During a normal homeschool morning, a teen was quietly crocheting when her dad asked what she was making. Before she could answer, her younger sister jumped in and spoke for her.

So she calmly asked her sister not to interrupt…a pretty standard boundary, right? Apparently not, because her dad immediately labeled her “petty,” and what should’ve been a tiny moment quickly spiraled into a much bigger argument.

Read on for the story.

AITA for thinking I’m not being petty?

So this morning during our homeschool morning stuff, I (15F) was crocheting a turtle. I have a small crochet business, so I usually crochet while we’re doing things.

My dad asked me, “What are you making?” I started to answer, but before I could finish, my little sister (10F) jumped in and said, “She’s making a turtle.”

I turned to her and said, pretty calmly, “Hey, can you not interrupt me? He asked me the question.” I wasn’t rude and didn’t raise my voice.

A fair statement.

My dad immediately said I was being petty. He told me I’m a young woman and should know better, and that correcting her like that was petty.

I said I didn’t think it was petty and that it seemed like a normal thing to say, especially as an older sister. He wouldn’t accept that and just kept repeating that I was being petty and should know better because of my age.

Eventually I said, “Okay, whatever you think. I’m not going to argue anymore.”

Wow.

This has happened before, so I tried to explain my point. I asked, “If I interrupted someone and Mom said, ‘Hey, don’t interrupt people,’ would that be petty?” He said no.

So I asked if that meant my sister shouldn’t be corrected at all. I gave an example of her being at a friend’s birthday party and answering for the birthday girl when someone asked what she got.

He admitted that would be rude, but still said I shouldn’t be the one correcting her. He said I was trying to undermine his parenting by trying to find a loophole and I said no, I’m just trying to understand exactly what you mean.

Sir, you’ve got this all wrong.

Then he said I was trying to be petty on purpose and trying to start problems early in the morning, which honestly wasn’t what I was doing at all.

At that point I just said, “I don’t think I’m the one being petty here, but okay. I’m not arguing anymore. Let’s just do morning stuff so we can be done.”

He said “thank you” in a really sarcastic, mocking tone and then kept talking anyway. So now I’m confused. AITA?

She eventually stopped engaging, but the exchange left her confused about whether she’d actually crossed a line, or just stood up for herself in a normal way.

This person has an adamant “NTA.”

This person can’t believe their ears either.

And this person says the father sounds terrible.

Asking not to be talked over isn’t petty, but turning it into a power struggle definitely might be.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.