My eldest son was one when I first heard the word autism used in relation to him. We were staying with my mother-in-law, a retired educational psychologist, and I had told her I was worried he wasn’t happy. She raised the possibility that he was autistic.
So I did what everyone does in a crisis: I went on the internet and did some heavy Googling, which frightened me a great deal more than it helped. Then I raised it with a health visitor. She watched him for a minute, put the cap back on her pen, handed me back his red book and told me he wasn’t autistic. I felt a burst of relief (these were my unenlightened days, when I feared autism and thought it meant my child would forever be unhappy).
The relief only lasted until we got home, however, where nothing had changed and I still had no real idea what he needed from me. This was the actual problem: he was not unhappy because he was autistic. He was unhappy because the people around him, me included, knew nothing about autism.
He got his official diagnosis at two. As a journalist, I started researching and writing about it and have dedicated much of the past decade to looking at what helps neurodivergent children to be happy. So if you are thinking “could my child be…?”, here is what to do about it.
The signs
Does your child get weirdly furious or tearful after a trip to the supermarket, a noisy party or a big family gathering? Do they take themselves away from the group because things quickly get too chaotic or intense? Do they struggle to know what they are feeling, or to put words to what is wrong, while seeming more anxious than you would expect of someone their age? Do they find school and friendships hard work? Do they struggle when routines change, or expect to sit at the back of the bus on the way home because that is where they sat on the way there? Do they have different social preferences, perhaps finding chit-chat pointless and annoying? Have you noticed that when something is planned and structured, your child is at their best, more communicative and more relaxed? Do they have intense special interests that bring them great joy?
Above is a list of some common features of autism, but autistic children will not tick all the boxes. There is enormous variety, in the same way that there is enormous variety in neurotypical people.
Mothers very often know deep down, in some wordless way, their child is different; long before anybody confirms it. That feeling is an instinct to take seriously; it’s also the thing most likely to be talked out of you. If some of the answers above are yes and the feeling will not go away, my advice is to get your child assessed.
It is also extremely common for two parents to end up in different places, one certain an assessment is needed and the other dead against it. There is no magic formula for resolving this. But it may help to know that you are not the only household having this argument.
Get in the queue
As of June 2026, there were 294,792 referrals for an assessment of autism in England, and 86.8 per cent of those people had waited longer than the 13 weeks the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommends. In some areas, the wait is three years. Those figures exclude community paediatrics, where many younger children are seen, so the real picture is likely worse.
This means it is sensible not to spend a long time agonising before you get on a waiting list. Get on a waiting list, then agonise. Your child’s school can refer them, and this is usually the best route because they can add their own observations. But if the school will not agree to it, go to your GP and ask them to refer instead. And you can book privately, which is faster if you can afford it, though check first what your local NHS service and your child’s school will accept, because a report nobody recognises is an expensive piece of paper. It is also worth asking about Right to Choose, which lets you pick a private provider and have the NHS pay for the assessment rather than you. Some areas have paused it on cost grounds.
How to talk to the school
Start with the class teacher. Say what you have noticed at home, then ask what they have noticed.
If they have seen support needs too, ask for a meeting with the special educational needs coordinator, or SENCo. The teacher may arrange this, or give you the SENCo’s email so you can request it yourself.
Go into that meeting with specific points, not generics. Not “he struggles socially” but “he seems able to make friends but not keep them”. The aim is to nail down the challenges and to get a sense of what exactly the school will do about them (rather than “we’ll keep an eye on him” which is vague), assuming everyone agrees on what they are.
Ask direct questions: what is your child’s experience of break time if they are young and can’t tell you (often schools won’t know), and if it is clear they don’t know, ask for someone to observe and report back. Break times are a school’s blind spot: it is when teachers are on their break, too, and there is an assumption that all children benefit from an hour of unstructured time, when for many autistic children that hour is the hardest and loneliest part of the day. Ask what structured activities exist and see if there is a club your child would enjoy. Structure lowers anxiety and makes everything easier, including communication and friendships.
The law around what schools have to do is clear: it is based on need, not labels. So a school that tells you it can do nothing until the results of the assessment comes through is wrong.
Email after the meeting confirming what was agreed. Do not overcommunicate with the school: staff are stretched, and the parent who emails daily is listened to less, not more.
Use the wait
Start a Google Doc. In it, note every meltdown and, more importantly, what happened in the 20 minutes before it. Note what calms your child and what tips them over, and what the environment, activities and triggers are for both. This will be useful evidence for the clinician assessing your child, but it also helps you spot patterns. It will help you do more of what calms your child and less of what stresses them out.
Ditch any sense that normal is right. If the music class the rest of the NCT group goes to is an hour of misery, stop taking your child. Ditto if they are forcing themselves to go to big gatherings but come back miserable. Encourage them to pick and choose the outings that are right for them. Add structure and predictability to your days.
Let them decompress after school, and do not fill the diary. Watch for masking. An autistic child who spends all day appearing normal to lessen the chance of being rejected or bullied is paying an enormous price for it, and the collapse that arrives at home is the bill. So let home be the place they can really be themselves. No forced eye contact, no compulsory small talk. Let them skip the big family gatherings, or at least have a quiet room they can retreat to.
Feed the special interests instead, because they are a source of real joy and possibly a career, and tell the teacher what they are in case they can be incorporated into lessons. Seek out groups of other neurodivergent kids, ideally with the same interests, and see if that makes friendships easier. It might also build their self-esteem, because finding someone you like and respect, who also upsets people without meaning to, makes a world of difference.
One last thing
You will no doubt be told that autism is overdiagnosed and that you are indulging a trend. The data says the opposite: if anything, it’s being under-diagnosed and children who need support are going unnoticed.
So hold your nerve, and don’t let people who don’t know what they are talking about influence you. It is responsible to find out whether your child is autistic or not, because if they are, it is vital information for them to have. If you are autistic and don’t know it, it is far harder to be happy.
Jessie Hewitson is the director of NeuroUniverse , a company that supports parents of neurodivergent young people. She is also the author of ‘Autism: How to Raise a Happy Autistic Child’ and ‘ADHD: How to Raise a Happy ADHD Child’.
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