r/Autism_Parenting

my son is 8 years old and everytime he eats he smacks his head as if it hurts to eat like something in his belly hurts. Also no matter how much I brush his teeth he has like poop breath. what can it be? Gut infection? Ulcers? Parasites? im taking him to the dr on Friday to see if he can get his stool tested. I feel horrible because he’s nonverbal and just cries random and self harms 😞

Sorry if this isn’t the best place for this, but I’m not sure where else will relate to the unique core of this issue.

My husband is not great with our autistic 4yo. I can see that he tries his best, he comes to the therapies, he knows what to do but is rarely able to actually help her in practice and usually escalates things instead. On the other hand, I am very good with her. That’s not me having an ego, but I am. I’m also autistic though so I have a deeper understanding of what she’s probably going through especially when she’s melting down.

Due to this I usually have to step in. And trust me I have tried not stepping in following countless arguments with my husband about him being annoyed that I’m stepping in. But I’m not going to allow my daughter to get distressed to the point of hurting herself just to ‘give him a chance’ because at that point she needs intervention and he isn’t helping her. For what it’s worth I think he is autistic too, and a big part of this is that he struggles to cope with his own dysregulation especially when she is screaming. I wear my loops when handling my daughter’s meltdowns because she screams LOUD. I suggested he do the same, but he said he doesn’t need to.

Then add our four month old into the mix and we had a big blow up tonight. I went from calming a meltdown with my four year old which took over an hour, straight to then needing to take over with my four month old because she was screaming and he was getting frustrated, then when they were both settled dealing with him having an attitude with me because I stepped in again. He has never and would never hurt the kids but his energy is brimming with anxiety, stress and frustration which they absolutely feed off. I got pissed off that I had to do back to back regulating of not only our kids but then also him. I usually have to help him regulate after helping our autistic daughter and it’s a lot of mental energy for me.

Anyway during the argument he said that he constantly feels pushed out, like he doesn’t know what to do with our daughter, that she hates him and we’re against him and that we’d all be better off without him. I asked him very clearly whether he was planning to do anything and he said that he never would, but he just thinks we’d be better off if he wasn’t here.

I want to be clear, despite my gripes with him not being able to handle our kids with calmness and patience when they need it, he is a great dad and a very good person. He doesn’t deserve to feel like this. Our daughter also does gravitate towards me too due to the fact I am always the one helping her when she’s melting down and I understand it must be hard to feel like he can’t get through to her. The meltdowns she has are very physical, she will scream, hit, kick and throw things. She’ll try to hurt us and herself. It’s very distressing and we’re getting help for it at the moment but I do understand why he finds it so hard too.

I guess I’m just not sure what to do from here really. I can’t necessarily settle now that he has said that. He said he’ll reach out for some help tomorrow but we’re in England and can’t afford private therapy so the wait list on the NHS will be several months to years. I’m scared to leave him alone in case he really does mean it, and I want to reach out for someone but I don’t know who or how without losing his trust.

I don’t know sorry if this isn’t super relevant to other things on here, I’m just looking for some advice really. Thanks.

Apparently being a parent to two children with severe non speaking autism isn’t hard enough, we are now dealing with idiots complaining about us on Facebook!

For context: My husband often takes my son and our dog to an off-leash dog park. My son plays with the leaves and stims a bit with the dogs, NEVER intentionally hurting them, just tapping them with his hands.

Well some anonymous a-hole decided to rant on a local far right Facebook group about it, claiming my son is intentionally hitting, kicking and poking the dogs with sticks. Then he goes on to threaten my husband in the post with violence as do a few other people. It’s complete BS and makes me so angry and scared for the safety of my family!

Does anyone have any advice? I live in a small city with a number of ignorant morons, but there are also really great people here who have been understanding about our situation. My son likes the park for the plants and trees and while he’s not really into dogs, he would never hurt one on purpose!

My older son is 27 months and it’s pretty clear he’s on the spectrum. Not yet diagnosed because he’s extremely verbal and can converse, but he’ll likely get a level 1 diagnosis in the next few years. He’s currently in OT for sensory seeking behavior and vestibular insecurities. He didn’t point until 20 months and I knew the second that milestone was missed at 12 months that something was up. He was an EXTREMELY colicky baby up until 7 months or so.

My second is the happiest little guy ever. God he is so smiley and joyful to be around. Just constantly smiling at me and his dad. I was in pure bliss for the first 6-7 months because he was such a happy baby and I didn’t experience that with my older son.

