Early diagnosis and intervention is massively important and yet for a parent of a diagnosed highly functioning ASD child (formerly known as Aspergers), it is o

Early diagnosis and intervention is massively important and yet for a parent of a diagnosed highly functioning ASD child (formerly known as Aspergers), it is one of the most frustrating things I've ever experienced. Our child was diagnosed at 3; it took the experts a while to conclude, in the end they needed to see him in the proper environments, with other children. Poor social skills was one of the give aways, yet it wasn't all. Wanting to give our child every opportunity we did go for what we could do at great personal / financial cost, our health insurance in Australia covered next to nothing. Why ABA isn't covered beats me, if your house burns down your house insurance will cover it, yet if your child has autism .. with economical impact approaching the same, yet you sit there with no bloody cover. There's just so much, too much to write about in a single post. The comments from other people, even other family members: All children all difficult, he looks perfectly normal to me. (They have no fracking idea). The looks you get when you can't control his tantrums ... fortunately for us, this doesn't happen all too often out in the public, for some reason it's mostly at home. The sheer exhaustiveness of dealing with it all, whilst trying to hold down a job, stay sharp and current with the latest in programming developments. The sadness of not daring to give your only son a sibling, because it could also be on the spectrum and it might simply be too much. Besides, with savings gone... The hard toll it has taken on your marriage.. Yet you persist and it's all worth it. I can't know if it was worth burning our savings, but it does seem so. We will never know, we only have one shot at this. A couple of key points: If you've seen one person with autism you've seen one child with autism. Each case is different. Please do not make assumptions about the next. Someone wrote you can't die from autism. Suicide rates beg to differ; extremely strong correlations to depression and other mental illness. Early diagnosis and intervention are indeed critical; starting school this year, we now have full engagement of the school who are professionally prepared to deal with the traits of autism. This is going to make a world of difference. I wish the people here in the same boat the very best of luck. Stay strong.