Hello, greetings. I've lurked for quite awhile, but I'm seeking out the wisdom of the members on these boards for a very pressing issue that, not to sound melodramatic, is quite frankly ruining my life. I live well, but I've recently been butting heads with my parents so frequently, and without any lessons learned, that I've a lot of the flare in my life.
Please don't dismiss this as another hormonal teenager with problems, soon enough I'll be off to university, but I want this to be dealt with, I can't keep this up. Thank you, apologies if this is long, but I really, really need help here.
Recently my parents and I have been fighting incessantly over the smallest of things, snowballing into raging, heated, passionate arguments. The most recent one happened not two hours ago. I sit here in my room, lost. Please read it all, it makes for an interesting story at least.
We began the argument fighting over something to do with driving. My parents disagreed with how I handled a situation, and I quite frankly said I was in the right, the correction was unnecessary. You have to understand my father and mother, while nice people to the outside world, are very opinionated, stubborn people. They refused to backdown, and in their defence, neither did I. I believed I was correct.
Anger grew on both sides, and my parents started yelling at me. I tried to keep my cool, but when you have two full-grown, mature adults yelling at you, jumping on every word, backing you into a corner, what am I to do? I fought back, getting angry to. To me, that seems like a valid reaction. I get attacked by parents who are to set an example, and I fight back defending myself.
They play the card "Oh, why can't you just admit you're wrong? You cause all these fights." etc. But I'm just standing wide-eyed thinking, "This is at least our fifth significant fight in two weeks, and you still can only point blame at me? You handled this perfectly, parents? I'm more than willing I should have calmed down, but they were equally in the wrong. They could have said, "Perhaps you're right, we'll talk to someone who knows the answer." I mean, they're the adults here, are they not?
Evidently, this doesn't end there, anger heightens to new levels, and I'm truly seeing red. Both are in my face yelling at me, threatening to call my former Drivers Ed teacher and all this crap. Not. Backing. Down. How do I recover from that point? I'm yelling, trying to defend myself from two parents who are ganging up on the young'un, when my mother then grounds me from the party I was going to tomorrow. "Don't talk to your parents like that." Excuse me? I've been yelled at, belittled and treated horribly for the last hour, and I'm grounded for defending myself?
Dad even doesn't agree with her, I slam my door, consequently almost putting my fist through it, and they argue. I go downstairs, still seeing red, my face feels like it's on fire, and just think. Calm down, you. Upstairs I hear my parents arguing, and the one point I hear my mother say made my ears go up, "You're going to let a kid tell you what's right?"
This did it for me. Always my parents make me feel that because I am younger than them, every point I make is thereby invalid, and they are always correct. I can never show them fault, because I am apparently the intellectual inferior due to my age (a term I've since coined "Age Syndrome"). This phrase my mom uttered finally proved to me that she will never take my opinion seriously. She will continue to see herself as perfection.
Why do I see this as a problem? Why don't I just put this argument behind me? Plain and simply, I'll admit I handled something poorly. I can be selfish, arrogant and stubborn. My parents? They never admit any fault. Never. I can honestly, honestly say, I can not for the life of me remember the last time one of my parents admitted they were wrong. Is that not sad?
What does this do? We repeat a vicious cycle where my parents never learn one thing from it, they hug me and say they love me dearly, but even at gun-point would never admit any fault of their own, which causes these arguments where only one of the three people learn, to keep repeating over and over.
And don't get me wrong, I love my parents dearly. They're beautiful, kind people when we're not fighting, but the fighting is becoming so frequent and inevitable, that I'm losing my mind in the futility of it all. I don't want to be another kid who says, "Screw it, I'm going to university soon. Won't have to deal with this." No, I want to deal with it and have a great relationship with my parents, I love them immensely.
But to put it simply, I cannot fathom a way to go about this. Whenever I approach them about what they might have done wrong, admitting my faults to start, they either ignore me completely, won't hear any of it, or say "Okay, but here's what you did." Okay? No, that wasn't a confession. That was a word.
I've grown restless, I fear for the relationship I cherish so greatly with my family may be at risk. Nights like these, I don't want to go to sleep. I wake up with the most painful, wretched feeling of regret (but part of me still knows I was right) and unfounded remorse that I end up feeling bad and apologizing, which just causes this to start again in a few days, because my parents think "See, HE was wrong! I was right the whole time."
What did I gain from this? Nothing, it's going to happen again. We've all gone to bed in separate rooms, furious at each other. On top of this, I'm not not allowed to party with my friends tomorrow, something I've been looking forward to for weeks. I've hit a wall. I'm about to lose my mind. Can they not just realize we are ALL humans, capable of faults? A fact age does not excuse you from?
