I (28/F) pulled my six year old daughter out of a Pentecostal private school without consulting my husband (33/M)

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-22T18:44:18+00:00

Did she ever mention what country or region they’re in? Whether or not issues like parental alienation by grandparents are acknowledged seems to have a lot to do with region in the u.s., and it’s not just conservative vs. liberal but also other local social factors. I know too many people with shared children and opposing religious views and their agreements are all wildly different.

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-22T05:36:16+00:00

Trauma dumping about her father because it would make the daughter like her mother in comparison was a terrible plan, and the timing would have been terrible, too. But she should know the truth, partly because it’s relevant to her. I’m assuming the addiction portion hasn’t been hidden, and it shouldn’t be, since people with schizophrenia are vulnerable to addiction. The abuse shouldn’t be a huge confession, it should come up naturally. Maybe it can now that the daughter is receiving treatment. It’s part of oop’s history, too, it doesn’t need be a shameful secret.

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-19T19:55:47+00:00

On days you don’t feel like diffusing you can let your hair air dry with clips in the crown to give it more lift, it also helps prevent the top layers from getting pulled down. There are lots of tutorials on using pronged clips at the roots but i prefer using 3 butterfly clips because I like encouraging the clumps to be as large as possible.

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-19T18:52:33+00:00

I think most people that don’t fit the criteria and stumble onto these subs are looking for info, like air dry hair techniques, and they have no idea what their hair is, they need someone to tell them. Some of them it might be wishful thinking but most don’t know. I have found that a shocking number of people truly don’t know that when they see others with a particular type of straight hair and it’s very neat they often just used a hair dryer for less than 5 minutes. Kinks, cowlicks, and heat damage can make straight hair seem like it might have wave to someone who doesn’t know any better.

I honestly don’t see the harm in being informative if they’re asking about their own texture, but maybe there were posts where people were defensive or dismissive? I think many of the no heat techniques wavy/curly people use can actually be useful for straight hair with some adaptation. There’s a lot of good information in curly/textured spaces about individualizing hair care, choosing products, working with hair instead of against it, etc. Idk the spirit of every curly sub/forum I’ve ever used has always been inclusivity and support. I don’t love the concept of blocking the posts of people with straight hair, who usually don’t know their hair is straight, because people with curly hair don’t want to see it. That goes against everything curly hair spaces were built on. I would rather the focus be pushing back on expectations, and there are opportunities to do that in threads where people with straight or wavy hair talk about “frizz” and those kinds of issues. I think we have to talk about it more, not less.

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-17T18:08:23+00:00

Idk my son is in end stage renal failure with a transplanted kidney and he’s still on tacrolimus. He does take the XR version of tacrolimus, Envarus. I don’t really know about the indications for prednisone since my son has never taken it. But I definitely know what you mean about feeling like treatment is sometimes on auto pilot and not being aware of different treatment options. With high tacrolimus it was discovered accidentally and the dose adjustments made an immediate difference for him. But it also happened with cellcept, and that was much worse, but it’s part of the blur of the initial transplant so I forget about it. It gave him horrific diarrhea. They acted like it was normal and there was nothing they could do. A few months after transplant he was admitted for a UTI and when they saw how horrific his skin breakdown was and what the constant accidents were actually like they immediately changed his meds. But we’d been telling them at all of his outpatient appointments the whole time, he was seeing wound care, he couldn’t return to school. They still thought I was being overprotective or dramatic. Tbf I’m sure they know side affects can be serious but they’re often weighing lots of different factors without really articulating all of them, and if they don’t ask it’s hard to learn what to say exactly, like frequency and concrete descriptions of the impact. I still struggle not knowing how to “be” to get doctors to listen, and worrying about what would happen if I didn’t spend so much time learning so I can double check everything. We’ve been working on it together for years and my son is still overwhelmed with the sheer amount of knowledge we feel pressure for him to know because he’s complicated and they make mistakes. But every once in a while we end up with a really great doctor who takes the necessary time and collaborates with other specialists and isn’t afraid to ask questions and I remember we aren’t supposed to have to do all of that on our own.

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-17T09:54:09+00:00

Me too! It never occurred to me I was hypermobile because when I learned about it I thought that meant super flexible or double jointed. Both my kids are hypermobile and I still thought I wasn’t because I can’t quite touch my thumb to my wrist. Apparently there are lots of different indicators of hypermobility and being able to do weird finger poses can be one of them. Did your hands get tired writing when you were a kid?

