I have a niece who will be 4 in July. She is an only child who lives with both mom, dad, grandma and grandpa at grandparents house. There is a lot wrong with the whole situation here, as well as the relationship with everyone in the house. Parents are in mid 30’s and got pregnant after only one month of dating. Married 6 weeks later. So as you can probably tell, the mom and dad do not have a good relationship at all…They do not watch their daughter EVER, do not parent EVER and the child has no life at all other than TV. She has no set schedule in her life and pretty much is ignored daily. She goes to bed at 2am when her unemployed dad goes to bed and they both wake up around 12-1:00pm the next day. She cannot sit for any length of time. In fact last night my mother n law was trying to feed her and she would chase my niece around the house with a bowl of rice feeding her like a baby… OMG I was floored to see that…

I am very worried about my niece and her development and wonder if something could be wrong. I know that a lot of her issues are due to lack of parenting, constant fighting in the home among all of the adults and many other issues. Also, she is a bubble baby. She has NEVER left the house other than going to doc appts or to major family events. She has never had a play date other than my own son who is a week younger than her. My son tries to play with her, but get’s frustrated of the lack of communication as well as her not understanding personal space……
My niece has no ability to hold any form of conversation what so ever. EX. I will ask her wow that is a nice doll, what is her name, or what is your name. Maybe even ask her what color is your dress. She will look up to the sky or wall and repeat lines from a movie. She will not make eye contact with you in anyway.

When she asks for something to drink she will say sasa want juju. She cannot be given any form of direction to follow through with at all. She is also not potty trained. She is very sweet, and I know she wants to be able to talk with us, but she cant. One of the best descriptions that I can give, is that she reminds me of the movie rainman where he went around repeating tv ads and tv shows. She does the same thing all the time. ask her a question she responds will lines from movies or Dora.

Last night, she did something that actually amazed me, but not sure if I should be amazed or not. As always, a movie is turned on for her and my son. I decided to sit and watch the movie with the two of them. My niece was able to recite the movie lines almost word for word. I was impressed that she could memorize the lines. I mentioned it to her mom and she said yeah she watched that movie for almost 12 hours yesterday…………………WTH who lets a kid watch that much tv…

Anyways, I am very sad about my niece and don’t know if I should say anything to my sister n law about it. Do you guys think that any of this is abnormal? Do you think that if she were to get socialized in a DC or preschool she might change, or do you see the red flags that I see??
I really want to help without stepping on toes and really want to talk with my sister n law, but I just want to make sure that my thoughts of her having some issues are correct. What do you guys think?

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