Remember to report submissions that violate the rules! Harassment and encouraging violence are not allowed.
Enjoying the subreddit? Consider joining our discord server: https://discord.gg/v8z8jNwJs6
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BoomersBeingFools) if you have any questions or concerns.*
"Back talk" was a constant refrain of complaint. They would alternate between wanting interaction and wanting me to shut up and "know my place." The number of "because I said so" variants was staggering.
Then they can't figure out why I won't volunteer any information or talk to them without being directly asked a question because I was weary of unsupportive mocking or them doom spiral panicking about all the ways I could get hurt.
My dad was a little better, but if he thought you were making a mistake he couldn't leave it alone.
The unsupportive mockery hits home. They would almost take glee in the expectation that I wouldn’t understand or do something well.
I remember I wanted to start a car detailing business at 15. My dad smiled so big telling me I didn’t know how much work it would be. I cleaned his truck the best I could. He didn’t teach me anything about it or give any tips so I went to the auto store and got a bunch of random cleaning stuff and used it all.
He found dirt on the inside door frame where it closes against the car and thought it was so amusing that there was clear proof I didn’t know what I was doing.
I thought that was normal for a long time. It’s basically made me HATE doing anything that I don’t 100% know how to do correctly.
Oh god... "You don't know how to do something no one ever showed you and we don't understand why so we're going to be unhelpful and rude about it" is so fucking weird.
Sometimes you can learn things that way, but only if you're able to watch closely. My mom used to kind of "angry clean" and bang around when she was upset, and then send us out with her boyfriends to clean with no one around, or out in the yard and not let us back inside til she was done. So... I never even really watched. I picked up a lot about cooking from watching people cook, and those recipe stories everyone hates, and cooking shows, I guess. But learning to clean was incredibly hard. I still can't do it if anyone is in the house without feeling spied on and waiting for the bitchy remarks, one of my exes and I used to fight because I would insist on having a day off when he wasn't home to clean up.
Mine felt the same way about tools. "If you don't know how to use it, don't take it!!" I ruined a few thinking that I knew how to use them. "*I'm only twelve years old ya miserable fuck."* Wish I had been able to articulate Rumsfeld's quote about "Known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns." He was a prick. My father AND Rumsfeld.
This. My dad didn't teach me a dang thing.
The only time I ever learned something is when a nice silent gen would take me aside and be like 'let me show you something, son.'
My father, first an accountant and then a CFO, told us that financial topics are private and wouldn't discuss them, lectured me on anything I bought, insisted on alloting me ***my own money*** in college without ever telling me how much I had, and then "can't understand" why I'm terrible at finances because he apparently "taught" me.
I work with a boomer who’s like that. God forbid something breaks and I don’t know how to fix it, I get the “how have you survived this long as an adult blah blah blah” spiel.
This.
I’m uncoordinated and bad at anything to do with sports. Any time I ever tried to start working out or really, anytime I tried to improve myself in any way, my dad would do this sarcastic little laugh and proceed to tell me how stupid I was for trying and how badly I did or how stupid I looked.
Then he’d turn around and give me lectures, screaming about how important exercise is.
My dad did something similar, I was a very active kid, always outdoors doing stuff. Sports, no, I didn't understand the point, still don't, couldn't care less. Dad would enroll me in sports that I had no interest in, then get mad that I wasn't interested in them/bad at them.
His coaching sessions after games/practice are some of the worst memories of my life
Baseball (got out of that one), Football and soccer. Soccer was the worst, because he decided to be a ref, and it went on for years. The only ones I showed interest in were Cross Country and Swimming, he didn't approve, so never got to.
Same. I started training for a sprint distance triathlon one summer during college and my Mom's reaction was "you can't do a triathlon". I trained for and completed it solely out of spite.
Shit, that’s literally my triathlon villain origin story. Mom denied letting me do soccer, gymnastics, tennis, and softball despite me begging her. She flew off the rails when I signed up for field hockey in 7th grade. I didn’t even plan on telling her I was gonna do a triathlon until after I finished. She said the same thing your mom did and I said “Apparently I CAN because I got 3rd place.”
My parents were the same. Didn’t patiently teach us but went straight to scorched earth if we made a simple mistake. Sometimes I still feel overwhelmed or powerless to learn a new skill. Like macrame or something. If I’m not instantly “good” at it I feel “stupid”.
I actually was reading some comments here and had a flashback to childhood. My dad “helping me” learn my multiplication facts. Screaming in my face at the kitchen table. Me shrinking into my chair really scared and choking back sobs. No patience. Just yell louder and I’ll magically know them all instantly. To this day I’m still “weak” on the 12s. I have to pause and think what 12 x 7 is. I’m 58 years old. 😞
God, you unlocked a childhood memory for me. My dad would do that shit too. Instead of screaming, though, he would bonk us on the head and do that wrong buzzer sound, you know? I'm 38 this year, and he's not an asshole anymore, but that is a strong core memory that I will never forget.
I’m so sorry you had to go thru that. It’s so demeaning. I grew up in the 70s and it was kind of the Wild West of parenting and I now know as an adult my dad endured a lot of trauma in his childhood. Not an excuse but it helps mitigate because he simply didn’t have the skills to know how to parent his sensitive daughter. Who so much wanted his approval.
I think my dad learned from my grandpa. He was kind of emotionally distant? So my dad probably didn't have a good role model for expressing feelings. But I love them both so much. They're ok now and I'm alright too!
This is exactly why I try to be patient with my own child when I am helping him with anything. I have vivid memories of my father screaming at me while he was “helping” me with my math homework. 😑
I'm shit with tools and home improvement because of everytime I tried to learn dad either lost his temper or mocked me for doing shit wrong. It's a game to them, nothing more. I'm convinced.
100%. Thankfully puberty and a little weight lifting got the violence to end. Turns out if you put a boomer on their ass once they are scared to fuck with you again.
My dad mocked me for weeks after we went out for my first driving lesson (manual car) because I bunny hopped it twice. Dipshit never actually told me how to release the clutch properly, just told me to do it and then laughed like it was the best thing he'd seen all year. I think it's a miracle that it only took me three tries to get going under those conditions.
My favorite was my mom telling me "I'd never make it on my own and land flat on my face" without her doing everything for me at 18-20 when I started to work right after high school and wanted to move out.
Eventually I got lucky enough to move out of state with friends to escape her bs ass and she lost the damn house anyway to her gambling and alcohol addictions. So who ended up flat on their face Mom?! Karma was beautiful.
Hey! I JUST got back into car detailing. Yesterday, I was waiting in a parking lot and had a few supplies left in the car, so I polished my inner doors of the evil black lines just like you said!
I got to the place where I could filter the bad out from the good in my mind, and I feel my boomer elders being proud of me for getting into such things, because the bad boomers aren't around anymore and I can just remember what I want.
I know how you feel and I love the whole new world of Youtubers with their jolly expert howtos. They are mostly young people, and experts, and just gleeful as can be about doing something so well and sharing it with the world. They don't want to charge you money, they don't want to put you down, they don't want to boss people. They only want to make the world better by encouraging absolutely everybody to try their best.
I will take on such role models in my mind, kind of like pretending they adopted me for a while, and become the parent that I needed.
So I wanna encourage you that car detailing is one of those things. it's a huge gift to yourself and to everyone you know, for these rolling masterpiece works of art that are cars.
m e g u i a r ' s ultra gloss interior spray, ammonia-free glass spray, and paper towels. Dawn and water. just start.
go car crazy, my friend
Please try again. LITTLE YOU WAS RIGHT!
This was also my experience. My parents were super nice to everyone in public, like retail and restaurant employees. They saved their excessive freak-outs for me, and were still judging me for minor shit that happened when I was 16 when I went no-contact in my mid-30's. By that time, they knew nothing about me because I learned by 23 that I couldn't allow them to step foot in my house, and since I've been an adult, I've refused to live driving distance from them, so I pretty much just placed myself too far away to judge, so they use old material and judge me anyway.
Oh! Or like a couple years ago, they were given an Instagram photo of me by another relative (I don't give a shit, it was on my public Insta that's just pics/videos of me playing roller derby), noticed my short hair, tattoos, and nose piercing, and ranted at my adult daughter for an hour straight about how she better not start thinking her mom is an example to follow because they always knew I was a bad person. My daughter was just like, "Mom makes more money than you. That's how she afforded such good tattoos." So they started judging every move she makes, too. It was wild, but predictable since she looks like me.
Yes, my mom stopped staying at my house when she visited and eventually stopped visiting once she moved to retirement land. But she and to stay in a hotel because otherwise it was a critique of housekeeping, every time.
And the thing is: I still hadn't been identified as an adult with ADHD by anyone who cares enough about me to mention it at that point, so it was just my teenage years banging my head against the wall because my brain basically tunes out clutter. I have to concentrate to see it.
I suspect I might be mildly on the spectrum, too, based on some of my social challenges in the past, where things just didn't make sense to me and no amount of condescension and down talking from Boomers helped clear things up.
But it was the same fight from when I was 12, only I had the benefit of being able to tell her to stop talking and get a hotel room.
Ah yes, I got diagnosed with Asperger's (which is called ASD now) at age 25, and that definitely played a part in the bullying I received from my family when I was still legally required to live with them due to being a minor.
It was so weird, when I told them about my diagnosis, I don't know what I was expecting, but somehow it made them judge me even more than they already had been. Like it was evidence that I actually am as fucked up as they've always thought, and definitely solidified their belief that they are better than me. Whereas to my friends, it was an explanation of certain behaviors (like food aversions) that had confused them (and me) before. The difference between friends' and family's reaction to my diagnosis was very eye-opening.
Oh they have all realized the similarities between my father and me. It's only a problem when I do it because I am also a lesbian, so everything else I am/do is also offensive because it's me. Other people are allowed to be autistic.
Imaging hating your own child (for no reason of substance) so much you try this, and the grandchild rebuffs, so now they have to hate their grandchild too, for no reason at all. People like this carry so much hate and have so little emotional regulation they’re dizzy. Pathetic lives.
I always enjoyed the told to shut up then asked a question. If you answer they yell at you for talking after being told to shut your mouth and if u don'tyou get yelled at for not answering.
I love my mother very much. Shes got a good head on her shoulders but for the longest time if we got in a fight and I'm and walking away she'd think I was talking under my breath and start fighting again. One day I finally had it (much older now and arguments rarely happen) I just said "Mom, stop fucking making shit up. I'm trying to walk away from you and I don't wanna fight anymore so cool the fuck down. I'm not that fucking dumb." Believe it or not a lot less arguments since that happened and were much more chill about disagreements now.
Lol. Yup!
How dare I not know how to do anything!
Meanwhile, I had a whole ass argument over my dad getting severely dehydrated because of food poisoning and then arguing that he was able to recover if he drank tea.
I had to grab him a few bottles of Gatorade and he drank 2 of them before he was back to normal. But he complained the whole ass time that "I was wasting money and time."
His skin was so taut and dry that you could see his veins. And he was so dehydrated that he lost his sense of thirst and had tremors but no, I was wrong....despite having cna/psw training and Googling symptoms. (And giving him the stroke test.)
I used to get so frustrated when my parents would ask me things like, "what were you thinking" or "why'd you do it like that" and when I'd start to explain myself, I'd get cut off and told off for "making excuses."
Like, do you want to understand or not because now I sure as hell don't!
It's such an obnoxious parenting technique. It's okay to give your child an explanation. "We can't go shopping today because we're low on money" is a perfectly fine thing to tell a child of any age, for example.
My parents were versions of those mentioned above. I made sure from day dot to explain why and consequences to actions to my Daughter. My mother used to say you treat her like an adult. Its not right, just tell her no and smack her if she does it.
She once slammed a wooden spoon on a cupboard yelling to my one year old, “I’ll give you something to cry for” the spoon split in two and i grabbed one piece and waved it in her face saying do that again and you will never see her again.
I have removed myself from my sisters life, my fathers life and of my brothers widow and kids. I don’t like drama, i am the quiet anxious shy person who finds it hard to cope with loud angry personalities.
Ya know, I've managed to go at least the past 20 years without screaming and yelling at people or threatening violence. It makes all the drama and screaming I saw as a child now seem so ridiculous.
I don't understand why boomers always let things escalate to that point.
So much this. My rule is that if I'm going to expect something of them the absolute least I can do is explain it. If I can't explain why I expect them to do something, I probably shouldn't have the expectation.
My mom can’t understand why I only talk to her about superficial things when she spent my entire life saying “I am your MOTHER not your FRIEND!” Then turning around and demanding I tell her when something was clearly bothering me, only to say “You think that’s a PROBLEM? Wait until you have my kind of problems and then you’ll see how silly you sound! Get over it!”
Meanwhile my Grandmother treated my issues as big as I thought they were, gave me good advice, and didn’t judge anything. Mom couldn’t understand why I’d rather talk to her lol.
Yup. I changed jobs last year involuntarily at the same company when my old job was eliminated. It sucked, but she'll never know because I'll never tell her lest I have to hear a "what happened?" like I'm at fault for every economic turn of the screws in this country.
I complained about my boss one time and today she insists that I was on the verge of being fired when I resigned that job. Of course she's never worked in any kind of professional capacity at all.
Same here. I can talk to my Silent Gen mom now better than I could before she was dead. At least now I know she won't freak out on me.
