"Are my parents wrong to refuse to learn ASL for my sister because of church?"

America is bad at providing adequate provisions for Americans with disabilities. America is still improving ADA compliance and making everything more accessible for people with disabilities. On a popular Reddit thread in the Am I the A**hole Subreddit, one teen gets upset with his parents for refusing to learn ASL to accommodate his sister's disability.

AITA For Listing Everyone Who HAS Learned Sign Language For My Sister To My Parents

We're glad Natalie is okay, OP.

I(16M) am the middle child, with my older sister being 23 and my younger sister is 13 now. Five years ago, there was a car accident, and my older sister (will call her Natalie) got banged up very badly. Most of it she got better from but she's mute now from damage to her vocal cords.

An interesting perspective from mom and dad.

Natalie gets by very well with sign language; however, our parents have always refused to learn ASL. They always insisted that Natalie could write anything out, that text-to-speech was good enough if she didn't want to carry a pen and paper. Most of her teachers were like that too, but I get it for them, she's just one student and they're busy.

It takes me close to 12 hours to respond to texts sometimes.

Natalie and I face-time a lot because I did learn signs for her and it's how she prefers to communicate. She texts my parents, okay, but my parents want to use text to replace the long phone calls they had with their parents when they went away to college and Natalie doesn't want to just sit around and text with our parents for hours at a time.

OP is not having any Natalie slander.

They expect her to be sitting on the couch with the phone and replying as fast as possible in real-time, and she's not interested. I overheard my parents complaining about this and insulting Natalie for it, and I blew up at them.

Even the cheating boyfriend.

I pointed out everyone who'd learned the sign for Natalie-me, multiple cousins, our grandparents, multiple aunts and uncles, the two boyfriends she had after the accident (one of whom cheated on her so he wasn't exactly prince charming but he still learned), her current girlfriend, and her creative writing teacher in high school. So many people learned to sign for her, but never them.

Your parents have a lot of things they put ahead of their children.

My parents got really angry at me and told me I couldn't understand, then grounded me. Then both of their sisters, who never agree on anything, called to tear into me. 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.

Wow.

They sarcastically asked me what clubs and sports me and my little sister should have lost so my parents could spend time learning a new language when Natalie's hands worked fine.

At least Natalie is bringing the family together.

My aunts never agree on anything. We can't have activities with both sides of the family because they're so bad. But they both agree that Natalie and I are awful. So I guess I just wanted to come here and see if y'all agree that we're unreasonable and that I should apologize to my parents.

LordNeo says:

NTA (Not the A**hole), parents, should've been the first ones to learn ASL. If 'church responsibilities' are more important than parental responsibilities, they should get a reality check on what the church teaches them. Also, it's not Natalie who wants those long phone calls, so they have to find a solution, not Natalie.

Glock212327 says:

NTA, personally, I feel that “church responsibilities” come after family & communication with your daughter is necessary. I think they could find time to learn ASL for her. There’s no set time frame for fluency. I found anywhere from 60-90 hours to years. But wow- they can’t even sign “I love you” or “I’m proud of you.”

Greenelse says:

NTA. You are right; Natalie’s right; your parents were very poor in both refusing to spend time learning and blaming either of you. Their demands on Natalie to spend hours tethered to a phone are also ridiculous.

They had to work; they also prioritized church time over their child’s well-being. Work wasn’t optional; church “responsibility” was. They are attacking and recruiting aggressive aunties to displace their guilt.

I also refuse to believe that they did that back in school - what; they tied up the dorm wall phone for hours when the norm was NOT these hyper-intense helicopter parenting relationships? Really?

OP, if your parents still refuse, ask them what Jesus would do if he had a daughter that couldn't speak. Actually, they'd probably say Jesus wouldn't have had a daughter, but if he did, he would heal her with a miracle. Either way your parents are jerks.