Communicating with family shouldn’t feel like a game of telephone.

One woman had long felt estranged from her siblings, even as they continued reaching out whenever they needed something from her.

So when she realized they refused to speak to her directly, she stopped responding to the middleman and forced them to ask themselves.

Keep reading for the full story.

AITA For forcing my siblings to only contact me directly

I’m the black sheep of the family.

Due to having bad anxiety and depression as a teenager, I just sort of drifted away.

Now, as an adult, we still aren’t close and don’t communicate much.

But when they do need to communicate, they do it in a strange way.

I’ve noticed that whenever my siblings need something from me or have to ask me something, they never ask me directly.

They will reach out to my mom to contact me or, in certain settings, send their kids as messengers to talk to me.

This year, I started to realize how disrespectful this is.

She’s starting to feel majorly slighted by this approach.

They all have my phone number, yet choose to overcomplicate things by bringing our mother in, or their young children, to ask for important things.

Like borrowing my car.

So lately, she decides if they want to speak to her, they’ll have to do it directly.

So now, whenever my mother contacts me to relay a message or want from my siblings, I ignore it.

She asks again, I ignore it.

I ignore it until my sibling is forced to ask me themselves.

Then I immediately respond.

She knows it’s not the most orthodox approach, but it’s the only strategy she has left.

I know it’s silly to ignore my mother instead of just telling her flat out to tell my siblings to contact me directly, but it does give me a small sense of satisfaction knowing that they probably get impatient and frustrated waiting for my response when they could have simply shot me a text.

I hate how everything is funneled through unnecessary avenues.

It feels like I’m being slighted and will never have individual relationships with my siblings.

But I could be wrong, so AITA?

By all accounts, it seems her immature siblings have forced her hand.

What did Reddit think?

This commenter would have done things just a little differently.

Perhaps bad communication habits run in the family…

Sometimes the only way out of a bad situation is through.

This user also thinks she should be more direct with her mother.

Turns out, the quickest way to end the game of telephone is to hang up on the operator.

If they really needed the favor, it’s time to grow up and ask for real.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.