before now. its easily done. I just wanted to be sure who you had replied to.

Your DD is aware of what she is up against and does something to help herself manage the issues. Which is precisely what my DH doesn't do. He recognised himself in the symptom list but would never do anything about it. An old style man who see this as every one elses problem but his own. Sigh!

Nelliemoser - I do apologise.
I am either have a fat-finger day, or a fat brain week! I did indeed intend to address your post ...think I must have read the 'Cathy' in bold, and just run with it

I was probably being a little defensive about the "getting by" comment, and know it was meant to be taken in context. I am so proud of my DD's independence, stable relationship and stable job that I tend to react to anything which questions her abilities.

If I am honest with myself, there are still some difficult issues, and there always will be. The upside is that DD has researched her condition, has an in-depth understanding of why she reacts to things as she does, and is therefore able to explain her reactions from an intellectual standpoint.

I so wish that more support was available to parents of higher functioning children on the spectrum.

I totally agree with everything that has been said but ASD is such a wide spectrum that it is very difficult to generalise. My heart goes out to those who are severely affected and their families. Nobody asks for this affliction and I never cease to be amazed by families who do their utmost to give their children the best quality of life they can.

However this thread was concentrating on those less severely affected who could possibly cope in mainstream school and the fact that this disability may or may not be diagnosed or even accepted by some members of the family and it was to this group that I have been addressing my posts.

I cannot stress enough that for this group of children (in my opinion), mixing with so called normal children is the best option. It certainly seems to be working for my grandson though it is not always easy for him and sometimes I am very sad when I see the way other children occasionally laugh at him. The girls seem to be far more accepting of him than the boys.

"Inthefields"
In your post you addressed Cathy did you mean me Nelliemoser?

I addressed my response to Cathy as I had some issues with her comments on ASD particularly being calm.

Yes sorry! I didn't mean anything in particular about saying "getting by" but I was trying to point out that it can be a very disabling condition.

My DH is undiagnosed but has shown many classic Aspergers symptoms. He has an MSC but cannot organise himself, has lost lots of jobs due to slowness or not wanting to start anything when he has been asked.
A classic line was.. I would have done it if you hadn't mentioned it. He talks people to death and can't stop giving far too many details so the poor listener looses the thread. Etc tetc. My life is not made easy by this to say the least.

Quite right Nelliemoser; calm is not a word I would use in connection with ASD. My grandson has high end ASD and my son says that it is very common for parents in his support group to think that their child is inevitably going to be some kind of genius.
I think this can get in the way of coming to terms with the acceptance of the realities of the condition and the many difficulties of bringing up an autistic child. Of course it is important to take a positive view, but parents need realistic support and help too.

Well said on several points Cathy, including the support needed by carers....but my DD would take serious issue with anyone who thinks that she just "gets by" with her life (and she was assessed as being lower on the spectrum than any of us expected!!).

Cathy Calm is not a word I would use about almost any child with Autism. The difficulties in processing information frequently leads to those affected being very stressed by noises, new places and changes in routine etc that most other people would not bat an eyelid at.
This distress can lead to a child being presenting with very challenging behaviour, being overactive, distressed, destructive and self harming.
I am not generalising here but it can be a condition that seriously affects lives. I have known a number of parents of severly affected Autisic children who are constantly exhausted by caring

Yes! A very very few do have special skills the "autistic savant" but so do a great number of non autistic spectrum people. In reality, life for the individual and the carers can be very challenging indeed and it is people caring for relatives with this disability often need a lot of support.

I find it really hard to argue that there are any good points to this condition. There are ways of managing it and many of those at the "high end" of the autistic spectrum with Aspergers syndrome do get by. For others it makes life very hard indeed and independent living is impossible. That group and any carers do need to be able to make it clear that they need and deserve support .

Lyndaj - your description of your grandson could be a thumbnail of my daughter at the same age. As mentioned, she remained un-diagnosed throughout school and did exceptionally well academically (tho bailed out at tertiary level as she could not handle the social aspects and changed structuring).
School bored her due to the repetition of points she had understood on the first run through, but she was not disruptive and forged ahead by reading the textbooks - usually at the back of the class. It sounds as though your DG is equally bright, and may be well liked by teachers

My daughter was bullied, but mainly because she has very red hair not because of social skills!!
Oddly, she found junior school much harder than secondary level where she discovered more children who were both bright and not popular, with whom she could form a circle of her own.