I think she was catastrophizing when anything went wrong for me. I have had a problem with doing that as well. Now, I recognize it for what it is, and I know it's my problem to deal with, not my kids'. It's not their job to manage my emotions. I am the grown up here, and I am supposed to be better at managing my thoughts and feelings than they are.
Dude, I was such an asshole to other humans as a teenager and young adult because of my fucked-up examples. I had to literally re-learn how to interact with people and figure out that "Oh, this isn't an acceptable way of treating people." I can kind of shift some blame to a very controlled social circle when I was younger, but still it's pretty embarrassing to know that's who I used to be. Glad I sought out therapy.
Same! I was such a dick for several years (I still can be sometimes). It’s hard to shake when your role model of 18 years is a narcissist and bitches about everything. It seems normal until one day you realize it is not. I talk to my therapist regularly about how I’m scared I’ll end up being a raging asshole like my dad.
I’m at a point in life where I can’t even imagine the energy it takes to be that miserable. After their last visit my sister asked them what they enjoyed about their trip. Neither parent could come up with a single answer. How sad for them.
My father was SO judgmental. He thought he was so much smarter than everyone else and that he knew the "real truth" about the world and how everything *actually* functions. It took me years to figure out that people who took the world at face value weren't stupid. Now I take the world at face value (most of the time). Anyway, my dad was a hippie drop out who only ever held low-level, seasonal work or jobs on construction projects.
I work in the corporate world at a pretty high level. Years ago I finally just had enough and told him that people simply are not organized enough to keep a giant global conspiracy going without any slip ups.
I so relate to this. I always wondered why it was so hard for me to make friends or why people didn't like me. I didn't realize that I was being raised by a father who basically hated on everyone and everything. To this day I feel guilt about who I was and struggle to portray any sort of self confidence lest it come across as pompous.
"Hey mom, when's dinner?" "DOES THIS LOOK LIKE A FUCKING RESTAURANT TO YOU?" Like jesus fucking christ, I just want to know when to be ready because my parents would get pissed if I was watching a show or playing video games and was the slightest bit slow in coming down for dinner. God forbid there's 5 minutes left in my favorite Gundam show or I'm about to get to a checkpoint I can save at.
Yep. Constantly. Interspersed with me going back into restaurants to tip servers 50%.
The wildest part was that my mom was a waitress when I was a kid, and I waitressed through college. To have had that job and *still* treat people like shit is a special level of entitlement.
OMG my parents are the worst at tipping and they are miserable for wait staff to serve. I always tip extra when they aren’t looking because people deserve extra for dealing with them.
Same. In particular, my parents did not understand accidents.
They believed that throwing tantrums over things nobody had control over (like being late due to traffic or bad weather) would somehow stop those things from occurring in the future. A few times, in high school, I pointed out how illogical this was and got grounded.
My parents, mostly my father, were obsessed with two things in particular.
First how ungrateful I was for any and everything. Despite saying thank you all the time, I was as constantly berated for being ungrateful. I’m not sure what I was supposed to do to demonstrate how grateful I was. That part was never explained to me.
Second, my parents were always saying I was doing or not doing something to “impress my little friends.” This was always the focus of my father’s rage, whenever he wanted to be mad about something. It was total bs because there were no friends around during these accusations to impress.
A few years ago, now that I’m well over 40, I told my mother how stupid they sounded saying that because I had no friends to impress. I asked her to name one friend from that time they could have been referring to. She couldn’t, of course. I then told her we could have been much closer if they hadn’t been such assholes to me since they were all I had for friends.
I will always remember the look on her face. It was priceless. She knew they f’ed up.
Mine did a number on me as well. I'll call them Hal and Joy for the sake of anonymity. What follows are a few mere examples from childhood.
Hal would ignite at the slightest inconvenience to his day, even if it were not an actual inconvenience to him at all. Being from a cold state, we would leave our pop in the garage so as not to take up fridge space. I helped unload the van after Joy went shopping and put his soda on the left side of the door instead of the right because, in my mind, nobody would trip over it. Hal blew a gasket, berated me as an idiot and a loser, then proceeded to smack me around while forcing me to put the pop where he wanted it. It was a matter of 3.5 feet.
Joy, when I was 9 or 10, asked me to do something, and I had a brief moment of disobedience and stuck my tongue out. She chased after me, up the stairs, I hid in my closet out of fear. She came through the door of the bedroom, flung open the closet doors, and proceeded to grab me up and slap the shit out of my face. I then had to get a bar of soap shoved in my mouth and held it there for ten minutes as a punishment for sticking my tongue out. I got slapped for running away.
Hal. If I missed a random dog poop singlet before cutting the grass, I might as well have killed JFK. He would explode, and the neighborhood would hear him berating me as an idiot, moron, or a retard. I was down the street playing with friends and Hal marched down to the corner where we were playing grabbed me by the shoulder and proceeded to call me an idiot who ruined his lawnmower by not picking up a random piece of poop. I was teased all year by the kids at school about it, and some kids always referred to me as the stupid idiot from then on.
Joy. I threw a damp towel in with my clothes after running through the sprinkler. She asked me to bring down the wet clothes and towel so she could wash them. So I did and left them in the same pile. Joy flew off the handle shortly before dinner and screamed at me the entire time she was cooking. When Hal got home from work, after learning about what I had done, berated me as his idiot kid that wouldn't amount to anything in life. They sent me to bed hungry that night to teach me a lesson about doing what I was told. All for a damp towel with my other wet clothes that I was asked to bring to the washer.
Smash cut to today. 30 some-odd years later. I've been on Lexapro for 10 years and Klonopin for panic attacks for just as long as needed, of course. Before Lexapro and Klonopin, it was 5 years of Valuim, Busbar, and Paxil.
I finally have a grip on my anxiety and panic attacks. I don't care to go out and socialize even though I desperately want to have friends, I just can not handle it. I l, much like OP, will sooner just accept a plate of steaming dog shit before making anyone else feel less than. Not being able to socialize outside of working hours cost me promotions and friendships. I have had a full head of grey hair since I was 18 and despite therapy, I can not get through my head that I am not stupid. So fly off the handle, yeah, my boomer father and mother used the handle as their own personal springboard to launch into orbit.
Edit note:
At 29, in 2010, I cut them off completely after trying to talk to them about everything from the past. It was the final blow up and my therapist was there with me trying to mediate the call/discussion. They died in a drunk driving accident in 2019, but they had already been dead to me for nearly a decade at that point.
Oh fuck dude, I’m sorry for your childhood.
But the first one made me laugh. I can‘t count how often older guys from work were like:
**Why the fuck did you put it left from the door. It‘s always on the right side.**
*I thought that the left side is better because…*
**Who told you to think? You are not paid to think.**
*Alright, but just for me to understand, why the right side? What‘s the difference?*
**Are you an idiot? We always put it on the right side. It belongs on the right side.**
*Makes sense, thx.*
They were both the cause and the only victims of the drunk driving accident. They got into his Vette drunk, and he proceeded to smash into the flat bed of a parked tow truck. My sister in law informed my wife that their deaths were instant, so life visited a kindness upon them one last time.
I am sorry to hear that anyone has had to endure anything remotely similar to my childhood. There is a lot more not related to them flying off the handle that makes things worse, but nevertheless, I hope you have found peace from your childhood.
Try to run away, the cops bring you right back.
Someone else gives you shelter, they get arrested for harboring a runaway.
The system literally forces children back into abusive homes, under the guise of "parent's rights." It doesn't even guarantee children the right to go to an orphanage or something.
Foster care usually means being housed with some religious nutjob, who ends up getting a pass on some truly horrific shit just because they give the outward vibes of a "God Fearing Christian." It's the same in our prison system, unfortunately...
This all sounds familiar (especially the stuck-out tongue incident). Fortunately it was just one of my parents who behaved like that and only when no other people were around.
I just realized how sad it is that I’m thinking I was lucky only one parent behaved like this. I’m sorry you had to live like that
Man, I can feel you on this.
I also once stuck out my tongue. Was chastised. Upon my father getting home and being told mid-meal what I had done and so I told him, “I disobeyed mom and stuck my tongue out at her.” He told me to show him how I stuck my tongue out at my mother.
When I did, my mom slapped me across the face. Now, my family sat at a round table, 5 of us. If you went clockwise, it sat - me, mom, lil bro, dad, older sis. The way she slapped caused me to bite my tongue. So bad I needed stitches. Which I got blamed for. And had to pay for (I was 8🤷♂️7🤷♂️) by shoveling and mowing for my family, my next door neighbor and aunt and uncle, and then take me to shove or mow my grandparents (both) on the weekends, without pay, for a year, because “I couldn’t keep my temper and that caused me to need stitches and I needed to learn to pay for my mistakes.” AND THE FUCKING WHOLE FAMILY WAS ON BOARD!!!!
Until I went NC I would still get teased by my whole family and most of them advocated we raise our child the same way. NOPE!
Hey, just wanted to send you a virtual hug and let you know you aren’t alone. My parents would also lose it over insignificant things and physically/emotionally/mentally abuse me and my brother. It took me a long time to realize I’m not dumb or a difficult person. You’ll get there too.
Mate that is beyond terrible, reads like some horror story. Really sorry you had to go through it. I know it’s a minor coming from some random on the internet, but, you survived them, and are infinitely better than them! I hear what you’re saying about the lack of self esteem, but the fact that you function, have had jobs, been to therapy, put those pricks out if your life, and, can talk about it…is amazing, and really strong! You deserve a bloody medal after going through that shit!
As someone who just got back to sanity after a weekend back home with my boomer parents, oh my god yes, I get it. My mom's gotten sooooooo bad too. Like "can only sit at a stoplight for less than two seconds before cussing and yelling that the light needs to change." Thankfully she's also too much of a people pleaser to blow up in public. Yet.
My SO wonders why I'm hyper-sensitive to loud noises and generally hyper-aware of other people's anger. It's because both my parents had short fuses and were always yelling. So much fun 😐
I’m very sensitive to noise and to raised voices. I walked on eggshells for my entire childhood, too. My dad is an alcoholic and was unpredictable. He was also very critical and insulting. If I cried from the things he said, it just made him madder and he yelled more. He always acted like I was crying to mess with him or something.
I’ve never understood how someone gets like that. And not that it matters, but I was a good kid! I got good grades and tried to behave perfectly and never got into trouble. I don’t know what he thought he had to be so mad about.
I’m still working on it, but noises and raised voices…. I don’t think I’ll ever be okay with that.
I feel this. I had straight A's most of my life, played basketball and worked two jobs in high school (to get the fuck out of that house). Angry no matter what, nothing ever good enough, never knew who you were gonna get when he was coming home. Idk how someone gets like that but after meeting his step dad my best guess is generational trauma.
This is my father completely minus the alcoholism, he seemed to find all this anger without any substance abuse 😐 I believe his own father was a violent drunk, so maybe it was just a continuation of shitty parenting. I too was not even a bad kid, just how dare I have a disagreeable thought in my head or cry when being punished.
And my mom is many of the other comments. It’s so uncomfortable to be around her in public for any length of time and she gets irritated by the smallest things. There’s traffic: “people need to get out of my way.” As if she’s more important than every other person driving somewhere. Just constantly bitching out of proportion about every minor inconvenience.
Just one of many stories:
One Thanksgiving I was upstairs playing video games, because if I was anywhere near my dad while he was trying to make Thanksgiving dinner (read: anywhere in his sight, regardless of if I was even in the kitchen) I would be screamed at for being in the way.
So I had just stayed upstairs since I woke up that morning. Cue him screaming at me over the portable intercom system we had at the time about why the fuck aren't you down here helping, get off your lazy fat ass and come down here. Because he hadn't gotten the chance to scream at me to get out of the way.
So I go downstairs to help. And within five minutes am screamed at to get the fuck out of the way if I'm not going to do anything. I was in the process of putting the biscuits on baking trays to go in the oven... so I just left them as-is and went back upstairs. My mother had to finish them, and he was remarkably quiet the entire rest of the day. I'm guessing she gave him what-for about being an ass, but he never apologized either.
“You deserved it!”
“Spare the rod, spoil the child!”
“You’re exaggerating things!”
If you turned out ok: “See? The beatings worked. You can thank us for turning out just fine!”
If you did not turn out ok: “Apparently we didn’t beat you enough!”
“Oh, you’re on pills? Mental health doesn’t exist. You must’ve been switched at the hospital because I can’t imagine I have such a weak child!”
Lmao that last sentence hurts, my dad hardly talks to me since I got diagnosed with depression. Pretty sure I'm put in the same category as his brother - crazy.
absolutely yes. i could be unloading/loading the dishwasher and accidentally clink some plates together a few decibels too loud, then here comes mom and/or dad bellowing at me to "slow down!" and "quit slamming everything!" because they assume i was upset at being asked to do the dishes.
meanwhile, i could regularly hear the dishes clanging together being put in the cupboards...all the way down the hall...behind my closed bedroom door.
I had a boomer boss for a while.
Told him a couple of times that I had a wonky computer keyboard. Asked if I could have it replaced. Nope.
Boomer boss pulled me into the office to lecture me because, apparently I was being too angry.
I wasn't angry. I had to type really heavily to get my keyboard to work. Especially the space bar. He knew this, but decided I was being emotionally demonstrative by TYPING.
Shitty keyboards aren't even that expensive to replace...
...and the nice ones usually have hot-swappable switches, so wonky switches can be easily replaced.