What do I do, Mac Rumors? How do I solve this?
Please don't dismiss this as another hormonal teenager with problems, soon enough I'll be off to university, but I want this to be dealt with, I can't keep this up. Thank you, apologies if this is long, but I really, really need help here.
Recently my parents and I have been fighting incessantly over the smallest of things, snowballing into raging, heated, passionate arguments. The most recent one happened not two hours ago. I sit here in my room, lost. Please read it all, it makes for an interesting story at least.
We began the argument fighting over something to do with driving. My parents disagreed with how I handled a situation, and I quite frankly said I was in the right, the correction was unnecessary. You have to understand my father and mother, while nice people to the outside world, are very opinionated, stubborn people. They refused to backdown, and in their defence, neither did I. I believed I was correct.
Anger grew on both sides, and my parents started yelling at me. I tried to keep my cool, but when you have two full-grown, mature adults yelling at you, jumping on every word, backing you into a corner, what am I to do? I fought back, getting angry to. To me, that seems like a valid reaction. I get attacked by parents who are to set an example, and I fight back defending myself.
They play the card "Oh, why can't you just admit you're wrong? You cause all these fights." etc. But I'm just standing wide-eyed thinking, "This is at least our fifth significant fight in two weeks, and you still can only point blame at me? You handled this perfectly, parents? I'm more than willing I should have calmed down, but they were equally in the wrong. They could have said, "Perhaps you're right, we'll talk to someone who knows the answer." I mean, they're the adults here, are they not?
Evidently, this doesn't end there, anger heightens to new levels, and I'm truly seeing red. Both are in my face yelling at me, threatening to call my former Drivers Ed teacher and all this crap. Not. Backing. Down. How do I recover from that point? I'm yelling, trying to defend myself from two parents who are ganging up on the young'un, when my mother then grounds me from the party I was going to tomorrow. "Don't talk to your parents like that." Excuse me? I've been yelled at, belittled and treated horribly for the last hour, and I'm grounded for defending myself?
Dad even doesn't agree with her, I slam my door, consequently almost putting my fist through it, and they argue. I go downstairs, still seeing red, my face feels like it's on fire, and just think. Calm down, you. Upstairs I hear my parents arguing, and the one point I hear my mother say made my ears go up, "You're going to let a kid tell you what's right?"
This did it for me. Always my parents make me feel that because I am younger than them, every point I make is thereby invalid, and they are always correct. I can never show them fault, because I am apparently the intellectual inferior due to my age (a term I've since coined "Age Syndrome"). This phrase my mom uttered finally proved to me that she will never take my opinion seriously. She will continue to see herself as perfection.
Why do I see this as a problem? Why don't I just put this argument behind me? Plain and simply, I'll admit I handled something poorly. I can be selfish, arrogant and stubborn. My parents? They never admit any fault. Never. I can honestly, honestly say, I can not for the life of me remember the last time one of my parents admitted they were wrong. Is that not sad?
What does this do? We repeat a vicious cycle where my parents never learn one thing from it, they hug me and say they love me dearly, but even at gun-point would never admit any fault of their own, which causes these arguments where only one of the three people learn, to keep repeating over and over.
And don't get me wrong, I love my parents dearly. They're beautiful, kind people when we're not fighting, but the fighting is becoming so frequent and inevitable, that I'm losing my mind in the futility of it all. I don't want to be another kid who says, "Screw it, I'm going to university soon. Won't have to deal with this." No, I want to deal with it and have a great relationship with my parents, I love them immensely.
But to put it simply, I cannot fathom a way to go about this. Whenever I approach them about what they might have done wrong, admitting my faults to start, they either ignore me completely, won't hear any of it, or say "Okay, but here's what you did." Okay? No, that wasn't a confession. That was a word.
I've grown restless, I fear for the relationship I cherish so greatly with my family may be at risk. Nights like these, I don't want to go to sleep. I wake up with the most painful, wretched feeling of regret (but part of me still knows I was right) and unfounded remorse that I end up feeling bad and apologizing, which just causes this to start again in a few days, because my parents think "See, HE was wrong! I was right the whole time."
What did I gain from this? Nothing, it's going to happen again. We've all gone to bed in separate rooms, furious at each other. On top of this, I'm not not allowed to party with my friends tomorrow, something I've been looking forward to for weeks. I've hit a wall. I'm about to lose my mind. Can they not just realize we are ALL humans, capable of faults? A fact age does not excuse you from?
What do I do, Mac Rumors? How do I solve this?
