I (18M) have a little cousin (one generation removed, so I kind of treat him like a nephew) (3M). I swear to God, from my perspective, this story is so one-sided that it almost sounds fake to read, or like I’m leaving out details. However, unfortunately, this is actually what happened. And of course when children get involved in any AITAH story, the lines always get blurred, so I need other perspectives.

I hung out with my cousins yesterday night at an indoor sports rental building, but since I don’t really enjoy playing the specific sport they chose on that day, I was kind of just chilling on my phone by the sofas and talking to my other cousins that opted out of participating. After a while of playing games and such one of my cousins (18F) gets the bright idea to call my little cousin over and yell that I was being mean to her (obviously this wasn’t true, she basically just trained him to “defend” her and yell at people when she says this for fun).

So the kid comes up to me and starts yelling in my face “STOP BEING MEAN TO HER! I DON’T LIKE THAT!” over and over again while waving his hands in my face and smacking me. I obviously just laugh this off as he’s just a toddler, but my cousin thinks it’s hilarious and starts fake crying to push him further. He almost started crying out of rage while doing this (I was literally not doing anything back, other than laughing a bit and telling him she was lying to ease the tension), so she calmed him down. We decided to cool the atmosphere by playing catch, so we got up and grabbed a football.

The kid grabbed hold of the football from my hands and yelled “NO! YOU’RE NOT PLAYING WITH US!” YOU’RE BEING MEAN TO (cousin)!” and they tossed it back and forth, as I just watched and waited for one of them to toss it to me. The problem is, the kid was standing in front of me and blocking me, and they didn’t want to make him mad by throwing it to me. My cousins told me to say sorry to the girl and the little kid so he would calm down, but I just ignored them and went to join the other group of cousins who were playing a different sport.

He started crying as a result of this as he didn’t want me to be able to play any sports/games at all, and everyone blamed me for it. I admit I was somewhat at fault and should’ve just said sorry because he’s just a kid and I’m supposed to be more mature than that, but in the moment I was genuinely feeling my fight or flight response kick in. The thing is, you can’t really even use the argument of “he’s just a kid so you should do whatever you can to appease him” on me, because I never got that treatment as a child for a second.

When I was a child, I used to get beat for no reason all the time, blindfolded and hung upside down on doorframes then whipped with a belt, had my fingernails burned with a metal serving spoon heated up with a lighter (my dad came up with this to avoid leaving scars, because my fingernails could regrow pretty fast, even if they were discolored a little bit at times), tied up with belts/scarves and locked in dark bathrooms/closets, etc. (some of these weren’t necessarily even disciplinary beatings. For example, I had OCD from a young age which, at least for me, is like a constant stream of uncontrollable intrusive thoughts or repetitive thoughts that won’t go away and waste my time. The subjects of these thoughts usually change after several months and are controlled by some kind of paranormal fear. At the beginning, I believed that if I didn’t point to specific places at specific times, something bad would happen to me. My dad would make me sit in a corner of his room and hit me hard with a wooden walking stick every time he saw me do it. He didn’t believe I had a real condition and thought I was doing it for attention or something, Idk. Unfortunately, this didn’t help cure me.) and God forbid, if I had ever had the audacity to yell at someone older than me, my butt would have gotten whooped like there was no tomorrow.

Mind you, people other than my own parents would also hit me or tie me up/blindfold me for simple things like running around as a kid at family gatherings or going under tables, etc. because I grew up with non-tolerant adults and my parents encouraged their behavior rather than being protective of me (and I was also hit many times over misunderstandings or things I didn’t do/got framed for. This mostly stopped when I started getting physically bigger and stronger than those adults, not including my aunts because they’re always confident that men won’t hit them back.) so I was shocked that this kid was openly screaming at me and people were just… encouraging his behavior? And obviously this wasn’t his first time acting like this. He often yells, screams, and hits people when he doesn’t get what he wants, whereas I was often noted to be one of the quietest toddlers people had ever seen when I was little. It’s just in cases like these where he suddenly acts like he has the moral high ground and gets praised by the adults around him (for defending people from nonexistent threats).

Also, this specific instance really got me feeling heated because I’ve been falsely accused of things several times in my life. When I was a kid (in elementary school, so under 9 years old), my older sister (one and a half years older than me) and I got into a fight, and afterwards she told my mom that I raped her to get revenge on me. Obviously this did NOT happen. It’s so baffling that it makes this whole post sound fake to me, even though I literally experienced it. I was so shocked, I unironically can’t put it into words. I didn’t even know where it had come from. Yet my parents believed her immediately, beat me and cursed me out several times over it, and even openly discussed calling the cops or getting rid of me. I was so pissed at the time, seeing my sister smirking at me while my parents glared at me, and although she may have forgotten about it by now, I will never forget it.

Another time I had another little cousin (Idk her age, F) who smacked me on my private parts out of the blue. I laughed it off and told her not to do it again, and she did it again anyway. I then told her that if she did it again, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from hitting her back (this was just to make her stop, I would never actually hit a child). Later, my older sister (who was present at the time) told a group of my cousins that I had said “If you touch me over there again I won’t be able to control myself”, obviously insinuating a disgusting meaning of my words. I felt outcasted by my cousins for a long time and they talked behind my back/glared at me when we were at family gatherings until my sister eventually cleared up the misunderstanding at my request and an IOU pass (obviously the uneasiness still lingered for a long time, though).

Finally, since I don’t want this to get too long, I’ll just mention another time that I was accused of hitting a girl in recess when I was in elementary school. Basically, her friends were playing a game where the loser was dared to tell the teacher someone was hitting them, and she chose me (for what reason…? I didn’t even know her. That’s probably exactly what made me a good target) and I got an office referral then had to sit inside for recess for two weeks while the rest of the kids played outside. Nobody believed me for shit, obviously not even my parents, ever.

This is all just to say that the whole confrontation with my little cousin yelling at me while my other cousin falsely accused me of being mean to her and secretly giggled at me brought back very unpleasant memories and déjà vu, and genuinely ruined the rest of my night. The last thing I wanted to do was apologize to him and my girl cousin for literally no reason and have everyone laugh at my expense. I still don’t regret not apologizing, even though the kid ended up crying because of it. I also just hope my little cousin stays away from me in the future, ngl. I never, ever approach him. He approaches me every single time he sees me to play with him. I just feel pressured to not ignore him.

As for my family, they’re starting to make up for their past actions, but building kinship with them has been an extremely slow process thus far. I wasn’t even aware that most people loved their families more than their friends until a few years ago thanks to a random conversation with a friend. I don’t want to include any “trauma” in this story because I’d feel cringe for doing that so I’m not going to go any deeper than this. Any advice, criticism, or feedback would be appreciated, thanks. :)

TLDR; My little cousin yelled in my face for something I didn’t do upon my other cousin’s command, and due to flashbacks of similar negative past experiences and my deteriorating mood as a result of of them, I decided not to apologize and just left instead since I was innocent (which is immature, I’ll admit, considering I’m 18 and he’s only 3). This made him cry and many of my cousins got mad at me for it/told me to man up because he’s just a kid.