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Getting your name wrong once in a while is excusable. Getting it wrong five times a week for a month straight is a whole different story.

One teenager has spent years being occasionally mixed up with his older half-brother, who lives 600 miles away and rarely comes up in daily life. Usually it was a quick slip, caught and corrected.

Then his brother’s looming divorce became the family’s main topic of conversation, and suddenly the wrong name started sticking around a lot longer than a casual slip should.

So when he finally said something, expecting understanding, what he got instead was a mother more focused on defending her intentions than fixing the problem.

Keep reading for the full story.

AITA? My parents keep messing up my name.

So, I’m 17m and I have one half brother, ~30m, who lives about 600 miles away from us. It’s always happened throughout my life, they’d slip up and call me by my brother’s name.

This teen is pretty chill about it, all things considered.

Annoying, but fine, people make mistakes.

He hasn’t lived here in years, but sure, fine, I can live with it.

Most of the time they would realize their mistake and quickly correct it.

But lately his parents have been preoccupied with his half brother even more than usual.

Well, now my brother is very likely going to go through a messy divorce and is a main concern of my parents, which is fair.

However, now they keep messing up my name consistently.

Tonight, my dad called me the wrong name twice just during dinner.

Finally, he comes clean about how hurtful this habit is to him.

He left to do something, and so I told my mom that it’s getting hurtful to be consistently called the wrong name. It happens 5+ times a week, for a month now.

Not only the wrong name, but the name of my brother who isn’t alike to me, who I do not have a good relationship with, who is 600 miles away and has been for almost 10 years.

His mom really didn’t seem that keen on changing her ways.

She was receptive to why it hurt, but when I told her I wanted it to stop, she said something like “how am I supposed to fix something I’m not doing on purpose?”

Well, mother, how hard is it to remember my freaking name?

The name of your only son in the state, no less.

We left the conversation at a bit of a standoff.

It was clear his parents didn’t really care that much that they were hurting his feelings.

She must think it’s not a big deal, but to me I’m sick of it.

I don’t really like my brother due to some of his decisions, and I don’t want to be associated with him, let alone confused with him.

AITA for letting it bother me?

Forgetting your own child’s name is a new low.

What did Reddit have to say?

His family definitely wouldn’t appreciate it if the roles were reversed.

It’s hard not to take something like this personally.

This commenter wonders what all the fuss is about.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a grandson who is tired of driving 5 hours one way to work on his grandparent’s investment property for free.

Another fellow parent chimes in.

Nobody’s asking for perfection here. Slipping up once in a while when two names get tangled in a parent’s head is understandable.

Five times a week for a month is not a slip, though. That’s a pattern, and patterns are hard to write off as innocent mistake.

His mom’s response completely dodges the actual issue. Her intent was never the problem — the impact was, and that’s the part she brushed right past.

At the end of the day, it’s a pretty reasonable response to feel upset about feeling invisible in your own house.