Now that he’s 7 months, I’m starting to notice he’s not yet doing back and forth noises with me, or mimicking me. His name response is 50-50. My gut was right about my older son, and now I’m wondering about my second.

It’s completely taken away the joy of my second which I tried so hard to avoid, but I don’t know how to not focus on it. This sucks and I’m sad.

Looking for some episodes to play for my 6 year old that focus on making friends/being a friend/social communication. We have watched Daniel Tiger in the past and similar shows which are nice, but I’m hoping to play some specific episodes before the start of the school year as a refresher!

I’m 46 male. For ten years I raised my autistic child on my own. I don’t think people who haven’t done it understand what that takes — the appointments, the school fights, the nights, the fact that there’s no one to tap in when you’re done. I did it, and I’d do it again, but it was hard in a way I still don’t have good words for.
What I didn’t expect is the thing that’s keeping me up now. It isn’t the past. It’s the future. I lie awake afraid that I’ll regret not having more children, and that I’m going to end up alone.
I don’t know if that’s a real regret or just what exhaustion turns into after a decade. I don’t know if it’s grief for a life I didn’t get to have, or fear of a quiet house later on. Some nights it feels like both.
If you’ve been here single parent, older, past the window or close to it — how did you make peace with it? Did the fear pass, or did you just learn to live next to it? I’d rather hear something honest than something reassuring.
My son now is over 18 and live in group home.

I am at my wits end. Quite frankly, paralyzed in fear for our son's future over his inability to not just manage his hygiene, but even care. He's 11 and has a "mild" ASD 1 diagnosis. Most people and sometimes even my wife and I included, have a hard time believing he even is on the spectrum, except for a few serious social norms he struggles with. And unfortunately those struggles eventually get discovered by his peers, makes him uncomfortable to be around and he loses friendships. He really has none. :(

The biggest societal norm he struggles with is the near daily pooping accidents (at times). We've got access and have used specialists at the #1 Children's Hospital in the country. And we've gone through their encopresis program with very sporadic success. (Scheduled and timed sits with rewards, laxative protocols, dietary adjustments, X-rays and lab work to rule out other issues) He also has massive ADHD and is on Ritalin, which definitely helps some. He sees a therapist regularly and has a great team of support behind him through his IEP.

Yet at 11 years old he's still pooping his pants really often, typically near bedtime. It's often in the presence of screens (TV or tablet). It can occur 15 minutes after his post dinner scheduled sit where he already did void. He can have days where he voids several times and still has the problem.

But what kills us the most is he doesn't seem to care at all. Which is strange because he is a deeply emotional and competitive child about most things. He wants to be successful. He has big dreams for his life and certainly the intelligence to achieve many of his dreams. But with the pooping accidents, he just doesn't care. He will sit in his own feces and carry on like there's no problem until someone smells it and tells him to go clean himself up. Which he does, but shows no signs that he feels there is a problem . There's no urgency or shame in being covered in poop, even though we tell him a million times in a million different ways from soft to stern that immediate clean up is always going to be the expectation wherever he is in life from school to socially to eventually the work environment.

I'm a broken man over all of this. I feel like a failure. I've changed jobs to be home more often for him. I've pursued and invested heavily in the very best specialists the country has to offer. My wife has been a stay at home mom his whole life due to the need to constantly be available to take him to various doctors and therapists and be there for him basically every moment he's not in school. I do everything in the world to make sure I'm healthy physically and mentally so I'm never off my game for him. Obsessed with the gym, diet and proper sleep because I'm 50 and feel like I'm going to need to be physically and mentally capable of working until I'm 90 because I'll always need to support him like he's a small child. I just don't see independence in his future and the toileting hygiene is probably the biggest thing that will hold him back. Even worse, my head goes to very dark places where I worry that he will lose his will to live if he doesn't have friends, a job he can be proud of etc, especially when my wife and I are gone someday. And I feel like I'm powerless to protect him from such a painful future on the horizon with the current trajectory.

I broke last night and lost it on him (screamed by head off) for "not trying" and "not caring". I simply snapped. He went to sleep in tears. It was horrible . I am up alone at the crack of dawn wanting to puke I'm so disgusted with myself.

I don't know what I'm looking for in this post. I just want the problem to be over for him and to be able to breathe a rare sigh of relief that progress is being made. Perhaps the hardest part is occasionally he doesn't have the issue for a month or two and then he just falls right back into a cycle of daily accidents. It's such a painful situation for all of us including his normally developing, younger sibling.