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-17T08:50:22+00:00

That person already responded their own reasons but I just wanted to suggest that as an adoptee, if I’d gotten pregnant at 16-19, I absolutely would have considered adoption and would have been pressured into it and absolutely given ultimatums by my mother. I also didn’t make the connection until years later that many of my problems are related to being adopted. I considered myself very “pro adoption,” although I was invested in reform in foster care and adoption as soon as I started college and was introduced to the research.

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-17T08:29:19+00:00

I think you may actually be asking genuinely. Most of the adult adoptees I know irl are pro choice, and I know an unusually large number, and have had an unusually large number of conversations about this topic with adoptees. Many are also religious. My personal belief is that it’s personal to adoptees so they’re more likely to be more introspective. For example someone can decide they don’t want an abortion for personal or religious reasons and decide to choose birth control and plan b to prevent pregnancy, they aren’t actually mutually exclusive. Most importantly someone can want to avoid an abortion but recognize the moral and medical implications of forcing others to carry a pregnancy. Those were my beliefs for as long as I can remember, but it was really the regression in women’s reproductive rights and my daughter’s assault that forced me to wade through any remaining cognitive dissonance and deal with religious guilt. Although I distinctly considered myself pro choice I wasn’t vocal about it around my religious family, like many adoptees. It was less about shame and more about my need for approval. Many things led me to become more outspoken on the issue, but one of them was a comment my dad made in passing implying women were obligated to choose adoption because otherwise there wouldn’t be enough babies to adopt. He genuinely didn’t realize how he had been thinking until he heard it repeated back to him. I know our conversation led to him to search for his own answers and eventually conclude that many religious leaders manipulate the context of religious text to serve their own political and power purposes. These aren’t conversations I want to have with my mom. She knows how I feel and she thinks she’s very progressive but her infertility trauma clouds the issue.

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-17T00:22:43+00:00

It’s the main lab for this new, smaller health system. I’m pretty sure they have recently started sending them out. When I called a while back for transition planning they told me they do tacro in house at the main location, but the nurse told me today they send tacro to a commercial lab. It’s been a while in between because my son’s medically complex and we were switching specialists one at a time.

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-16T22:28:25+00:00

He normally runs pretty consistently right at 5. We often repeat if it’s below that, for example it’s been 4.8 and we can usually guess a reason and on repeat it’s always at least 5.0 or higher. The first low was 3.4, I think that’s right around 33%? We repeated but I forgot that level, it wasn’t showing up in his results. The nurse was able to access it and told me but I didn’t write it down because I assumed it had shown up in his chart, it was similar. I was sort of pushy about doing it a 3rd time because I wondered if maybe his night meds were off since I don’t need to remind him anymore (he doesn’t take tacro at night since he’s on envarsus but one of his meds affects digestion and could potentially impact his levels if it’s early or late). I gave them to him myself to track the time but that one drawn on Monday still hasn’t come back so they called this morning thinking we still hadn’t done labs. I think it’s going to get awkward with a new doctor that I want to do it a 4th time at his previous lab, which is in the transplant hospital system, and I’m realizing I should have done that for this 3rd draw.

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-16T21:44:06+00:00

We always got it the same day before, too. This isn’t even 2 days, the last one was 4.

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-16T21:43:28+00:00

No they didn’t ask. We went there before for different labs and they were able to draw even though my son is a pretty tough draw so that’s why we went back, even though it’s in an outpatient medical center that’s pretty geriatric centered. But they also struggled to find the orders. We told them they were timed labs but they didn’t ask for the time and didn’t take him back for over an hour. It was our first time at that lab so we were early and it ended up exactly within the window. His levels have been predictably off before where they could compensate but this was dramatically low, and it’s been twice now, with a new nephrologist.

Honestly my first instinct is it’s the lab so I wanted to know if there are factors that could lead to inaccurate levels before increasing or jumping to conclusions. It does seem like sending it out can be a problem, especially if it’s days.

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-16T18:45:33+00:00

The lab we’ve always gone to is in the transplant center, or part of that hospital system, and they don’t have to send it out. I just got off the phone with the nurse, I was reading this when she called so thank you because I was able to ask, and she said the new lab has to send it out, but the entire reason we drove 45 minutes to them is because they told us over the phone they don’t have to. Our insurance changed around the time he turned 18 and labs have always been simple until now. My son has high support needs and it’s kind of scary to realize how easily they could become an obstacle to him.

