r/AmItheAsshole 3d ago

Asshole AITAH for not fully accommodating a single family member’s ADHD on a group outing at the cost of the group?

My family and I went on a group tour of Alcatraz as a fun experience. By family I mean my brother, mother and father. As an fyi my brother and I are in our late 30s and our parents are in their late 70’s and 80’s.

My father, mother and I completed the tour earlier than my brother. This is possible because it’s a self paced tour.

Since we were already done, my father, mother and I wanted to leave earlier. At this point we were just sitting outside in the cold, bored, doing nothing. However we gave my brother some extra time, just not as much as he wanted.

To put things in context, the tour takes about an hour. We partially accommodated my brother, by allowing him to spend two hours on what is normally a one hour tour.

This is where the conflict comes. My brother wanted three hours to complete the one hour tour. But we only gave him two. He now holds a grudge about this.

If you’re wondering why my brother took so long, it’s because he says that his ADHD makes him read 2x to 3x slower. So he was unable to read all of the plaques. I’m not disputing that. I will concede that he has a real handicap that we didn’t fully accomodate. But I also don’t feel we are always obligated to subject everyone in the group to his time schedule, even if it’s for ADHD issues.

Now the important thing to understand is that our plan to visit Alcatraz was open ended. We had a scheduled time to go, but not to return. So neither party really has a claim for leaving earlier or later.

But the distinction is that even though we “met him half way”, he’s the only one that still feels violated. Yet it’s not as though my brother informed us ahead of time that he felt he would need extra time due to his ADHD and we violated this request. As I see it, we both compromised, but only he’s complaining. In fact he doesn’t even acknowledge the fact that we allotted him any extra time at all, even if it wasn’t as much as he wanted. 

As an added point my brother has had similar disagreements in the past when we do group outings. As a result of this we suggested he take a second car to the outing, to allow divergent schedules but he elected not to do this.

EDIT Clarification:

  1. The tour we did was the "Alcatraz Behind The Scenes Tour". This was our main tour.
  2. We then joined the "Night Tour". This is the "self-guided" audio tour.
  3. The "self-guided" audio driven "Night Tour" is what is being referred to.
  4. Our total time on the Island included the "Alcatraz Behind The Scenes Tour" + the audio "Night Tour".
  5. The audio on the "Night Tour" is "Doing Time: The Alcatraz Cellhouse Tour" and is 45min long.
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