Ahhhhjhhhh!!!!!!

I just don’t know what to do. I am really at my limit, and I am crying every day because everything is just so hard and everything feels like a fight. I have a daughter who is 3 years old and not yet diagnosed because her pediatrician wants to wait until she is 4.

Every day is just a struggle. She wakes up and is just angry all the time, every day. She is crying and shouting so much, and she is so aggressive. She hits me and bites me, although the biting only happens about once a day now.

And it continues throughout the day. The tantrums don’t stop. She will keep going, and I try to calm her down, but nothing seems to work. She will hit me, kick me, and keep crying. It takes 20–45 minutes to calm her down, and I just don’t have the energy anymore because she has so much power.

Then there are her sensory issues. Dressing her, doing her hair, everything is a fight. Taking off her pyjamas, getting dressed, everything. She hates tags; everything needs to be cut out. She hates hats, rain boots, raincoats, coats, just anything and everything.

Everywhere we go, she just wants to be carried. She won’t walk on her own. And she only wants me. That’s another issue. My husband tries everything, but it’s only me she wants.

It’s the same with sleeping. I can’t remember the last time I slept more than four hours. I am so tired. She can’t fall asleep without me, and she has to lie on my left arm. If I try to wiggle myself out, she wakes up and cries, and it takes another 45 minutes for her to fall asleep again.

There are also so many nights when she wakes up at 1 am and doesn’t fall asleep again until 5 am.

I am just tried.

I just started my son (10, autism level 2 due to behaviours; independent and very verbal, average intelligence + severe ADHD + ODD) on the liquid formula. We started at a microdose of 1ml (regular starting dose is 4ml). I thought for a second I saw a change, but I don't think it's actually making any difference one way or the other at this point.

Our doctor told us to do 1ml for two weeks, then 2ml for 2 weeks, 3ml for two weeks, and then after SIX WEEKS finally start the regular starting dose.

I am getting impatient (but will continue following doctor's orders, of course) -- has anyone else been through this process? When do you start to see the actual impact of the medication?

He's also currently on Guanfacine which makes a tiny difference, but the irritability, impulsivity and general hyperactivity has been UNBEARABLE.

Parents with neurotypical kids to whom this applies: what's it like to be able to do homework with your kid? What's it like to have a child that will actively participate in a concept that you're trying to teach them? I would give my left foot to be able teach my child math, or reading, or spelling. To show them the tips and tricks to solving whatever problem. My favorite kind of play as a child was to get my blackboard and teach my stuffed animals how to read. I waited my whole life to do that with my child. Im grateful he gives some type of cooperation with his teacher, but homework is usually a nightmare. I just want to be able to complete nightly homework with my child. To have a little bit of semblance of a normal school night. Vent over.

My 7 year old is AuDHD. She generally does well in a main stream classroom with some extra supports. Last year, in first grade, we discovered that those supports should include 1:1 or very small group testing. In her mid year tests, she raced through all the questions and told her teacher it was “too boring.” She ended up in the 20th percentile. We tried 1:1 for end of year and she was back up in the 99th percentile. So we kept it in her IEP.

While I was talking with her about beginning of the year testing, she was very resistant to 1:1 and said she wanted to take the test with the rest of the class. She was very upset and said that needing 1:1 makes her feel like she’s “the worst” and stupid. After some prodding I discovered some other kids in her class had been saying that to her.

I tried explaining that we all need different supports and the 1:1 doesn’t mean she’s not as smart as her classmates (quite the contrary - it helps her show how smart she really is) but she’s still pretty upset. Has anyone been in a similar situation or does anyone have ideas on how I can reframe this for her to make her feel better about the accommodation?

Anyone have experience dealing with PreK teachers who don't understand how to deal with a child with Autism? My son, 4, is in PreK this year after being in preschool for 2 months and told he was ready to move up. Problem is, he's autistic and is not the easiest to deal with when he is overstimulated. He has 3 teachers, and there are a couple other autistic kids in his class along with a good bit of neurotypical kids.

They called us the other day saying he's hitting his teachers when they make him do things, bothering other students, and can't sit still. They are coming off rude talking about it, like they don't like him after less than 2 weeks of school. It's breaking my heart and I don't know what to do. The actual SpEd teacher seems more understanding but she is not the main teacher. He does hit his little brother (2) and we put him in time out every time, but we haven't found an effective method to get him to calm down INSTEAD of hitting.

