trying to argue with or have any sort of serious mature conversation with either of my parents has always been futile for me. my mother has always been too emotionally and mentally unstable to parent me, let alone listen to anything i have to say, so anything that she deems to be negative or criticism towards her is met with “i’m sorry i’m such a horrible mother”, “i’ll just leave then and then everyone will be happy”, “i won’t do anything anymore/i’ll just die”, or something else along those lines. it doesn’t matter what the conversation is about or how i approach it; i could be calm and rational, or upset and crying, or angry and yelling and i’d still be met with the same response every time. because of this, i bottle up my feelings where she’s concerned. it works out for her because she doesn’t have to deal with me emotionally, but i’m unable to tell her when she’s hurt or misjudged me, when something serious is going on and i need her help, when i’m struggling mentally or physically, etc, and that doesn’t work for me. i can’t tell her how her fits of rage make me feel unsafe and uncomfortable in my own home, or how i’m on the verge of having to drop out of high school, and that sucks. i can’t rely on or talk to my own mother, and that makes me feel unable to rely on or talk to anyone. plus, whenever i do finally have to talk to her about my feelings or a situation, she thinks it’s sudden or that it’s coming out of nowhere when it’s not — i suffer alone for days or weeks at a time so that i don’t have to deal with her trying to manipulate me, make me feel worse or saying/doing the wrong thing again. i’m not sure if it’s done intentionally or if she’s just responding the only way she knows how, but it still hurts and is incredibly frustrating lol.
my father isn’t any better, unfortunately. he’s an angry, emotionally absent man, and has been for as long as i can remember. going to my mother about my feelings or things i’m dealing with/going through is favorable compared to going to him. everything is always a competition with him. i can’t be tired or grumpy because i’m running on only 4 hours of sleep because he only got 3 hours of sleep. i can’t complain about the food poisoning i got back in march because while he didn’t get sick, his food tasted gross, and that’s obviously worse than me being physically ill from what i ate for almost a week. i can’t be in pain because his knee hurts. i can’t be mentally ill because that’s inconvenient to him. me not knowing how to do anything is an inconvenience to him, and yet so is teaching me. his response to pretty much anything, good or bad, is jealousy, anger or indifference. i’m nervous about telling him about things i’m happy about or proud of, like getting a good grade in school or making a phone call by myself, because if it doesn’t directly involve or benefit him, or it’s confusing to him, it’s either not good enough or he says/does something that ruins it. whenever my mother tries to talk to him about her friends or something she saw/read, he interrupts her with “i don’t care,” and yet we always have to listen to everything he has to say. you can’t talk about a common interest with him without him getting overexcited and yelling at you, especially if you have an opinion that’s different from his. hell, i can’t even tell him that i’m taking a day off from school without him stomping around the house and slamming **** for the rest of the day.
communicating with my parents is impossible, but they’re not any better at communicating with each other. arguing with each other usually consists of us yelling/screaming, ignoring whoever we were arguing with for a few hours or days, and then breaking the ice and pretending like it didn’t happen until the next argument arises. no argument or problem ever gets resolved because of this, tension and resentment is always high (especially on my end), and i have no idea how to communicate with or resolve arguments with other people; i either just ignore them or the problem at hand until i blow up, or we
do talk about it but i still keep my mouth shut, which results in the same outcome. i’m also always terrified of having a disagreement or argument with someone else, like a friend, because i think they’ll respond to me in the same way that my parents do.
it sucks lmao.
kids should be able to talk to, and argue with, their parents about pretty much anything imo. a relationship doesn’t work without communication, and that doesn’t just apply to platonic or romantic ones — it applies to familial relationships as well. kids having their legitimate questions be shot down with “because” or “because i said so”, or being prevented from responding during an argument with “don’t talk back to me” so that the parents always have the final word and don’t have to hear their kid out has always bothered me. i think some arguments are non-negotiable, but i think everything can be talked about, and i think kids have the right to ask their parents why their answer is what it is. kids also have the right to talk to their parents about things that are bothering them, even if the thing that’s bothering them is the parents themselves. people have the right to talk and be heard, even when it’s with their parents. having any kind of authority over someone doesn’t mean you don’t have to listen to what they have to say.
i’m tired so i have no idea if any of this even made sense lmao, but yes, i think kids should be able to ‘argue with’ or talk to their parents about things. even if the argument is about something non-negotiable/the parent considers to be nonsense (ex. a 9-year-old wanting to get a tattoo
), communication is still important and things are always worth being discussed. not talking to or hearing your kids out will strain your relationship with them. they’re relying on you to teach them how to communicate from the moment they’re born, and shutting them down, tuning them out or not knowing how to regulate your emotions enough to have serious conversations is not the way to go about it.
tldr; yes lol.
Sometimes I feel like they like to pick fights and drag on the argument. I always ask them why they won't let me explain, and their resposne is: "Because you're a kid, you don't need to." I find that very ludicrous. (Okay, I'm gonna stop before this turns into a rant.)