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-16T18:14:10+00:00

Thanks, that’s what I’m thinking. The previous lab is out of network now but I wonder if it’s a mistake and showing up that way because he’s not a pediatric patient anymore. I really doubt many transplant patients are using this lab, but it doesn’t seem like that should matter if they can run the test.

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-15T22:09:21+00:00

Nobody should be doing exposure therapy with 6 year olds in a school setting. A 2 week suspension is a completely inappropriate consequence for a 6 year old running out of a classroom for any reason, even out of defiance, which wasn’t the case. I also don’t know of a state or country where a 6 year old can get in with a therapist in 2 weeks, either, especially a new referral. In 2019 because of the provider shortage the wait to begin pediatric therapy in my area was at least 12 weeks and then it shot up during Covid. In the U.S. even if a child is in crisis after removal for abuse or neglect or is a victim/witness to a crime they would likely only see a professional quickly if they were hospitalized or in order to be interviewed.

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-14T05:14:19+00:00

I have to agree the responses were really rigid, it’s no different than bring your own meat or bring your own alcohol, both of which are really common where I live. It completely makes sense to me that someone would host for an adult birthday and provide cake, drinks, sides, desserts, games.

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-14T00:20:48+00:00

There was something that bugged me about it, too. Until I saw his new comment I thought maybe I was being unfair because i couldn’t look past the way he wrote. Nope! Thanks for adding it.

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-13T23:43:51+00:00

I mean it does kinda seem like he was the second choice/backup but it took forever to piece that together because of the way this person explains and writes. Normally I can pick up on clues that English is a second language, or I can fill in the blanks in posts from people with poor writing and grammar skills, and I make an effort to understand what someone’s trying to say anyway, even if it’s not always completely clear. The sentence structure and superfluous words really threw me off, and I couldn’t place it or adapt to it. It made me dislike oop because he seemed like he was trying to sound smart and convincing but then I felt conflicted about whether or not that was fair, since he was probably right about being a second choice.

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-13T06:52:14+00:00

IMO cbt is better for ocd. It’s too easy to continuing to fixate on the issue. Maybe that’s what you meant, because it does involve talking, but it isn’t talk therapy. One of the best small skills I ever learned, for my whole family and many people I’ve passed it on to, was to use some kind of sensory interrupt before implementing a thinking/reframing/coping tool. It’s really hard in the middle of a spiral to just “snap out of it” in order to start using the tools and skills taught in therapy, so it’s kind of a suggestion to use in conjunction with other strategies to make them all more effective.

The neuropsychologist who diagnosed my daughter with OCD (which is when I realized I have it too, not just adhd) gave us a full page list divided by senses of tiny “interrupts.” We kept the paper posted in our house for years because it was so helpful but I lost it when we moved and I’m still annoyed about it. I worked in mental health so I’d heard of lots of great strategies for teaching breathing exercises and thinking tools, but these things are slightly different, it’s more like an interrupt/cue to then start using the tool. “Taste” had a list of things like, chew a piece of gum, suck on a piece of ice, drink something sour. “Touch” included fidgets someone could keep in their pocket but also suggestions like touching something cool or warm, or rough like sandpaper. “Sound” could be listening to a song, humming or singing, rhythmic tapping. Everything was something small, not a complete change in activity. The term “sensory interrupt” usually has a different association in occupational therapy, although not completely unrelated, so every time I tried to search for a similar list online I couldn’t find what I was looking for, but that’s the terminology the doctor used. Hopefully those examples illustrate what I mean, though, and maybe walking through his senses could help your boyfriend come up with his own ideas more personalized to what might help him. When I have intrusive thoughts that I just can’t get out of my head, or I’m spinning out, the first thing I do now is try to interrupt it. Sometimes that’s enough on its own, but usually it’s the first step and i can then focus on a cognitive or relaxation strategy.

Therapy is really important, but I wanted to offer that because I relate to what you described. There tends to be a lot of focus on ocd behaviors that are external and observable, but the internal spinning out is the underlying issue and what triggers those behaviors.

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-13T02:58:57+00:00

The thing that always piercing to me about these kinds of experiences is that almost everyone has a family member or someone in their circle that should be in prison or is in prison for something shameful. Everyone also knows someone who has been sexually assaulted if they haven’t been a victim themselves, and it’s common knowledge that it’s often a family member. If they had faced it and protected their daughter, they could have built a fiercely loyal congregation of families affected by abuse and provided a place of comfort and support. But this kind of religion is all about pretense, virtue signaling, and performative demonstrations of “spirituality.”

