My parents didn’t wait till I was 18, a week after my 13th birthday they dropped me off at foster care, no warning. I thought we were going to the store.
Damn son that’s colder than a polar bear drinking Coors light. I see why you’re angry.
Oh, no, I’m medically angry. IED, ridiculously low serotonin. Since like age 8.
Being thrown into foster care only put into overdrive.
TBH it was probably IED and autism that caused them to put me there. I mean when I look back I don’t see any incidents that would warrant being kicked out of the family and in foster care there were a ton of kids that had actually attacked their parents or stolen large amounts of money.
But I can also see how it would have been tough, but it’d been nice if they had let me know what they were planning to give me the decent chance to run away first.
While growing up, my migrant parents loved to comment on this and say how an Anglo Saxxon family would have kicked me out when I turned 18. Meanwhile they kicked me out of home at 14 for being gay.
Bro, you should have just gone to church, married a girl you met there, have a family, and do the whole gay thing on the side like all the Republican politicians do when they hit up the RNC convention. Grindr literally crashed from all the activity in Milwaukee when the convention started there :>
It’s a joke but I often wonder if this was why my dad was so upset by my coming out. I don’t think he’s even likely to be gay, but I think that unexplored question in his mind is a black hole now.
It’s wild the kinds of shit that run genetically in a family. And I’m not just talking about stuff like alcoholism, which my family has in spades. My two teenage kids and I are each left-handed, non-binary, and autistic.
Had me in the first half not gonna lie. Sorry to hear that though, I hope you’re doing better now
Thank you! Definitely living the dream now 22 years later. Got a husband, two dogs, a cat and my own business.
That sounds enviable, I wish you all the best
Oof, that sucks. I hope things are better now.
My oldest just graduated high school a year early. She wants to move with me to Portland to get her degree in psychology there. However, because her mother is still her legal guardian for another year until June 2025, she is refusing to allow her to do so and is, instead, forcing her to go to college in Texas four and a half hours away from home. She is transgender and being forced to take classes at a college she doesn’t want to attend in a small Texas town, all because her mother is so god-damned insecure that she can’t bear the thought of her child wanting to live with her other parent instead of her. My kid doesn’t have the courage to stand up to her mom right now, and it breaks my fucking heart. But at least when she turns 18, she will be free to make her own choices, and she’s told me she’s definitely moving to Portland with me next summer.
Suffice it to say that my ex-wife is a fucking monster, and I sincerely doubt her kids will want much of anything to do with her as adults.
My youngest (also trans, they/them) is on track to graduate two years early and with an associate’s degree. They also want to move to Portland to live with me, and thankfully they have no problem standing up to their mom.
reading this was refreshing, it’s nice seeing that not everyone hates trans people.
My senior year of highschool, I was 18… And working full time, had an apartment with roommates, and still went to high school.
I had known for years my time was limited living with my parents. When I lived with my dad, one morning he woke me up just to tell me I had maybe months before I had to get out because him and his wife (my step-mom) were going to be trying to have a kid and it was going in my room. Basically it was an eviction notice.
I can definitely say it wasn’t easy. Struggled a lot. At one point I’d accepted that I probably wasn’t going to live to 21. Yadda yadda, it’s been over 20 years and my family is bewildered why I don’t visit, or treat them like best friends.
Honestly, I’m kind of baffled by the opposite; when people are committed to their family for family’s sake even when they’re abusive. Putting the concept of family on a pedestal to the point of self-destruction never made much sense to me, there needs to be a limit for any relationship, family or not.
The reality has just been more starkly revealed in the US that many people care more about their religion and political allegiance than who their family truly are as people.
They’re both wrong.
Parents owe undying love and loyalty to their kids. Kids don’t owe their parents shit. If the parents did a good job, their kids will want to support them on their own. If you need to pressure kids into loving their parents, then abuse or neglect has already occurred.
That’s not necessarily true. Personality disorders exist, as does addiction, as does kids growing up into assholes. I’ve raised 5 kids and I can tell you parents have a lot less control over who their kids turn out to be than you suggest.
Personally, I believe parents are responsible. Outside cases of rape, they make the conscious decision to bring you in. That’s not to say patents can’t earnestly offer their absolute best and it not be enough for a number of reasons. Though you should always take culpability for being nieve enough to believe this world is kind enough for another when you can’t guarantee it.
Personality disorders are caused by child abuse. If your kid develops BPD “out of nowhere”, it’s your own fault for not loving them enough as a kid.
