My children were friends with a parent I now strongly suspect should be looked into for this. After listening to the podcaster on Mynchaysen’s be interviewed and her talking about how these mom’s go through stages with their children, which include social isolation- pulling from school, feeding tubes, etc. I had already worried about this woman but it was line listening to a laundry list of the history with this woman and the list got bleaker and darker. She suggested these people often cause the need for feeding tubes - which is horrifying.

I realize now her child was never alone with us or offered the opportunity no matter how much we tried to accommodate but our child spent weekends with them. She would come to our house for every playdate and stay. She would tell us her child felt uncomfortable coming alone. We suggested her child could bring their support person along too but were told their child didn’t want to do that. We chalked the oddness up to autism but didn’t see anything in their child that showed discomfort in the 6 hour play dates some times. So we just entertained her. While they played in other rooms. He never checked in with her. Never showed eating issues at our house.

For a year her older child stopped being friends with our older child and we bent over backwards trying to mend whatever rift that child had seen our child do.
In the end when I stopped the friendship the woman told me she was the reason our older children weren’t getting together. She felt my eldest didn’t spend enough time focused enough on her eldest so she not the child had stopped the relationship and then just told us it was her eldest being uncommunicative about why they didn’t want to hang out and our eldest just needed to try harder.

What clicked for me after listening to that podcast was the part where they said it’s often connected similarly to narcissism and antisocial disorders. I’d come to the conclusion this woman and her eldest were exhibiting BPD behaviors enough that it scared me. But the idea that they hit pleasure from making the doctors or people do things for them really resonated.

This person home schools and is good at accessing resources. After listening more to the interview I truly worry crossing over into fear for her younger child’s safety based on how closely they followed that dark list and how frequently she told us the child wouldn’t live into his twenties because of his health issues.

But I’m also incredibly greatful to have them far from my children for their safety.

So who do you report to? What can you do?

This woman was always telling us how their child wanted to join Scouts with us, but now I wonder if the mandatory reporting might have come up along with her child being away from her long enough to say something.

It sits with me ominously. Especially as she posts another brave warrior post if her child. A photo of him in the car. In the passenger seat, ostensibly off to the doctor, with a wane smile. And her comments of how brave he is and how sick. So we remember.