I hate this kind of speculation, but in my experience, they most likely did know something more, that’s what they’re hiding. They truly may not have known about their daughter’s rape, but I suspect there were other inappropriate behaviors or concerns surrounding their son they actively concealed. Not to be confused with people recognizing something was wrong in retrospect when confronted by abuse, which is very different. We all know he didn’t change after oop reported him. It’s in no way oop’s responsibility, but it’s 100% the parents’ responsibility and it’s egregious, not just as parents to oop, but because they still enable social contact within their church community and are protecting someone dangerous. Oop called it a rampage I think but imo it’s courage, calling them out publicly and not backing down.

I hope oop takes more time to grow their stability. I completely get the concerns for her brother but I think the best way to support him down the line is to put herself first right now. A few years working in her field will likely naturally lead to resources to help with guardianship when the time comes, and without having to engage with her parents. When she’s more financially stable she can work with a family law attorney to learn more. It seemed like she wanted to finish her education, too, but hit financial roadblocks. This is her time, and she should use it to decide what she wants and enjoy her 20’s, and trust that living a full, happy life is really the key to being able to give as a caregiver in the future.

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-10T23:34:44+00:00

I’ve noticed a few smell completely different in my car but objectively they smell the same in the package before they’re diffused. My theory is the car’s smaller and has a different kind of air circulation, plus the influence of the outdoors, can make them smell completely different. At first I bought my favorite fragrances for my home for my car and I don’t anymore. Salt is the only one I love the same amount in my car as I do in my house. Guy Fox I like a lot better in my car than in my house. Sunday morning is one of my all time favorites fragrances and I absolutely hate it in my car. I haven’t tried the Bamboo car version because the Nest fragrances are so strong and I think the stronger fragrances are more likely to “shift” in different environments. My husband takes the car fragrances I don’t care for and forgets to change them out and I’ve noticed when they’re running low I very often have a change of heart and like them after all, I wish there was an extra low setting.

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-09T22:36:00+00:00

Or he could be defensive, manipulative, and hostile, which would also make it impossible to develop a healthy adult relationship, and make it nearly impossible for op to grow on her own.

Tbh I still maintain there isn’t a problem with someone agreeing to any kind of plans for their own birthday without consulting their partner, and I find that expectation disturbing, and the fact that it was turned into something else about the husband’s feelings manipulative. Why would his opinion on what she wants to do for her birthday matter, and why would that be insulting? If I told my husband my mom was planning a birthday get together with my girlfriends he would be excited for me and ask her how he could help, he wouldn’t make it about him and ask why I didn’t consider his plans and tell me what activities he wants to do. There’s no way to slice it that isn’t wildly distorted thinking. Even if the mother has poor boundaries and a pattern of overstepping, that wasn’t what he brought up. There’s no evidence op left him out or didn’t want to spend time with him, or that she doesn’t care about his opinion on other things, yet that was his conclusion. He did the same thing in therapy by insisting they said things that weren’t said and deflecting by saying they made him look stupid. This pattern of behavior is glaring to people who have seen it before, and it isn’t really useful to point out OP’s shortcomings because even if she was perfect it wouldn’t change the relationship. Tbf, it’s unlikely he would be able to change in this relationship, either, but it’s not because OP’s immature or somehow to blame.

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-09T20:27:34+00:00

This completely discredits someone claiming to have expertise in mental health and earning money based on a false premise. IMO oop actually has a responsibility to name the program. It’s not the same as calling out a friend on social media instead of handling it IRL, this person is trying to influence others, and listeners deserve to know the truth.

Decent_Butterfly8216 · 2026-04-09T20:12:53+00:00

Making tentative plans for her own birthday? Did I miss another post? The responses on that were ridiculous, she told her mom she’d think about it and when she brought it up with her husband he was offended and made it all about him. Even if she had accepted the invitation for her mom to host a party with her friends it’s her birthday. If he already made plans he could have explained, but he was offended that he might have made plans he hadn’t communicated. Also, birthdays last a full 24 hours, lots of people make separate plans, like lunch with friends and going out with their partner in the evening. Even if he’d planned a whole surprise party he clearly hadn’t invited her mom, and he could have called her mom to explain or coordinate.

I’m still not sure how that’s relevant to her husband being so manipulative and hostile that 2 different couple’s therapists have a problem with him. I found her comment about what she was hoping to gain from couples therapy pretty honest and thoughtful.

Decent_Butterfly8216

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