Like the title says, my best friend is driving me crazy. I don't know how much longer I can put up with her crap. The really awful thing is that we've been friends for 23 years. I just don't know if it's worth the aggravation anymore.

I'll try to keep this brief. My best buddy since kindergarten is obsessed with autism. She has always been obsessed with it. When she was pregnant with her first kid she would say that she knew he was going to be autistic. When he was born he was smiling within a week, talked early, and has never shown any single sign of autism according to his doctors. He's ten now and she still talks about how he might be autistic. I've never seen a child make friends so fast or be so smooth in social interactions. He's quite the little flirt and a joy to be around.

In the neighborhood where they live there is a little girl who is a spoiled brat. She runs around cursing at everyone and hits anyone smaller than her. She ran up and slapped my friend's four year old in the face for no reason. She's 13. My friend went to talk to her mother about it and while they were talking this little girl slapped her own mom and called her a bitch too. Then she started calling the neighbors the n-word, for twenty minutes straight while her mother stood there and watched. There were no repercussions, no punishment, she just let her daughter do that. This kind of thing has been going on for over a year. Earlier this week the mother came over to talk to my friend and spun her a sob story about how all of a sudden her daughter is bipolar and autistic. She might be, but it appears to me she has a complete lack of parenting. Her mother often leaves her at home alone, but locks the doors so she can't get in. She'll be outside for hours at a time causing trouble and unless someone calls or goes and knocks on the door the mother is never seen. I've never met the woman and I'm at my friend's house all the time.

My friend ate it up hook, line, and sinker. Now all she keeps talking about is how she could have handled the kid better if she knew the girl was autistic. It's like she thinks she's some sort of autism professional because she babysat an autistic child once, for an hour. Now she's taking her normal, happy, social four year old to a specialist to have him tested for autism. It's almost like she wants her kids to be autistic, like she thinks it'll make her life better. I'm so tired of this. It's all she wants to talk about. I would think that everyone would be thrilled to have two happy, active, healthy children, but it's like it's not enough for her. I want her to stop treating autism like it's the coolest new accessory that she needs. She's always talking about how she knows she could handle an autistic kid because she already has one. She likes to think that her life wouldn't be any different if one of her babies turned out autistic. It would be, it would be a lot different. I have tried and failed to get this across to her. She tells me that I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm exhausted of this. I feel like taking her kids home with me so she won't be bothered by their normal behaviors.

Thanks for letting me vent.

I would be pissed if that were my friend too. I'm sorry, but I hate all this obsession with autism and other mental disorders. I know word needs to get out there so that we can find ways to cope with it, and I was a psychology major, but I just feel like the whole world is freaking out about ADD, ADHD, Depression, OCD, Bi-polar disorder and all these other things and it's like, live your life, make the most of it, if you need help get help, but don't obsess and nitpick about every little thing. It's pretty clear to me that the other mother is just not good at parenting and lets her child get away with anything and that is why this child is going around hitting people, it has nothing to do with autism.

Your friend should be happy that she has two beautiful, healthy children and not worry so much. When I was growing up (I'm 25 btw) all these mental issues weren't a problem and sure some cases were not recognized or diagnosed, but they also weren't a problem because it wasn't part of the "pop-culture". Nowadays, people go left and right self-diagnosing and coming up with excuses for why they behave as such, it's total BS. And I'm not gonna lie I used to diagnose myself as depressed and OCD because I had little compulsions and felt lonely, but everyone has these. People just feel more comfortable categorizing things and knowing things that they start making stuff up that "makes sense".

It really is one of my pet peeves that people all of a sudden feel the need to diagnose everything and worry about everything. People need to relax and enjoy their lives or they're going to miss it because they're so afraid of this or that. And I also don't like that celebrities and other people in the media keep talking about how vaccines cause autism and such. Vaccines are important, otherwise they wouldn't exist. In middle school I once did a project on polio and I really don't wish to see a polio epidemic in my lifetime (when it can be prevented) because people are idiots and think that vaccinating their children is the root of all evil.

I completely agree. We've been friends for years and I hate to throw that away, but I feel like she's wishing problems on her children because it's somehow "cool." I think having two happy, healthy children is the best thing anyone could hope for. Someone once told me that people feel better when they name things. I think that's what a lot of this is about. It's like giving people a free pass. "You've done nothing wrong, all your problems are because of _____." It's like when Asperger's started being discussed, no one had it. Now three out of four socially awkward people have it. I have no doubt that it is a real disorder and that people do suffer because of it. However, I don't think that every person who has committed a social faux pas has Asperger's, but it's being used as a get out of jail free card.

I wonder if it would help your friend to have her children tested, then at least she would be reassured they are ok. Maybe shes subconsciously concerned about them being alright and is seeking reassurance. As to the other poor girl she doesnt sound Autistic, or Asperger, she needs a better mom probably :0)

Sounds like your friend has a case of special snowflake going on. She WANTS her son to be autistic so she can go around talking about it to get attention and/or sympathy.

Hopefully your friend starts acting like a decent parent, but what really bothers me is the other woman. If you know this has been going on, you should call (well, should have called) whatever form of child protective services exist in your area.

Reading this I was thinking Munchausen syndrome by proxy. I feel bad for the kids.

That's just shitty parenting. Like when my neighbor screamed, "WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?" at her kid. Duh, he's like "this" because you scream at him all the time.

When I was in elementary like about 20 years ago now (holy shit I'm old) the "hot" thing to say your kid had was ADD or ADHD. My mother somehow got one of her doctor friends to write me a prescription for Ritalin. Even at the age of like 7 or 8 I KNEW that I didn't need the medicine, just something inside spoke to me that it was doing nothing. So when I was visiting my gma I told her "nope don't want it" she let it go and noticed zero differences in my behavior and attitude for that week I was there visiting. I was just a normal kid who did normal kid things and one of those things is short attention spans. My mother just wanted me drugged so she could drink, but that's another story altogether.

So pretty much some research comes out that says these x symptoms means your kid has x problem. People will jump onto the OMGZ MY SNOWFLAKE HAS IT when at most the kid has maybe 2 or 3 of the symptoms and forgetting that MANY things share the same symptoms. Mental illness is the current "hot" topic of kids being deemed "sick". What irks me is the people are so willing to jump onto these band wagons of "new found research shows x will happen due to x" or "if your kid acts x way they most likely have one or more of these things on this list, treat them with x medicine" and not find out where the results are from or anything but take it as the holy truth.

Like recently they found out the "doctor" who "found" that vaccines lead to autism was nothing more than a fraud report he made to gouge pharmacies. There was many years of research done after his "report" and found little to no connection in a kid having autism because of a vaccine. However look at how many people hopped onto that train and stopped vaccines and now some areas are reporting a change in illnesses that most people get vaccines for are now showing up in those whose parents never got them for the kid. Yet people swear it's worse to get a vaccine due to the "risk" of autism.

Not discrediting anyone who has it ever because these things DO exist, just most likely not to the new scale people are emerging out with. However I do like that disorders and illness of the mind is being studied far more and leading to more help and preventions and it isn't the stigma it was even 10 years ago.