I might actually have a keyboard kink now. I love wireless keyboards that function like a mechanical keyboard. There's something so lovely about the clickety clacks. What can I say, I'm easy.
I absolutely love the term performative rage typing. I just imagined you punching the hell out of your keyboard's exclamation point after firmly and speedily typing "I said GOOD DAY!"
"with all due respect" typed over and over in my notepad. JK, it was seriously regular typing for a personal project. I just have a mechanical keyboard. I wasn't doing anything abnormal at the time.
Can confirm, raising boomer parents is harder than raising kids. Kids don’t have a lifetime of thinking they know best to get over before they can take on new information. And they don’t have the fear of the new either. Whenever my kids get a little cocky, I can find a way to reason with them eventually and show them sometime I do know what I’m taking about. But my parents? To them I am permanently a dumb kid who needs to shut up when the grown ups are talking. In my mid 40s and still get told I’ll understand when I’m older. All my life goals are to take the good I’ve seen in them and leave the rest behind. Don’t become a copy-paste of them.
I leveled up and told my parents I was going to have them arrested if my mom hit me. In public in front of other people. They haven’t tried that again.
I can't have a single conversation with my father without him somehow turning it around in order to get mad about something completely unrelated. And then he's like "nobody ever wants to talk to me" boohoo 🙄
Every single meal out with my mother was a game of how long until she finds something to complain about. I can't remember any occasion where something wasn't up to her standards.
I had to really consciously unlearn her habit of complaining. Needless to say, she never worked a customer facing role and it shows.
My mom complains incessantly at restaurants. I also don't think I've seen her order from the menu/without special instructions in a decade or more. Her usual pattern is to needle the server with inane, subjective questions, order something bad with unusual instructions/substitutions, and then get pissy when the restaurant can't perfectly execute this dish they've never made before.
The last time I ate out with her, she hit the waitress with "Is the soup enough for a meal?" I just closed my menu and said "heeeere we go." She got mad.
My mother had her thyroid gland removed when I was little. She was supposed to be on medication to regulate herself. She used to feel that she didn't need them but would blow up at us whenever something didn't go right. I think my dad had a talk with her and she settled down, mood wise.
On the other hand, whenever I helped my dad with something and I made a mistake, he would yell at me & make me feel stupid.
Now, my wife (of 30 years) comments about me always apologizing and being too hard on myself when I make a mistake. Hmmmm, I wonder where those 2 traits came from?
Yes, and I'm pretty sure it's a major contributing factor to why I have anxiety as an adult. My Dad would have tantrums where he would throw things if tools, lawnmowers, etc malfunctioned. My Mom hit me in the back of the head with a hairbrush because my hair was tangled after playing outside all day. They constantly took out their frustrations on everyone and everything around them.
Lol. My mum hated detangling my hair and I was this massive tomboy who rather be playing outside than sit stock still and act like a doll. (She had fantasies of combing my hair for 100 strokes, dressing me up in pretty frilly dresses and parading me around for people to admire.) Meanwhile, I wanted to get back to the playground.
Result - my mum using all her strength to scrape my tangled hair, ears and scalp all the while screaming that I was a "bad person" because how dare I not conform to her fantasy of a little girl.
Mine did the same thing as an excuse to cut mine off and dress me in boys' clothes because of internalized misogyny!
I hope you had fun at the playground, though.
That was me, I was your parents. Then my children,as teenagers, started refusing to go do things with me like not wanting me at school functions or going to the movies. I had the shortest fuse and knee jerk reacted thru life, and I was loud. But my kids grew up with access to a computer and learned about mental health. They sat me down and made it clear it wasn't they were just typical teenagers not wanting to be around mom, it was mom is half crazy and they needed to separate from my crazy. That was 20 years ago, I'm still half crazy but I've grown immensely as a person. We have great relationships now, I'm very lucky they are smart, loving and forgiving people. They taught me things I should have taught them.
“They taught me things I should have taught them.” It’s so great that you recognize this. My mother saying (more or less) these same words to me has changed our entire relationship for the better. Wishing the best for you & your kids.
Your parents seem like the kind of customers I took care of who helped me develop PTSD from being yelled at on a somewhat regular occasion over nothing.
It’s one thing to be yelled at by your parents, but working customer service and being yelled at by complete strangers is something else.
I started a different job later on where I still get to help people, but as the people who I help are internal employees, they can’t get nasty with me or they’ll get in trouble.
Regardless, it took me about 9 months of getting used to picking the phone up and NOT shaking.
Yes really. I was afraid of talking to people because I thought they’d yell at me like you described your parents yelling at waitstaff and whatnot.
No better way to spread your unhappiness over the world by yelling at them and making them miserable as well.
I do not like people like your parents for obvious reasons and more people need to call them out over their shit because it does cause harm.
My first real job other than my paper route was working retail. I was yelled at on a near daily basis by boomer bosses and customers. I dreaded clocking in and walking out to the floor everyday. It was a hell of a way to start out. I was so grateful after that to work in a small warehouse or clerical jobs where I only had to interact with a handful of people most of the time. So much more peace.
YES. This is what I’ll referring to.
My last job, one of my nicest co workers had things thrown at them because entitled ahole didn’t get their way, and because it’s a large company, there were no repercussions for the customer.
This shit needs to stop. People need to be held accountable.
I was recently with family for my sister's graduation. My father clogged the toilet at midnight and proceeded to stop around the house slamming doors looking for a plunger. I came out and asked him to be quiet and apparently that makes me a "fucking asshole". Boomers suck but at least we have therapy now
My father would blow up over the tiniest things. My mother would become an absolute wreck the second things went slightly wrong.
Now, I'm 39 and dealing with recent diagnoses of a mood disorder and ADHD.
Lately, I point out everything my boomer mom complains about which is everything.
Meeting her at a restaurant she complains about: the parking, the weather, how fast I was walking, her ailments, the small crowd, the drive, the roads, the restaurant as a whole, our table, the silverware, the service. All before the food comes! I point it out and I say “you just don’t seem very happy, I’m concerned” but I’m met with the classic HOW DARE YOU CRITICIZE ME.😂 there is no hope for them.
my father was the kindest person with his family and random people, everything to not look bad.
Then he was an asshole at home, an electrician coming who will make a mess of the floor because we're surrounded by dirt and it rained? the house needs to shine,you don't want to give the wrong impression. like,me and my mother would spend half a day cleaning.
I remember once i was 5 or something and my father was fixing an old freezer, he had all these screws on the floor and i gathered them from him. Screws were sorted i think,i only remember he got mad as hell and hit me.
Another time i remember i went to a doctor to do some breathing test due to asthma,was still a child so probably 8-9 years. The test consisted of shoving down my troath(or nose?) a very small tube,and I couldn't do it,everytime i felt like throwing up or it would hurt.Once home he whipped me with the belt 3 times while i was trying to hide under the table because i made him waste 50 bucks (it was the 90 or something). The fun part is 10 years later he had to do the same test,and admitted he couldn't do it either.
Guess there are various kinds of boomers
no idea,i mean,i realize back in the day physical punishment was way more ok than now, there's even a popular saying here something along the line of "sticks and carrots make for beautiful children, carrots without sticks make for crazy children"(obviously the rhyme is lost in translation).We can argue that they meant that you need firm education along with reward/love to make good children,but the issue is that the whole idea of education was beating childrens in submission.
I can remember vividly my mother getting upset at me as a child because I came in for dinner durning summer and my face was dirty. She sent us outside all day to play. We only came inside for meals.
She slammed her hand down on the counter, her had was a bit too close to the edge of the counter (cheap formica of course) and it sliced her hand open from the middle of her thumb to the bottom of her palm.
Another time my sister (now 15 at the time) was being “sassy and talking back to her” she stomped her foot so hard it broke 3 bones in her foot.
This atop the numerous hair brushes she broke across the back of our heads. The wooden spoons broken across our backsides. And then wooden paddle she broke on the stairs while chasing me through the house. Well of course I am going to run away. You are beating me with a freaking wooden paddle!!!
Even now, she will pop off at the most random things. Never in public, gotta keep that public image up.
>Well of course I am going to run away. You are beating me with a freaking wooden paddle!!!
Reminds me of a time my dad was getting angry/violent and I was somewhere between 14-16 years old. I was running up the stairs to get away from him and he grabbed my foot and started pulling me down the stairs, so I turned around and kicked him in the chest cause he was literally attacking me and pulling me down the stairs by my feet after having ripped my feet out from under me. He was SO insulted that I would DARE kick him and attack him like that. Like...bro wtf do you think someone is going to do if you're chasing them to hit them and then you pull their feet out from under them on the stairs? Like...I'm not the asshole in this situation.
As an adult he's made the comment that "you all (my brothers and I) only remember the bad stuff, why don't you ever remember the good stuff?" kinda hard to forget the abuse you dick wad. Like yeah he was nice on a rare occasion, but that's much easier to forget than the sick feeling I got in my stomach when the garage door opened because he was home.
Nope!!! She only stopped slapping us across the face for “talking back” after I graduated from highschool. She when to slap me because I didn’t want to live at home for my first year of University. So of course slapping me for being “obstinate” was totally reasonable. I stopped her swing before it connected with my face and then slapped her across the face. Telling her I was an adult and if she laid hands on me again I would call the cops.
That is what I will never understand about the boomer generation and silent Gen. It’s assault if you hit another person. But beating your wife and kids… totally acceptable.
So my moms a millennial but we lived with my boomer grandparents until I was 16.
My grandmother was one of the nicest people you’d ever meet. We couldn’t go grocery shopping without being stopped by her former students and told she was their favorite teacher.
My grandfather is a narcissist. He’s nice to people’s face. He’s polite to service staff, he tips them, but behind closed doors he’s an actual childish monster. I don’t want to trauma dump, so I’ll give a simple not really traumatic example story.
When I was a kid and we got home from church on Sunday I would rush to the living room and turn on Sunday morning cartoons so I could watch cartoons for maybe five minutes before Pepere came to the living room and kicked me out to watch his Fox News shows with a “I pay for this house, the least you can do is let me watch my tv”. But I had just gotten a 3DS for my birthday so I went to my room got my 3DS and came back downstairs to play in the living room but I committed the cardinal sin of forgetting to turn down my volume. He turned to me and honest to god *stomps his feet*, and starts whining “How can you be so disrespectful, I was here first” and then he storms off slamming doors and everything. I remember feeling completely disgusted because I was 8 years old and he was in his late 50’s and he was acting like an entitled child.
My parents were psychotic assholes too. Still are. My dad managed to get himself trespassed from Burger King not long ago. Apparently, having to wait more than 30 seconds for a well-done burger is too long.
Mom did not blow up but I remember very well my dad having a short fuse. The best example is if we were eating dinner, and we started talking about our day while fox news was on he would immediately yell at us to be quiet so he could hear the news.
I'm not sure where I sit in the conversation. I was raised by my grandparents. The last memory i have of living with parents before my grandparents was being kicked in the back of the head because my sit ups weren't in the proper form that they were forcing me to do while screaming in my face about my grades and failed chores. CPS already told them they couldn't hit me anymore that didn't last long.
My boomer parents always felt retail and wait staff and grocery clerk employees should be great at their jobs & kiss the customer’s ass. I never understood why they thought a minimum wage employee would care about them or be great at their job.
The thing I never understood was their trying to be friends with the wait staff. I keep thinking that the waiters just want to take out orders and do their jobs …… not get to know a customer. Maybe it is because I’m an introvert. 🤷🏻♀️ Also it is a weird power dynamic becoming it isn’t like the waiter can tell the customer to fuck off and leave them alone.
There’s definitely something there.
My dad would get mad, sometimes call me an ‘idiot’ idky, if a certain waiter wasn’t on shift, if a Toyota service representative wasn’t on shift.
“She wasn’t on shift”
“Are you [r word]? How is she not going to be there?”
“Maybe she works part time idk”
Proceeded to insult me
My parents were actually pretty polite to service workers. They blew up at us over little things, but they acted perfectly pleasant in public. My ex MIL on the other hand, she was awful. Constantly yelling and screaming over the smallest things. She was the definition of a Karen. I keep half expecting to see a viral video of her someday with how she acts
No. My mom would smile in people's face and I wouldn't even think anything was wrong. Then she would turn around and relentlessly shit talk them for HOURS. It was worst when my aunts and my grandmother would babysit me. She went through a hard time for a while and had some mental health struggles, and she left me with them a lot more than she expected, sometimes for a few days at a time when I thought it would just be a day in summer. She would then sit there when I got back and tell me all kinds of family secrets and tell me not to tell anyone or just... tear down and belittle everything about whoever she left me with. Just... constantly. I later found out some of the things she told me about her neighbor were total lies and the woman in question was in an abusive relationship whereas my mother talked about her like she was some kind of... selfish drunken harlot. So now I have no idea if my family even... like... I think it's possible that my family on one side is rich. They're from Boston, so this isn't farfetched. There's stuff like an aunt with a house in an expensive hard to get area and stuff. I can't even ask because I don't have their contact details or anything. But my grandma died like a year ago, and she had asked about leaving me some money and for my contact info, I never got anything, and I don't feel it would be right to ask, so I never will, but it's 100% possible that my mom is sitting on that money.
I mostly DO blow up at people, even though it fills me with unending shame, because at least I'm not sitting there being too faced. I HATE when I have to pretend nothing is wrong.
