I recently tried to be on Facebook again after my therapist recommended I seek out autism parenting groups. I made it less than 24 hours before I deleted my account again.
Now that is some quality hate right there folks! I admire the cut of your jib, mister.
I have a similar in-law. If I saw some vehicle whack her I’d award the driver both ears and her devil-tail.
To know her is to loathe her.
Don’t worry, you aren’t missing much. I found them to be helpful in the beginning only to know I wasn’t alone… And that was it. There was no advice there that I couldn’t get from a better source. The only thing they helped with was IEP stuff and even then I got better advice from a friend who has an autistic child. (I’ll even pass that IEP advice on to you - It has to be in writing. If you want it done, put it explicitly in the IEP. If it isn’t explicitly in the IEP, the school doesn’t have to do it.)
Last night was rough for my husband, my son and I. The boy woke up screaming and was inconsolable for about 20 minutes. He writhed around, didn’t want to be touched, didn’t want milk, didn’t want anything but kept calling our names, clearly in pain. And then, just as suddenly as it started, it stopped. He politely asked for milk, drank the milk, played for a little bit , and went to sleep. It happened again about 4 hours later, though that time lasted longer. I am guessing he had painful gas but it was startling and hard to watch as my poor 2 year old writhed around in pain with nothing we could do to help him. I don’t know what to do to help him. He’s been chronically constipated for a long while, probably since he started solids. And when he’s not constipated, he’s got diarrhea. His doctor told us to put him on Miralax. We did but that doesn’t feel like a long term solution. And his doc isn’t willing to test him for allergies or anything like that because he’s too young I guess. We took him off dairy milk, which seems to help a bit. He at least stopped vomiting from straining every time he pooped. But it doesn’t seem to have solved all the problem. I don’t know what to do next and the doctor isn’t helpful. Do I try eliminating FODMAPs? Gluten? It’s like he has IBS, at 2 years old.
TL;DR - The toddler has pooping problems and the doctor isn’t helpful. I don’t know what to do next.
You should rather look at this as validation that you made the correct choice.
I bought a single scented votive last night. In the miasma of smells that is a big-box candle aisle, it seemed pleasant.
Woke up this morning thinking, “What the HELL is that smell?!?” It wasn’t unpleasant, per se, just … strong as hell.
At that point, the need to pee took over. As I toddled back to bed, I passed the shelf where I’d set a few non-food purchases for later storage, and … oh. Ah. Okay.
I’m kinda chilling in bed with my phone & cat, windows wide open, and I can smell that fucker the next room over. I’ve never even lit the thing.
Returning it to get my 69 cents or whatever back is way more trouble than it’s worth. But I have a feeling my trash bin outside is about to become fragrant.
Oh, my god, my heart - and tummy - ache for him. And for you, that helpless feeling is horrible.
Can his regular doc provide a referral for a nutrition expert or something along those lines? Something is wrong with his guts, and if they don’t “learn” to process food correctly, he’s in for lengthy misery … but someone has to figure out what is going wrong with his normal processes first, of course.
I agree with your instinct that a lifetime of Miralax isn’t really a solution.
(My mother would say to simply get a couple of prunes down the gullet each morning, but that’d be her advice, not mine.)
My challenge with grocery shopping and grocery lists continues. Something about this process always goes wrong. Over the course of several days I carefully compiled a shopping list. When I got to the supermarket today I reached into my pocket where I had put it, and it wasn’t there! I concluded that it must have fallen out when I was fiddling with credit cards at the liquor store, my previous stop.
When I got home, there was the list, sitting on the desk where I had left it. Apparently putting it in my pocket had been some sort of wishful dream.
But to those who wish to accuse me of experiencing cognitive decline, hear this: forced to go from memory, I somehow achieved the purchase of every single thing on the list, and even a couple of things I had forgotten to write down. Yay! I still have some semblance of a working brain! 
I create grocery lists on my phone, usually in my notes app. Though sometimes my wife will text me a list of things and I go by that. If I want to add something to the list, I text her back my stuff, so when I open my text app on my phone it’s all there.
I’d probably lose a written list too, but I’m really careful with my phone.
Used to be when I left my grocery list at home I would buy one of everything in in the store* to make sure I didn’t forget anything.
That worked fine until my wife told me “you were supposed to get two cans of green beans for the casserole tomorow night.”
* Nah, not really, but I did consider it a couple times.
