Denial

I have a family member who’s child may or may not be autistic...

Background he was born at 27 weeks weighing 2 lbs 11 oz ...hospital offered therapy once he was home that lasted for all of a month then his mom decided “they were in her business” 😒 she had a rough pregnancy and prior to did some recreational drugs (marijuana and I believe she tried lean and dabbled with ecstasy before)

Skip ahead

He is now five only eats French fries, potato chips and drinks milk or juice. He will not try anything else. He has very repetitious behavior and often gets fixated on a movie and believes he’s that character it was once the hulk he would growl and hit you all day long now it’s IT (the clown)

You can’t have a simple conversation with him all of his conversations are move lines. He is extremely hyperactive from the moment he wakes up he does not rest. Constantly hitting jumping off furniture growling and running around. He doesn’t play well with other children at all and often times children his age stop and say (Joe) is bad. His mom says “he’s just a boy” some other family thinks he needs spanking, but I can’t spank him because I feel he doesn’t understand. I’ve witnessed his mom hit him telling him to stop doing something and even while crying it’s like he couldn’t stop she just kept hitting him.

I tried to talk to her and she got extremely defensive. None of the family will babysit him even her own mother refuses. My mom ends up keeping him and by the end of the day shes so frustrated and overwhelmed she’s yelling at me for just calling her. She says she’ll let friends keep him but they wouldn’t begin to understand him and would more than likely just spank him when that’s not at all what he needs and he wouldn’t be able to tell her if someone mistreated him.

She keeps talking about how she’s gonna put him in school in the Fall... he can’t even follow simple one step commands (throw this away, sit down) I feel so bad that she doesn’t see anything going on.