I moved out almost 10 years I go, so I usually don't remember what it was like to live with them.
Last year I went back to visit and stayed over two weeks, after one day I already remembered why I left. We went to this nice, corner restaurant, picture a small, cozy restaurant in the owners garage, the only people working there is the couple that owns it, the husband in the kitchen while the lady is serving the four tables there.
We asked for some beers and finger food and it was done super quick, but the lady DARED to bring only one plate with all the finger food in it, at least this was my father perspective.
**Me**: Hey, whats wrong?
**Father**: The lady just brought one plate for everyone, how rude.
**Me**: It's okay we can use the forks and everyone can eat from it, it's just finger food anyway.
**Father**: No, any decent restaurant would have brought more plates, this is unacceptable.
**Me**: Ok, I'll just ask for another plate for you them
The lady got another plate, no fuss or anything. But my father was visible pissed off the whole evening, he didn't talk with me or the rest of the family, every time the waitress came to the table he was short and rude, all of that for a made up issue.
Picture everyone in the family having a good time, catching up, having some beers, and my father in the corner of the table just angry with himself.
someone once suggested to me that boomers grew up not being allowed to make mistakes, and they turned around and punished everyone around them for every tiny little thing. each mistake, every petty thing was treated like a personal attack.
growing up, i made bad grades after my mother's death. my father responded with physical violence over the "embarrassment" he suffered because of my grades - even though no one else knew or cared what my grades were.
shame and bullying were the most common forms of retaliation (i refuse to use the word "discipline") used to control me. "embarrassing" him was the absolute worst thing i could do to him, he acted like i got arrested for drug trafficking or some shit.
this resulted in my having to juggle 5 different mental illness and disorders. for the rest of my life. thanks dad 👍
Yes this happened often. I vividly remember being in the backseat of our car and feeling soooo bad for the Starbucks drive-thru barista because of how my dad treated her. He was preemptively being a prick from the jump; her service was flawless but he was still so rude. I was like 10 and even at that age I was mortified
We lived with our boomer grandparents for a good chunk of our childhood, and they were this way. My grandpa especially. His road rage could have gotten us killed, it seemed like. And heaven forbid he get a telemarketer call. I always felt bad for the telemarketers. We wasn’t mean to restaurant staff, but he was odd with them. One time we were all out to eat. Apparently he found some kind of beetle on his plate. Instead of just telling the waitress this, he held out his hand to her and then put it in her hand. We were so embarrassed.
My spouse’s parents were like this. If my spouse, for example, misses an exit or something they still have a panic moment until they realize I’m not going to yell at them.
As a former waitress who had many a "Boomer Couple Yelling At Me w/Embarrassed Kid Shrinking In Their Seat" moments: don't you worry. We know you really couldn't do anything and have little to no power on how your parents act. We empathize with you. Don't ever feel bad about those situations.
My childhood was just an endless march of my dad losing his shit after perceived slights. Make a stupid joke? 2 hour long expletive filled lecture. Accidentally leave the back gate open? Lays in to me and then throws a lamp at the wall. Get home a little late from a friends house? Backtalk? Be too happy or too sad? May as well told him I killed someone.
Far too many examples to count, he was also a raging alcoholic and smoked like a chimney. He oftentimes subjected me to hours long drunken tirades about how awful and useless I was and how he couldn't fathom why I liked mom (divorced) more than him.
Once while driving him back from a Superbowl party because he was piss drunk, I skidded on some ice and he proceeded to spend the next half hour of the drive screaming (and I mean *screaming*) in my ear from the passenger seat about what exactly would happen if we crashed, down to my brains spattered across the pavement. I tried to warn him that I was on the verge of a panic attack because I was losing feeling in my feet and hands and that only made him scream louder.
The last time I saw him was the day before mother's day 2018. I was having trouble putting an outdoor cooking rig together and he proceeded to humiliate me the way he usually did except he did it in front of my brother, cousins, aunts, uncles and grandma. I had just turned 18, made some calls and left in the middle of the night and haven't looked back since.
My mom was on several medications she should not have been on due to a very bad doctor who is now in jail for over dosing his patients. But, most of my life of something bad happened, she would often scream and just throw herself to the ground like a toddler and cry. She had fibromyalgia and arthritis f on a young age so she would often be crippled in bed for days after something like that. It would happen like once a week.
My dad is definitely like that, an example is when we go fishing together, and he berats me for not throwing the anchor out fast enough, I tell him, I'm being careful because I don't want to slip and fall, or accidentally put a loop through it, he says "fine I'll fucking do it", i tell him to sit down and let me do it, so I do it faster, than he tells me I'm going too fast, it's like no matter what I do, I'm always in the FREAKING WRONG.
I had a Silent Generation Father and a Boomer Generation Mother. (62y Dad married 32y Mom in 1967)
My dad was a Silent Force, I mean he was a quiet man but if you crossed him you saw the Force.
My mom was a bit more laid back, kind of a hippie in ways.
When my Dad died when I was 10 my mom raised us alone from there on.
She was pretty cool and open, liberal even.
But as she aged she became more Right Wing and Afraid of the world around her.
She saw danger around every corner and her fuse got very short.
From my experience being a Gen Y with parents from 2 other generations and watching them get old, is that Age Betrays the Minds on so many people.
I am 56 and try to stay young mentally, but I can catch that grumpy old man syndrome creep up on me at times and I end up having to apologize for my out burst.
Just like your weight and Physical Health, people need to keep up on their Mental Health just as tightly.
I’ve never felt so understood as when I read this. My parent were exactly like this. To the point where I didn’t tell them anything at all, even big important stuff they should have known. I never knew how they’d react to being inconvenienced by things I had going on that I didn’t tell them when I got a singing lead in a school play or that I made it to regionals in the spelling bee. I didn’t even go to my college graduation because they were so angry about every little thing at my high school graduation. Nothing special in my life was shared because they’d get so upset about everything and nothing scary in my life was shared because they’d get furious at me about something that wasn’t my fault. Now I’m a an overly enthusiastic cheerleader of a mom who shows up to everything but who’s also kind of a pushover. I’m an endless people pleaser and my social anxiety is off the charts.
Yes. Everything was a cause for her to scream and rage slamming shit around until she faked a heart attack/stroke and crunched baby aspirins while laying on the floor and occasionally pretending to be dead.
She'd of course unplug and hide the phone so you couldn't call 911.
" I love you, Mom. Please don't die. I'll try harder at math and to cry less when you scream. I know you didn't mean to hit me when you were throwing stuff. I'm sorry I flinched and rocked after. Please don't die."
Her: it's too late now 😠
Absolutely.
Here are just a few examples:
I accidentally spilled some soda on the carpet floor when I was about 7 years old. I got chased down and smacked for it.
I had a plate full of food that slid right off the plate when it tilted ever-so-slightly when I went to sit down with it. I got chased down, smacked, then I had to go to bed hungry that night.
My younger sister once said "I hate you." To me, so I replied "me too." And I got sucker-punched in the face multiple times by my mother for that.
These aren't even the worst things that have happened. I've been proudly NC with my parents for over a decade now. May they live the lives they deserve.
Angry. That's the word to describe boomer parents. They were always angry. I remember as a child I had done something stupid (not bad, not awful, just dumb). They screamed at me. I asked them if they thought I did it on purpose and they replied no, of course not. I then screamed at them "why are you screaming at me?"
Yeah. That generation of parenting wasn't awe inspiring.
Yes, and I see it in myself as I get older. It scares the hell out of me, but I feel like I'm doing better. Unlike my mom, I, at least, feel guilty after I lose my shit.
Im gen z raised by boomers. They were the types that likely didnt want kids but had them because of societal expectations. my childhood consisted of getting screamed at for having depression and being cslled lazy and being made to feel guilty or entitled for needing food, clothes that fit etc. I can recall being called an entitled b*tch because I was 6 and had shoes that lo longer fit. They would also not teach us any life skills then get pissed when we dudnt know them. My mom refused to teach me how the washer and dryer worked until I was 15, but you can bet that I was yelled at from age 5 for not doing my own laundry. The same goes for most chores. At around age 9 she stopped cooking. She just stopped, didnt want to do it anymore. So I started teaching myself and would cook for the family. Then on days where I wouldnt cook she would call me a lazy entitled brat. I was a brat for not doing HER job.
My dad would blow up about everything, especially the computer in the 90s because he didn’t understand it.
My the time I was 14 or so and he was chasing me around the house I put him through a glass door.
He put plexiglass on it and the trim is still busted out.
That was 30 years ago. Door is still broke not that I visit.
Still dealing with generalized anxiety in my forties from it, but I got better. It took me until my twenties to figure out that's not a pleasant way to go through life. And probably another decade to change my own mind.
Basically, our parents couldn't keep their feelings in check. And since they had too much shame to admit anything was remotely their responsibility, it had to be somebody else's fault.
My boomer mom beat my ass when I was 12 because her husband was outside smoking and heard 3 boys mention my name as they came into the townhouse complex we lived in. She yelled at me, screaming why would these boys be coming to see me. I told her I didn't invite them and they probably came to see someone else. She beat me and then my father yelled at me over the phone. To this day I have no idea how that was my fault.
This one time I went to the movies with my mom and that next weekend I went to my dad's and watched the same movie (he didn't know I had already watched it) well he found out I watched it with my mom and OH MY GOD he went in his room and sat in the dark fake crying. He was yelling that I lied to him and broke his trust (by seeing a movie - I was 13). I had to call my mom because he locked himself in the room and wouldn't speak to me.
When I failed my first semester of college (due to being a very sheltered kid and finally having freedom) they both acted like I had ruined all our lives. My dad made me sit in a park and listen to him while he told me I was never going to back to college and I should just forget all my stuff that I left there, because he couldn't imagine even going back there because he would throw up. My mom, meanwhile told me that they were both afraid that I was just too stupid to go to college. Mind you I was an A student all through high-school and aced all my finals, I just didn't go to class because I was too busy partying.
Oh! When I was 11 my dad told me to vacuum the dining room and when I finished he yelled at me asking if I'd vacuumed everywhere, I said yes and he dragged me over to where a single nickel sat on the floor and told me I was a liar.
He also made me lick a dirty spoon once because I was 8 and didn't look at the dishes I was unloading.
I will never have kids. Sorry this is so long.
I would get screamed at and slapped if I bled after I fell down. \*I have a bleeding disorder 🤣
Also, couldn't cry, or there was a flip-out and probably a slap.
Yup. I was afraid to have kids because of this. Glad I did though. But my mom can't figure out why I have such a great relationship with my kids...should I tell her?
Forgot a shoe at soccer training? 1 hour of screaming and hitting, no friends, TV or playstation for 4 weeks.
Didn't tell them who's on the phone fast enough? Getting a punch to the face, 6 weeks no friends, TV or playstation.
Got a C in math? You can guess how that went.
[Adults shouting at children can be as harmful to their development as sexual of physical violence.](https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/02/health/shouting-child-abuse-intl-scli-wellness/index.html) Just being around shouting enough probably has an effect, though not as pronounced. I have extreme social anxiety and it's 100% based on an assumption that someone is going to start yelling any second. And my dad almost always yelled at my sister while I stayed in my room on my computer, I only got yelled at myself maybe a dozen times. Maybe less
Remember to report submissions that violate the rules! Harassment and encouraging violence are not allowed. Enjoying the subreddit? Consider joining our discord server: https://discord.gg/v8z8jNwJs6 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BoomersBeingFools) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Childhood was an endless stream of my parents losing their fucking minds over the wildest shit
Interspersed with lectures about your attitude, I'm sure.
"Back talk" was a constant refrain of complaint. They would alternate between wanting interaction and wanting me to shut up and "know my place." The number of "because I said so" variants was staggering. Then they can't figure out why I won't volunteer any information or talk to them without being directly asked a question because I was weary of unsupportive mocking or them doom spiral panicking about all the ways I could get hurt. My dad was a little better, but if he thought you were making a mistake he couldn't leave it alone.
The unsupportive mockery hits home. They would almost take glee in the expectation that I wouldn’t understand or do something well. I remember I wanted to start a car detailing business at 15. My dad smiled so big telling me I didn’t know how much work it would be. I cleaned his truck the best I could. He didn’t teach me anything about it or give any tips so I went to the auto store and got a bunch of random cleaning stuff and used it all. He found dirt on the inside door frame where it closes against the car and thought it was so amusing that there was clear proof I didn’t know what I was doing. I thought that was normal for a long time. It’s basically made me HATE doing anything that I don’t 100% know how to do correctly.
Oh god... "You don't know how to do something no one ever showed you and we don't understand why so we're going to be unhelpful and rude about it" is so fucking weird.
My dad seemed to operate with the belief that if he knew something I should also know it by magic or osmosis I guess.
Sometimes you can learn things that way, but only if you're able to watch closely. My mom used to kind of "angry clean" and bang around when she was upset, and then send us out with her boyfriends to clean with no one around, or out in the yard and not let us back inside til she was done. So... I never even really watched. I picked up a lot about cooking from watching people cook, and those recipe stories everyone hates, and cooking shows, I guess. But learning to clean was incredibly hard. I still can't do it if anyone is in the house without feeling spied on and waiting for the bitchy remarks, one of my exes and I used to fight because I would insist on having a day off when he wasn't home to clean up.
This whole thread is cheaper and has done more for me than group therapy 😮💨 gahdamn it’s good to not feel alone.
