Parents – I can’t live with them, I can’t live without them. And as you grow up, there is bound to be conflict. So Redditor kissableecassy asked, “Teens, what are your parents doing that is secretly driving you crazy?” Here’s what people said about their parents’ most frustrating habits and tendencies.
1.“They comment on literally everything, to the point where I was afraid to listen to music for years because I didn’t want my parents to comment on my music taste. (Which is pretty mainstream; it’s just different from theirs) Whenever we want When they meet someone, they tell me afterwards what they think of that person and indicate whether they had acne, had too long hair, wore a short shirt, etc. They consider their comments as innocent observations, but it causes uncertainties.”
2.“My mother will make suggestions that aren’t suggestions at all. She will say it in a friendly, ambiguous way at first. If you thank her but tell her it’s not necessary, she will repeat it again in a more insistent tone. If I reject again, it usually becomes an order (for a teenager), or as an adult she starts torturing herself and inventing catastrophes that will happen because I didn’t follow her advice to give in out of frustration.”
– teach yourself
3.‘They always talk about how smart I am, like I’m a child prodigy, a Sheldon Cooper. It bothers me because they put too many expectations on me.”
4.“When my parents reacted negatively to everything I said or did as their first reaction. It taught me to keep secrets, tell lies and avoid informing them about something until just before or after it happened…”
“…They wanted me to get a job at some point, so I did. It was a full-time seasonal job and well paid, just a 30 minute drive away. They scolded me for not finding anything closer. They made me manager and quit. I was 16 or 17 at the time. This wasn’t a one-time thing. It was really frustrating growing up, always expecting a negative reaction to things.
—n0stalgicm0m
5.“Whenever I tried to talk about my feelings or the things my mother did that hurt or upset me, she immediately turned to the distraught ‘I’m such a terrible mother!’ And the whole conversation is no longer about me, working through my problems and listening to my emotions, because I have to sidetrack to comfort HER.”
6.“Once I say I like something, they turn it into my whole personality.”
—4rs0nk1tten
7.“I’m in my 20s now, but my mom started doing this when I was a teenager and still hasn’t stopped. She’ll say something like, ‘You’re probably going to get mad at me for saying this, but…’ and tell me then something unnecessarily rude about my appearance or weight that is completely unhelpful and inappropriate. I’ve started shutting her down and telling her that maybe she just shouldn’t say it at the time, but it was a lot harder to do that. her up when I was 14.”
8.“Being outwardly judgmental. I never tell my parents about my taste in music, my friends, or many of my interests because I know I’ll get snide comments if it doesn’t meet their standards.”
—Blinding_Power_5016
9.“Me: ‘I want to be left alone now.’ Mom and Dad assume this means I want to talk.”
10.“Make a lecture out of everything. When I tell you something bad happened, I don’t always have to turn it into a life lesson. 😐”
—NetLow3689
11.“I work 40 hours a week, but when I spend my Saturday playing video games, that’s all I do.”
12.“My mom always offers to help me, but if I let her, the next time she’s upset she brings up every single task she helped me with and tells me I didn’t do anything to get her help or to deserve her kindness. Now she is angry that I never accept her help, and she doesn’t understand why I never accept gifts from people before I know what is expected of me.”
—ChillNinetales
13.“Not a teenager, but something my father said he learned from me when I was a child was not to compare me (and my siblings) to other people’s children. Our mother always did that; she constantly said : ‘Why is that possible?’ “Do you no longer resemble the name?” It bothered me because it wasn’t like she was comparing the ‘bad’ kid to the good kid…”
“…She just had friends whose children were talented in ways she had hoped we would be (musically, academically, in sports). We had our own talents and performed averagely in school, but that was still a reason not to be good I felt comfortable telling my father how hurt I was every time my mother said those things. So he said he immediately learned not to compare us to others in that way (my parents are still married; this all happened in the same household)”
—Taro_Otto
Skynesher/Getty Images
14.“Not a teenager, but still living with my parents. Lots of little things get on my nerves, but the one thing I absolutely hate is when my mom asks about my day, then immediately scrolls on her phone and tells me completely ignoring it when I tell her. It’s even worse when she starts listening randomly and has no idea what I’m talking about. Worst of all, when I confront her about it, she always denies it.
—ell_fin
15.‘I’ am an adult now, but it was definitely my parents who doubted anything adventurous I wanted to do. Going out to a party…be careful, they use drugs at parties. Are you going on a road trip? Be careful, you could get hit by a drunk driver. Are you going on holiday? Beware of thieves and robbers. Just a constant burden of worry and warnings about everything I wanted to do. And that burden became so heavy that after a while I just stopped doing things or just did things without telling them. Sometimes I think they were so afraid that I would die that it never occurred to them that I would never live.”
16.“Say I’m angry when I raise my voice, but complain that they can’t hear me because I’m quiet and mumbling. I can’t help but talk in a whisper all the time, but when I speak louder, apparently, I do that too “I’m rude. And now I wonder if I suffer from anger, because everything I do is ‘angry’, according to them.”
—Po-mart
17.“Spying on my bank account even though I’m 18 now. I just don’t want them to see my purchase history.”
18.“If they make their pain worse than whatever I have. If I have a fever, they have the flu; when I have a headache, they have a headache and a stomach ache; when my whole body hurts, theirs wants to make them go to the hospital. My mother likes to talk about herself all the time, and that makes me more prone to anger these days.”
— cloverlilrat
What is something your parents often do (or something they did when you were growing up) that bothered you to no end? Tell us in the comments or in this anonymous form?