Imagine growing up with an autistic younger sister who is quite destructive and always gets her way. Would you be understanding and helpful, or would you grow resentful and cold towards her?

In this story, one teenage boy is in this exact situation, and he doesn’t care about his sister at all anymore.

Keep reading for lots of examples of why he came to feel this way.

AITA for being cold and uncaring to my autistic sister because I know autism isn’t the reason she’s awful to be around?

I (16m) have a sister (14f) who’s autistic. She was diagnosed at 3 years old and our parents have ignored 90% of the professional advice they were given.

They also used her diagnosis to excuse all the bad stuff she does and when kids don’t want to be her friend or parents don’t want her around their kids they call them ableist and say it’s discriminating against her for being disabled.

She’s allowed to throw food, steal food off other people’s plates, disrupt dinner and eat dessert before actual dinner.

And when those things aren’t allowed she throws tantrums and screams and kicks and acts like a toddler.

If I were her grandparents, I wouldn’t allow this family to come over again.

Sometimes we stay with our aunt or our grandparents and she acts like that.

One time she spat chewed food into grandma’s mouth because grandma was saying she couldn’t take food off my plate.

Another time she spat at me for stopping her and then she threw her mashed potatoes at grandpa because he told her to stop.

Both times mom and dad were angry at me and my grandparents for not going along with what she wanted because she’s autistic.

This would be so annoying!

If we’re shopping and she wants to wander I’m expected to follow her and reach for stuff for her. But she doesn’t have to ask she can just tell me to do it and if I say no she tells our parents and they get mad at me.

My sister has stomped on my foot for not reaching for the stuff she wanted.

She does get overstimulated sometimes and I get being quieter when that happens and letter her unwind. But sometimes she goes into a complete meltdown and can hit and break stuff.

The mom is being really unreasonable.

Mom let her play on my Switch during lockdown while I had school work and she overstimulated herself and broke it.

Then mom got mad at me because I said someone needed to replace it and stop her using my stuff in future.

My sister got mad at me for keeping her from other stuff I had and she ran to mom and dad to use it.

I can definitely see why nobody would want her at their birthday party.

She doesn’t get invited to birthday parties anymore because she used to hate waiting for kids to open their gifts and she’d start opening them herself and then she’d get mad if she couldn’t take home the stuff she’d like.

Or there were parties with bounce houses where she wanted the bounce house to herself because she didn’t want other kids touching her and she tried to push or bounce other kids out of the bounce house.

She put her hands all over food at birthday parties too and slobbered over an entire pizza at one because she didn’t want to share it with others.

He’s really grown to not care at all about his sister.

She has an IEP for school but our parents expect that to be a get out of jail free card for her. They think it lets her get away with doing whatever the hell she wants and everyone has to just deal with it.

In school she has no friends and my parents are mad because we have lunch at the same time and we’re in the same school again and I refuse to eat lunch with her or check in on her.

At home I don’t talk to her and if she talks to me I’m pretty rude to her face.

She’s always rude, violent and mean to me so I won’t be anything but cold back. I’m past the point where I care about her feelings or what she needs. If she was arrested tomorrow for hitting someone I’d be happy and celebrate.

He knows other people who are autistic, but they don’t act like his sister.

My parents told me I should be nicer to my sister and they complain about how cold and uncaring I am toward her.

She was upset last Tuesday because someone called her names and I said nothing to her. When she cried I actually rolled my eyes because she says mean stuff all the time but autism is meant to be an excuse for it.

One of my friends is autistic, there are two other students in my grade who have autism and I have known them since kindergarten. They all have differences but nothing like her. At least not all the time.

It’s worked on. They get better at talking to people and apologize if they hurt someone. My sister never does.

His family thinks he’s the bad guy.

My parents don’t care about that though and they think I’m TA.

My sister does too because she hates that I refuse to hug her when she asks now and I don’t say I love you or anything nice to her.

AITA?

His parents are the real problem for enabling their daughter’s bad behavior. Autism may have it’s challenges, but like OP said, he has friends who are autistic who work through their challenges and learn how to function in social settings.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person knows what will happen in the future.

This person offers some advice.

Yup, this is exactly what it sounds like.

Here’s another good recommendation.

His parents are setting his sister up to fail.

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