Can I just say, and I'm just being honest...

[Esquilax]

CIJS?

Now that it's not just me saying it, and we also have a diagnosis, will you stop accusing me of making excuses for him? Please, for the love of the child, inform yourself. Educate yourself. Learn to love him the way he needs to be loved. Stop trying to shape him into your idea of normal. Let him become even more amazing in those areas in which he is a high achiever. Help him, don't fight him. I know you mean well. I know you just want what's best for him. Just... open up your mind a little. Be a little more flexible. I appreciate that you care so much, but I need you to listen to what they have to say. I'm not saying to not challenge him. No way! He's incredibly capable of so much! Let's just learn the how and why of everything. It's the only way.

People who think like that are a dime a dozen. Hell, I'm 26 years old and right after I got my diagnosis my dad's earliest suggestion was that I don't do any research on it because I might start thinking I have certain symptoms. Not that I might recontextualize things I already felt, but that I might invent new symptoms out of whole cloth now that I have a "license" to do so. To him it was one big excuse just waiting to happen, even if it's a disability I didn't choose to have.

What I'm saying is, you're doing great by approaching it on his terms as best you can. Before the diagnosis and after it. A lot of people simply will not stop thinking of others outside of their own experiential framework, even when those others medically differ from that in ways they can't help; having an ally who'll actually take that difference into account... it means a lot, trust me.

I dunno, maybe I'm saying a bunch of shit you already know, and I certainly don't mean to be all doom and gloom: hopefully this person takes what you have to say to heart and changes. Just wanted to give you a kind of thumbs up for being cool from the outset, I guess.