Teenager asks if they're wrong to not want to hang out with special needs kid.
It can be awkward to deal with someone with special needs. When this teenager feels uncomfortable, they take to the popular Reddit forum to ask:
'AITA for not wanting to hangout with the special needs kid?'
Little bit of context there’s been this special need kid following me and my friends around school (let’s call her R) for months now and it’s making us really uncomfortable. So after a while we decided to tell R that we don’t want hangout with her anymore because it makes us uncomfy.
Not to mention that she just stands there she barely interacts with us. It’s honestly a bit creepy and eavesdrops our conversations. I understand that it can be hard to talk to new people but like you can’t just stand there and expect us to like you it doesn’t work like that.
So I don’t sent her a message telling her “hey we don’t want you hanging around us it makes us uncomfortable no hard feelings :)” or something like that. To that R replied “mk” next day she keeps following us and our friend group is pissed.
We told her politely to stop hanging with us but she just won’t listen. The message was sent by me so then we decided to do it as group and tell her not to hang out with us (we did this over text) again politely. R just replied with ok.
So after we have our classes and stuff we see her crying like bawling and we start feeling bad cause this wasn’t our plan we never wanted to make her cry. After that we decided to talk to our teacher to clear things up.
We don’t our teacher everything and told us we were in the wrong and how we should be friends with R just because she has special needs. I understand that but you can’t just make us be R’s friend cause she’s “special” even if you do become “friends” no one is gonna be happy.
We’re gonna be annoyed and she’s gonna be upset because we don’t like her. So are we the assholes for not wanting to be friends with the special needs kid? Ps. Please excuse my grammar or typos English is my second language. AITA?
Well, let's find out.
thistlefun writes:
NTA. If I found out that all my friends where just letting me hang out because I'm autistic and they felt bad for me, I'd feel awful. It would suck so much to just let her think you're mates when you aren't.
You don't have to be friends with anyone, and if someones behaviour makes you uncomfortable then it's fine to not be around them. It doesn't matter why they act that way, if it bothers you then you have every right to not have them in your friend group.
scrimpscampi writes:
YTA Although I can see your perspective, and how no technically it isn't your responsibility to be her friend just because she has special needs. But I also understand she might really be struggling, and sometimes it just takes that small act of kindness to get to know her. Sometimes the right thing to do is the hard thing to do, yknow?
specialaltitude4442 writes:
NTA. Just because someone has special needs doesn't give them carte blanche to hang with whoever. You didn't want her around and she needed to listen.