Do you think that sometimes parents of children with disabilities let them get away with too much and use that as an excuse to not parent them?
This 44-year-old man spent the last three years with his 42-year-old fiancée, and they are both single parents. His fiancée has a 25-year-old son, and he has three daughters, ages 20, 22, and 24.
While he has always had nothing but love for his fiancée and thought they were a perfect fit, her son turned into a giant nightmare for him and his daughters.
His fiancée’s son was diagnosed with autism late in his life. While he technically is a functional person, he can’t drive or cook. He also has no manners or social cues.
“This leads to an issue everytime myself and/or my daughters are living with them for a weekend. My fiancée’s son sleeps until 5 pm every day because he goes to bed at 6 am,” he explained.
“He showers for an hour between 2-4 am. He stays awake all night, either in the bathroom or walking around the house. It is very unsettling when we are all trying to sleep.”
“Never mind when one of 2 bathrooms is constantly being used, leaving one bathroom for 5 people to share when we have nighttime routines. He’ll eat everything in one sitting. Batch of 48 cookies, all gone. Pan of brownies, eaten.”
If his daughters don’t have food before his fiancée’s son helps himself, there is literally nothing left for any of them to eat, since his fiancée’s son will not leave a scrap behind.
His fiancée thinks it’s a nice thing that her son has such a tremendous appetite, but he thinks this behavior is completely rude, and that’s all there is to it.
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After his fiancée’s son eats everything in sight, he sits at the dinner table, burping and being gross. He has attempted to speak to his fiancée, but she refuses to do anything about her son.
“She tells me that we all need to live with it, and if we are to move in together, that this is the way life will be because he’s autistic,” he continued.
“There is no attempt to try to correct the issue on her side. She sends him to therapy, sporadically, then gives up (say 5 visits in 5 months). She hasn’t reached out to organizations for help; she just lives in this bubble, expecting all of us to accept this situation.”
“She just expects everyone to change for him when I don’t think it’s fair to everyone else. I’m trying to figure out if it’s the autism or bad parenting, and if [I would be the jerk] for breaking it off with her. Am I being unreasonable?”
I’m sorry, but autism isn’t an excuse for his fiancée to refuse to parent her child. She has done her kid no favors because she hasn’t even made an effort to try to shape his behavior or make him enjoyable to be around.
His fiancée clearly expects nothing from her son, so that means this will never, ever get better. I don’t blame him for being ready to dump his fiancée over her disinterest in being a parent to an adult child who still truly needs her.
What do you think?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