A lot of this is venting but I really do need advice from fellow Autism parents. We are trying our best to find ways to get him on the right path, but we can't afford outside ABA and the rest of his therapies are at school.

I love my child more than anything. She just turned 8 and has ADHD and Autism. She is perfectly fine for everybody. When she’s with us, 90% of the time is arguing, rudeness, anger, meltdowns, and pure rage. Every time we go somewhere, it’s ruined by the end because of her behavior. She’s what you’d consider level 1. She does great in school academically, has some trouble focusing but it’s improved, etc. Every morning she wakes up ready to just scream and fight. She’s amazing during the day for my in laws (where she goes during the summer while we work). By the time she gets home, same thing as the morning. Even if we just let her be and decompress when we pick her up, it’s straight rage again. I don’t understand and I’m so lost. I’m so jealous of other parents who don’t have to deal with this.

My son is 6 and has AuDHD, autism level 2. He is verbal, but his functional speech is still quite limited, and this is probably one of my biggest worries.

He can answer very simple questions when they only require a one-word response, especially yes/no questions. But anything that requires him to explain something or retrieve information can be very difficult.

For example, he has a habit of throwing his teddy bear over one of our walls. If we ask him, “Which wall did you throw it over?”, he often can’t answer the question. Instead, he may continue repeating a script that he wants to say. He is also a gestalt language processor, so there is a lot of scripting and repetition in his speech.

At the same time, he is clearly intelligent. He can do mathematics, has an amazing memory and often surprises us with the things he knows and remembers. There seems to be a big gap between what he understands/knows and what he is able to communicate or demonstrate.

His concentration is also extremely poor. He is currently on Amfexa, which has helped to some extent, but he still struggles enormously with tasks such as writing. He often needs someone to hold his hand or physically guide it to keep him on the task.

The other major concern is impulse control, executive functioning and safety awareness.

He will constantly try to run into the road if given the opportunity. He seems to have very little understanding of the actual danger involved. Sometimes he will laugh and say things like, “Cars won’t kill you,” even though we have repeatedly tried to teach him about road safety. Knowing a rule and being able to act on that knowledge in the moment seem to be two completely different things for him.

We are discussing Risperdal/risperidone with his doctor because some of the impulsivity and behaviour is becoming very difficult to manage safely. At the same time, we love his bubbly, happy personality and don't want to lose that side of him. I'm not really looking for a debate about medication ,that is something we will work through with his doctors.

What I would really love to hear about is development over time, particularly from parents of children who were similar at 5–7 and are now older.

Did functional communication eventually improve significantly?

Did your child become better able to answer open ended questions and actually tell you what happened, what they wanted, where something was, etc.?

Did impulse control and safety awareness improve as they got older?

Did executive functioning improve?

Was progress sometimes incredibly slow for years and then become more noticeable later?

He has been doing OT, speech therapy and play therapy for over a year. There has been progress, but it feels very small and very slow, and sometimes it is difficult not to worry about what his future will look like.

I know nobody can predict an individual child's development. I'm really just hoping to hear experiences from parents of older children, teenagers or adults who recognise their younger child in what I've described.

Is there reason to hope that things like functional speech, impulse control and basic safety awareness can improve substantially with age, even when progress at 6 is still very slow?

My six-year-old son was just diagnosed with autism after we had him assessed for ADHD and he tested negative for that. Frankly, we were/are pretty surprised by the results (that he does NOT have ADHD and does have autism). He also tested for giftedness, so 2E.

Everyone, including his teacher, is "baffled" by the diagnosis because it's not as traditionally apparent as those, like me, assume. I'm still trying to make sense of the report. His primary issues are with picking up on social cues, not being able to keep his hands to himself, struggling with multi-step directions and staying on track. In the ADOS test he apparently had limited imaginative play (he told me the tester only had superheroes and he prefers dragons, ha).

He has good/average eye contact, is flexible and adaptable with transitions and switch-ups to routine, other than the hands to self he doesn't seem to "crave" touch, he's outgoing, has a great sense of humor, has an understanding of affect and others' emotions - in fact is exceptionally empathetic, he doesn't have repetitive behaviors, I think every so often he stims by chewing but it comes and goes. He can be anxious about "what if" situations. He's a bit immature, but doesn't really stand out. He wants to connect with other kids but seems to lack an understanding of how. ETA: whoops, the big one I omitted - he's disruptive in group settings including class, recess, lunch and sports (which he loves but can't behave), and is frequently getting physical with kids or not listening and being rambunctious.

