[00:00:00] My name is Andrea Gibson. This video today is going to be a little bit different than some of the others that you’ve seen here on our resource library. This video is going to be more based on my personal experience. I am an occupational therapist, but I am also a late diagnosed autistic adult. I was identified as autistic when I was 35 years old.
And the topic of this video today is why I feel that it is beneficial to share your child’s diagnosis with them at a younger age (and all throughout their childhood) to help them form a positive self identity. So to do that, I’m going to share. Just again, my own personal experience. I do want to be clear up front here that I am in no way trying to represent the autistic community as a whole.
This decision is very personal for every family and every individual. There’s a lot of complex factors that go into this decision. So I do want to just preface everything that I say here with that, that I’m happy to share my experience. But [00:01:00] everybody has their own path to travel here.
So to me, what brought diagnosis into my view was actually attending continuing education conferences about autism and realizing how much I resonated with the autistic experience that was being shared by autistic speakers, which then led me to do a lot of personal research, a lot of reflection, talking to family members about my childhood, looking at old home videos of myself, all sorts of things to gather information.
Then I did ultimately go through the formal diagnostic process at the age of 35. What came out of that process for me was truly life changing. It changed my entire view of myself. I was never, I was never truly hard on myself. I always had a pretty decent sense of self and identity.
However, I did always struggle with many of the [00:02:00] stereotypically autistic things. I had a lot of sensory sensitivities and a lot of social awkwardness. I wasn’t always sure how to navigate different friendships, relationships, different dynamics, between people. And for a lot of, for a lot of years, most of my life, I just figured that was my personality.
That it was a me thing, or that was something that everybody dealt with and I was just bad at dealing with it. So I did have a lot of anxiety that came along with that. I had a lot of nights spent up late overthinking every single thing that I had said. And did I perceive that correctly? Did I say something wrong?
Do people think poorly of me because of what I said? All of these types of things. The vast majority of that quieted down once I was diagnosed and once I began to understand myself a little bit better. And so, it was the diagnostic process and the label of, okay, these are things that are [00:03:00] due to being autistic that allowed me then to grant myself grace and understanding.
It was just the fact that I now had an answer as to why some of these things are hard. Why it’s hard for me to pick up a phone and make a call without having a script written out ahead of time. Why it’s hard for me to tolerate bright sunlight, or loud noises, or itchy clothing, or any of these different things.
Before that diagnosis, I just felt like they were just, they’re just struggles. They were weaknesses of mine that I was perpetually trying to work on to get better at, but was never able to get better at them. So I’ve always said that it’s so important that the kids, once we’ve identified them as being neurodivergent, whether that’s ADHD, autism, the combination, or any other difference, it’s helpful for them to have those answers earlier on. My mental health went from [00:04:00] “Okay, but a little bit of a daily struggle” to “Great” just through the diagnostic process and the processing after that. I can better understand myself, better accommodate myself, set a reasonable expectations for myself, and just really come into my own, even though, yes, I was already a fully professional adult at the time that I went through diagnosis.
I was already an O. T. I already had the clinic up and running. But it still brought me a lot of peace and a lot of answers. So with that all said as to why I believe that we should share diagnoses or labels with the kids, how do we do that? How do we bring it up? And again, this is going to be a very personal decision, but I’m a big believer in talking about neuro divergence , as a matter of identity. It’s a matter of just a neutral fact about somebody. It is not something that is good or bad. It’s just different .And [00:05:00] yes, autistic brains or brains that have ADHD can struggle with different things, and it can be really validating and helpful for children to understand that early on.
So it’s okay to say, “We’ve found out how your brain works.” because that’s that’s what we’ve really done by going through diagnosis. We’ve found out how their brain works. “And my job as your parent, is to help you understand how your brain works.” It’s okay to talk about the struggles. It’s okay to acknowledge that some things are more difficult than others
So for some people, using books can be a really helpful way to broach the topic with your children. I did want to share just a couple of books that I’ve found to be really helpful, in talking about brain differences and diagnoses with kids. One of them for younger kids is this one. It’s called Just Right for You, by Melanie Hayworth.
This book does a wonderful job of just objectively talking about [00:06:00] different brain differences. Without shame or without embarrassment or without being too heavy on the struggles It really does a great job And it’s a nice picture book. It’s engaging for younger kids So this one’s a really good one to use and then I also have this one.
It’s the Awesome Autistic Go-To Guide This one’s geared towards a little bit older. It says for tweens and teens. This is by Yenn Purkis and Tanya Masterman. Again, this one is also really helpful. There’s a mixture of some activities as well as some more stories and things like this.
This is more focused on, again, validating the autistic experience for those middle school age or a little bit older. So it talks about sensory differences and meltdowns, but it, but it talks about them in a way that is really validating and objective to people that are actually experiencing them. So both of [00:07:00] these two are great resources depending on the age of your child.
There are, there are a lot more. Those are just the two that I happen to have on hand. And there are a lot of resources on online for This specific topic of talking about the diagnosis with kids. I will link some of them into the resources page here with this video, but I just wanted to share. Again, my experience on how much my quality of life actually improved after being diagnosed, as autistic and starting to understand myself and why I personally believe that sharing that diagnosis and information and helping children understand how their brain works from an early age can really set them up for success.
From a self identity pride, self esteem standpoint for later in life. So thanks again for listening and more resources are linked down below.
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