Last night I had to tell my son he has autism.

It's a decision that my husband and I have struggled with for a long time. When and how to tell a child that they think differently and understand the world from a very different perspective.

Developmentally some children are not going to be able to process and understand what that information means until they are older. The level of self-awareness, emotional development, and language processing abilities all have to 'jive up' with what you are about to explain. We waited because we wanted things to jive up a bit more. Yet sometimes other parts of your life have a way of saying, 'it's time'.

In the past, we have merely told our son very generic things such as 'well sometimes you just think differently' or 'sometimes you see and hear things that the other kids can just tune out' or 'sometimes words can mean other things', and so on and so on. We never said why these things sometimes happened we just explained that it does.

Last night we had to explain why that it does.

It's not that we feel ashamed or embarrassed or that we feel he is cursed with a terrible affliction. Because we don't feel or believe any of that. He is who he is and we love who he is. He is a child with a pure heart and a passion for life. He is funny and more insightful than most adults I know. I am blessed with the privilege of being his mother, his guide, his teacher, and his advocate. He makes me a better person. Everyday he pushes me to do more, be more, think more, to love more, and to appreciate life more. He inspires me to higher levels of thought, perception, compassion, and understanding.

We feel that autism is a double edged sword--some things in life will be hard--really hard, and yet in other ways, autism will help him see the things we don't, comprehend things that we can't. Autism giveth and autism taketh away.

Yet we have always remained very positive and hopeful and because of that, I hope this transition to self-awareness and disclosure is just a natural step in the direction toward my son becoming his own champion. As you can imagine, autism is a word freely used in my house. A word that is always said in a spirit of hope and possibility. Even if I have never said to my son, 'hey you know are autistic' until last night (not the phrase I used by the way)--I hope he can see that we really do believe the world is a world of possibility for him.

Christopher Reeve said, 'Once you choose hope, anything is possible.' I choose hope.