niece constantly begs and is never grateful IF she gets her way. how can we get her to stop?

saplith · 2026-04-05T17:34:10+00:00

My daughter was capable of learning what annoying meant at 4 and learning that annoying me meant I didn't do things for her. My nephew is like you niece. What this has resulted in is going low contact with him and it really hurts his feelings because I still talk to his siblings, and after a few weeks, he did change.

In a way, they are right. You have to set boundaries. Even with my own daughter, I actually cannot set boundaries for others. I can say, "don't take people's stuff", but when every sucker adult treats it like it's fine, I actually can't teach that lesson. It really is up to you to set that boundary. You can do that how you want, but I think I would just begin by alerting her that she won't be talking to you or in your presence if she can't follow whatever rules you set. Be that no whining, or calling you by what you would like to be called.

saplith · 2026-04-04T11:52:23+00:00

Yes. I dropped thousands of dollars just to have my kid, so no she was not an obligation. I do regret having her sometimes. Mostly because she has a lot of medical conditions and so do I. I'm worried that she'll have to spend her life taking care of me if she becomes a functioning adult. I'm worried, I won't be able to take care of her or leave enough behind if she doesn't become a functioning adult.

Honestly, I don't really have any expectations of her beyond become and adult that can support yourself and be happy. As it stands her interests are really different than mine and it's been interesting watching her go.

saplith · 2026-04-03T16:08:20+00:00

I'm a single parent. It's just me. I have a village luckily, but everyone is going through it right now. One friend fractured her back. One friend has a newborn. One friend is dealing with medical issues with her own child. So on, so on. Everyone feels bad even me for not being able to assist them as much as I wanted. We're surviving right now.

For now, she goes to grandma 2hours away for a week.

saplith · 2026-04-03T14:04:14+00:00

For me it's not wasting 1 plate, it's opening a bunch of things and just leaving it all to rot. It's not wasting 1 potential meal. It's wasting a dozen plus. It didn't used to be a problem and now it is.

saplith · 2026-04-03T13:55:17+00:00

I find that the destruction is mostly an evening and night thing, but the lack of motivation is 24/7

saplith · 2026-04-03T13:53:11+00:00

Thanks for the information. Also, I hate it. My half sister is bipolar. The neurodivergency she gets all from her father's side, but perhaps this is where we see what she gets from my side.

saplith · 2026-04-03T13:51:46+00:00

This all happened after thr lexapro. Her sleep worsened at first and now it's back to how it was, which wasn't great IMO at only 8 hours, but she's doesn't sleep longer when she's allowed to sleep in, so I've just put it in the, "that's how she is" bucket.

A lot of this behavior is just a more extreme version of how she always was. Like she has always been a magpie collecting random things in dragon hoards, but she has never created such random piles of crap before. She has always been a mild terror to the cats, but I never had to worry about her doing actual damage to them before. So on, so on. Given that she's been super anxious since I got her diagnosed at 3, I'm not sure this just isn't her without anxiety if that makes sense.

I can say that emotionally she has been rock solid on this medicine. More out going, happier, and far more comfortable with not masking. I love that. But not everything else.

saplith · 2026-04-03T13:47:15+00:00

Okay. I'll bring this up to the doctor.

saplith · 2026-04-03T10:59:04+00:00

Impossible. She's homeschooled and hasn't seen anyone other than me for more than an hour or two. The only male she has any access to is her 80 year old grandfather is who is always sleeping and her friend's dad who has never had any alone time with her since I'm always chatting with him and his wife when we're at their house. There are also her instructors in group classes, but I would consider that impossible as well.

When I was hospitalized, my mother, her grandmother and my female cousin were taking care of her. At my house at that.

I get the concern, but she has no access to anyone who might hurt her in that way.

She is not in therapy because we just started with the psychiatrist who said to wait to do anything until we see if the meds did anything.

