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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/Naive_Baker3472 on 2023-09-09 17:00:53.

I’m a fair bit older than my brother. 53/41.

My kids are all grown up but his kids are 8 and 7. I collect Lego and so do my sons. Whenever his kids would visit they always wanted to play with my Lego so I started buying sets for them to have when they came over. I didn’t want them messing with mine.

So I buy small Marvel or Star Wars or Disney sets and we build them together. We set up on the kitchen table and build together. I often mess with the sets on purpose. I will give a Disney princess a blaster or a Light Saber. Or I will switch out Gamora’s hair for Rapunzel’s. Just to play with the kids. Then we will get into a big long argument about why a princess might need weapons to take out the evil Queen or the Joker.

It’s fun and the kids play along. The problem is that, like myself, my brother is ND. But I have had a lot of counseling and have developed lots of mechanisms to cope with life. He hasn’t. He is very rigid like our father was.

He will come into the kitchen while we are playing and complain about me switching out Boba Fett for Iron Man. He will get really upset about it and has even just packed up the sets so they “can build them correctly at home”.

After the first time he did that I didn’t buy them sets for two visits. And I locked my stuff away so that they couldn’t see it. He asked me why I didn’t get his kids something to play with and I said entertaining his kids wasn’t my job. He got mad at me and said his kids never play with him like they do with me. I said that’s because he doesn’t really play. He just follows the instructions and nothing else. I told him to go to the store and grab a set and we could build it together.

He tried but he got frustrated when I added some flowers to an X-wing “for color”. He said I was being stupid and he wanted it to look right. I told him to get out of the kitchen and let me play my way.

He thinks I’m being an asshole for excluding him from activities with his kids. I think he needs help because he cannot understand his kids.