Hey

Ok, first post, and it's going to be a pearler.

* and if you are offended by the F-word, and by that I mean fuck, you may as well click off now.

So I'm Lulu and I have a human Cyclone living in my house, he is also known as my son.

Cyclone has literally just a week ago been diagnosed with Aspergers. He was a little higher up on the spectrum than I expected but apart from that it's no great surprise.

I'm going to tell you how we got to this point in the posts that follow. It's going to be good for me to have a record.

But for now, it's just about today.

It is really starting to get to me. It's the people, my family and even some friends.

They hear me when I say what the diagnosis is, then go on to tell me what I need to do, how I should do things differently.

Usually it's followed by lines like "my friends sister has a kid with Aspergers and he did/didn't - this/that/the other usually to indicate that because my child does/doesn't/won't/can't do the exact same thing as said children that I don't know what I'm talking about.

Or I'm doing IT wrong.

This to ME indicates that THEY don't know what they are talking about and I AM NOT doing things wrong.
If you don't understand or really know much about it how about you just ask me not rely on what other random people with their mythical fucking Spectrum children have told you.

Then I have to spend half a fucking hour explaining exactly what Aspergers/Autism really means. Even though I have done this 5 times already.

Already I can see people literally erasing Cyclones personality and pasting something else over it. Something else could mean - crap parenting, not being "firm enough", not having a better routine - whatever.

Now I get the "label" thing. I didn't care about labels before. They could mean anything and we all wear labels - either put there by ourselves or other people. Right or wrong, I don't care how people label me. I don't care if people give Cyclone the Aspy label - as long as they actually know what that means.

I know you know what it means when you say "oh ok, cool" or "yeah were you expecting that?" or even "shit hot, now you can get funding to help Cyclone". Other Aspy/Austism parents (I shall find a better label for that hahahahaha!) just ask how your alcohol intake is.

So for now, I am just going to photocopy Cyclones medical reports, information on Sensory Integration Dysfunction and a list of books to read and have them all ready on hand anytime someone irritates me by being an ignorant dick.