I know that sounds horrible, but I can’t help it.

So the backstory of this is that mom passed away in 2005. My dad only just started dating last year and this is the only woman he has brought home. Me and my two brothers were super happy for him and supportive, at first.

One of my brothers is deaf. He’s the closest to me in age so the two of us have always been close, especially since I’m the only one in our family that knows ASL since our mom died. He’s good at lip reading and that’s how he’s always gotten along with my dad and our other brother. Like I said, he’s good at it and speaks very well so I never thought it would be an issue.

But it has been since she first got introduced to us. I’m the only one of us that still lives at home, so I also get to hear her talking about him when she’s over and my brother isn’t around.

She constantly complains about him and my dad just puts up with it. And now she is starting to complain directly to my brother. If we all meet up at a restaurant, she tells him to be quiet because he tends to talk loud. We’re all used to it, but we do tell him if its worse than usual.

But she doesn’t just ask him to speak softer, she tells him that he’s bothering other people and embarrassing her. Then when he overcorrects and gets too quiet she complains about that too.

This was annoying but we all just put up with it because our dad was happy and seems oblivious to the behavior. We hoped she just needed to get used to be around a deaf person or something and that it would get better with time.

Then christmas happened.

Dad brought her to the family christmas to meet our grandparents and everyone else. Which is great and all, but within half an hour of being there she started with this crap again about my brother. Everytime he tried to speak to her, she would just claim she couldn’t understand him or that he was too loud and it was giving her a headache. Then she had the balls to tell him that he should consider going to speech therapy again to “fix this”.

I almost lost it when I heard this and my brother was very upset about it. He spent his entire childhood in speech therapy because no one in our family but my mom learned ASL (I learned because I’m younger and my mom raised me with it.) He does have a deaf accent obviously, but he is not that hard to understand at all. He’s a little loud, but not enough to warrant this treatment.

I’ve brought this up to my dad but he just shrugs it off and thinks I’m overreacting. I’m afraid this is going to alienate my brother. He’s already started making excuses to not come to family stuff now, he skipped our dad’s New Years party even which he has never missed before.

He’s fed up with her and so am I. I want to say something to her directly, but my dad is always around when she is over obviously and I know he’ll take her side. I just wish I could get her alone for a few minutes and give her a piece of my mind 🤬

—edit—

Yes my dad knew he wasn’t at the party and I’m sure he knows why too no matter how oblivious he acts about it.

My dad and my brother don’t have a great relationship to start with. Our dad refused to learn ASL when they found out my brother was deaf and discouraged our oldest brother from learning it too. They get along, but there’s a disconnect at the same time if that makes sense. Dad just has never done anything to make things easier on my brother. But it was so status quo that we all just overlooked it all this time.

Now with this girlfriend in the picture, his total lack of caring to do anything that requires effort to help my brother with anything is just showing worse than usual. And I think that’s the issue just as much as this lady being a bitch to him. My brother’s pretty laid back, he can overlook some stuff. But both of these issues together at the same time is too much I think.

I hope that clarifies some of the questions I saw in the comments. I probably will confront her, but I’m only 17 and I don’t know if she will take me seriously or not. I want to tell her off, but I also don’t want to make things worse for my brother.