On holiday with friend and her kids; it's not going well

[GlummyMcGlummerson]

For context, my DD (8)was diagnosed a few weeks ago with a (mild) neurological condition. As part of this she has good days and bad days - good days she’s a normal 8yo with a normal routine, bad days she get dizzy spells, nausea, headaches (usually triggered by noise or bright lights) and sleeps a lot. She’ll have a 1-2 hour nap and then 14-15 hours at night. I am essentially waiting to see if she gets over it on her own before considering treatment, on advice of her doctor.

We (me, DD and 4yo DS) are on week-long UK holiday with my friend and her kids who are the same age as mine, a couple of hours from where we live. My friend’s 8yo - lets call her Emma - is a sensitive child, always has been, my friend has discussed it with me before, but I never gave it too much thought, my own DD can certainly be sensitive. However we are now on day 4 of the holiday, and living in close quarters with them I’ve realised she’s VERY over sensitive and it’s affecting everyone’s enjoyment of the holiday, and more importantly my DD’s condition. Emma is NT.

A few examples
⁃ they were colouring the other day and Emma went slightly over the lines in her picture. She burst into tears, blamed her mum because her mum was talking to me, and cried for half an hour, chucking her paper in the bin
⁃ - they put a “play” on for us the other night and Emma jumbled up for words. She got really upset, sat on the floor sobbing with her arms folded and refused to finish the play, which annoyed DD the others as they wanted to show us.
⁃ She stubbed her toe on the sofa yesterday and had a totally OTT reaction. She grabbed her foot, rolled around on the floor and screamed the most high pitched scream I’ve ever heard, relentlessly, for 20 minutes. I had to take DD out the room as it brought on a headache. If you overheard you’d think she’d have been stabbed. Her toe was fine, no break and no bruise.
⁃ We went for a picnic yesterday and when we packed up we told the kids that they all had to carry something back and we gave Emma the (lightweight) picnic blanket to carry. After a couple of minutes of walking back to the lodge, and heard a shriek. We turned around and she was about 10m away sitting on the ground crying hysterically. She said it was because the blanket was too heavy then we all left her behind. My friend had to carry for uphill back to the lodge and she cried all the way.

It’s lots of little things all the time. As to not drip feed, my friend’s DH has said before (in front of my friend) he thinks Emma’s sensitivity is exacerbated by her mum babying her. I (secretly) agree - she carries her a lot because she “gets tired legs” - such as round the supermarket, or from a restaurant to the car, or out of someone’s house. She also apologises to her a lot where I don’t think it’s necessary - she apologised for “making” her go over the lines when colouring. She also lays with her every night til she falls asleep - singing a lullaby or scratching her back, for about 1-2 hours. Her 4yo goes to sleep alone! The last 3 nights I’ve looked forward to having a bottle of wine with my friend, but she doesn’t usually come down til 10pm from putting Emma to bed. She’s attempted making her fall asleep alone before but had little success.

Anyway DD has been quite good about Emma’s tantrums considering she hasn’t been well, and every day has been a “bad day” for her. But last night when DD started to feel sleepy around 6pm, and Emma wanted her to play a game. DD said no she just wanted to watch a bit of TV, and Emma has a strop and told her mum that DD was a “bad friend”. At that point DD burst into tears and said to me, in front of Emma, that this is a rubbish holiday and Emma is ruining it 😬 well, merry hell broke loose and I took DD to bed to try and diffuse the situation.

Me and my friend had a bottle of wine and a bit of a grumble last night about it all, she said she has a daily struggle with Emma being so sensitive and her DH goes out the house for hours at a time to sit in a car park because he can’t stand the noise.

When I woke DD up today she said that she feels sick all the time and wants to go home . TBH I feel the same way, I’m sick of the shrieking and whilst I feel sorry for my friend it’s making it an unenjoyable holiday.

I figure I have 4 options:
1. Go home - say DD just isn’t well enough (DS is very chilled out and likely wouldn’t mind this but I’m loathe to cut his holiday short)
2. Tell my friend how Emma’s behaviour is affecting DD and ask her to speak to her or step in before it escalates
3. Do more as a family of three separately from the other family and maybe just meet them for dinner
4. Say nothing, they’re kids and will get over it
WWYD?

I suspect Emma has ASD. Tough gig for you though. Maybe do something with just your kids for the day.

From an article :
Parents might seek ASD and ADHD diagnoses when they are not the best or only explanation for a child’s behaviours. This is often a result of parents’ and professionals' understanding of a child’s behaviours or the avoidance of stigma relating to other diagnoses e.g. attachment or conduct difficulties. These require management of the wider environment around the child such as parenting, rather than placing the difficulty mostly within the child and their neuro-development.

@Trunkella

From an article : Parents might seek ASD and ADHD diagnoses when they are not the best or only explanation for a child’s behaviours. This is often a result of parents’ and professionals' understanding of a child’s behaviours or the avoidance of stigma relating to other diagnoses e.g. attachment or conduct difficulties. These require management of the wider environment around the child such as parenting, rather than placing the difficulty mostly within the child and their neuro-development.

