This Person Refuses to Visit Their Parents Until They Learn Sign Language. Are They Wrong?

Call me crazy, but I think I’d make a HUGE effort to learn sign language if one of my kids was hard of hearing.

Or a significant other or even a friend.

But in this story from the “Am I the A**hole?” story, a person is laying down the law about this when it comes to her parents.

Read on to see what happened.

AITA for telling my parents I would not visit them again until they learned sign language?

“When I was 18 I was in an accident that caused TBI, resulting in me losing most of my hearing in both ears, making me deaf. I didn’t qualify for cochlear implants, so being deaf was just my new reality.

Obviously this derailed my life for a while. University got pushed back, and I was depressed for a long time. Eventually I got back out there, discovered the deaf community, learned ASL (american sign language), and at 26 I now feel very content with my life.

My parents were devastated by my accident, and our relationship has never been the same. A few years ago I told them I have embraced being deaf, and I asked them if they would learn ASL, as that is now how I prefer to communicate. They said no at the time because they didn’t have time to learn a new language. I have tried many times over the years to try to give them information on deafness and ASL, but they have shown no interest.

We communicate now mainly by using voice-to-text on our phones, which is far from perfect, and very chaotic when multiple people are talking. Trying to keep up with conversations is exhausting, and people are constantly getting frustrated with me for not following along. Often we watch movies, but they refuse to turn the captions on because it’s “annoying”, despite the fact that it means I can’t understand the movie at all.

This past Christmas, I once again struggled with conversations, which once again resulted in me being either ignored or yelled at. Before I went home again, I sat my parents down and told them that if they did not begin to learn ASL, I would not be visiting again for a long time.

I told them I don’t expect them to ever be fluent, but I need them to show effort in learning. I told them that they have continuously dismissed my needs as a deaf person, and that if they want to continue to have a meaningful relationship with me, we need to have some kind of shared language.

This didn’t go over well at all, as my parents accused me of wanting to cut them off, which isn’t true. I just can’t do any more visits where my presence feels like a burden. My brother and I have been texting since then, and he thinks I’m being hugely unfair.

So AITA?”