My son will be 7 in a few months. He knows that he has autism. He has been able to read since he was 2 and we have books and articles about autism all over the house. We are active in our local autism community and attend autism events. DS is partially mainstreamed, so he spends part of his day in the regular 1st grade  classroom and part in the autism classroom. He knows lot of other kids who have autism. He also knows his other diagnoses: asthma, albinism, and vision impairment.
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However, knowing the word autism and understnading what it means are two different things. The understanding is a gradual process that we are guiding him through. He knows that autism means that his brain works differently. We talk about how all kids have some things that are easy to learn and some things that are hard to learn. But that autism makes certain things easy and other things hard.
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DS is at a point in his development right now where he has recently become much more aware of himself and of the differences between kids. Recently he named some children and told me that they are like him beause they wear glasses. Then he named some other kids and told me that they are like him because they have asthma and do breathing treatments. And then he named the kids from his autism classroom and our support group and said that they are like him because they have autism. But then he wanted to know why there is a special classroom for kids with autism and no special classrooms for kids with asthma or kids with glasses. He wants special classrooms for those kids too. So we tried to explain that the kids with autism have specific things they need to learn and that is why they have special classes.
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It's a gradual process to reach understanding. We know that it's not going to happen all at once. So we try to provide him with the best information he can understand at this point.
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