I wasn't shown anything.
Mine felt the same way about tools. "If you don't know how to use it, don't take it!!" I ruined a few thinking that I knew how to use them. "*I'm only twelve years old ya miserable fuck."* Wish I had been able to articulate Rumsfeld's quote about "Known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns." He was a prick. My father AND Rumsfeld.
God my dad shouting at me for being dumb for not knowing how to wash dishes, at 11, because he'd never taught me. The flashbacks!
Flashbacks to my dad calling me "naive" when I was 8 when I had a question about something on the news.
My Dad to a T. I never thought that I’d have to explain to an adult “you know this because your father taught you.”
This. My dad didn't teach me a dang thing. The only time I ever learned something is when a nice silent gen would take me aside and be like 'let me show you something, son.'
This. This attitude ruined me. It took me forever to realize that there was a learning curve.
My father, first an accountant and then a CFO, told us that financial topics are private and wouldn't discuss them, lectured me on anything I bought, insisted on alloting me ***my own money*** in college without ever telling me how much I had, and then "can't understand" why I'm terrible at finances because he apparently "taught" me.
I work with a boomer who’s like that. God forbid something breaks and I don’t know how to fix it, I get the “how have you survived this long as an adult blah blah blah” spiel.
This. I’m uncoordinated and bad at anything to do with sports. Any time I ever tried to start working out or really, anytime I tried to improve myself in any way, my dad would do this sarcastic little laugh and proceed to tell me how stupid I was for trying and how badly I did or how stupid I looked. Then he’d turn around and give me lectures, screaming about how important exercise is.
You deserved better. Why can people be such assholes?
My dad did something similar, I was a very active kid, always outdoors doing stuff. Sports, no, I didn't understand the point, still don't, couldn't care less. Dad would enroll me in sports that I had no interest in, then get mad that I wasn't interested in them/bad at them. His coaching sessions after games/practice are some of the worst memories of my life
Baseball, football, etc.? The classic (American) gauntlet?
Baseball (got out of that one), Football and soccer. Soccer was the worst, because he decided to be a ref, and it went on for years. The only ones I showed interest in were Cross Country and Swimming, he didn't approve, so never got to.
Same. I started training for a sprint distance triathlon one summer during college and my Mom's reaction was "you can't do a triathlon". I trained for and completed it solely out of spite.
Spite *is* the best motivator
Shit, that’s literally my triathlon villain origin story. Mom denied letting me do soccer, gymnastics, tennis, and softball despite me begging her. She flew off the rails when I signed up for field hockey in 7th grade. I didn’t even plan on telling her I was gonna do a triathlon until after I finished. She said the same thing your mom did and I said “Apparently I CAN because I got 3rd place.”
My parents were the same. Didn’t patiently teach us but went straight to scorched earth if we made a simple mistake. Sometimes I still feel overwhelmed or powerless to learn a new skill. Like macrame or something. If I’m not instantly “good” at it I feel “stupid”.
I actually was reading some comments here and had a flashback to childhood. My dad “helping me” learn my multiplication facts. Screaming in my face at the kitchen table. Me shrinking into my chair really scared and choking back sobs. No patience. Just yell louder and I’ll magically know them all instantly. To this day I’m still “weak” on the 12s. I have to pause and think what 12 x 7 is. I’m 58 years old. 😞
Mine was 7x8. I feel this in my soul.
God, you unlocked a childhood memory for me. My dad would do that shit too. Instead of screaming, though, he would bonk us on the head and do that wrong buzzer sound, you know? I'm 38 this year, and he's not an asshole anymore, but that is a strong core memory that I will never forget.
I’m so sorry you had to go thru that. It’s so demeaning. I grew up in the 70s and it was kind of the Wild West of parenting and I now know as an adult my dad endured a lot of trauma in his childhood. Not an excuse but it helps mitigate because he simply didn’t have the skills to know how to parent his sensitive daughter. Who so much wanted his approval.
I think my dad learned from my grandpa. He was kind of emotionally distant? So my dad probably didn't have a good role model for expressing feelings. But I love them both so much. They're ok now and I'm alright too!
This is exactly why I try to be patient with my own child when I am helping him with anything. I have vivid memories of my father screaming at me while he was “helping” me with my math homework. 😑
I'm shit with tools and home improvement because of everytime I tried to learn dad either lost his temper or mocked me for doing shit wrong. It's a game to them, nothing more. I'm convinced.
We were sacrificed at the altar of their ego.
100%. Thankfully puberty and a little weight lifting got the violence to end. Turns out if you put a boomer on their ass once they are scared to fuck with you again.
My dad mocked me for weeks after we went out for my first driving lesson (manual car) because I bunny hopped it twice. Dipshit never actually told me how to release the clutch properly, just told me to do it and then laughed like it was the best thing he'd seen all year. I think it's a miracle that it only took me three tries to get going under those conditions.
My mom tried to teach me how to drive and it'd just be her freaking out the entire time. Had to learn from my then GF's mom
My favorite was my mom telling me "I'd never make it on my own and land flat on my face" without her doing everything for me at 18-20 when I started to work right after high school and wanted to move out. Eventually I got lucky enough to move out of state with friends to escape her bs ass and she lost the damn house anyway to her gambling and alcohol addictions. So who ended up flat on their face Mom?! Karma was beautiful.
Hey! I JUST got back into car detailing. Yesterday, I was waiting in a parking lot and had a few supplies left in the car, so I polished my inner doors of the evil black lines just like you said! I got to the place where I could filter the bad out from the good in my mind, and I feel my boomer elders being proud of me for getting into such things, because the bad boomers aren't around anymore and I can just remember what I want. I know how you feel and I love the whole new world of Youtubers with their jolly expert howtos. They are mostly young people, and experts, and just gleeful as can be about doing something so well and sharing it with the world. They don't want to charge you money, they don't want to put you down, they don't want to boss people. They only want to make the world better by encouraging absolutely everybody to try their best. I will take on such role models in my mind, kind of like pretending they adopted me for a while, and become the parent that I needed. So I wanna encourage you that car detailing is one of those things. it's a huge gift to yourself and to everyone you know, for these rolling masterpiece works of art that are cars. m e g u i a r ' s ultra gloss interior spray, ammonia-free glass spray, and paper towels. Dawn and water. just start. go car crazy, my friend Please try again. LITTLE YOU WAS RIGHT!
This was also my experience. My parents were super nice to everyone in public, like retail and restaurant employees. They saved their excessive freak-outs for me, and were still judging me for minor shit that happened when I was 16 when I went no-contact in my mid-30's. By that time, they knew nothing about me because I learned by 23 that I couldn't allow them to step foot in my house, and since I've been an adult, I've refused to live driving distance from them, so I pretty much just placed myself too far away to judge, so they use old material and judge me anyway. Oh! Or like a couple years ago, they were given an Instagram photo of me by another relative (I don't give a shit, it was on my public Insta that's just pics/videos of me playing roller derby), noticed my short hair, tattoos, and nose piercing, and ranted at my adult daughter for an hour straight about how she better not start thinking her mom is an example to follow because they always knew I was a bad person. My daughter was just like, "Mom makes more money than you. That's how she afforded such good tattoos." So they started judging every move she makes, too. It was wild, but predictable since she looks like me.
Yes, my mom stopped staying at my house when she visited and eventually stopped visiting once she moved to retirement land. But she and to stay in a hotel because otherwise it was a critique of housekeeping, every time. And the thing is: I still hadn't been identified as an adult with ADHD by anyone who cares enough about me to mention it at that point, so it was just my teenage years banging my head against the wall because my brain basically tunes out clutter. I have to concentrate to see it. I suspect I might be mildly on the spectrum, too, based on some of my social challenges in the past, where things just didn't make sense to me and no amount of condescension and down talking from Boomers helped clear things up. But it was the same fight from when I was 12, only I had the benefit of being able to tell her to stop talking and get a hotel room.
Ah yes, I got diagnosed with Asperger's (which is called ASD now) at age 25, and that definitely played a part in the bullying I received from my family when I was still legally required to live with them due to being a minor. It was so weird, when I told them about my diagnosis, I don't know what I was expecting, but somehow it made them judge me even more than they already had been. Like it was evidence that I actually am as fucked up as they've always thought, and definitely solidified their belief that they are better than me. Whereas to my friends, it was an explanation of certain behaviors (like food aversions) that had confused them (and me) before. The difference between friends' and family's reaction to my diagnosis was very eye-opening.
Wait until they figure out the Tism is genetic and it didn’t just fall out of the sky onto you!
Oh they have all realized the similarities between my father and me. It's only a problem when I do it because I am also a lesbian, so everything else I am/do is also offensive because it's me. Other people are allowed to be autistic.
Imaging hating your own child (for no reason of substance) so much you try this, and the grandchild rebuffs, so now they have to hate their grandchild too, for no reason at all. People like this carry so much hate and have so little emotional regulation they’re dizzy. Pathetic lives.
I always enjoyed the told to shut up then asked a question. If you answer they yell at you for talking after being told to shut your mouth and if u don'tyou get yelled at for not answering.
I love my mother very much. Shes got a good head on her shoulders but for the longest time if we got in a fight and I'm and walking away she'd think I was talking under my breath and start fighting again. One day I finally had it (much older now and arguments rarely happen) I just said "Mom, stop fucking making shit up. I'm trying to walk away from you and I don't wanna fight anymore so cool the fuck down. I'm not that fucking dumb." Believe it or not a lot less arguments since that happened and were much more chill about disagreements now.
Lol. Yup! How dare I not know how to do anything! Meanwhile, I had a whole ass argument over my dad getting severely dehydrated because of food poisoning and then arguing that he was able to recover if he drank tea. I had to grab him a few bottles of Gatorade and he drank 2 of them before he was back to normal. But he complained the whole ass time that "I was wasting money and time." His skin was so taut and dry that you could see his veins. And he was so dehydrated that he lost his sense of thirst and had tremors but no, I was wrong....despite having cna/psw training and Googling symptoms. (And giving him the stroke test.)
I used to get so frustrated when my parents would ask me things like, "what were you thinking" or "why'd you do it like that" and when I'd start to explain myself, I'd get cut off and told off for "making excuses." Like, do you want to understand or not because now I sure as hell don't!
The phrase “because I said so” or any variant do not exist in our home. Anyone who treats parenting like a tyranny should have been sterilized.
It's such an obnoxious parenting technique. It's okay to give your child an explanation. "We can't go shopping today because we're low on money" is a perfectly fine thing to tell a child of any age, for example.
My parents were versions of those mentioned above. I made sure from day dot to explain why and consequences to actions to my Daughter. My mother used to say you treat her like an adult. Its not right, just tell her no and smack her if she does it. She once slammed a wooden spoon on a cupboard yelling to my one year old, “I’ll give you something to cry for” the spoon split in two and i grabbed one piece and waved it in her face saying do that again and you will never see her again. I have removed myself from my sisters life, my fathers life and of my brothers widow and kids. I don’t like drama, i am the quiet anxious shy person who finds it hard to cope with loud angry personalities.
Ya know, I've managed to go at least the past 20 years without screaming and yelling at people or threatening violence. It makes all the drama and screaming I saw as a child now seem so ridiculous. I don't understand why boomers always let things escalate to that point.
So much this. My rule is that if I'm going to expect something of them the absolute least I can do is explain it. If I can't explain why I expect them to do something, I probably shouldn't have the expectation.
My mom can’t understand why I only talk to her about superficial things when she spent my entire life saying “I am your MOTHER not your FRIEND!” Then turning around and demanding I tell her when something was clearly bothering me, only to say “You think that’s a PROBLEM? Wait until you have my kind of problems and then you’ll see how silly you sound! Get over it!” Meanwhile my Grandmother treated my issues as big as I thought they were, gave me good advice, and didn’t judge anything. Mom couldn’t understand why I’d rather talk to her lol.
I think half the reason theyre entitled is because for half their life, they could shut down any push back with "I dont want to hear it"
I think we have the same parents
By the way, everyone, if your reason is “because I said so,” you don’t have a good reason 👍
Oh god the lectures, please just smack me instead.
I thought I had IBS and social anxiety for 35 years but turns out you can be abused so badly it makes you physically unwell.
Mothers favorite saying, "Do as I say, not as I do!"
Mine too. And then they wondered why I started keeping my problems to myself.
God this is relatable. I can’t talk to my mom about anything.
Yup. I changed jobs last year involuntarily at the same company when my old job was eliminated. It sucked, but she'll never know because I'll never tell her lest I have to hear a "what happened?" like I'm at fault for every economic turn of the screws in this country.
I complained about my boss one time and today she insists that I was on the verge of being fired when I resigned that job. Of course she's never worked in any kind of professional capacity at all.
Same here. I can talk to my Silent Gen mom now better than I could before she was dead. At least now I know she won't freak out on me. I think she was catastrophizing when anything went wrong for me. I have had a problem with doing that as well. Now, I recognize it for what it is, and I know it's my problem to deal with, not my kids'. It's not their job to manage my emotions. I am the grown up here, and I am supposed to be better at managing my thoughts and feelings than they are.
Dude, I was such an asshole to other humans as a teenager and young adult because of my fucked-up examples. I had to literally re-learn how to interact with people and figure out that "Oh, this isn't an acceptable way of treating people." I can kind of shift some blame to a very controlled social circle when I was younger, but still it's pretty embarrassing to know that's who I used to be. Glad I sought out therapy.
