Apologies for the repost, I accidentally posted this in relationships. Meant to put it here in parenting!

I have a cousin who has this weird habit of self diagnosing herself and her kids with neurological/mental health conditions. She is convinced she herself has autism because of tiktok videos she watches about autism. She’s also convinced her 4 year old son has both adhd and autism for the same reason, as well as her husband. I have known these people for years; I actually have a degree in education and specialize in early intervention and I can tell you none of these people have autism or adhd, which I’ve expressed to her. But she watches these videos on tiktok and Instagram and shows them them as “proof”. Her 4 year old is the most low energy, neurotypical child I’ve ever met. He’s well behaved, has zero sensory issues, social, kind, funny, and has good communication. Her and her husband are normal/typically behaving. If anything their only problem is laziness and entitlement as both refuse to get jobs and live off welfare and gofundme’s. On top of the mental health self diagnoses (she has never been to a psychologist nor has her husband or child), she has also diagnosed her 4 year old with asthma and says he cannot go to school because of this and he’s too “fragile”. She did take him to TWO pulmonologists who told her he does not have asthma, but she is still convinced and wrote a whole long Facebook post about how doctors “don’t listen to moms”. Trust me, nothings wrong with this kid’s breathing, I’m around him constantly and have been since birth. There’s no breathing issue. It’s been driving me mad recently because my own child actually IS formally diagnosed with both autism and adhd. It feels like she is, in a way, trying to weirdly one up me. Whenever we are at a family get together or something, and my son behaves a certain way, she will step in and be like “Finlay does ____ too, autism is so hard!!” Meanwhile Finlay is playing nicely and normally or talking to someone. Like what are you talking about? Why on earth does she do this? Like is she threatened by any “extra attention” my son gets?