My mother was obsessed with bowel movements. She would ask me if I’d had one recently even when I was a teen. Yeah, no embarrassment there, mom. Her solution was to set a bowl of stewed prunes in front of me at breakfast, their bloated bodies floating in what looked like sewage discharge. Guess again, mom.
Mine brought me two (2) prunes in a little bowl, every morning, to my bedroom as I was getting ready.
It’s not that I wasn’t allowed to leave my room until they were gone, technically, but I never once risked the wrath that would have no doubt ensued had I made such an attempt.
Instead, I flushed 'em.
Years later it occurred to me, I was simply skipping a few steps.
Follow me for more efficiency tips!!
I mean, it can’t hurt. I suspect cutting back dairy would help a lot, but I would look at other things too, like soy. I’ve had luck myself with limiting FODMAPS - foods you wouldn’t expect, like bananas and honey, are big problems for me. I’m sorry you’re not getting much support on this. Ideally you’d be working with a nutritionist. But at this point, well, I imagine you’re desperate, so try cutting out some other things and see what works. I’ve learned from my own picky eater that it takes a lot to malnourish a child, so cutting out a few more foods probably won’t hurt.
Our shopping list is a Google Doc that my wife and I share. She can add things to it anytime, even while I’m at the store shopping. We’ve been doing it this way for years, works great.
You guys with your new-fangled tech! Mind you, I’m not averse to new tech, either. I write out my grocery lists with a high-tech Pilot G-2 gel ballpoint pen on a small square of pre-cut notepaper. Which I then leave at home when I go shopping.
It’s more efficient that making the list on my phone, and then leaving that at home (which I also did).
So… he was controlling… over-bearing … clueless… and obnoxious? Tried to force his religion and his politics on you? And when you objected and left the group/defriended him quietly he accused you of being a shitty person? You sure lost a prize there. They sound like the family that tried to imprison the foreign exchange student in “Better Off Dead”.
“But… but… but… you met my Mother.
< turns away from the computer and calls out to the kitchen >
Ma…! I lost another one…”
I’m still at the written-on-a-scrap-of-paper stage for my shopping lists, but I’ve managed to avoid leaving them at home. This may be because I write up my lists in my office based on the sales shown on the store’s website, then carefully tuck them under my cell phone which is sitting on my desk. Then when I’m getting dressed to go shopping I pick up both my phone and the list, putting them both together in my pocket.
Right after I started working at my present company, one of the office ladies sent out a mass email about how drinking cold liquids with meals would cause heart attacks or something. I found the appropriate Snopes page and forwarded it to her (just to her - no “reply all!”). Either she stopped sending out glurge, or I was dropped from the glurge list. Either way, a win!
Or you can use your phone’s Reminders app. My son has created a grocery list there that is shared between three people. Don’t ask me how to do it; that’s why I had kids.
Entirely anecdotal so likely useless, but:
My niece is autistic with very poor social skills as an older toddler. My SIL ended up putting her on a non-gluten, non-dairy diet and it helped tons (she is now a second grade teacher).
I don’t know if that was medical advice or not - I know she did a lot of her own research (and I know how that sounds around here), but it worked for her. I know they tried weaning her off the diet occasionally (she has an older and younger sibling, so having special food for her was even more challenging) and she regressed.
So, offered for what it’s worth. Good luck with your son.
I don’t want to revive that thread with the very disturbing story, but as a few random shrieks were heard this evening, it reminded of a comment in that thread about the rather self-evident fact that the behaviour of children is entirely a function of their upbringing. While kids are naturally rambunctious, concern for the neighbours is entirely on the parents.
I didn’t seriously have a problem with the shrieking young females I described earlier, because they were obviously having a Saturday night party and that rarely happens (the Bouncy Castle noise-making at the same house was the previous summer or maybe even earlier). But I was sure glad when it was over. The penetrating shrieking that is more or less permanent is fortunately from a different place, several houses away, and by the time it gets here it’s sort of an annoying distant echo. I just pity the immediate neighbours.
But what the comment about parenting reminded me of is my immediate neighbours directly behind me, and for them I thank my lucky stars and what gods there may be. They have two young children, a girl and a boy, of prime Shrieking Age. I never hear them. They have a dog. It never barks. They have a swimming pool, and the kids love to frolic in it, but their frolicking is, if I may coin a phrase, quietly rambunctious. Lots of splashing, little shrieking.
Good parenting! That’s what’s it all about, whether dealing with kids or with dogs. The shortage of it is a plague upon the world.