Family accessibility fail

[fusuma]

So you really want the family gathering to include not only family, but also your friends. And you want it to be at your house and not where it has usually been.

In that case, the best way to invite your hearing impaired family member—who finds it impossible to participate in large gatherings because multiple people are usually speaking at once—is to give them a lot of reasons why your needs and the needs of other family members require the event to take place at your house, and conveniently fail to mention that you've already invited your friends.

When your family member asks for confirmation that there will be a maximum of N people—which number would already be outside their comfort range for the size of gatherings—the best way to handle this is to ignore the request until you're reminded.

Then when you finally have no choice but to reply, the best response is to announce that you "feel unable...to restrict it in this way," while showing no understanding of why the request might have been made, and continuing to hide the fact that you already invited your friends.

Then when your family member is angry because you have unilaterally chosen to exclude them from the gathering, the best way to soothe them is to complain that "for years now, we've been putting aside our own personal desires and needs" around this gathering.

It's really good that you had the tact to avoid such mistakes as
Talking to your family about your personal desires and needs around the gathering, rather than letting resentment build up for years
Waiting to invite friends until you'd discussed your plans with the family
Telling the truth about why you want the event at your house
Acknowledging the reasons why the event has been restricted to family in the past
Demonstrating an understanding of the difference between a want ("we want to invite our friends") and a need ("my family member literally can't participate if the group is too large")

Comments

[ironed_orchid]

That sucks.

I hope the rest of your family members are more considerate.

[staranise]

That really does suck.

I am so glad my family's accepted that I'll simply only appear for so long (the length of dinner, half an hour) and then disappear again. It's the kind of compromise we've all learned to live with, now that I'm not labelled as rude or unsocial.

[jesse_the_k]

In some families, getting together isn't work. Wish that was true for you.

[minxy]

Aw, I'm sorry. That blows.

[jecook]

I can understand this.

For example, I'm not sure how I'd react if I was forced to attend an event with my father (whom I've not seen in... nearly twenty years, and who skipped out on the obligations of the divorce decree), but now that I'm thinking on it, it'd involve a process server, blood, and possibly a broken limb or two.

[lady_ganesh]

Oy vey. That sucks.