Delivering bad news is never easy, nor is receiving it, but it’s even worse when you get bad news on a day that’s supposed to be celebratory, like a birthday or graduation.

In this story, a family has particularly bad sense of timing.

Is it unlucky or is it intentional? Tough to say, but after several ruined special occasions, one kid has had enough.

Let’s see the news.

AITA for pulling away from my parents because they always decide to break bad news on important days for me?

This was a long running thing with my parents and something my siblings (19 and 17) commented on.

I (21m) am the oldest of three. And starting at a young age my parents have made weird decisions about breaking bad news.

Here’s an example.

It started when I was 7.

I was the lead in our school play and 20 minutes before the play starts my parents decided to announce my great grandma was dying.

They had known about it for days at that point and waited to tell us and said they needed a good moment. Then they acted super shocked when I bawled in front of everyone.

I messed up the whole play and couldn’t get a single line right.

The parents didn’t learn their lesson.

Then when I was 9 it was the day of my assessment for learning disabilities. My parents announced on the way home that dad had lost his job 3 weeks prior.

They could have waited another day or two to tell us and we’d have to make a lot of changes in our lives.

At the time I wondered if they saw my learning disabilities as a burden on top of everything and resented me for it.

How could this get worse?

The morning of my 10th birthday party (not my actual birthday but a few of days after) they told us they had to put our dog down two days before.

They had not sent him to our grandparents house, as they’d claimed, for a few days to not have him running around during the party.

It gets even worse.

They announced they were getting a divorce on my 15th birthday.

My mom waited until my graduation to announce she was diagnosed with cancer. She’d known for two months. Just waited and again on a day important for me.

It’s time for this madness to stop!

When I moved out for college I dropped the rope. I didn’t call or text. I didn’t even check in on mom.

I spoke to my siblings every day, sometimes twice a day, but I didn’t invest in my relationship with my parents.

I didn’t go to either house for Christmas or summer break. I figured out other stuff.

They called a few times and I answered but I would always make it short and to the point.

Her parents didn’t understand what she was doing at first.

My siblings said my parents thought I was just being a typical first time college kid but it started to get more obvious by the first Christmas after I moved out.

They avoided bringing it up until this summer when they saw on Insta that I moved into an apartment with three of my friends and we decided to put down roots here.

They brought up the elephant in the room and I was honest.

Sometimes you gotta talk about the elephant… how will mom and dad react?

They asked me why I never talked to them about it.

And I said it wasn’t something I should have to bring up because they weren’t announcing things as they happened. They’d wait and that stuff felt intentional.

I said they didn’t forget when my birthday was or that I was 10 minutes away from performing in the school play, and the lack of sensitivity made them less approachable.

Both of them think I was petty to pull away for this. My siblings think they’re just heavily in denial.

AITA?

Even if OP is in the wrong, I wouldn’t want to talk to this family either for fear of devastation.

What do the comments on Reddit think here?

This person says, these parents are toxic.

Someone suggests entrapment.

Another person is like, just enjoy your peace.

This poster says, yeah, stop letting them rain on your parade.

Someone else says, more than three coincidences is no longer chance!

Give me the news… but not like that!

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.