I would be very reassured, and as others have said, work with educating yourself. As a tip .... the best way to handle is with clear concise instructions given one at a time!! My daughter explains that her wiring is different (and research has indeed shown the brain firing differently) and therefore she cannot "read" facial expressions or intuit what is meant when sentences have more than one meaning..... she asks that people say exactly what they mean. An instance would be : could you do the washing up? to DD, this is not a request, she hears it as "are you able to do washing up", answers in the affirmative and carries on with whatever she is doing blithely unaware that anything was required of her. Distraction (sudden total engagement with something) totally over-rides any earlier directive, so "put away your toys" often resulted in compliance only up to the point that any one toy caught interest. There is no awareness whatsoever that this is not appropriate behaviour and they cannot process the emotional reasons/reactions of those who then become cross. Again, they are mystified by the responses.

It may or may not be of help to you, but if your DGS is anything like my DD then he will slowly learn to read his parents emotive responses simply because of the repetition over years. Not well, but enough to know how to stay within their boundaries. If an action consistent provokes shouting (and loud noise is usually abhorrent) then they do learn where the parental limit lies. It won't always help (we had some major confrontations -particularly in teen years) but it is those very normal responses that DD considers have enabled her to function as well as she does - as I said before.

I think I am wittering on, so will stop, but am very happy to talk through any other experiences of raising a child with this level of ASD if you would like to PM..

Your DGS already has the best thing in the world going for him ....someone who is prepared to understand, and learn, albeit in the background :-)
B x

These high functioning children can achieve such a lot. Have you read the books by Temple Grandin.? She is amazing and gives lots of advice . She is autistic and has a real affinity with cattle. It sounds funny but she has done some really good work in that area and will leave her mark in history . My daughter heard her lecture when she came to Reading and was really impressed. Einstein is thought to have been autistic as well ,and there are many others who have done good because of their single-minded focus and their devotion to their pet interest rather than spending time socially.

My grandson had an obsession with spinning things when he was smaller. He would stand at the washing machine for ages and turn his pushchair upside down to play with the wheels. We had to take him to the Garden Centre to see the fans!!

I have a lot of time for these children. They are rarely malicious and generally don't lie. All they need is to be accepted and they can be heaps of fun .Who's to say they haven't got it right in some respects? They certainly do not conform to the crowd.

Lyndajgran you have just described my grandson. With the added lack of eye contact. Also he is obsessed by cars/trucks he will spend hours lining his toys up. They have to be exactly level.
DD has always maintained he has a problem. He will be 4 this month and is due to go for an assessment next week. He is high functioning has an amazing memory, knows all his letters, shapes, colours and counts to 20.
DD wants a diagnosis. At one point she wasn't expecting him to go to mainstream school. He is due to start September. I think it's the best thing for him.

Lyndajgran It looks as if your grandson is high functioning and as he grows older he may well be able to develop strategies to cope with his problem. At this stage I would be guided by what the school thinks. It sounds as if he is not a problem for them.My grandson has been helped to play imaginatively and this is where you could help out possibly with pretend tea parties etc. I think this is very important at this age for social integration. At one point my daughter thought my grandson was being bullied at school but it turned out they were playing police and criminals but when they said a policeman was coming to put him in gaol he took it literally and was very frightened. It is now his favourite game !!

Lyndajgran it is not a label he needs but understanding of his particular needs. If he is on the ASD spectrum , and some of the behaviour you describe could fit that, then those around him need to understand what he sees/feels and what he is finding difficult to do compared to his siblings/cousins.

The argument about labeling children is complex. It should lead to understanding of why /how/ a child feels /behaves and offer strategies and advice to parents and professionals to support the child's progress and development.

However some parents want a label to excuse behaviour, some use the label to protect a child and others think it means /leads to under achievement and do not want a label.
In school an assessment that might lead to a statement of educational needs can provide additional funds so the school can have additional resources to help meet the needs of the child. I understand this is under review at the moment with a view that money might go to parents.

Gorki, the symptoms i've noticed are his amazing ability to learn and recite parrott fashion, his insistance on routine. he doesnt have the imaginative play that my other grandkids have, and only sees everything litterally and unfortunately his lack of social conversation. he will answer my questions perfectly but with the others of similar age we can talk about any number of topics but not with him. these are just a few examples. I just want to see him get the best opportunities and no my son and d in law are not bad to him, they just dont know how to react and tend to shout a lot

thank you for your advise, i think if i learn how to respond and react to him then its a start. nothing has been mentioned at school as far as im aware but he is brilliant in class with his reading and reciting.