Addiction is forgivable if caused by poverty, but not if caused by the parents. Healthy people are a lot more resistant to addiction. Children use drugs to escape when you’ve made their lives miserable.
Some personality disorders are caused by trauma and abuse.
Some trauma and abuse are caused by parents.
The world is big and you are being a narrow-minded asshole with this kind of comment that confidently places blame on people you don’t know for things you don’t know about.
Okay, let me explain what just happened to you:
I said parents owe their kids undying love, and kids don’t have to love their parents.
You said “Nuh uh, I don’t have to love my kids if they get a mental illness”
Or maybe you didn’t. Maybe you actually meant “Nuh uh, my kids owe me love if they get a mental illness”
Either way, you decided to follow this behaviour up by trying to take the moral high ground. For some arcane reason.
Now listen, I know an adult with a PD, just one, who says his parents never abused him. And he loves them. And I know two dozen who were abused, and loathe their parents. Let’s try and spot the correlation, shall we?
No, it went like this:
You said, “all child personality problems are caused by parents”
and I said “no they are not, and further, you are an asshole for claiming that”
You’re mixing up the order of events.
I’m sorry if that’s your experience, but it’s definitely not universally true. We are doing everything we can for our 14 year old, with some success thanks to modern medicine, but she is diagnosed with BPD.
My 12 year old probably has more trauma and gets less attention because of how much time and effort my 14 year old takes, and she is very well-balanced.
It’s not as simple as you’re trying to make it.
Yeah, I was the well adjusted kid in a family just like yours. The self-sufficient one, who was well behaved, never did drugs, never broke the law. I had the BPD sibling who caused our parents no end of grief. Threatened me with a knife several times too. You know what I realised around the time I turned 18? I didn’t love my parents. I was just going through the motions. I never knew love until I was an adult.
We all thought my sibling was just being difficult. We all thought that my parents were doing everything they could. Nah, I know better now. I got a personality disorder too after I turned 20. Mine was just dormant for longer. Fuck my parents.
Family just like yours.
There’s not much more I can do. I spend as much time with them as they will let me. My 12 year old is super independent, but we do have some great conversations later after everyone else is in bed. She and I built a table from scratch together - to the extent she would let me help. I actually love spending time with her when she’ll tolerate me. If things go badly for her, it will not be due to abuse or lack of love.
I don’t have that same relationship with my 14 year old because I can’t, but I sure would if I could.
I’m not trying to absolve your parents for what you went through. I’m genuinely sorry for how things went for you. I can see with my own eyes how hard it is to be that kid and I feel terrible that you had to go through it. All I can say is people have other experiences.
There can be organic sources. Yes my parents were shit to me when I was a kid but that didn’t give me IED, I had IED and autism WHILE they were being abusive and that gave me ptsd and depression.
So not all kids problems are parent caused.
I was told to either start paying rent or get my own place at 18.
Now that I think about it, that was the last time I wasn’t living paycheck to paycheck.
This reminds me of what AOC says about our existing systems being massively scaled up isolation.
Some of my friends were charged rent. My mother never did. If I lost everything, as long as she was alive and still lived there she’d let me stay. She did this for my brother. Later she told me that the one things she asked him was to have a meal with her once a day. He told her that wasn’t happening. She still let him stay. I don’t respect the man much though.
I paid ‘rent’ ie: participated in the family funding of stuff. It felt normal to me. Was only required to participate when I had an income and it was less than what I 'd have to pay living on my own.
It made the entire family’s life better.
TBF, that may be a hard promise to keep every single day even if you want to. Assuming the child works.
It’s fair that you wouldn’t know details, but he moved back home after being fired in his late 20s. He spent little time looking for a long term job and in addition to housing our mother paid for his food and transportation costs.
There goes the benefit of the doubt.
I’ve actually got a cousin who is basically in the same situation and has been that way all her life. Gonna be really interesting when her parents are gone.
I cannot fathom how my children will make it through life in the USA without financial support from us. My immigrant parents, my wife’s immigrant parents, they worked hard to educate us, and we were able to capitalize on that and do well in life. With a good dose of luck, of course. My kids were born into a country in which opportunity is less prevalent than the world I experienced in my 20s and 30s. Maybe they’ll do as well as us, hopefully better. Or, maybe not. I have no clue, they’re just kids. But I will invest everything I have in them. I honestly see little other point to having money.
I honestly see little other point to having money.
What!? You don’t want a Scrooge McDuck vault of gold coins to swim through? Are you even American?!
I mean George Costanza moved back in with his parents so there’s always that chance and he’s somehow supposed to be Italian.
