By Cultural_Badger8422 • Score: 2 • April 11, 2025 4:33 AM
AITA for telling my dad he was being immature and childish, or am I just being a dramatic teenager?
I (13F) got into a really big argument with my dad (42M) a couple of days ago, and now we’re not talking. I’m still really upset about it, but part of me is wondering if I messed up too.
So, I’m 13 and in 11th grade. I’ve been homeschooled almost my whole life, except for one year when I went to public school in 9th grade. That one year was honestly the best. I got to learn properly and be around people. But recently, I found out that my parents have been homeschooling me wrong this whole time. Like, not even legally.
I was the one who figured it out. I realized that I wasn’t even registered with the state. If I hadn’t caught it, I would've finished high school with no proof of anything. No report cards, no transcripts, no records. Which means no college. So we went to the homeschooling department in February to fix things.
At that point, I had already finished 10th grade on my own. But the state only had my 9th grade year from when I went to school. The lady at the office (let’s call her Kristy) was not happy we were late. She gave us a bunch of forms to fill out—registration stuff, report cards, immunization records, physical exam papers, and something called an IHIP, which I had never even heard of.
Here’s the part that really bothered me: I had to fill out ALL of the paperwork. Not just for me, but for my younger siblings too. I even had to figure out the immunizations and physicals because my parents didn’t know what they were. The only reason I knew anything about them was because of that one year I was in public school.
There were parts I didn’t understand in the registration, and I told my parents. They told me to leave it blank and said it didn’t matter. So I did.
When we went back to the office, Kristy thought my dad filled the forms out and started yelling at him. She said if he didn’t know how to do basic stuff like this, he shouldn’t be homeschooling. She also pointed out everything that was missing and said we still needed an IHIP. My dad didn’t know what that was either.
And instead of being mad at himself or taking responsibility, he got mad at me. He called my mom while we were visiting my aunt, and when I saw it was him, I ignored it (I don’t like talking to him). My mom picked up, and he demanded to talk to me. He started yelling, saying I messed everything up and “made some angry white lady yell at him.” I told him I did the best I could and that it wasn’t my fault he and my mom didn’t give me the info I needed.
Then he said he couldn’t do the forms because English isn’t his first language. But we were literally arguing in perfect English, and I pointed out that he’s been in the U.S. since he was 17. He didn’t like that and said my attitude was annoying and that I needed to fix it.
He told me to find out what an IHIP is, write it, and email it to him by the next day. Then he hung up on me.
The next night he called again and asked where it was. I hadn’t done it yet because I was helping my aunt out—she had a complicated pregnancy and needed help around the house. I was taking care of five kids (a 3-month-old, a 5-year-old, a 7-year-old, a 10-year-old, and an 11-year-old), cooking, cleaning, and basically doing everything while my mom was at work and my aunt was resting. I was exhausted.
When he called me lazy and irresponsible, I snapped. I told him he was acting immature for not doing the paperwork himself and childish for yelling at me like it was my job to fix everything. I said that if he can’t handle homeschooling us, then maybe he shouldn’t be doing it at all—especially since I do all my schoolwork by myself on a laptop anyway.
Now he’s not talking to me, and I’m not talking to him. My mom says we both should apologize. She told me I should because he’s my dad, but also that he should because I’m his firstborn daughter.
Reading all this back, it feels kind of ridiculous. But I still feel like I didn’t do anything wrong.
So, AITA for calling my dad childish and immature? Or did I take it too far?
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