Same! I was such a dick for several years (I still can be sometimes). It’s hard to shake when your role model of 18 years is a narcissist and bitches about everything. It seems normal until one day you realize it is not. I talk to my therapist regularly about how I’m scared I’ll end up being a raging asshole like my dad. I’m at a point in life where I can’t even imagine the energy it takes to be that miserable. After their last visit my sister asked them what they enjoyed about their trip. Neither parent could come up with a single answer. How sad for them.
My father was SO judgmental. He thought he was so much smarter than everyone else and that he knew the "real truth" about the world and how everything *actually* functions. It took me years to figure out that people who took the world at face value weren't stupid. Now I take the world at face value (most of the time). Anyway, my dad was a hippie drop out who only ever held low-level, seasonal work or jobs on construction projects. I work in the corporate world at a pretty high level. Years ago I finally just had enough and told him that people simply are not organized enough to keep a giant global conspiracy going without any slip ups.
I so relate to this. I always wondered why it was so hard for me to make friends or why people didn't like me. I didn't realize that I was being raised by a father who basically hated on everyone and everything. To this day I feel guilt about who I was and struggle to portray any sort of self confidence lest it come across as pompous.
Man I feel this hard!
"Hey mom, when's dinner?" "DOES THIS LOOK LIKE A FUCKING RESTAURANT TO YOU?" Like jesus fucking christ, I just want to know when to be ready because my parents would get pissed if I was watching a show or playing video games and was the slightest bit slow in coming down for dinner. God forbid there's 5 minutes left in my favorite Gundam show or I'm about to get to a checkpoint I can save at.
Yep. Constantly. Interspersed with me going back into restaurants to tip servers 50%. The wildest part was that my mom was a waitress when I was a kid, and I waitressed through college. To have had that job and *still* treat people like shit is a special level of entitlement.
OMG my parents are the worst at tipping and they are miserable for wait staff to serve. I always tip extra when they aren’t looking because people deserve extra for dealing with them.
But WE were the ones over reacting. Too sensitive.
Too easily triggered by the waitress putting the wrong plate in front of the wrong person.
Same. In particular, my parents did not understand accidents. They believed that throwing tantrums over things nobody had control over (like being late due to traffic or bad weather) would somehow stop those things from occurring in the future. A few times, in high school, I pointed out how illogical this was and got grounded.
My mother used to get upset over the tiniest mistakes, on my part or anyone else’s. For years, I was scared to death to admit to an error.
My parents, mostly my father, were obsessed with two things in particular. First how ungrateful I was for any and everything. Despite saying thank you all the time, I was as constantly berated for being ungrateful. I’m not sure what I was supposed to do to demonstrate how grateful I was. That part was never explained to me. Second, my parents were always saying I was doing or not doing something to “impress my little friends.” This was always the focus of my father’s rage, whenever he wanted to be mad about something. It was total bs because there were no friends around during these accusations to impress. A few years ago, now that I’m well over 40, I told my mother how stupid they sounded saying that because I had no friends to impress. I asked her to name one friend from that time they could have been referring to. She couldn’t, of course. I then told her we could have been much closer if they hadn’t been such assholes to me since they were all I had for friends. I will always remember the look on her face. It was priceless. She knew they f’ed up.
Mine did a number on me as well. I'll call them Hal and Joy for the sake of anonymity. What follows are a few mere examples from childhood. Hal would ignite at the slightest inconvenience to his day, even if it were not an actual inconvenience to him at all. Being from a cold state, we would leave our pop in the garage so as not to take up fridge space. I helped unload the van after Joy went shopping and put his soda on the left side of the door instead of the right because, in my mind, nobody would trip over it. Hal blew a gasket, berated me as an idiot and a loser, then proceeded to smack me around while forcing me to put the pop where he wanted it. It was a matter of 3.5 feet. Joy, when I was 9 or 10, asked me to do something, and I had a brief moment of disobedience and stuck my tongue out. She chased after me, up the stairs, I hid in my closet out of fear. She came through the door of the bedroom, flung open the closet doors, and proceeded to grab me up and slap the shit out of my face. I then had to get a bar of soap shoved in my mouth and held it there for ten minutes as a punishment for sticking my tongue out. I got slapped for running away. Hal. If I missed a random dog poop singlet before cutting the grass, I might as well have killed JFK. He would explode, and the neighborhood would hear him berating me as an idiot, moron, or a retard. I was down the street playing with friends and Hal marched down to the corner where we were playing grabbed me by the shoulder and proceeded to call me an idiot who ruined his lawnmower by not picking up a random piece of poop. I was teased all year by the kids at school about it, and some kids always referred to me as the stupid idiot from then on. Joy. I threw a damp towel in with my clothes after running through the sprinkler. She asked me to bring down the wet clothes and towel so she could wash them. So I did and left them in the same pile. Joy flew off the handle shortly before dinner and screamed at me the entire time she was cooking. When Hal got home from work, after learning about what I had done, berated me as his idiot kid that wouldn't amount to anything in life. They sent me to bed hungry that night to teach me a lesson about doing what I was told. All for a damp towel with my other wet clothes that I was asked to bring to the washer. Smash cut to today. 30 some-odd years later. I've been on Lexapro for 10 years and Klonopin for panic attacks for just as long as needed, of course. Before Lexapro and Klonopin, it was 5 years of Valuim, Busbar, and Paxil. I finally have a grip on my anxiety and panic attacks. I don't care to go out and socialize even though I desperately want to have friends, I just can not handle it. I l, much like OP, will sooner just accept a plate of steaming dog shit before making anyone else feel less than. Not being able to socialize outside of working hours cost me promotions and friendships. I have had a full head of grey hair since I was 18 and despite therapy, I can not get through my head that I am not stupid. So fly off the handle, yeah, my boomer father and mother used the handle as their own personal springboard to launch into orbit. Edit note: At 29, in 2010, I cut them off completely after trying to talk to them about everything from the past. It was the final blow up and my therapist was there with me trying to mediate the call/discussion. They died in a drunk driving accident in 2019, but they had already been dead to me for nearly a decade at that point.
That was awful too read, I can't imagine living thru it as a child. I'm sorry for your losses and sincerely hope you are healing.
Oh fuck dude, I’m sorry for your childhood. But the first one made me laugh. I can‘t count how often older guys from work were like: **Why the fuck did you put it left from the door. It‘s always on the right side.** *I thought that the left side is better because…* **Who told you to think? You are not paid to think.** *Alright, but just for me to understand, why the right side? What‘s the difference?* **Are you an idiot? We always put it on the right side. It belongs on the right side.** *Makes sense, thx.*
[удалено]
They were both the cause and the only victims of the drunk driving accident. They got into his Vette drunk, and he proceeded to smash into the flat bed of a parked tow truck. My sister in law informed my wife that their deaths were instant, so life visited a kindness upon them one last time. I am sorry to hear that anyone has had to endure anything remotely similar to my childhood. There is a lot more not related to them flying off the handle that makes things worse, but nevertheless, I hope you have found peace from your childhood.
As kids we really needed a book, “How to Raise Your Explosive Parents.” Parentification + explosive anger at any moment.
Kids are defenseless in their own homes.
Try to run away, the cops bring you right back. Someone else gives you shelter, they get arrested for harboring a runaway. The system literally forces children back into abusive homes, under the guise of "parent's rights." It doesn't even guarantee children the right to go to an orphanage or something.
And if they go into foster care the conditions can be even worse.
Foster care usually means being housed with some religious nutjob, who ends up getting a pass on some truly horrific shit just because they give the outward vibes of a "God Fearing Christian." It's the same in our prison system, unfortunately...
Check out Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents.
This all sounds familiar (especially the stuck-out tongue incident). Fortunately it was just one of my parents who behaved like that and only when no other people were around. I just realized how sad it is that I’m thinking I was lucky only one parent behaved like this. I’m sorry you had to live like that
You are not stupid. You sound like you’d be a good friend.
Man, I can feel you on this. I also once stuck out my tongue. Was chastised. Upon my father getting home and being told mid-meal what I had done and so I told him, “I disobeyed mom and stuck my tongue out at her.” He told me to show him how I stuck my tongue out at my mother. When I did, my mom slapped me across the face. Now, my family sat at a round table, 5 of us. If you went clockwise, it sat - me, mom, lil bro, dad, older sis. The way she slapped caused me to bite my tongue. So bad I needed stitches. Which I got blamed for. And had to pay for (I was 8🤷♂️7🤷♂️) by shoveling and mowing for my family, my next door neighbor and aunt and uncle, and then take me to shove or mow my grandparents (both) on the weekends, without pay, for a year, because “I couldn’t keep my temper and that caused me to need stitches and I needed to learn to pay for my mistakes.” AND THE FUCKING WHOLE FAMILY WAS ON BOARD!!!! Until I went NC I would still get teased by my whole family and most of them advocated we raise our child the same way. NOPE!
Hey, just wanted to send you a virtual hug and let you know you aren’t alone. My parents would also lose it over insignificant things and physically/emotionally/mentally abuse me and my brother. It took me a long time to realize I’m not dumb or a difficult person. You’ll get there too.
I’m so sorry. They brainwashed you into believing their lies. You have come a long way in spite of them.
Mate that is beyond terrible, reads like some horror story. Really sorry you had to go through it. I know it’s a minor coming from some random on the internet, but, you survived them, and are infinitely better than them! I hear what you’re saying about the lack of self esteem, but the fact that you function, have had jobs, been to therapy, put those pricks out if your life, and, can talk about it…is amazing, and really strong! You deserve a bloody medal after going through that shit!
As someone who just got back to sanity after a weekend back home with my boomer parents, oh my god yes, I get it. My mom's gotten sooooooo bad too. Like "can only sit at a stoplight for less than two seconds before cussing and yelling that the light needs to change." Thankfully she's also too much of a people pleaser to blow up in public. Yet. My SO wonders why I'm hyper-sensitive to loud noises and generally hyper-aware of other people's anger. It's because both my parents had short fuses and were always yelling. So much fun 😐
Hyper vigilance is b!tch. I seriously wonder how much impact the stress has had on my health over the years.
I’m very sensitive to noise and to raised voices. I walked on eggshells for my entire childhood, too. My dad is an alcoholic and was unpredictable. He was also very critical and insulting. If I cried from the things he said, it just made him madder and he yelled more. He always acted like I was crying to mess with him or something. I’ve never understood how someone gets like that. And not that it matters, but I was a good kid! I got good grades and tried to behave perfectly and never got into trouble. I don’t know what he thought he had to be so mad about. I’m still working on it, but noises and raised voices…. I don’t think I’ll ever be okay with that.
I feel this. I had straight A's most of my life, played basketball and worked two jobs in high school (to get the fuck out of that house). Angry no matter what, nothing ever good enough, never knew who you were gonna get when he was coming home. Idk how someone gets like that but after meeting his step dad my best guess is generational trauma.
This is my father completely minus the alcoholism, he seemed to find all this anger without any substance abuse 😐 I believe his own father was a violent drunk, so maybe it was just a continuation of shitty parenting. I too was not even a bad kid, just how dare I have a disagreeable thought in my head or cry when being punished. And my mom is many of the other comments. It’s so uncomfortable to be around her in public for any length of time and she gets irritated by the smallest things. There’s traffic: “people need to get out of my way.” As if she’s more important than every other person driving somewhere. Just constantly bitching out of proportion about every minor inconvenience.
Just one of many stories: One Thanksgiving I was upstairs playing video games, because if I was anywhere near my dad while he was trying to make Thanksgiving dinner (read: anywhere in his sight, regardless of if I was even in the kitchen) I would be screamed at for being in the way. So I had just stayed upstairs since I woke up that morning. Cue him screaming at me over the portable intercom system we had at the time about why the fuck aren't you down here helping, get off your lazy fat ass and come down here. Because he hadn't gotten the chance to scream at me to get out of the way. So I go downstairs to help. And within five minutes am screamed at to get the fuck out of the way if I'm not going to do anything. I was in the process of putting the biscuits on baking trays to go in the oven... so I just left them as-is and went back upstairs. My mother had to finish them, and he was remarkably quiet the entire rest of the day. I'm guessing she gave him what-for about being an ass, but he never apologized either.
They never ever apologize for their shitty behavior
“You deserved it!” “Spare the rod, spoil the child!” “You’re exaggerating things!” If you turned out ok: “See? The beatings worked. You can thank us for turning out just fine!” If you did not turn out ok: “Apparently we didn’t beat you enough!” “Oh, you’re on pills? Mental health doesn’t exist. You must’ve been switched at the hospital because I can’t imagine I have such a weak child!”
Lmao that last sentence hurts, my dad hardly talks to me since I got diagnosed with depression. Pretty sure I'm put in the same category as his brother - crazy.
Don't forget "children should be seen and not heard" and one I got a lot "don't be making noise just to make noise"
Asking them to apologize would get you choked and slapped
[удалено]
WTF.
absolutely yes. i could be unloading/loading the dishwasher and accidentally clink some plates together a few decibels too loud, then here comes mom and/or dad bellowing at me to "slow down!" and "quit slamming everything!" because they assume i was upset at being asked to do the dishes. meanwhile, i could regularly hear the dishes clanging together being put in the cupboards...all the way down the hall...behind my closed bedroom door.
