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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/No-Basil5340 on 2023-08-31 15:30:12.

Backstory. I (28F) have been living with my mom the last few years because she convinced me that it would be great for me save money on rent and eventually buy a house. The reality of that ended up being that she wanted me to be a live in babysitter when she didn’t feel like dealing with my now 15 year old special needs brother. My brother is very low functioning, he isnt toilet trained and communicates in few words. (Few sentences too) My mom has always been lazy with his care. She stopped taking him to school and his therapies for speech, life skills etc around the time of the pandemic. She slowly stopped taking him years before this, and would never follow through will making sure he kept up with what he was supposed to be learning. Even the therapists would tell her to spend more time teaching him how to do certain things to help set him up for a bit more independence but my mom just gives up when things get hard and assumes he wont be able to do them. She’s a stay at home mom, and all she does is watch tv and play games on her phone all day and make excuses. Lately…Shes been booking vacations with my stepdad and leaving him with me without advanced notice and not even considering the fact that I would have to take off from work to watch him without any compensation from her. She feels as though I don’t pay rent (I have student loans and tons of other bills) that I don’t need to get paid to watch him. Watching him is a job in itself. He cant do anything for himself so I have to basically be a CNA, a nanny etc. My long distance boyfriend of 4 years found me my dream job offer close to where he lives and set everything up so that I can move there asap. My mom is furious and says that its a a bad idea if I leave and went on a rant about me “following after a man”. (Which is funny because shes done the same thing multiple times). Anyway we got into a heated argument and I pointed out that the only reason she doesn’t want me to leave is because I provide her with free childcare. At first she swore that wasn’t it but then told me that I’m being selfish by leaving and that taking care of my brother is an all hands on deck situation. I forgot to mention that my stepdad (his father) also lives with her but works a 9-5 an hour away. He works from home 2 days out of the week and gets home around 6 the other days. And my oldest brother who works from home (38m) lives 10 mins away so she’s not alone she just rather me do the heavy lifting. After telling her that I’m making the decision to take this job and move forward with my life shes being absolutely horrible towards me and acting as if I betrayed my family. I told her that even though I’m happy to help out sometimes, he is not my child and I cant put my life on hold to watch him when you decide to you don’t feel like dealing with him. AITA?

**EDIT. Wow thank you for responses but I want to clear up somethings. First, while she is lazy she isn’t neglectful. She does make sure he’s fed, after he goes to the bathroom and is cleaned up after etc. my issue is when she feel like she deserves a break it gets pushed on me without asking if I’m up to it. Its like “here it’s your turn, I’m tired. And if you complain your a terrible ungrateful child etc etc”. So yes I agree that there is a lot of emotional manipulation that I didn’t speak up on earlier which allowed her to continue this behavior and entitlement, I 100% accept my responsibility it not creating better boundaries, but to be clear he is not being neglected shes just a lazy mother. She does the work but complains the entire time and feels like its our burden to share. Its as if she see’s me as the 3rd parent Which explains her reaction to me moving. I do feel guilty about leaving (I now know that I shouldn’t) but that needed to be said towards the call cps comments