Over Anxious Parent?

[Davros]

OK, second go at posting this having done a bad job of it the first time and getting it pulled. Thanks to the couple of MNers who responded the first time, sorry about that!

I would appreciate the opinions and advice of you MN SNers about a friend. It is not technically special needs but this is where I am comfortable so hope that is OK.

My friend has two kids, aged 2 and 4. She has always been what I consider cautious, e.g. struggles to make decisions and likes to keep her options open, is a bit of a tight wad with money and now she constantly thinks her kids are unwell. I am very much at the other end of the spectrum when it comes to the kids being ill and work on the assumption that they are fine unless they show very clear signs of illness. I don't give them medication usually, they simply get better and it shows that you don't need meds for minor/low level illness most of the time. Because DS (16) has ASD, he has no "behaviour" to go with illness and so doesn't play a game of being unwell when he isn't. DD (8) is NT and does it a little but not much, e.g. "my tummy hurts" means I don't want to do X or Y usually. I know that many other parents think their kids are unwell more than I do or classify what I would consider nothing much as more serious. So what I'm trying to say is that I realise that maybe my view is a bit distorted and that I'm more "immune" to claims of illness or actual illness because of DS.

However, said friend seems to be way beyond what I would consider "normal" but different to me. We went to visit over Xmas and first she said the 4 year old had a cold because she had sneezed twice, then she took her out on an outing and totally forgot about the "cold". When we arrived at her house, the 4 year old was crying after a nap and she told us she was going to phone the doctor! The child was fine and not even remotely ill, yet an hour earlier she was going to phone a Doctor!!! I used to think it was a way of cancelling arrangements or trying to get others to cancel, because she didn't fancy doing X or Y, but now I think its different. She genuinely believes at the time that the kids are ill when there is nothing wrong with them. Of course, I thought afterwards that the 4 year old is too old for an afternoon nap but I haven't said anything.

So, is there cause for concern? What, if anything, should we do? I think its partly her personality and I'm not very tolerant as she has pissed me off in the past with not being able to stick to a plan, but I think this is extreme.

In what way has she been unsupportive towards you? Has this been in a "I can't cope with your difficult child - he's too stressful to be around" sort of way, or a judgmental, "you're a bad parent causing all the problems" sort of way? If more the former, that would fit in with her not being very good at coping with stress and therefore trying to find ways to avoid it, if the latter, then you are likely to have a hard time separating your need to show her what a poor parent she can be and getting your own back for her spectacular lack of empathy, and having enough empathy of your own to do something because you genuinely want to help her... or maybe she's a mix of the two? Maybe she finds it hard to deal with the way your relationship works with your ds, because it doesn't fit in with her view of how interractions should take place and it discomforts her, so she tries to make sense of it by blaming the external behaviours of parent and child, rather than the internal causes of them.....

OK, so I am a big chicken shit! She came round this morning, nearly an hour late, and I didn't say anything. Its so much harder in RL than in my head! I also knew I couldn't say it without sounding, and being, critical, but I did raise an eyebrow at a couple of comments. Just thought some of you might want to know how ineffectual I am!!

I do wonder about PND although a lot of it does fit in with her personality and usual behaviour, just rather extreme.

I think it's normal to be ineffectual at this sort of thing! It's not exactly something that can helpfully be raised as a passing remark... you are, basically, feeling the need to tell her that she's either ill or silly!... or probably both, from the way you describe her!

Nail on the head Rabbitstew!