u/briar_prime6

My daughter has been chewing on her hair and her shirt collars, just like me at the same age. But now we have better options than just yelling at kids to stop doing that, so I confirmed they’re allowed in school and got her one with rainbows and one with hearts and told her they were coming and she’d be able to chew on them instead of her hair. She told me her friend had one too, and hers arrived today, and she loves them and is so excited. I’m so happy I can do better for her.

(Also, can we get a flair that’s something more like parenting victory/achievement? Nothing was really appropriate to that)

My partner and I held a family RESP with Qtrade as joint subscribers, our two kids beneficiaries (little and nowhere near starting post secondary, FWIW). My partner passed away and I’ve been trying to get the account changed to just my name, my understanding is a joint RESP should pass automatically to the surviving subscriber’s name. Customer service is telling me I need to pay a $250 estate handling charge, close the RESP and move it to a new account as an individual subscriber. Seems particularly cruel that they want to charge this money for an account benefiting my kids who lost a parent and are now in a single-income family. Am I missing something here, is this actually standard procedure for a joint account?

My daughter is 4.5 and has been racking up signs she’s inherited my ASD but I haven’t been encouraged to seek a diagnosis when I’ve brought it up. We’re still dealing with constipation and encopresis 3 years after starting toilet training (been working with specialists almost 2 years), she was recently referred to am SLP at school for pronounciation issues, big feelings, big tantrums especially with restraint collapse at home, has worked intermittently with an OT for the toilet and self-regulation issues. Recently the physical stims have been more of a thing like sticking her hands in her mouth constantly (including while touching gross public transit vehicles, ew) and chewing on her hair which I remember were big things for me at a similar age (collars of all my shirts were soggy and gnawed in all my photos from 5.5-6). Doctor said she’s doing okay at school and we have enough on our plate right now so no rush to do an assessment which kind of makes my late-diagnosed blood boil even though I know she means well and I see where she’s coming from. I also went through an assessment at pretty much exactly this age with the actual diagnosis given only 30 years later so I worry we’ll just be dismissed too if I did push for it.

Has it been helpful for anyone here to get a diagnosis on the earlier side and be able to use that to access public services where available or school-based supports if the need comes up later on, or does it make more sense to just adapt to what I see, advocate where needed, and use what’s worked like OT (which has been an out of pocket cost but there may not be any comparable covered if we do have a diagnosis)? (Also how do I get the dirty fingers out of her mouth??)