Sorry if I wasnt clear in my question, I'm asking for your own personal experience. How long was your assessment process?

This Dr Mike Shooter that Trunkella keeps referencing is the guy who went on TV two years ago (coincidentally at the same time he was peddling a book) and said that ASD/ADHD are a badge of honour for failing parents and that these parents seek diagnosis in order to cover up failures in their parenting.

He's a dickhead and has been widely criticised for this view.

@Gancanny he is the former president of the Royal Society of Psychiatrists - which doesn’t make him a dickhead, and I would trust that he is better qualified than you. His point is worth considering, and even people have argued against him have addressed overdiagnosis as the article I quoted from above states.

His point has been widely discredited and appears to have been made purely to garner publicity for his book via the controversy. Qualifications do not exempt someone from saying stupid things.

As the parent of two autistic children and as someone who grew up with an autistic sibling I think I know a damn sight more than he does about the realities of autism.

The so-called "badge of honour" he refers to is bullshit. It takes an average of 3.5 years to get a diagnosis in the UK and often this requires multiple assessments as it is not uncommon for the first assessment to come back as inconclusive. Parenting classes form part of the assessment process and assessments are made across a range of settings with input from a range of professionals. If anything, autism and ADHD are under diagnosed in UK, particularly in girls who are usually diagnosed at an older age than boys if at all.

A diagnosis confers no benefits and even with the "label" in your hand you still have to fight for every scrap of support, you are still judged, and you still have idiots who really should know better spouting shit like "it's an excuse for bad parenting".

@Lovemusic33

Emma sounds like my dd at that age, my dd has Aspergers and dyspraxia. She complains a lot and no one ever wants to go anywhere with us. You say Emma is NT but you don’t know that.

Anyway, even if Emma is not NT it doesn’t mean you have to put up with it, if your dd is feeling unwell then of course it’s ok to go home but I wouldn’t tell your friend that it’s due to her DD’s behaviour, I’m sure she already very aware of the issues her dd has.

This.

I totally feel for Emma's mother. Until you've had a child like this you don't know how draining it is. And everybody blames your parenting. You've had a glimpse into how hard it is for your friend. You don't have to stick around if it's not the best thing for your DD though. As the parent of an "Emma" I've bailed when things got too much for him so it works both ways.

@gancanny I disagree that it’s been widely discredited. I would say it’s controversial - and you would find as many examples of people agreeing as disagreeing. It’s an uncomfortable stance, but it needs addressing. It also important to see both sides of a discussion. I would argue that the difficulty faced by many people who need an autism diagnosis Is made harder because of a tendency by others to overdiagnose.

Jeez. My daughter is 8 and to imagine her like that would be unbearable.

I would do something separate like take DD for a last lunch, then make your excuses. Say your DD is struggling with her new condition and wants to be home.

Go home, treat your kids to a takeaway, and a games night with you, put them to bed, the sit down with the bottle of wine and drink it on your own in peace and quiet.

I would argue that the difficulty faced by many people who need an autism diagnosis Is made harder because of a tendency by others to overdiagnose.

Whereas the autistic community will tell you that in actual fact what makes it harder to get a diagnosis and support is a combination of lack of funding and lack of understanding with views such as those beheld by Mike Shooter contributing greatly to the second.

The number of people falsely claiming autism is vanishingly small and they are easily weeded out during the assessment process, this fear of misdiagnosis is in part what makes some clinicians so reluctant to impart a diagnosis. The assessment process is thorough and when it gets to the diagnosis stage it is difficult to find something which isn't there.

The OP posted "WE ARE HOME!!" on Saturday evening!

@gancanny - yes, the autism community will naturally have a different viewpoint and I’m not dismissing that - it’s incredibly important - but the other side has to be listened to as well. There have been recent articles on the dilution of autism and this concerns me - along with the immediate armchair diagnosis of ASD on mumsnet. It’s a well known characteristic that medical conditions that are based on a subjective diagnosis - are open to misdiagnosis.

@Trunkella

It concerns me on mumsnet that there is a tendency to medicalise any behaviour rather than address parenting first. If a child is being taught boundaries, self-discipline, responsibility and respect (particularly of their parents) - then they don’t ‘know’ how to behave. Yet rather that accept this, and admit the parent may be at fault - people assume a medical condition which has the danger of diluting the condition itself.

Mostly people are offering the benefit of their own experience of children with such conditions, to give a possible reason to the OP as to why the child might be behaving that way.

Doesn't mean we're trying to "diagnose" them from afar, or "medicalise" them - but it DOES offer an alternative viewpoint, that the OP (or in this case, her friend) may not have considered.

Shared information has use, you know.

I copied this from an article arguing against Mike Shooter and posted above - but to me it sums up all I want to say! I’ll stop posting now as I’m definitely hijacking (sorry!)
Parents might seek ASD and ADHD diagnoses when they are not the best or only explanation for a child’s behaviours. This is often a result of parents’ and professionals' understanding of a child’s behaviours or the avoidance of stigma relating to other diagnoses e.g. attachment or conduct difficulties. These require management of the wider environment around the child such as parenting, rather than placing the difficulty mostly within the child and their neuro-development.

