Gold Logie winner and The Project host Waleed Aly has opened up about his son’s autism diagnosis.

We all know parenting can be quite tough, for numerous reasons. But, having a child with autism can be quite a challenging experience.

In a segment about comedian Tom Gleisner’s work with the Learning For Life Learning Centre, Aly spoke about how finding out his son has autism “opened up doors.”

“I know when we got our diagnosis for our son we actually had the opposite reaction to the guy in the package,” Aly said on The Project on Monday night.

“I didn’t worry, it didn’t hit me in the face — it actually explained a lot of things and it opened up doors.”

Aly, who very rarely speaks about his own personal life, explained how with the “relief” came the realisation that a change had to occur in his approach to parenting. “Then what happens is you’ve got to try and reorientate everything, so that you’re communicating with the kid in a way that actually works with the way their brain works,” Aly said.

“And when you do that and you get those moments where a door opens, and suddenly they do something … your heart just leaps.”

However, Aly confirmed he does still cast doubt and holds concerns over Zayd’s future.

“The thing that is really scary about it is you actually don’t know what their ceiling is,” he said.

“So all the things that you would normally take for granted like when they have a career, when they get married or whatever, you’re just facing an unknown. You don’t know if those things will ever be possible.”

“And when you see something you don’t know is possible happen it changes your world, it’s really powerful.”

Aly and his wife Dr Susan Carland married 17 years age. They share two children; 15-year-old Aisha and 11-year-old Zayd.

The Project host also opened up about Zayd in a 2016 TV Week interview, saying Zayd’s diagnosis was “a major thing for us”.

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