When you have younger half-siblings, your life will obviously change, and in most cases, what you call each other will just evolve naturally.

What would you do if your mother got very upset at the fact that you called your half-siblings ‘half-siblings’ rather than just siblings?

That is what the young man in this story is experiencing, and it is making his mom so upset that he doesn’t see her very often anymore.

Check it out.

AITA for saying half siblings when my mom hates it and says they’re just my siblings?

My parents have been divorced since I (17m) was 6.

My mom remarried when I was 8 and she has three kids (my half siblings) with her husband. I always called them half siblings.

Parents often try to force relationships like this and it rarely works.

Mom always said just siblings and she corrected me a lot when I was younger.

She told me they’re not half people or half loved so they shouldn’t be half siblings. She said the term makes no sense.

I told her it means we have a different mom or dad. She said it would make more sense if they had a different mom but we don’t, we all come from her uterus and that’s all there is to it.

When I said we have different dads she said that shouldn’t come into it.

She told me I grow up around them 24/7, which wasn’t ever true. I always went to my dad’s every other week.

I think maybe mom is the one who needs therapy.

My mom got me into therapy when I was like 11ish because she thought there was something wrong with me being so stubborn about the topic.

The therapist and I talked about why I felt like I did and I told her it just made sense to me.

When I was seeing her I talked to my friends who had half siblings and they all used half too, unless they felt like they shared the same parents.

Like if they called their stepparent mom or dad or their half sibling called their parent mom or dad.

The ones who didn’t see their stepparent as mom or dad used half.

And a couple of my friends said it was different. That they wouldn’t want to be apart from their full siblings but they wouldn’t want to be raised by their stepparent even if that meant being apart from their half siblings.

This seems very reasonable.

That made me think and I felt the same.

If mom died or something happened and she wasn’t able to take care of us I wouldn’t choose to stay with her husband just so I could still be a big part of my half siblings lives.

Even if dad was dead too I’d choose another family member over staying with them. I told my therapist and she asked me if there was any other part of using half that made me want to.

And I explained how to me it made sense because they’re not my dad’s kids and I’m not their dad’s kid. She talked to me about love, relationships and all sorts of stuff and I still came out feeling like using the half.

Which the therapist said was fine and she talked to mom, but mom hated it.

Wow, why would mom make such a huge deal out of this?

I started spending less time at mom’s house last year because it was still such a big deal to mom.

She has punished me for using it, she has talked to me, she has cried in front of me and told me it hurts her feelings to see me use it, she has made me cry (when I was younger) for saying it but I still say half.

And I wanna be clear. It’s not that I call them half sister or half brother all day every day. Or that I use it when talking to them instead of their names.

But when I get asked if I have siblings I say I have three half siblings.

Or for school if we get asked or have any assignment that talks about our family or if I use the topic in a personal essay I say half. It doesn’t happen every day but because mom’s aware of it she makes it an all the time fight.

Mom needs to realize that this isn’t about her.

She told me recently that I exhaust her and she feels like a failure as a mother because I have created this gap between me and my half siblings and she can’t bridge it no matter what she does.

She told me no family she knows uses half like that.

I told her 7 families she knows who do.

Which upset her and she said I was trying to prove a point. I told her she was doing the same. She then accused my dad of making me think like that and I said dad never mentioned it.

But I grew up with friends who said it. She was like they probably share a dad and I said only some of them but others only share a mom.

Then she was like a good big brother would drop it in case it hurts his siblings feelings and I told her I know for a fact they’ll hear it from others too and I know two of them hear it from their friends.

My mom was like you’re so exhausting and I know she meant it too.

AITA?

Not at all, mom is going to drive her eldest son away if she can’t let this go. Forcing a relationship never really works.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about it.

I agree with this commenter.

Yup, mom is the problem here.

This commenter says that he is just using the correct term.

This is actually a good idea.

Sadly, I think this is true.

Mom is just making the whole situation worse for everyone.

She needs to let it go.

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.