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[quote=Anonymous]OP here.

I appreciate your reality checks, really. I have a few things to say, just to clarify and help the first two posters make sense of my situation. I think that from my initial post, you think that I think that the daughter should have been "trained" or whatever to make less of a mess. I have no reservation that she is doing the best that she can; my expectation is not around her, but around her mother. I would think that her mother would know her daughter's limitations and not expect a stranger (which is what I really am to her and to her children) to clean it up, particularly under the circumstances (I was having family gatherings both times and preoccupied with food, guests, children, etc. and was not in a position to be entirely attentive to one person). And to boot, I had no idea that she had an issue in the bathroom in the first place, otherwise, had I known, I would have seen to it that the bathroom was cleaned before allowing my child to go in there. I have no idea what it is like to surrender to the reality that a child may never be independent in the bathroom, but as I stated, my child has had mistakes in other people's homes and I generally clean it up. It would have been nice to have a set of expectations from her mother that this may happen and you may want to watch out for it, rather than her watching the daughter go in and not saying/doing anything, even after knowing the first time that there had been an accident. And as far as being hyper-critical of the state of the mother's house, I guarantee that you all would have been apalled and would not have wanted your children to use the facilities. Yes, accidents happen, my issue is that it was clear that she doesn't clean them up for days at a time.

As far as the seductive behavior, you are right, I do not think that she is actively trying to "steal" my husband or anything absurd. She has picked up some language that is graphic and I won't repeat it here. I am not suggesting that she knows entirely what it means, but she uses it pretty accurately and only with males. She also goes beyond hugging with my husband (not with me or others that I have seen, however) and it turns into groping/squeezing him in private areas. The mother sees this, sees that my husband does not know how to address it without hurting her feelings and she does nothing. When my 4yo is annoying people, my husband and I have ways of curbing it and if someone else were to care for my child, we would probably share that with them so that they could know how we moderate his behavior without embarrassing him or making him feel like a nuisance. I was just not sure if similar methods are used with special needs kids to help them navigate.  Obviously this answer varies, and I will take that into consideration.

I am not critical of the daughter, but of her mother. I feel like she chooses not to communicate at all about her daughter's strengths and weaknesses and how to help a stranger deal with it in their home. I write extensive notes for babysitters when my husband and I go out about allergies, bedtime, making sure that my 4yo uses the potty and what to do if there is an accident. To me, it is about communication. But I gather that some think that there should be no expectation there and I should  just accept it and move on. Okay, fine, noted.  Like I said, this is not the first special needs child I have been around and others have handled it differently, in ways that have set examples even for how I deal with my own children. But maybe they are the bad parents for not letting their children express themselves through touch in an unlimited way. That's why I ask. My dad threw a bunch of insults my way, much meaner than anything you could say to me to try to make me feel very, very small.  In the meantime, he has still not offered any words of concrete advice, any information, any recommendation on reading materials and not even the suggestion that was given here, that I volunteer. Nothing. I am at least trying to look at myself, evaluate myself and deal with this in the way I would want someone to deal with me if the tables were turned. That's all. Really, honestly, and wholeheartedly. [/quote]

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