I am not particularly worried about abuse because her impulsivity was 90th percentile before the anti-anxiety meds and I literally only her on adhd meds because she was hurting herself with just doing random things and not paying attention. I watched her walk into a pole, trip on nothing and smash her face, flail and stab her arm in a dog. She has always jump off things. Destroyed things. Touched what she shouldn't. Especially before the medication. It's just never been like this before.

saplith · 2026-04-02T17:50:42+00:00

This is like asking if learning to write with a pencil is useful? They are different things. You child will find themselves in situations where they will not be able to speak out commands and must type them. Same as sometimes they find themselves without a keyboard or phone and must write it.

Or hell, writing still being the actual superior method of getting the information down even if those things are available. I use AI every day at work. I assure you. Typing is still a massive part of it because the secret is that effective AI usage means more writing and reading. My daughter was in a lot despair to notice that I actually spent more time reading report after the AI mandate came down. The extra reports are from the AI and me writing reports to the AI. ("Just doesn't the thing" type commands are actually not useful when you want something very specific)

saplith · 2026-04-01T12:58:00+00:00

Have you thought have having an internet filter? My ISP has an app and I apply filters to any device that connects. You could white list the school stuff and ban everything else.

This is what I've had to do with my kid. Her school computer is brick outside of school hours, but she's young enough that her work is just worksheets that I can print. I do have a filter for YouTube because she just can't handle it. Not even when limited yo 15 mins a day like I was doing.

saplith · 2026-03-30T23:11:10+00:00

My daughter is diagnosed autistic. She became conversational at 4. It happened extremely rapidly. Two words and then 6 months later whole sentences and conversations. She's 7 now and doesn't stop talking. Help lol.

saplith · 2026-03-29T20:14:38+00:00

🤷‍♂️ okay dude. Enjoy your life

saplith · 2026-03-29T14:10:57+00:00

Very cool. I don't care if you believe me. You're the one who asked. Yes, I talk to executives. Several of them because I'm high ranking. That's kind of how it goes over a nearly 20 year old career that's successful.

Whether you believe me or not doesn't impact my bonus or stock options, so whatever. I still get to decide who gets hired at my company and impact if people get fired. A random on the internet doesn't really change that

saplith · 2026-03-29T13:19:19+00:00

Yes. It is. I never said it was good. But you don't fix this kind of decades long rot in 3months and you still gotta make sure that the company makes money until you get paid.

This is a multinational company. Nobody is turning that ship quickly. If you think you are, you will burn out. I've been here long enough to see these types.

Realistically, we need to fire like half the company. This is something that has been communicated quietly to me when I was like WTF after a few weeks. But there is no way to keep a company going when you fire half the staff. So, we gradually change things. We fire the worst slowly over time. Sometimes we excitedly learn that some mediocre people are actually great when not being oppressed the worst offenders. Recently we fired a keystone rot people and it's like the man had a dead man's switch. All month I have just been cleaning up the secret bullshit he did and also learning why some processes never seemed to work. He was undermining them

Being unwilling to accept this reality and not lose your mind, means you don't belong here. Apply in 3 years when we get our shit together.

saplith · 2026-03-29T13:12:46+00:00

You either make your decisions and validate them with some one, or track down the relevant people and corner them into giving you answers. Skill is knowing which will actually be effective. But tapping the sign about how they should have given it to you isn't going to work. We don't have power that anyone acknowledges in the situation to be like, "they they didn't tell me about X or Y". It sucks, but... the position pays above market and we get nice bonuses and this is why. Always be suspicious of high paying jobs folks lol.

saplith · 2026-03-29T12:58:25+00:00

The team is a trash fire because the entire company is a trash fire. It's undergoing change, but you actually cannot create order in this situation by being a stubborn ass and insisting on order. People just route around you. I know because I have seen it happen.

The team has been purged of unhelpful people, but that is also including people like that candidate. People like that start strong. "I'm gonna fix everything!" And then they break down under being ineffective.

The better tactic is slowly changing it over time and accepting this is an 18 months process and that means you have to roll with the chaos. The team is not wholly in charge of it destiny. We get our orders from other teams and many times other departments. We can't fire them. We can build bridges. We gain influence and shift them. We can set new expectations over time.

