When His Parents Asked Him To Help Provide Care For His Disabled Brother, He Said No Because They Had Been Neglecting His Needs For Years

Michael Levanduski

4 hours ago

Source: Shutterstock/Reddit

When someone in the family has a serious disability, it is going to impact everyone in different ways.

What would you do if your brother had a serious disability, which meant your parents spent all their time and money on him and neglected you?

That is what happened to the brother in this story, so he called them out on it when they asked him to provide more care for his brother.

Check it out.

AITA for asking my parents what they have done for me and not for my brother?

I (17m) have a younger brother (15m) who has a number of serious disabilities from birth.

He suffered brain damage at birth, has a missing kidney, has digestive issues that means he eats through a feeding tube, he cannot walk and can only make sounds instead of talking.

My parents time and attention has to be focused on him more than on me.

Of course, the brother needs more attention.

For the first few years after he was born I spent a lot of time with my grandpa who raised me from the age of 2 until I was about 7.

Then I was seen as “old enough” to be at home after school and could make my own food and clean up after myself and not need supervision mostly.

Grandpa was willing, and had offered, to keep taking me after school but my parents said he didn’t need to do it and he deserved to live his life.

I never get 1:1 time with my parents.

They couldn’t afford field trips and never took the time to apply for the school field trip fund so grandpa picked up the slack there.

He paid into my school lunch account so I didn’t have to make my own lunch.

Grandpa was the person who’d pick me up from school if I was sick.

He’d stay and take care of me at home since whichever parent would be home would really just say to go to bed or lay on the couch and relax and there was no caring for me or taking care of sick little me.

That is awful, especially since Grandpa was willing.

When I was 11 I got picked for this junior programmers contest through our school district.

My parents said they couldn’t take the time for it so they refused to sign off and since grandpa couldn’t, even though he offered to take me, I missed out on that.

When my laptop broke in October 2020 it was grandpa who replaced it for me so I could, you know, school when school wasn’t in person.

When I got older I was asked to do more like cook for everyone, pick up meds or get the special bath ready for my brother.

A few times my mom or dad even reprimanded me for not doing off my own initiative.

My parents have nothing set aside for me to go to college.

They have never considered colleges.

And last year I had my guidance counselor on my case wanting me to go to college and wanting us to attend some college talk and my parents wouldn’t go.

I told her I didn’t have money for college and she said she would reach out to my parents about forms.

They never got back to her.

She called, emailed, reached out repeatedly.

They need to make time for this.

Nothing.

Then I told her I had decided to skip college and she was like nooo, nooo, you need to go and she tried reaching out to them again to talk about it but they didn’t answer/respond.

My parents wanted to get a night off and catch up with some friends in town and they asked me to babysit.

I said no.

My parents told me I should help my family and considering all they do for me.

So I asked them, what have they ever done for me.

I told them it had to be for me, not for my brother.

I can see why he is hurt by this.

I asked them to name one thing and I pointed out all the stuff they don’t/didn’t do.

They called me spiteful and told me to stop looking at it through the lens of a kid.

AITA?

What a heartbreaking situation for everyone involved, but the parents do need to put in effort to their older child.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say.

Exactly, they need to be parents to both kids.