I think one of the best things that ever happened to me was my step dad gradually pushing me out of the house when I was around 20. It taught me how to take care of myself. Of course, it’s taken me 20 years and I still haven’t quite figured it out. It would have been better if they had prepared me, taught me some of the essential skills. That’s the real problem, it’s not that parents in America make their kids leave the nest, it’s that they don’t prepare them properly for it first. I feel like I could have done a lot more with my adult life if I hadn’t had to spend most of it slowly learning how things worked, through trial and error.
IMO there’s a balance of support and sending them out of the nest. My parents did not find that balance and threw me out completely unprepared. It made me homeless for a couple of years
It did teach self-reliance and that I don’t need my family in my life to get by. My wife’s family is cool as hell though and love them to death
There’s also a balance in asking for rent off your child and making it so they basically have no money for themselves.
My mam likes us all being in the house and we all pay rent to her, but it’s also a payment that is far, far lower than it would be for us all to go out and live on our own.
It’s fair to be expected to contribute to the family/house if you’re an adult and have the means. I stayed with my parents through a lot of covid and helped woth the cooking and groceries. The key thing was it wasn’t an ultimatum, it wasn’t a hardship on me, and if I hadn’t been able to, they wouldn’t have minded.
Oh yeah my parents would take all of my money. At 16 they handed me a brand new car that I A) didnt ask for B) was expected to make the payments , but couldn’t afford the payments on a part-time McDonald’s employees wages. I also had to pay the insurance, and rent, and buy my own groceries. I ended up getting pushed by my parents to work full time at Mcdonald’s, part time at a pizza hut, part time at a grocery store, and keep up with my high-school classes. They then started blaming me for their money troubles because they were taking 100% of my money and to them, that wasn’t enough. I couldn’t even afford school lunches and went many days without eating anything. Only time I would get to eat is if I stole something from one of my jobs.
At 18 they convinced me to move 700 miles away from home promising they would help with college. That was a lie, so I started working full time for a construction company and full time for a movie theater. I got laid off from the construction, which was my biggest cash flow, so instead of stepping up for their kid, they sent me out the door, took my car, stole the last $300 to my name and told me best of luck.
I don’t have much to do with them, and they also try to guilt trip me into moving closer to them or talking to them more. I just tell them “I am how you made me”, and thar usually shuts them up
That’s a surprisingly controversial take in this thread, unfortunately.
I don’t know what I expected from a platform like Lemmy though.
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If you’re working and living at home, yes you should contribute to household expenses. What a strange take.
^ This is the exact unconscious commodification capitalism infects normal brains with. Everything has to be a zero sum transaction, no mutualism is possible and every relationship boils down to a network of debts.
The wort part about it is that those most affected by this mental illness are the ones that actively fight to normalize it.
Depending on the situation, it seems like mutualism to me. I stayed with my parents through a lot of covid and was happy to help contribute with the groceries and cooking because they’re family and I wanted to pitch in. I guess it’s really a matter of expectations, they didn’t expect me to pay for groceries, just to pitch in with the cooking. I think it’s also a matter of circumstances, if we were living on a tight budget in an apartment, I think it would be fine of them to expect me to contribute a bit to expenses if I had a job, but it wouldn’t be fine to me if they like set a dollar ammount or percentage or something like that. I don’t know, I’m just poking my brain to see how it reacts but it seems to me the expectation of family working together to provide for themselves as a family is fine as an expectation, but that starts to break down when you add transactional details. IDK, I’m rambling, and probably missing your point, but you can have my random thoughts anyways
they didn’t expect me to pay
Then your situation isn’t what we are talking about. We are talking situations where not only is there an expectation to pay, the entire situation is transactional. I.e. not mutualism.
Your username perfectly fits your response.
Do you think I came up with it at random?
It’s a warning label no one takes seriously.
Yes and no. You should not force your children to do so. Even young adults are not yet fully mentally developed and may still be more teenaged than adult, which is reflective in their behavior. Forcing them out may not bee a good thing. Forcing them out without them being able to provide for themselves is downright awful. Now I know the USA has awful laws in many places, but there should be some to protect people that can’t or cannot afford to defend themselves. Young adults are such people.
Were I live parents are forced to pay for the education of their children even after they grow up. At least for the first education.
If you’re unable to, then the responsible thing is for your parents to help you out, if they’re able to.
There is, however, a point where you start to look after your parents as they age, so if you’re a grown adult and working, then you should at least be cost neutral to your folks.
Parents probably saw their child turning into a tiktok influencer wastrel and is giving them a healthy dose of reality before they get too deep into it. Good on them.
