This Teen Blew Up On His Parents Because, In The 5 Years Since His Sister Was In A Tragic Accident, They Have Never Bothered To Learn Sign Language To Communicate With Her
This sixteen-year-old young man is the middle child in his family. He has a younger sister, who is thirteen, and an older sister, Natalie, who is now twenty-three.
But about five years ago, Natalie was in a tragic car accident, which caused her to suffer some serious injuries. Thankfully, she was able to recover from most of them– however, she still sustained permanent damage to her vocal cords.
So, Natalie has been mute ever since then and has learned to get by quite well using American sign language (ASL).
What frustrates him most as Natalie’s brother, though, is the fact that their parents have always refused to learn sign language for his sister.
In fact, rather than learning how to communicate with their daughter in the way she feels most comfortable, his parents insisted that Natalie could just write anything she wanted to say on a piece of paper.
Plus, when she did not want to carry around a pen and pad, they told Natalie that she could just use text-to-speech.
“Most of her teachers were like that, too, which I get for them. She’s just one student, and they’re busy,” he explained, “But these are our parents.”
He, on the other hand, always communicates with Natalie via Facetime because he did take the time to learn sign language. And apparently, she prefers to communicate face-to-face as opposed to text.
Still, though, now that Natalie is away at college, his parents have apparently only wanted to text his sister. And according to him, Natalie is an “okay” texter, but it just does not make her happy.
Anatoly Tiplyashin – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purpose only, not the actual person
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“My parents just want to use text to replace the long phone calls they had with their parents when they went away to college,” he revealed.
“And Natalie does not want to just sit around and text with our parents for hours at a time.”
Regardless, his parents still expect Natalie to literally sit on the couch, field their messages, and text back as soon as possible in real-time every single day. And quite frankly, Natalie is just not interested in that.
Anyway, this has recently become a major point of contention in his household. In fact, he even overheard his parents complaining and insulting Natalie over her dislike of texting earlier this week.
And after hearing their comments, he got seriously pissed and decided to tell his parents off about their lack of care for Natalie’s preferences once and for all.
First, he decided to list all of the people who went out of their way to learn sign language for Natalie– including himself, numerous cousins, their grandparents, multiple aunts and uncles, two of Natalie’s past boyfriends, and even her creative writing teacher in high school.
Then, he told his parents that each person decided to communicate with Natalie how she felt most comfortable– but they never did.
His parents did not take his blow-up well, though, and they ended up screaming at him about how he “could not understand.” Then, he got grounded.
Still, though, the drama was far from over– because afterward, two of his aunts, who apparently never agree on anything, actually called him up and berated him.
“They told me that my parents both worked full-time, had three kids to raise, both had church responsibilities, and that Natalie and I were brats for expecting them to learn a new language on top of that,” he recalled.
Plus, his aunts even sarcastically asked what sports and clubs he and Natalie should have lost out on so his parents could spend the extra time learning a new language while “Natalie’s hands worked fine.”
And honestly, he was totally shocked to hear this coming from both of his aunts. Apparently, his aunts have such a bad relationship that his family cannot even have gatherings with both of them present.
So, it was seriously surprising that they both agreed he was awful for expecting his parents to learn sign language following Natalie’s accident.
And now, because of that, he has been left wondering if expecting his parents to learn sign language was actually unreasonable or if his parents are really just jerks like he thought.
Do you think his parents’ excuses for not learning sign language are valid or not? Does he have a right to be upset by his parent’s lack of effort? If you had been in his shoes, would you have said the same thing?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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