I just imagined a world where for 10 years I told my child I loved them and then for them to within less than a year, stop responding and then actively shame you for doing so.
Fuck, I really wish my parents humanised themselves a bit more when I was younger. It took me far too long to rationalise that adults weren’t different from me.
The older I get, the more I empathise with teenagers. It’s far and away the most difficult era of your life.
You’ll have incredible pressure to not ruin the entire rest of your life, you’ll be constantly told to make decisions that will have a massive impact on your future (with little help or course correcting, I hope your three years of interest in that one subject lasts a lifetime).
your body starts mutating like a slow version of an American Werewolf in London, you’re thrown into a school that often resembles something out of Lord of the Flies, and adults aren’t there to support you, they just want you to be that 8 year old innocent child or a full blown adult with no inbetweens.
Yep.
Yes, no adult can empathise with ever being a teen. Feel like this post exemplifies the “no one understands” when literally every adult has already been deeply affected by it. Yet for most people becoming an adult is the realization that adults are no different from anyone else they are still just dealing with their life as it comes along
My point is that adults are different, are going through a totally different stage of their life, different responsibilities, different level of agency over their own life, adults aren’t transforming into a different person, adults have experience to deal with things, adults have normal hormone levels.
Adults are different, the only thing that changed is you became one.
Especially because it seems like the overwhelming majority of adults have forgotten how much it sucks to be a kid. A kid or teen’s world is much smaller. Sure, their biggest problems might be next week’s science fair and what that one girl from math class thinks about them, but those are huge insurmountable problems to someone who has never had to worry about being unable to feed their family. The problems are comparatively smaller but that doesn’t mean they’re any less emotionally devastating. I remember being a teen. I remember the emotional and spiritual pain I went through trying to talk about the things I care about, or were worried about, only to be told that my problems weren’t problems and weren’t a big enough deal to matter. In the Grand Scheme? Sure, maybe they weren’t such a big deal. But at the time they mattered to me a lot.
Most adults have forgotten what it was like to be a teenager and they dismiss them out of hand.
Reminds me of the quote:
“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”
I just imagined a world where for 10 years I told my child I loved them and then for them to within less than a year, stop responding and then actively shame you for doing so.
Whenever I hear a single-sentence story about how a parent did nothing but love their child and the child decided to drop contact out of nowhere, I always wonder what context has been withheld.
This was a good read, thanks. I’ve known so many people who have separated from their parents, and every single one of them has a good reason. I’ve often wondered how the parents tell it from their side. I’m sure every single one of them was “loving” and “nurturing” by their own account, even the dad who couldn’t accept that his son was gay, or the parents who perpetually and deliberately misgendered their daughter. I’ve known so many such cases, and sadly some have ended in tragedy.
Me, I’ve had good parents, but I have a brother who’s an abusive asshole who I want nothing to do with, and occassionally I get the “he’s your brother, you’ve got to love him” schtick from third parties. No. I really don’t.
No one is obligated to stay connected with family who are hurtful, especially when it’s the parents who were the ones who chose to bring you into this world. It’s massively unfair for people to expect that we just tolerate, even love, abusive family.
I’m sorry about your brother. I more than advocate cutting out abusive family members. I’ve found that those who advocate keeping in contact with said people have never dealt with shitty family members themselves.
Thank you. I think you’re right. It must be so nice to be able to have a family one can love.
I remember saying something similar when I was a teenager, only I was complaining about other asshole relatives, not parents. “Why do we have to pretend to love these people, and waste our holidays with them, just because we have some genetic material in common? What does that have to do with anything? And why are we the ones who have to make all the effort? You know those people wouldn’t lift a finger for us.”
Removed by mod
There strawman teenagers from the experience of being one. Not like I randomly hate people
I’m not sure I’m getting the point here. Is this all imagination or did something actually happen? Also why take a stab at all teenagers at large if the issue seems to be about only one? And what’s with the last paragraph? I’m also not sure how to interpret it
