You pick your battles. It’s an old expression, but it still holds true, especially for anything to do with family.

What would you do if you had a sibling who complained about how their life turned out and acted like you had everything so easy, but you knew that was far from the truth or the whole story? Would you get them whine or set them straight?

Check out the battle between these brothers. One of them isn’t sure he handled it correctly.

AITA for telling my brother that I don’t care about his problems?

My brother and I have had two different life experiences.

He was the child that didn’t care about anything growing up and I was the one that cared about school, sports and just doing what was expected of me by our parents.

To be fair to them they had the same expectations for his as well, but gave up when they saw that no matter what they did he would never care about the things that would benefit him in the long run.

The issue runs deep.

They tried.

They really did: put him in therapy, got him tutors and always tried to encourage him. But he just didn’t care about his future.

So recently I have had a tough couple of months.

My wife and I just had our first child in November and his the most beautiful and most important thing in my life, but getting him to sleep for more than 2 hours a night is hard. My wife and I take turns checking on him but it’s still mentally exhausting.

It’s about to get bad…

At every family gathering for the last couple of months my brother has been complaining on and on and on about how his life sucks and that I have had it easy.

I have bit my tongue every time but the exhaustion and sleep deprivation made me kinda lose it at him.

I told him in some not so nice tone and way that he should shut up and that I didn’t care about his problems, he had every opportunity to do something with his life and he chose to mess it up instead.

Nobody’s on his side.

He got up and left and my parents said that I went too far and should have just ignored him.

Now for some reason that’s beyond me my extended family has been calling me a jerk for going of on my brother and I owe him an apology.

AITA? I feel like he had it coming but maybe I went too far.

I definitely think the sleep deprivation played into this plus years of history and resentment.

Here is what people are saying on Reddit.

Great saying. Be prepared or zip it!

It’s so annoying when people whine instead of changing things.

True. Tact would have been good!

Impulse control goes out the window with sleep deprivation.

Some people are just like that.

Maybe this will be a wake up call.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.