My parents are pure evil. Are they really?

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It sounds like you're ready emotionally to leave the nest, but you lack some of the skills necessary to do so. That's very frustrating and perhaps a little frightening. It would be better to take the energy created by all these emotions and use it become more independent. I know you're feeling tired, but it's possible you'll feel less tired when you are confident you can create a future for yourself. And you need to: your parents will not change.

One thing you can do this instant to prepare for independence is to start taking care of your immediate environment. Help around the house. Pick up your room. Let your parents know there is another adult available in the house to help, rather than hinder them. You'll learn some needed skills for your new house and you may end up feeling better about yourself and them.

Whatever you do, don't fall into the trap of remaining a dependent child because you're "sick," and people are "mean" to you. Been there. Done that, and it's no life for anyone on or off the spectrum.

wow....do you have it great. my father hated me and did everything in his power to destroy my life. my mother was mentally incapable of taking care of herself, never helped me in any way. went to live with my grandmother, who was schizophrenic and she did all sorts of things to me.

been on my own since i was 10. lived and worked in a pool hall for several years. stayed in the room where the drunks spent the night.

finally escaped for good at 17 when i joined the military.

there are a lot of 'me's' on w. p. let me presume to speak for them by saying you're an ungrateful %^$#@*&%&.

you should be thanking your parents, EVERY DAY, instead of complaining. i can only wonder how my life would have been different if i had had just anyone who cared about me. i am jealous of you. would that i had had your parents.

Whiney, ungrateful kid squared. You are 21 and arguing about some pathetic issue from 6 years ago, out of petty jealousy for your baby sister? Did anyone feed you, clothe you and keep you warm for the 6 years you have been bearing this trivial grudge? You should go and apologise, then tidy up your room and show more respect for the people around you - and I don't mean some olde worlde Christian respect for authority, I mean respecting the dignity of other people.

Well.
I'm not going to call you whiny.
But I am going to say that your situation sounds fairly typical. There's always that set of parents in the neighborhood who are slightly anal about one aspect of raising the kids or another. In this case, it seems they used to be VERY uncomfortable having other peoples' kids in the house. Maybe they had personal reasons for this distaste. It seems they've mellowed out in the years following.

As for them not remembering standing in your way, my parents are absentminded about that stuff too. As I'm sure most generally are. They have their own lives to live, and maybe didn't put enough effort into understanding your needs or your mind when you were younger.

Be happy your younger siblings are going to have an easier time of things. As for you, the best thing to do is make sure you have the skills to take care of yourself on your own, and plan to move out. The relationship with your parents - the history you all have - is carved in stone. You can't change it, but you can alter the dynamics of the relationship by getting out, and making your own rules about your own place.

Until then, ask your parents if you can move your room to the basement or something - or even better, if your sister can have her $#@% parties in the basement away from the sleeping areas of the household. Because sleep interference is detrimental to your health.

+1000. Also what DW said.

Your parents aren't evil, and nor do you deserve the insults that people are throwing at you here. I really recommend you move out if you can though; distance really helps put things in perspective.

I would say though that it's not nice for you to call your mum things like that; that was just mean. I know you feel that you didn't get what you wanted re: the sleepovers, but you got the holidays without even asking for them. Holidays are way more expensive and more effort for your parents, so they are probably feeling guilty for not being able to provide your sister with the same gift; the sleepovers may be their way of compensating.

Last edited by Lene on 28 Sep 2010, 3:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Your family sounds pretty normal, but that's not saying much. You said you got a house, so you're moving out? If so, good for you. Also, good for you for realizing you deserve to be treated better, most people just go around their whole lives with repressed guilt and anger for the crappy way their parents treated them. I don't know why people if have kids if they are just going to treat them like they resent they exist.

This is all too depressingly normal. People don't know how to love each other. Loving one's offspring isn't just about feeding them and clothing them. Every child deserves parents that are loving and fair and show basic respect and niceness. Parents and children should love each other, but instead they often just engage in petty power-struggles.

Move out and move on with your life. They are just typical messed up people who have too many problems to worry about, they probably had similar parents, obviously they don't care about seeing things from your point of view. Forget about trying to prove them wrong, deep down they already know they're wrong, and that is actually the very reason why they will never ever admit it. They don't even know how to be any other way besides the way that they are, and deep down, they probably feel guilty about that fact.

I bet you aren't that nice to them either, although clearly they've set up a bad example. Being a parent is stressful, never-ending work, you can't blame them too much for not being perfect. You just need to abandon ship, and set up a life for yourself where you can be in a more positive environment, or at least be alone. Learn from their mistakes, you are smart enough to see they don't treat you right, use that knowledge to make yourself a positive force and good example for the rest of the world.

I'm going to side with jametto. Social isolation is serious. And the fact that the parents don't feel comfortable with other kids in the house? That's a pretty poor reason for denying something important to teenagers.

