When you have a special needs child, you often have to give up important things in life to care for them.

What if you had to miss your other child’s academic honors ceremony because your autistic son was having a meltdown?

That is what happened to the mom in this story, and now her other daughter won’t speak to her because she feels neglected.

AITA – I missed my daughter’s award ceremony because of my son, she’s still not speaking to me

I’ve been a single mom to two kids since they were 6 and 4 – their dad passed away.

Around that time, my son was formally diagnosed as autistic.

He’s not very verbal and prone to physical outbursts when he has a meltdown.

He’s been in therapies of every kind for his entire life and it’s helped somewhat.

That is good at least.

Their dad had a life insurance policy which allowed me to stay home as my son’s main caregiver while working freelance, but money was tight and finding anyone capable of watching him has always been a challenge.

My daughter was graduating from college last year.

A week before the ceremony, she had an awards ceremony for academic achievement.

I was obviously incredibly proud of her.

She asked me to come to it and I said I would.

Her college is two hours from here.

I hired a trained sitter who specializes in autism the day of the ceremony.

Can’t the trained sitter deal with this?

Right as I was about to leave, my son had a meltdown and was lashing out at the sitter.

I couldn’t leave, and he wasn’t calm for hours.

I’d left my daughter a voicemail saying I wasn’t going to be able to make it.

She called back that night absolutely livid.

Clearly she feels neglected.

She called me a bad mother, said I had two kids but only cared about one, that I’d missed every game and performance she’d had as a child and it clearly wasn’t going to change as adults and that she was just done.

She said she knows he can’t help it, but her brother is incapable of showing empathy and it made it hard to be around him without resenting him.

She hung up and that was it.

I’ve barely spoken with her since.

She is really cutting her out.

She didn’t send tickets for the graduation we were supposed to go to the next week.

She hasn’t shown up for holidays and I’ve heard she’s engaged but didn’t call to tell me.

She’s cut us out, and in the one of three times we’ve spoken since she said it’s easier for her to not have us around than be disappointed and that being alone at events is nothing new for her, she just doesn’t have to bother getting her hopes up I might come now.

AITA?

What a heartbreaking situation. I feel bad for the mom, but maybe she should make more of an effort.

Let’s read the comments and see what they have to say.

She really let her daughter down.

Good questions.

Yeah, she just can’t trust anyone except herself to watch her son.

Here is someone who says she should have left her son to his meltdown.

This person points out that she has missed every event.

This mom needs to get some help.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.