My H said maybe we should take videos of our son at his best to document everything he CAN do and show that to the doctors. He wants them to think he's okay. I had to explain how they need to see him at his worst. That the more severe the diagnosis, the more early intervention he gets access to.

He said he doesn't want a diagnosis just because it might make our son sound special. I explained it's all about access to resources. Nothing more. I said the diagnosis could stay on official forms and we could never tell our son, never tell our family and friends and it wouldn't make any difference. The diagnosis is just words. With or without it your child is still your child and will behave the way they do regardless. Nothing changes. Except you have a word to put on the official forms and a key to resources to help your child.

That seemed to help him. At this point in time we're hoping for a diagnosis and a huge stack of early intervention resources with the dream of mainstream school and this all becoming a distant memory.

Maybe the promise of keeping it a secret (for the short term at least) will help him. Make it an "Us & Them" thing? THEY say our child has "blah-blah" because that gets them through their working day, WE know our child is just doing their thing but oh look, we snagged some extra education for our kid so haha to them!