Okay, what to do. Basically, the fact that your Dad can seemingly have a rational argument but can't really, that's not good. Basically, all the skills in world peacemaking. For example, when the Israeli military attacked the USS Liberty in 1967, did an Israeli military commander intentionally order this attack, and how far up the hierarchy did this go . . .

All this for just a household argument ? ? And the answer is, yes. All this for a household argument. You have to use your best.

In addition to a pessimist, your Dad sounds like a "be righter." Once again, have to use your best skills.

We are living in the middle of the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression (per one study, it bottomed out summer '09, and is slowly, slowly starting to get better). I am an optimist. Things will get better, but it may take a while.

So, jametto, you will run into well-meaning bootstrappers (and some not so well-meaning ones!) who will tell you that if you really want a job bad enough, etc. etc. etc., you know the party line as well as I do . . . Well, I often find that I come on too strong and that I have to consciously use a light or medium-touch, and just allow myself to make mistakes and keep trying.

It's 10% unemployment. If one counts people working part-time who are seeking full-time, it is higher. Now, if we ask, is this a technical 10% unemployment or a real 10%? No, this is a real 10% unemployment.

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All the same, as a young person of 21, you have your whole life ahead of you. I encourage you to dream big. First and foremost, I encourage you to give yourself the gift of considering being a doctor. At first, just consider it. Now, if you're great at science, that's fine. But all you have to do is be good enough at science to apply and explain it. That is, you need to be a bridge person with your patients. So, I'd recommend reading a couple of medical school autobiographies and seeing what you think.

Have your thought about being an entrepreneur, accountant, lawyer, engineer, artist? Different levels of risk involved, different levels of time required.

My dream is the triple play: school, a job, and a business all at the same time! You see, even if you're not in school right now, you can be prestudying and thus kind of gearing up for when you might be in school. And if you do it on your own terms, it's not a loss even if you never formally talk that subject, it's a gain. And if you do a business like auto repair, detailing, tutoring, computer repair, etc. which is primarily a service, it's a small initial investment but a pretty considerable upside (keep trying, don't expect to hit it the first time, keep trying and eventually you'll get lucky).

If you have an Uncle, Aunt, grandparent, even if you're not real close, maybe just starting off writing a letter, having a place you can stay at 3 or 4 days might be very helpful. And maybe starting off a shorter visit.

This might be an example of how good medicine works, and you can also try some stuff yourself. The key component is to ping-pong back and forth between trying something, feedback, and trying some new.

Okay, here's the example from medicine, patient has infection, doctor blasts it with one broad-spectrum antibiotic, doesn't work, blasts it with a second broad-spectrum. Poor medicince, right? I mean, the doctor doesn't know what's going on. Well, actually, this feedback and ping-ponging back and forth is good medicine, and it took me a long time to wrap my mind around this. You see, in the time we could do a test, if one is even available, we could just go ahead and try the first broad-spectrum antibiotic. And if it works, that's diagnostic to an extent. If it doesn't work, that's also diagnostic and helps our decision of what to try next. The only way this can run astray is if the doctor is a huffster and after the second attempt basically insists that he or she must be right and you must be wrong. Not so cool.

You want a doctor you can halfway talk with. Yes, be satisfied with mediocrity. But even that's not so easy to find. Okay, some things you might try and experiment with (and I am not a doctor)

sunshine, maybe a morning walk, say within a half hour of waking up to kind of set your Circadian clock

exercise, but no later than 6pm if you're trying to go to bed by 11pm

the old standby of warm milk or cereal with warm milk shortly before laying in bed

warm shower

something like an air filter that provides "white noise"

herbal remedy, these are of course real drug

talk with your 15 yr old sister, and hopefully she can realistically understand, and follow through most of the time (you can't really expect more with a 15 yr old!)

a plan to limit worries to a medium 'writing period,' perhaps away from the house


(again, I am not a doctor. Medical journalism down the road, now that's a possibility!)

As someone who had parents that abused me in every way possible, when they weren't they neglected me and my sisters and left me on my own to raise my sisters at age 13, most of the time hungry and a couple steps away from becoming homeless, l have little pity for you.

ok, it's finally happened.....class warfare on wrong planet. i will have no difficulty in choosing a side. i will be flounder in animal house. we need a bluto to lead the charge.........(i'm too lame)....." who's with meeeeeeeeee"!

Heck..you are 21, ...if you can't fall asleep due to the noise, get an iPod or a radio and a bottle of rye whiskey or vodka....that oughtta get you to sleep. Just lay back with your tunes playing and let the rye do the rest. My favourites are Royal Reserve or Crown Royal ( Canadian whiskies)

I'll second what these guys are saying. I can sort of understand your resentment at the double standard, and your parents' sheepish excuse "times have changed." You live their- your sister's friends don't. I think it's fair to ask them to quiet down (you live there, not them) but that might worse the situation. But dang! You really touched off a nerve with some of the people here! I'm kinda drunk I think.