She Won’t Learn Sign Language for Her Stepdaughter. Is She Wrong?

You would think that most people would be willing to go the extra mile to help out their kids or their stepkids, whatever the situation.

But I guess everyone is different, right?

And a woman took to Reddit’s “Am I the A**hole?” page to ask if she is out of line for not wanting to learn sign language for her stepdaughter.

Read on to see what she had to say.

AITA for not learning sign language for step daughter?

“I (30sF) have been married to Buford (40sM) for about a year.

I brought Jay (8M) and Juniper (5F) from a past marriage, and until very recently we thought Buford had no children. We had no intentions of having more kids.

As it happens though, it turns out Buford actually does have a daughter Markita (15F). Her mom did not tell Buford about her pregnancy and ultimately moved states, so he had no idea until she reached out on FB. We were a little dubious, but she turned out to be right.

Markita and mom moved back to our state in the meantime and live about 40 minutes from us. She wants visitation with Buford which he has agreed to. There’s no formal custody arrangement between Buford and mom so it’s basically just sporadic weekends and school holidays. Usually this is just between the two of them, but sometimes she will come to the house and has even slept over a few times.

Here’s my dilemma. Markita is hearing impaired. I’m not entirely sure to what degree but I do know she almost exclusively uses ASL. No one in our family knows ASL but Buford has been trying to learn for her. The last time Markita was here he pitched to me the idea of us learning ASL as a family.

The truth is that I really don’t know if that is worth the effort. Markita is present at our house maybe once a month. I would consider it if she were going to be over more often, but I work 48 hours a week and I just don’t have time for something like this.

I also know 3 different languages, one of which was in adulthood and it was very difficult for me even fifteen years ago. I just can’t fit something like that into my life, but I told Buford that Jay and Juniper can still learn if they’re interested.

The kids don’t want to since I’m not and now Buford thinks I’m being ridiculous since I have no other way of communicating with Markita. I told him we can work something out but he didn’t want to hear it honestly. Markita also thinks I should learn some basic signs but between work and kids even that would be a struggle.

AITA for not wanting to learn sign language?”

Now let’s see how Reddit users reacted to this story.

This person said that this woman is indeed an a**hole and a HUGE one.