Quote From: mcshelliI watched the show on aspergers and felt upset about it. My son is 6 now, and was diagnosed when he was 4. He is the sweetest boy and has never had any outbursts. We have always made it a point to not over react and treat him just like a normal child. He doesn' t even know he has it. I think Alex on the show has been told he has this all his life, and his parents used the disorder as an excuse for every situation they ran into. My son now also has cancer and we approach that the same way. We treat him as normal as possible and as a result he is very well adjusted and wonderful child. I hope people don't watch the show today and think that Alexs' story is the norm and start having a negative opinion about aspergers children.
I have a nine year old autistic child who has always known that he is autistic. He does at times have fits of rage, but it is not because he knows he's autistic and it is never used as an excuse for his fits. He has the fits because he can not properly verbalize what is bothering him and he gets frustrated by this. I do not think there is any thing wrong with telling the child this. I also believe if you try and hide this from your child that will cause more problems in the future for them. I accepted my childs autism and as a matter of a fact on one of my son's papers for school he put I am special and different because I am autistic. I feel that it is a part of acceptance and if he is able to accept that then hopefully we will not go through a time of him not being able to accept his autism or himself because they are one in the same.
Also I do believe that we should treat our children "normal", but we also can not deny them the right to know. It is not going to make them "normal" there is no cure just acceptance.
