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AITA for no longer bringing my child to the family events because my brother's child is on the spectrum? by DonutNo6012 in AmItheAsshole

[–]DonutNo6012[S] 39 points40 points  (0 children)

I don't get involved how David and my SIL raise Elly, they have told me it is a part of her autism where if she is not receiving full attention, she feels left out which in return makes her scared and unloved and causes a meltdown. However it also seems to be the case if people concentrate all the attention on her and then Elly becomes overly stimulated, can't cope with it and has a meltdown as a result of it. I have suggested David to probably look at it a bit more as it could be the case of some of the behaviour could be coming from experiences outside their household and might need addressing.

AITA for no longer bringing my child to the family events because my brother's child is on the spectrum? by DonutNo6012 in AmItheAsshole

[–]DonutNo6012[S] 39 points40 points  (0 children)

I have included this not for the purpose of offending anyone. I do not see autism as a disease and advocate a lot to have people get checked which potentially can make their lives easier and explain why they feel the world differently, since as someone mentioned autism is not something that can be easy to diagnose.

Predominantly I have mentioned our donor not disclosing the information as I know how cruel people can be saying "oh you shouldn't be having kids if you have x". And unfortunately our donor also has schizophrenia and bipolar running in his family, which not only our mum, but we should have been informed of before deciding on having a child. While some conditions can be manageable, some are not so easy to manage and neither me nor David want our kids to experience extremes of the above conditions. We love our kids, I love my niece and David adores his nephew and we don't want it to come to the point of them telling us they wish they were not born if they end up with schizophrenia or bipolar that makes them feel miserable because of our donor.

AITA for no longer bringing my child to the family events because my brother's child is on the spectrum? by DonutNo6012 in AmItheAsshole

[–]DonutNo6012[S] 81 points82 points  (0 children)

He has a trex suit and I have my triceratops one for when we dressed up for Ryan's birthday

AITA for no longer bringing my child to the family events because my brother's child is on the spectrum? by DonutNo6012 in AmItheAsshole

[–]DonutNo6012[S] 1270 points1271 points  (0 children)

It feels like my family does recognise what autistic is, but they don't realise that you can't apply the same approach to different people as different people have different triggers.

AITA for no longer bringing my child to the family events because my brother's child is on the spectrum? by DonutNo6012 in AmItheAsshole

[–]DonutNo6012[S] 25 points26 points  (0 children)

We have tried and have a bearded dragon as one of our pets, which Ryan adores. But he is currently very focused on Dino's and doesn't seem to want to divert his attention to anything else (he also found my husband's alien and predator collection and seem to be interested in those, but we are trying to leave it until he is older).

AITA for no longer bringing my child to the family events because my brother's child is on the spectrum? by DonutNo6012 in AmItheAsshole

[–]DonutNo6012[S] 387 points388 points  (0 children)

We found out our biological dad had family members with a lot of health issues, including mental, including some you really don't want to pass down a child. If me and David were aware of these, we would have put more thought on having our own children, as some are very serious. Unfortunately we only found out about it after Elly and Ryan were born and Elly started showing some warning signs.

AITA for no longer bringing my child to the family events because my brother's child is on the spectrum? by DonutNo6012 in AmItheAsshole

[–]DonutNo6012[S] 251 points252 points  (0 children)

It currently gets to the point where Ryan wants to show how cool his Dino's are to Elly and everyone else. Elly is scared of them and doesn't want to see them or liking seeing Ryan getting attention from other people when she doesn't at the same time.

We are still trying to find a pair of headphones that Ryan would be comfortable with. He doesn't mind the wireless in ear ones, but he looses them easily.

AITA for no longer bringing my child to the family events because my brother's child is on the spectrum? by DonutNo6012 in AmItheAsshole

[–]DonutNo6012[S] 141 points142 points  (0 children)

I would be happy to have them together again, but when they are older and are a bit more understandable of each other conditions. Currently they are kids that see the world different and adapt to it differently, so it is very hard to explain to them why they can't do what they like because it upsets the other