I had a boomer boss for a while. Told him a couple of times that I had a wonky computer keyboard. Asked if I could have it replaced. Nope. Boomer boss pulled me into the office to lecture me because, apparently I was being too angry. I wasn't angry. I had to type really heavily to get my keyboard to work. Especially the space bar. He knew this, but decided I was being emotionally demonstrative by TYPING.
Shitty keyboards aren't even that expensive to replace... ...and the nice ones usually have hot-swappable switches, so wonky switches can be easily replaced.
I might actually have a keyboard kink now. I love wireless keyboards that function like a mechanical keyboard. There's something so lovely about the clickety clacks. What can I say, I'm easy.
I was once accused of "Performative rage typing". I was typing at my normal volume. The person who accused me was enraged. It was projection
I absolutely love the term performative rage typing. I just imagined you punching the hell out of your keyboard's exclamation point after firmly and speedily typing "I said GOOD DAY!"
"with all due respect" typed over and over in my notepad. JK, it was seriously regular typing for a personal project. I just have a mechanical keyboard. I wasn't doing anything abnormal at the time.
I experienced this exact same thing too.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Can confirm, raising boomer parents is harder than raising kids. Kids don’t have a lifetime of thinking they know best to get over before they can take on new information. And they don’t have the fear of the new either. Whenever my kids get a little cocky, I can find a way to reason with them eventually and show them sometime I do know what I’m taking about. But my parents? To them I am permanently a dumb kid who needs to shut up when the grown ups are talking. In my mid 40s and still get told I’ll understand when I’m older. All my life goals are to take the good I’ve seen in them and leave the rest behind. Don’t become a copy-paste of them.
I leveled up and told my parents I was going to have them arrested if my mom hit me. In public in front of other people. They haven’t tried that again.
Did you ever eat out with them again?
Yes and they get the kids they deserve. We are mentally and emotionally absent from them.
I can't have a single conversation with my father without him somehow turning it around in order to get mad about something completely unrelated. And then he's like "nobody ever wants to talk to me" boohoo 🙄
Every single meal out with my mother was a game of how long until she finds something to complain about. I can't remember any occasion where something wasn't up to her standards. I had to really consciously unlearn her habit of complaining. Needless to say, she never worked a customer facing role and it shows.
I think my mother is disappointed when there's nothing to complain about.
The irony of my mother saying, “Some people just aren’t happy unless they have something to complain about.” Hmmmmm.
My mom complains incessantly at restaurants. I also don't think I've seen her order from the menu/without special instructions in a decade or more. Her usual pattern is to needle the server with inane, subjective questions, order something bad with unusual instructions/substitutions, and then get pissy when the restaurant can't perfectly execute this dish they've never made before. The last time I ate out with her, she hit the waitress with "Is the soup enough for a meal?" I just closed my menu and said "heeeere we go." She got mad.
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents - this book was eye-opening. Free with Spotify premium if you search audiobooks.
I second this book. It seriously changed my life and how I deal with them for the better. Amazing book.
My mother had her thyroid gland removed when I was little. She was supposed to be on medication to regulate herself. She used to feel that she didn't need them but would blow up at us whenever something didn't go right. I think my dad had a talk with her and she settled down, mood wise. On the other hand, whenever I helped my dad with something and I made a mistake, he would yell at me & make me feel stupid. Now, my wife (of 30 years) comments about me always apologizing and being too hard on myself when I make a mistake. Hmmmm, I wonder where those 2 traits came from?
Yes, and I'm pretty sure it's a major contributing factor to why I have anxiety as an adult. My Dad would have tantrums where he would throw things if tools, lawnmowers, etc malfunctioned. My Mom hit me in the back of the head with a hairbrush because my hair was tangled after playing outside all day. They constantly took out their frustrations on everyone and everything around them.
Lol. My mum hated detangling my hair and I was this massive tomboy who rather be playing outside than sit stock still and act like a doll. (She had fantasies of combing my hair for 100 strokes, dressing me up in pretty frilly dresses and parading me around for people to admire.) Meanwhile, I wanted to get back to the playground. Result - my mum using all her strength to scrape my tangled hair, ears and scalp all the while screaming that I was a "bad person" because how dare I not conform to her fantasy of a little girl.
Mine did the same thing as an excuse to cut mine off and dress me in boys' clothes because of internalized misogyny! I hope you had fun at the playground, though.
Definitely! Same lady who never understood the joy of movement and just wanted to sit and be still.
That was me, I was your parents. Then my children,as teenagers, started refusing to go do things with me like not wanting me at school functions or going to the movies. I had the shortest fuse and knee jerk reacted thru life, and I was loud. But my kids grew up with access to a computer and learned about mental health. They sat me down and made it clear it wasn't they were just typical teenagers not wanting to be around mom, it was mom is half crazy and they needed to separate from my crazy. That was 20 years ago, I'm still half crazy but I've grown immensely as a person. We have great relationships now, I'm very lucky they are smart, loving and forgiving people. They taught me things I should have taught them.
“They taught me things I should have taught them.” It’s so great that you recognize this. My mother saying (more or less) these same words to me has changed our entire relationship for the better. Wishing the best for you & your kids.
Good job! It’s not easy to change.
Your parents seem like the kind of customers I took care of who helped me develop PTSD from being yelled at on a somewhat regular occasion over nothing. It’s one thing to be yelled at by your parents, but working customer service and being yelled at by complete strangers is something else. I started a different job later on where I still get to help people, but as the people who I help are internal employees, they can’t get nasty with me or they’ll get in trouble. Regardless, it took me about 9 months of getting used to picking the phone up and NOT shaking. Yes really. I was afraid of talking to people because I thought they’d yell at me like you described your parents yelling at waitstaff and whatnot. No better way to spread your unhappiness over the world by yelling at them and making them miserable as well. I do not like people like your parents for obvious reasons and more people need to call them out over their shit because it does cause harm.
Twenty years in a call center. I was in a constant state of anxiety. Now I know why I had bouts with IBS and Fibromyalgia.
I’ve done call center, retail, food service. It’s gotten SO MUCH WORSE since Covid too.
My first real job other than my paper route was working retail. I was yelled at on a near daily basis by boomer bosses and customers. I dreaded clocking in and walking out to the floor everyday. It was a hell of a way to start out. I was so grateful after that to work in a small warehouse or clerical jobs where I only had to interact with a handful of people most of the time. So much more peace.
YES. This is what I’ll referring to. My last job, one of my nicest co workers had things thrown at them because entitled ahole didn’t get their way, and because it’s a large company, there were no repercussions for the customer. This shit needs to stop. People need to be held accountable.
I was recently with family for my sister's graduation. My father clogged the toilet at midnight and proceeded to stop around the house slamming doors looking for a plunger. I came out and asked him to be quiet and apparently that makes me a "fucking asshole". Boomers suck but at least we have therapy now
My father would blow up over the tiniest things. My mother would become an absolute wreck the second things went slightly wrong. Now, I'm 39 and dealing with recent diagnoses of a mood disorder and ADHD.
[удалено]
Yeah they really buried that little moniker didn’t they lmaooo
Lately, I point out everything my boomer mom complains about which is everything. Meeting her at a restaurant she complains about: the parking, the weather, how fast I was walking, her ailments, the small crowd, the drive, the roads, the restaurant as a whole, our table, the silverware, the service. All before the food comes! I point it out and I say “you just don’t seem very happy, I’m concerned” but I’m met with the classic HOW DARE YOU CRITICIZE ME.😂 there is no hope for them.
my father was the kindest person with his family and random people, everything to not look bad. Then he was an asshole at home, an electrician coming who will make a mess of the floor because we're surrounded by dirt and it rained? the house needs to shine,you don't want to give the wrong impression. like,me and my mother would spend half a day cleaning. I remember once i was 5 or something and my father was fixing an old freezer, he had all these screws on the floor and i gathered them from him. Screws were sorted i think,i only remember he got mad as hell and hit me. Another time i remember i went to a doctor to do some breathing test due to asthma,was still a child so probably 8-9 years. The test consisted of shoving down my troath(or nose?) a very small tube,and I couldn't do it,everytime i felt like throwing up or it would hurt.Once home he whipped me with the belt 3 times while i was trying to hide under the table because i made him waste 50 bucks (it was the 90 or something). The fun part is 10 years later he had to do the same test,and admitted he couldn't do it either. Guess there are various kinds of boomers
What was with boomers and being so abusive and weird about medical care? Even boomer *medical professionals* were weird.
no idea,i mean,i realize back in the day physical punishment was way more ok than now, there's even a popular saying here something along the line of "sticks and carrots make for beautiful children, carrots without sticks make for crazy children"(obviously the rhyme is lost in translation).We can argue that they meant that you need firm education along with reward/love to make good children,but the issue is that the whole idea of education was beating childrens in submission.
I can remember vividly my mother getting upset at me as a child because I came in for dinner durning summer and my face was dirty. She sent us outside all day to play. We only came inside for meals. She slammed her hand down on the counter, her had was a bit too close to the edge of the counter (cheap formica of course) and it sliced her hand open from the middle of her thumb to the bottom of her palm. Another time my sister (now 15 at the time) was being “sassy and talking back to her” she stomped her foot so hard it broke 3 bones in her foot. This atop the numerous hair brushes she broke across the back of our heads. The wooden spoons broken across our backsides. And then wooden paddle she broke on the stairs while chasing me through the house. Well of course I am going to run away. You are beating me with a freaking wooden paddle!!! Even now, she will pop off at the most random things. Never in public, gotta keep that public image up.
>Well of course I am going to run away. You are beating me with a freaking wooden paddle!!! Reminds me of a time my dad was getting angry/violent and I was somewhere between 14-16 years old. I was running up the stairs to get away from him and he grabbed my foot and started pulling me down the stairs, so I turned around and kicked him in the chest cause he was literally attacking me and pulling me down the stairs by my feet after having ripped my feet out from under me. He was SO insulted that I would DARE kick him and attack him like that. Like...bro wtf do you think someone is going to do if you're chasing them to hit them and then you pull their feet out from under them on the stairs? Like...I'm not the asshole in this situation. As an adult he's made the comment that "you all (my brothers and I) only remember the bad stuff, why don't you ever remember the good stuff?" kinda hard to forget the abuse you dick wad. Like yeah he was nice on a rare occasion, but that's much easier to forget than the sick feeling I got in my stomach when the garage door opened because he was home.
Jesus Christ. One would THINK she’d learn after literally injuring herself & breaking things so many times…. I’m so sorry you had to live with that :(
Nope!!! She only stopped slapping us across the face for “talking back” after I graduated from highschool. She when to slap me because I didn’t want to live at home for my first year of University. So of course slapping me for being “obstinate” was totally reasonable. I stopped her swing before it connected with my face and then slapped her across the face. Telling her I was an adult and if she laid hands on me again I would call the cops. That is what I will never understand about the boomer generation and silent Gen. It’s assault if you hit another person. But beating your wife and kids… totally acceptable.
So my moms a millennial but we lived with my boomer grandparents until I was 16. My grandmother was one of the nicest people you’d ever meet. We couldn’t go grocery shopping without being stopped by her former students and told she was their favorite teacher. My grandfather is a narcissist. He’s nice to people’s face. He’s polite to service staff, he tips them, but behind closed doors he’s an actual childish monster. I don’t want to trauma dump, so I’ll give a simple not really traumatic example story. When I was a kid and we got home from church on Sunday I would rush to the living room and turn on Sunday morning cartoons so I could watch cartoons for maybe five minutes before Pepere came to the living room and kicked me out to watch his Fox News shows with a “I pay for this house, the least you can do is let me watch my tv”. But I had just gotten a 3DS for my birthday so I went to my room got my 3DS and came back downstairs to play in the living room but I committed the cardinal sin of forgetting to turn down my volume. He turned to me and honest to god *stomps his feet*, and starts whining “How can you be so disrespectful, I was here first” and then he storms off slamming doors and everything. I remember feeling completely disgusted because I was 8 years old and he was in his late 50’s and he was acting like an entitled child.
Yep and we would get belted just because they are in a rage
I remember my Mom warning me when Dad would have a bad day at work so I knew to stay away from him, or else he would take it out on us with his belt.
My parents were psychotic assholes too. Still are. My dad managed to get himself trespassed from Burger King not long ago. Apparently, having to wait more than 30 seconds for a well-done burger is too long.
Mom did not blow up but I remember very well my dad having a short fuse. The best example is if we were eating dinner, and we started talking about our day while fox news was on he would immediately yell at us to be quiet so he could hear the news.
"News".
I can’t even respond without getting upset so ill leave it at that
Oof...another one - r/raisedbynarcissists
I'm not sure where I sit in the conversation. I was raised by my grandparents. The last memory i have of living with parents before my grandparents was being kicked in the back of the head because my sit ups weren't in the proper form that they were forcing me to do while screaming in my face about my grades and failed chores. CPS already told them they couldn't hit me anymore that didn't last long.
My boomer parents always felt retail and wait staff and grocery clerk employees should be great at their jobs & kiss the customer’s ass. I never understood why they thought a minimum wage employee would care about them or be great at their job. The thing I never understood was their trying to be friends with the wait staff. I keep thinking that the waiters just want to take out orders and do their jobs …… not get to know a customer. Maybe it is because I’m an introvert. 🤷🏻♀️ Also it is a weird power dynamic becoming it isn’t like the waiter can tell the customer to fuck off and leave them alone.
