Coming to Terms with the Diagnosis

No matter how well-prepared you thought you were after months spent worrying about your child's development, and seemingly endless visits with specialists, hearing that your child has autism is usually devastating. Many parents and psychologists describe the diagnosis as a kind of “death.” As Sharon Rosenbloom writes in Souls: Beneath and Beyond Autism, “With the diagnosis of autism, the dream dies.” While of course your child is very much alive, the feeling of loss is nonetheless very real for most parents and families. In many ways, the diagnosis of autism represents the death of both your idealized child and your life as you imagined it would be, full of soccer games and school plays, ballet classes and sleepovers. The diagnosis leaves you facing something entirely new and unknown, and it can feel very scary indeed.

**Information used with permission from Autism Speaks**