We've started with OT and are meeting with his school to establish a 504, but other than a behavior chart and check-ins, we're pretty lost on what he might need. His teacher is wonderful and involved in helping figure it out. Any sensory things we've tried haven't really stuck or helped anything. His report seems to include every possible accommodation that could ever be made.

Whenever I search for relatable situations, I land on kids with ADHD and can't seem to find anything similar to his profile. Does this sound familiar to anyone, and if so, was there any specific type of therapy or routine that helped? Thanks for helping me understand all of this a bit beter.

I’m a dad of two beautiful childs, an asd 6yo girl and a NT 4yo boy.

Lately, the communication skill of my NT son exceeds my daughter. He asks questions “why”, trying to understand everything. He asks the future, what happens when he has certain ages.(“Que sera sera…”).

It is such a pleasure to have spontaneous talk and can go more deeply in each subject and the feeling you can transfer your knowledge. It is a joy that I did not have, that any parents of only NT children can easily take for granted. But I know it is precious and I treasure it.

We commit to our daughter’s therapies but I will not let the constant worry of autism and her future robes me the joy of being a parent of a NT child.

My identical twin boys entered the game in 2020. There was no tutorial, no instruction manual, and no helpful floating arrow explaining what we were supposed to do next. There were simply two tiny, nearly indistinguishable humans with enormous personalities and questionable regard for sleep.

When they were three, we enrolled them in pre-K. That arrangement lasted until the school politely asked us to take them somewhere else. They were kind about it. They explained that they were not equipped to handle two autistic three-year-olds simultaneously. There was only one problem. As far as I was concerned, my boys weren’t autistic. Sure, they scripted language, struggled with transitions, became overwhelmed by sensory input, communicated differently, and reacted to unexpected changes as if someone had quietly replaced the laws of physics. But I didn’t see anything particularly unusual about that. They seemed perfectly normal to me.

“They aren’t autistic,” I thought. “They’re just like me.”

This was apparently not the airtight defense I believed it was. The universe quietly recorded my argument and saved it for the moment when its significance would become painfully obvious.

Both boys were evaluated later that year and diagnosed with Level 2 autism. We started ABA shortly afterward and gradually assembled an entire support party consisting of therapists, teachers, school staff, visual schedules, transition warnings, communication tools, predictable routines, and an apparently unlimited supply of laminated paper. Every time we learned something new about how their brains worked, a previously locked door inside my own history creaked open.

They memorized songs, videos, conversations, and entire scenes. They used familiar scripts when their own words were difficult to find. They struggled when plans changed unexpectedly. They needed extra time to process what people were asking them to do. Their emotions could hit their bodies like an electrical storm, and once they became overwhelmed, reasoning with them was about as effective as filing a formal complaint with a tornado.

I understood all of this instinctively because I had experienced versions of it my entire life… I had delayed speech and needed speech therapy as a child. I copied actors and borrowed other people’s personalities because everyone else seemed to have received a social rulebook that had somehow been left out of my starter pack. I struggled with eye contact, sensory input, transitions, abstract schoolwork, task switching, and emotional regulation. I could hear electrical sounds other people ignored, smell things nobody else noticed, and become overwhelmed by textures, noise, conflict, or unexpected changes.

As an adult, stress could make me overheat, sweat profusely, hyperventilate, and eventually lose the ability to regulate myself. I believed these were personal failures. Other people called me emotional, difficult, dramatic, lazy, argumentative, or unstable. Nobody suggested that my nervous system might be operating with entirely different settings.

The more I learned about my sons, the harder it became to avoid the obvious question: If these boys are autistic, and they are this much like me, what exactly does that make me? A few years after their diagnoses, at 43 years old, I completed my own evaluation and was diagnosed with Level 1 autism.

I had successfully identified that my autistic children were just like me while somehow failing to consider the most obvious explanation. My reward was the opportunity to reprocess 43 years of memories using updated information. No additional storage space was provided.
The diagnosis didn’t transform me into an autistic person. It revealed that I had always been one. The same was true for my sons. Their diagnoses didn’t change who they were. They gave us a better map for understanding where they already were and what they needed to keep moving forward.

That realization brought relief, but it also brought grief. I began wondering how different my childhood, relationships, health, and marriage might have been if someone had recognized autism in me earlier. I wondered what I could have learned if I had received visual supports, emotional coaching, patience, and co-regulation instead of being treated as if every struggle were a moral failure.
But then I look at my boys.