But it's not relevant to the child in this scenario. The mother hasn't done any such thing - nor has the OP - those of us who DO have experience of it have suggested that it might be worth looking into.
The mother of "Emma" isn't going after a diagnosis to compensate for her inadequate parenting at all!

Argh ok very last comment. @ThumbWitchesAbroad. Of course it’s helpful and vital to hear from people with experience with ASD. My concern is a tendency to place the difficulty on the child and their neurodevelopment (as above), rather than address parental and environment issues. My concern is about a balanced viewpoint.

The thing I find most interesting about parenting ASD is it’s pretty much the gold standard of parenting, in terms of boundaries, structure, and understanding individual needs. Techniques for ASD kids work really well for NT kids too, just that the ASD kids need to be patented in this way. Nobody with an ASD kid wants to parent in a boundaryless and non-strategic fashion. And the thing about neurodiversity is that it’s a spectrum, with diagnosis focusing on ‘significant difficulty across the triad of impairments’ - that doesn’t mean that you can’t have NT kids who have some traits in one or two areas. But in the case outlined above I would say there were significant difficulties in the parent-child dynamic that could be explained by ASD, and almost certainly would be improved by better parenting and understanding. It is certainly worth asking for an expert opinion because these diagnoses are not given out like sweets.

None of us with autistic kids go ‘oh well, he’s autistic, so let’s just let him run riot and have no consequences’. Most of us take the diagnosis as a starting point for how to better understand and nurture our kids. But some of us have been really trying hard to get the best of our kids for a really long time, we are not all lazy, useless parents. And it’s insulting to suggest that autism is caused by bad parenting

Emma's mum needs to get an EdPsych to help. The EdPsych can do an assessment and then recommend which professional to see next.

Unfortunately, in my very bitter experience, it's a question of paying privately to see an EdPsych. You don't need a referral if you pay. But it's hugely expensive (I paid 800 a few years back).

I paid for it for my ds and the report was extremely valuable and now, like the child of a pp, my ds as a teenager is happy, sociable and intelligent. With adjustments made for him.

I feel very uncomfortable when I hear "pandering" in the context of a child who is suffering. Emma's mum isn't pandering. She's trying to look after a child who needs help and adjustments.

Get a recommended, experienced EP.

When eldest DS was diagnosed I had a meeting with his neurology team that was specifically about DH and I and our thoughts and feelings relating to his difficulties, how we were parenting him, and so on. At this meeting I mentioned that people think we pander to DS because of the adjustments to our parenting we've made over the years where we've learned which battles are important and which ones aren't. The psychiatrist told me that where people who don't understand see 'pandering', they (the team) see scaffolding and that rather than pandering to him I should think of it as scaffolding him. She also told us that with DS particular set of difficulties, traits, and abilities they would expected to have found him in a much worse place than be was in terms of behaviour and mental state but that thanks to our adaptive 'pandering' he was remarkably well balanced.

Why do people see a thread which has been started days ago, and think "oh there can't possibly be any changes since then, I'll just bash out my advice at the end of it".

It is possible to just read the op's posts you know. You could at least do that, it would be polite and it would stop you looking like an utter twat.

I don't know what facilities the app gives you, but even on a phone it is possible to at least search for the op's name and skip down the thread that way. Then your invaluable advice might actually BE invaluable, instead of just a pointer to a person who is rude, lazy and ignorant......

I think you are too hard on her husband. It sounds like he goes through hell everyday, his wife panders to their spoilt brat of a daughter who screams over every thing and anything, and he's clearly tried to talk to his wife about how she parents and it's not done any good. He comes home from work and all he hears is screaming and crying. I am surprised he hasn't left for work one morning and never came back! I do not blame him one bit for not wanting to go on holiday with the wife the girl. I think she's lucky he has hung in there, tbh. Many lesser men would have left already.

The problem is with your friend and her raising a spoilt brat who is learning to cry and scream to get anything she wants, when she wants. Not the husband.

@Jux

Why do people see a thread which has been started days ago, and think "oh there can't possibly be any changes since then, I'll just bash out my advice at the end of it".

It is possible to just read the op's posts you know. You could at least do that, it would be polite and it would stop you looking like an utter twat.

I don't know what facilities the app gives you, but even on a phone it is possible to at least search for the op's name and skip down the thread that way. Then your invaluable advice might actually BE invaluable, instead of just a pointer to a person who is rude, lazy and ignorant......

Well said.

Why do people see a thread which has been started days ago, and think "oh there can't possibly be any changes since then, I'll just bash out my advice at the end of it".

I always imagine there's a significant overlap with the kind of people who encounter a tall person and feel the need to say 'What's the weather like up there?' Because there's absolutely no way the tall person will ever have heard this before, and anyway, they absolutely can't resist weighing in with their witticism.