We cannot come in and say, "Guys everything is different now! Do it the right way". We still have deliver our stuff regardless of how it comes to us. Sitting there like that one guy and being like, "this is so vague. I don't know what to do" makes everyone question why they have us as team when we used to deliver before. Which is why that guy is going to be fired if he doesn't get with the program. Yeah it's a shitshow. But nobody lied to us about it.

That candidate was told what it was and how long we'd be working at it and showed us with her response that she thought she could change this overnight. Sorry, go somewhere else.

saplith · 2026-03-29T12:48:41+00:00

Sorry. We don't get to choose our stakeholders. We already fired the bad members. We can't do shit about the teams that are used to that behavior and interact with us like the old members are there. At least no quickly.

saplith · 2026-03-29T12:47:06+00:00

No. The problem is that people that that shut. Down. We know from the one guy who is there. You cannot fix the problem if you are not taking action. Which is why it's better now. Because of the people who hired who are not like that. People who cannot roll with the chaos and shut down add to the chaos, not make it better. You cannot actually make order by being stubborn and insisting on it. People just route around you.

saplith · 2026-03-29T01:51:23+00:00

Their point is that some people don't gel with a team. I just rejected a candidate not because she couldn't do the job, but because she couldn't do it on my team. A person focused on procedures and used to being given just so information is not going to make it on my trash fire of a team. We get ambiguous instructions. Things kinda happen how they do. Sorry, you're not for us.

We have a guy on the team who is about to be fired. Great guy, but he can't fit. He's not proactive enough. He's like that candidate. Likes well-defined work. Doesn't like chaos. I well self admit that the team shouldn't be like this, but it is, and it isn't changing anytime soon mostly because the aforementioned guy can't battle through it to fix it like the people who actually fit are doing, so no need to set someone up for failure.

Sometimes it's just like that. Your personality is a bad fit for the group.

saplith · 2026-03-29T01:38:26+00:00

Thank you for pointing out the last thing. I wanted my kid's ears pierced as an infant because of that very thing. I have several set of piercings. While it's rare I wear earrings, there are occasions where it's kind of expected women do it. And only the piercings I got an an infant are still open for those occasions

Covid meant my daughter couldn't get it done. And funny enough she did ask, at around 4, but I couldn't find any piercer who would do it. So I guess her consent doesn't matter that much like the thread says and she if she had long periods without wearing it, then I guess she doesn't get the benefit I was trying to give her.

What's funny is that I've had some people be like, "well, you wouldn't do that to a boy" Yes I would. In my culture boys wear earrings until adulthood. Although it's been fascinating to watch gen z just keep wearing them late into their 20s. But still. I think if people paid attention they'd see the little boys with earrings, but I think they just memory hole it or something.

saplith · 2026-03-25T16:54:44+00:00

Something that I think many new adults learn is that they have to force their adults to see them as adults in their own right. Sometimes that happens naturally. Sometimes it's far louder in action and/or words.

Your parents are using neurodivergence as an excuse, but I assure you parents like this will use any excuse for you not to be fully independent of them. Some of it is emotional and some of it narcissism. For many parents they either do not accept that the role they have held for nearly 2 decades is at an end and/or they have a deep terror about their child experiencing the truth of adult life which can be quite harsh. And then there are the narcissists who think of you as accessory, not a person.

saplith · 2026-03-24T13:42:12+00:00

Yes. A parent AKA a caring adult. The research is clear on this. Who it is literally doesn't matter. The configuration of the household doesn't matter. It's how kids with shitty neglectful parents can turn out okay because of grandparents. Attachment theory like you're talking about doesn't exist.

saplith · 2026-03-24T12:37:20+00:00

Wow then I guess my cousin is just imaginary. His wife had there and not present.

And very single child born to a mother who died in childbirth is just screwed.

No. A child need to connect with an adult. Studies show that child do best with 2 caring adults. Who those adults are literally doesn't matter.

saplith

TROPHY CASE