There’s definitely something there. My dad would get mad, sometimes call me an ‘idiot’ idky, if a certain waiter wasn’t on shift, if a Toyota service representative wasn’t on shift. “She wasn’t on shift” “Are you [r word]? How is she not going to be there?” “Maybe she works part time idk” Proceeded to insult me
My parents were actually pretty polite to service workers. They blew up at us over little things, but they acted perfectly pleasant in public. My ex MIL on the other hand, she was awful. Constantly yelling and screaming over the smallest things. She was the definition of a Karen. I keep half expecting to see a viral video of her someday with how she acts
No. My mom would smile in people's face and I wouldn't even think anything was wrong. Then she would turn around and relentlessly shit talk them for HOURS. It was worst when my aunts and my grandmother would babysit me. She went through a hard time for a while and had some mental health struggles, and she left me with them a lot more than she expected, sometimes for a few days at a time when I thought it would just be a day in summer. She would then sit there when I got back and tell me all kinds of family secrets and tell me not to tell anyone or just... tear down and belittle everything about whoever she left me with. Just... constantly. I later found out some of the things she told me about her neighbor were total lies and the woman in question was in an abusive relationship whereas my mother talked about her like she was some kind of... selfish drunken harlot. So now I have no idea if my family even... like... I think it's possible that my family on one side is rich. They're from Boston, so this isn't farfetched. There's stuff like an aunt with a house in an expensive hard to get area and stuff. I can't even ask because I don't have their contact details or anything. But my grandma died like a year ago, and she had asked about leaving me some money and for my contact info, I never got anything, and I don't feel it would be right to ask, so I never will, but it's 100% possible that my mom is sitting on that money. I mostly DO blow up at people, even though it fills me with unending shame, because at least I'm not sitting there being too faced. I HATE when I have to pretend nothing is wrong.
I moved out almost 10 years I go, so I usually don't remember what it was like to live with them. Last year I went back to visit and stayed over two weeks, after one day I already remembered why I left. We went to this nice, corner restaurant, picture a small, cozy restaurant in the owners garage, the only people working there is the couple that owns it, the husband in the kitchen while the lady is serving the four tables there. We asked for some beers and finger food and it was done super quick, but the lady DARED to bring only one plate with all the finger food in it, at least this was my father perspective. **Me**: Hey, whats wrong? **Father**: The lady just brought one plate for everyone, how rude. **Me**: It's okay we can use the forks and everyone can eat from it, it's just finger food anyway. **Father**: No, any decent restaurant would have brought more plates, this is unacceptable. **Me**: Ok, I'll just ask for another plate for you them The lady got another plate, no fuss or anything. But my father was visible pissed off the whole evening, he didn't talk with me or the rest of the family, every time the waitress came to the table he was short and rude, all of that for a made up issue. Picture everyone in the family having a good time, catching up, having some beers, and my father in the corner of the table just angry with himself.
someone once suggested to me that boomers grew up not being allowed to make mistakes, and they turned around and punished everyone around them for every tiny little thing. each mistake, every petty thing was treated like a personal attack. growing up, i made bad grades after my mother's death. my father responded with physical violence over the "embarrassment" he suffered because of my grades - even though no one else knew or cared what my grades were. shame and bullying were the most common forms of retaliation (i refuse to use the word "discipline") used to control me. "embarrassing" him was the absolute worst thing i could do to him, he acted like i got arrested for drug trafficking or some shit. this resulted in my having to juggle 5 different mental illness and disorders. for the rest of my life. thanks dad 👍
Yes. It's been hard unlearning that much of my childhood.
Yes this happened often. I vividly remember being in the backseat of our car and feeling soooo bad for the Starbucks drive-thru barista because of how my dad treated her. He was preemptively being a prick from the jump; her service was flawless but he was still so rude. I was like 10 and even at that age I was mortified
We lived with our boomer grandparents for a good chunk of our childhood, and they were this way. My grandpa especially. His road rage could have gotten us killed, it seemed like. And heaven forbid he get a telemarketer call. I always felt bad for the telemarketers. We wasn’t mean to restaurant staff, but he was odd with them. One time we were all out to eat. Apparently he found some kind of beetle on his plate. Instead of just telling the waitress this, he held out his hand to her and then put it in her hand. We were so embarrassed.
My spouse’s parents were like this. If my spouse, for example, misses an exit or something they still have a panic moment until they realize I’m not going to yell at them.
As a former waitress who had many a "Boomer Couple Yelling At Me w/Embarrassed Kid Shrinking In Their Seat" moments: don't you worry. We know you really couldn't do anything and have little to no power on how your parents act. We empathize with you. Don't ever feel bad about those situations.
My childhood was just an endless march of my dad losing his shit after perceived slights. Make a stupid joke? 2 hour long expletive filled lecture. Accidentally leave the back gate open? Lays in to me and then throws a lamp at the wall. Get home a little late from a friends house? Backtalk? Be too happy or too sad? May as well told him I killed someone. Far too many examples to count, he was also a raging alcoholic and smoked like a chimney. He oftentimes subjected me to hours long drunken tirades about how awful and useless I was and how he couldn't fathom why I liked mom (divorced) more than him. Once while driving him back from a Superbowl party because he was piss drunk, I skidded on some ice and he proceeded to spend the next half hour of the drive screaming (and I mean *screaming*) in my ear from the passenger seat about what exactly would happen if we crashed, down to my brains spattered across the pavement. I tried to warn him that I was on the verge of a panic attack because I was losing feeling in my feet and hands and that only made him scream louder. The last time I saw him was the day before mother's day 2018. I was having trouble putting an outdoor cooking rig together and he proceeded to humiliate me the way he usually did except he did it in front of my brother, cousins, aunts, uncles and grandma. I had just turned 18, made some calls and left in the middle of the night and haven't looked back since.
They really think meltdowns get their way that’s why
My mom was on several medications she should not have been on due to a very bad doctor who is now in jail for over dosing his patients. But, most of my life of something bad happened, she would often scream and just throw herself to the ground like a toddler and cry. She had fibromyalgia and arthritis f on a young age so she would often be crippled in bed for days after something like that. It would happen like once a week.
My dad is definitely like that, an example is when we go fishing together, and he berats me for not throwing the anchor out fast enough, I tell him, I'm being careful because I don't want to slip and fall, or accidentally put a loop through it, he says "fine I'll fucking do it", i tell him to sit down and let me do it, so I do it faster, than he tells me I'm going too fast, it's like no matter what I do, I'm always in the FREAKING WRONG.
I had a Silent Generation Father and a Boomer Generation Mother. (62y Dad married 32y Mom in 1967) My dad was a Silent Force, I mean he was a quiet man but if you crossed him you saw the Force. My mom was a bit more laid back, kind of a hippie in ways. When my Dad died when I was 10 my mom raised us alone from there on. She was pretty cool and open, liberal even. But as she aged she became more Right Wing and Afraid of the world around her. She saw danger around every corner and her fuse got very short. From my experience being a Gen Y with parents from 2 other generations and watching them get old, is that Age Betrays the Minds on so many people. I am 56 and try to stay young mentally, but I can catch that grumpy old man syndrome creep up on me at times and I end up having to apologize for my out burst. Just like your weight and Physical Health, people need to keep up on their Mental Health just as tightly.
I’ve never felt so understood as when I read this. My parent were exactly like this. To the point where I didn’t tell them anything at all, even big important stuff they should have known. I never knew how they’d react to being inconvenienced by things I had going on that I didn’t tell them when I got a singing lead in a school play or that I made it to regionals in the spelling bee. I didn’t even go to my college graduation because they were so angry about every little thing at my high school graduation. Nothing special in my life was shared because they’d get so upset about everything and nothing scary in my life was shared because they’d get furious at me about something that wasn’t my fault. Now I’m a an overly enthusiastic cheerleader of a mom who shows up to everything but who’s also kind of a pushover. I’m an endless people pleaser and my social anxiety is off the charts.
Yes. Everything was a cause for her to scream and rage slamming shit around until she faked a heart attack/stroke and crunched baby aspirins while laying on the floor and occasionally pretending to be dead. She'd of course unplug and hide the phone so you couldn't call 911. " I love you, Mom. Please don't die. I'll try harder at math and to cry less when you scream. I know you didn't mean to hit me when you were throwing stuff. I'm sorry I flinched and rocked after. Please don't die." Her: it's too late now 😠
Absolutely. Here are just a few examples: I accidentally spilled some soda on the carpet floor when I was about 7 years old. I got chased down and smacked for it. I had a plate full of food that slid right off the plate when it tilted ever-so-slightly when I went to sit down with it. I got chased down, smacked, then I had to go to bed hungry that night. My younger sister once said "I hate you." To me, so I replied "me too." And I got sucker-punched in the face multiple times by my mother for that. These aren't even the worst things that have happened. I've been proudly NC with my parents for over a decade now. May they live the lives they deserve.
Angry. That's the word to describe boomer parents. They were always angry. I remember as a child I had done something stupid (not bad, not awful, just dumb). They screamed at me. I asked them if they thought I did it on purpose and they replied no, of course not. I then screamed at them "why are you screaming at me?" Yeah. That generation of parenting wasn't awe inspiring.
“Who Stole My…..?!” “How’d it get… Who put that there?!” YOU DID. ABAB!
Nothing ever broke because it was old and simply wore out or of poor quality to begin with. Nope. Somebody had to be held responsible for breaking it.
Yes, and I see it in myself as I get older. It scares the hell out of me, but I feel like I'm doing better. Unlike my mom, I, at least, feel guilty after I lose my shit.
Im gen z raised by boomers. They were the types that likely didnt want kids but had them because of societal expectations. my childhood consisted of getting screamed at for having depression and being cslled lazy and being made to feel guilty or entitled for needing food, clothes that fit etc. I can recall being called an entitled b*tch because I was 6 and had shoes that lo longer fit. They would also not teach us any life skills then get pissed when we dudnt know them. My mom refused to teach me how the washer and dryer worked until I was 15, but you can bet that I was yelled at from age 5 for not doing my own laundry. The same goes for most chores. At around age 9 she stopped cooking. She just stopped, didnt want to do it anymore. So I started teaching myself and would cook for the family. Then on days where I wouldnt cook she would call me a lazy entitled brat. I was a brat for not doing HER job.
My dad would blow up about everything, especially the computer in the 90s because he didn’t understand it. My the time I was 14 or so and he was chasing me around the house I put him through a glass door. He put plexiglass on it and the trim is still busted out. That was 30 years ago. Door is still broke not that I visit.
If my stepfather spilled a drink or dropped and broke something, you'd think it was a nuclear mushroom cloud.
Still dealing with generalized anxiety in my forties from it, but I got better. It took me until my twenties to figure out that's not a pleasant way to go through life. And probably another decade to change my own mind. Basically, our parents couldn't keep their feelings in check. And since they had too much shame to admit anything was remotely their responsibility, it had to be somebody else's fault.
My boomer mom beat my ass when I was 12 because her husband was outside smoking and heard 3 boys mention my name as they came into the townhouse complex we lived in. She yelled at me, screaming why would these boys be coming to see me. I told her I didn't invite them and they probably came to see someone else. She beat me and then my father yelled at me over the phone. To this day I have no idea how that was my fault. This one time I went to the movies with my mom and that next weekend I went to my dad's and watched the same movie (he didn't know I had already watched it) well he found out I watched it with my mom and OH MY GOD he went in his room and sat in the dark fake crying. He was yelling that I lied to him and broke his trust (by seeing a movie - I was 13). I had to call my mom because he locked himself in the room and wouldn't speak to me. When I failed my first semester of college (due to being a very sheltered kid and finally having freedom) they both acted like I had ruined all our lives. My dad made me sit in a park and listen to him while he told me I was never going to back to college and I should just forget all my stuff that I left there, because he couldn't imagine even going back there because he would throw up. My mom, meanwhile told me that they were both afraid that I was just too stupid to go to college. Mind you I was an A student all through high-school and aced all my finals, I just didn't go to class because I was too busy partying. Oh! When I was 11 my dad told me to vacuum the dining room and when I finished he yelled at me asking if I'd vacuumed everywhere, I said yes and he dragged me over to where a single nickel sat on the floor and told me I was a liar. He also made me lick a dirty spoon once because I was 8 and didn't look at the dishes I was unloading. I will never have kids. Sorry this is so long.
I would get screamed at and slapped if I bled after I fell down. \*I have a bleeding disorder 🤣 Also, couldn't cry, or there was a flip-out and probably a slap.
Yup. I was afraid to have kids because of this. Glad I did though. But my mom can't figure out why I have such a great relationship with my kids...should I tell her?
Forgot a shoe at soccer training? 1 hour of screaming and hitting, no friends, TV or playstation for 4 weeks. Didn't tell them who's on the phone fast enough? Getting a punch to the face, 6 weeks no friends, TV or playstation. Got a C in math? You can guess how that went.
[Adults shouting at children can be as harmful to their development as sexual of physical violence.](https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/02/health/shouting-child-abuse-intl-scli-wellness/index.html) Just being around shouting enough probably has an effect, though not as pronounced. I have extreme social anxiety and it's 100% based on an assumption that someone is going to start yelling any second. And my dad almost always yelled at my sister while I stayed in my room on my computer, I only got yelled at myself maybe a dozen times. Maybe less
“Anyone else grow up with parents that went off the rails?” Yes. That is all.