They are now six and in first grade. They are affectionate, hilarious, intelligent, creative, and capable of turning our home into a continuous two-person theatrical production. They read above grade level, understand multiplication, memorize hundreds of songs and scenes, and sing in harmony with each other. They can recite entire programs while one performs and the other supplies sound effects, because apparently the universe decided one autistic performer was insufficient.

They also still need support with communication, transitions, safety, sensory regulation, and expressing what is happening inside them. We use visuals, routines, repetition, preparation, and calm correction. When one of them becomes overwhelmed, I try to understand what his behavior is communicating instead of making him ashamed of it.

I do not always get it right. Parenting remains a live-action campaign in which the objectives change without warning and at least one party member is frequently missing a shoe. But my boys are not growing up believing that their brains make them defective. They are growing up knowing that they are loved, understood, and supported.

They led me back to the child I used to be. By learning how to become the father they need, I am also learning how to care for the parts of myself nobody understood. I originally believed my sons couldn’t be autistic because they were just like me. It turns out that was the biggest clue anyone had.

Has anyone else received an autism diagnosis after their child? Did you initially miss their autistic traits because those traits felt completely normal within your own experience?

Today i had my son & i was struggling bad ... he was crying for hours & hours non stop . I tried to figure out what was wrong he didn't seem hurt or sick i gave him snacks put on his shows gave him juice a bath everything... he was still crying after awhile i tried to lock myself in my room because i couldn't take it anymore. He literally wanted to sit next to me and just scream in my ears & when i tried to walk away a moment he would follow me. I ended up locking myself in the bathroom (he some how broke the door handle in my room) i got on the phone with my mom about how overwhelmed his screaming was and i started to have my own meltdown & i said something really mean im afraid to say ... but i told i wish i had a ab0rt!on . I know it was terrible and im sure he didn't hear me i really didn't mean it but this is really freaking hard & i do wish i just was not a mom sometimes. I love him to death i want the best for him but on the hard days i want to run away.

Update: My sister has decided that she won't attend my daughter's party at all. Thanks everyone.

I'm not a parent of a child with Autism I'm an Aunt. Let me preface by saying I love my nephew and I have always been apart of his life since he was 2 years old when I moved closer to my family. My nephew is mostly non verbal, he's extremely age regressed, and he can be quite violent. This was fine, we all adapted and adjusted and for 2 years I was his main baby sitter. Life got busy for me so I saw him less but I was still apart of his life and he loved his aunty, especially playing. Things changed when I became pregnant and he started punching and kicking me in my stomach. He became increasingly difficult for me to handle so I cut down the amount of time I spent watching him to at max 4 hours,I also had a high risk pregnancy so I felt the need to protect my unborn baby. My nephew is 8 and he's a big boy and heavy handed. They weren't light punches or kicks.

After my daughter was born he didn't interact with her which was fine but I feel like he struggled with not getting my attention like he used to, I didn't want to roughhouse with him as much because he didn't care if my daughter was in my arms when he'd try to get my lap for a hug. As my daughter has gotten older he's went out of his way to pinch her or kick at her or do anything to her that will give him attention. He recently put his feet on her head as I was distracted trying to change her diaper and squeezed his feet on head. My daughter was 2 months premature, she's small for her age. I spoke to his mom and after that last interaction I decided that I didn't want him at my daughter's 1st birthday party. Not only for her safety but for the expected 3 other 1 year olds expected to be there. He will snatch, hit, spit and push any one of any age to get what he wants and there's no way that my sister can be watching him the entire time to prevent what he's been doing.

Originally I talked to my sister about having time out/ safe spaces for him and other methods to help limit so of those behaviors. But after the last incident,o ne of the safety measures, my cousin was there and he still did multiple things to my daughter while both of us was there. I know he's doing a lot of the behaviors for my attention but hosting a party will have my attention every and I don't want to have to be wired trying to protect my daughter and other babies on a day meant to celebrate my daughter. My nephew is supposed to be with his dad that weekend anyways so I don't think he will be missing out on anything because he isn't the type to care. I offered to have a separate family gathering so he can be included because it's my sister who feels like he's being excluded and is upset but she declined.

We haven't spoken in a week but she just made a post about how Autism shouldn't make a child less welcome in their own family. I'm not sure what to do, am I the asshole?