r/parentingteenagers

He’s going to dorms in 6 weeks but I don’t know how we are going to make it that long.

There’s verbal abuse, he’s not working, he’s not following through with at home expectations, he’s rude and tells me things like I’m a fucking piece of shit. He never wants to spend time with me.

He’s depressed AF and has no friends after his friend group disowned him a couple of years ago. He has a girlfriend who he treats like a princess and everything in our house revolves around their schedule together.

The way he speaks to me, the way I’m trapped in my house and can’t really leave (I do, but in the evenings and such when I’d like peace, and we live quite a way from the city.) but then the way we’re stuck in this home and there’s so much hate. We’re in Therapy together but it’s not helping other than to make functional agreements to which he’s not adhering.

I want to move just to get away from him. Or just die because I wasted my life raising a human who doesn’t care about me or respect me. I’m sure I fucked up plenty but being called terrible things and told my life is worthless and all sorts of stuff makes me want to end it. I don’t have much for family, there’s no dad. There’s no male role models for either of us and we’re underresourced. I feel so bad and responsible but also like there’s no point in continuing to try.

I overreacted two weeks ago when he was telling me fuck all the rules of the house and he wasn’t respecting them and it was 6 hours later and it was still like that with the aggressive words and actively working against me, and threw a chair. It did not hit him , and was purposefully thrown away from him. But in response he point blank punched me. Am I the asshole? Maybe I am the scum of the earth and should just kill my self because sometimes that’s what he tells me. I don’t know how we are going to make it 6 weeks.

Pretty sure out 17m having sex with his 17f girlfriend, he’s my stepson. My husband had told him he could watch a movie in his room with her as long as the door was open, I didn’t agree to this and we got into a bit of a fight over it but an hour later ss comes down with out a shirt on and wearing sweatpants which was not what he was wearing earlier and that’s when it clicked, his gf came over in sweatpants too. It’s pretty easy to just pull them down or up quickly if they hear someone coming up the stairs and that’s how teens can get away with having sex with the door open. So if you really don’t want your kids having sex in your house don’t let them hangout in their rooms even with the door open and don’t let them wear pants that can easily be pulled down or up if you don’t want them having sex in your house.

I haven’t written in here for a while because I don’t really have teenagers anymore. But my youngest still is technically a teen so I think this still fits. Sorry this is long!! I’m just so upset.

Background; my daughter is a vegetarian who struggles with some mental health issues such as OCD, adhd and possible autism. I have spent her whole life trying my best to advocate for her and understand her. We have a very close relationship and I love her deeply. Both our daughters still live with us and my youngest took a gap year to try and figure stuff out. We are a very close knit family.

I have a job in the summer that takes me out of town for a week at a time and this time, I hadn’t been home for ten days and I’m leaving again in a week. So Friday night, it was our first family dinner in ten days and we were looking forward to having some good family time. I made tacos and since my youngest (I’ll call her V) doesn’t eat meat, I made a tofu version for her. We also were having a heat wave and I don’t have a/c save for one room in our downstairs. I know V is a picky eater so I put all the toppings and such on the side so she can pick and choose what she wants. After looking at the meal, she told me she actually won’t eat anything but the tofu and the tortilla. I asked her what about the cheese and she snapped at me and told me that “I know dairy makes her sick” (she had just eaten ice cream the day before). Every option I offered was met with a very disrespectful tone, even when I told her I would make her something else. Finally I told her she was being snotty and if she couldn’t talk to use kindly, we didn’t want to eat with her. So she storms upstairs and I don’t see her for the rest of the evening, which really hurt me since I was really looking forward to spending time with her and also bc I did put a lot of effort into dinner and sweating my ass off.

I really thought this was something that she would cool down from and we could have a productive talk and move on. I woke up to a text from her telling us her boyfriend was coming over and to make sure the door was unlocked. I was a little miffed by this bc she didn’t ask but we love her boyfriend and in the end, I didn’t see the harm. To try and just offer a place of peace, I went into her room and told her I was gonna make her favorite pancakes for her and her boyfriend and if she feels like it, they’ll be downstairs. I was met with coldness from her and in this moment, I should have just let it slide and given her the space, but instead I texted her how I was feeling. In the text I said “I didn’t think this was that deep but if it is, let’s talk about it”. I even said “I know me forgetting what you don’t like to eat can make you feel unseen and invalidated and that probably very frustrating and I’m sorry. I’ll do my best to remember in the future” and then I added “however, it was a mistake and the way you treated me made me feel like garbage”. That’s kinda the jist of the message and no response. Just refusing to speak to us.

After her boyfriend arrives, I hear them upstairs talking to my oldest daughter. I admit I ease dropped. The things she was saying about me and my husband were absolutely villainous. You would think she lived in an abusive household and we treated her like Cinderella. Some of the things she said were totally untrue or half truths (she cherry picked my message and kept harping on the fact that I said “it’s not that deep” leaving out where I offered to talk to her and acknowledge that it is that deep to her). She said we were refusing to pay for her college (which is a total lie, as we literally told her a month ago we would cover it) to which her boyfriend replies “I grew up in poverty and my family would never weaponize money like that” (which made my blood boil). She said I don’t try to understand her, that all I care about is “respect” and I don’t care about her mental issues (like I said, my life has revolved around them.) and a lot of other hurtful bullshit. Like I mentioned before, V and I are very very close. We have such a deep and loving relationship. So hearing her say these things about me was so deeply hurtful. And to hear what she said about her dad (including that it’s somehow our fault she hasn’t done anything during her gap year, even though my husband has driven her over an hour to shadow at a vets office just in the odd chance she might wanna be a vet). It all seemed to stem from her classic spiral though, which I’ve seen often and for the most part, I know to take with a grain of salt. I even heard her say that if she moved out, she would stop talking to me (that one cut deep).

I think that if this was just between her and her sister, I wouldn’t have gotten so angry. But hearing her spill this to a 3rd party just sent me into a blind rage. I stormed upstairs and yelled “I heard everything you said and if you don’t want to sit down and talk this out with me, you should leave” and so that’s what she did. Within 10 mins she had a whole suitcase packed and her and her BF were walking to the bus stop. My oldest daughter started crying and said “why would you do that?? I almost had her talked down. She told me if she left she’d have a hard time coming home” and I just broke down. I felt so much shame and regret for letting my anger get the best of me and pushing my daughter away. Even typing it out now I feel like I’m choking on it in my throat.

I know a lot of parents in these situations can’t look beyond what they do for their kids and can’t see where their kid has valid points. I really really try my best to not be one of those parents in fights. But this just seems completely ridiculous. She is so insanely entitled. She works 1-2 days a week and spends her money on whatever she wants. We don’t charge her rent, we go out of our way to get her groceries (even the day of the fight we had went to our local market and spent an extra 20 mins looking for the fudge booth bc she asked us for fudge), we don’t make her pay her own phone bill, we take her boyfriend with us on trips and outings and pay for him bc he doesn’t have a job and comes from a lower income family. She doesn’t drive so we drive her back and forth to work or pick her boyfriend up or drop her there and
Back. We never fight or even have tense times. We all have so much fun together.

I am swinging between a well of grief and a well of anger. I sent her and her boyfriend a long apology for my outburst and told her that I love her. No response. I have no idea when she’s coming back. I can’t eat. I can’t think. I have a headache from crying and as soon as I opened my eyes this morning I started crying again. Nothing like this has ever happened with our family and I don’t know how to handle it.

Thank you for reading if you made it this far. I’m just a sad mom who misses her daughter.

My daughter is 13.. she has anxiety.. which seemed to go away when she made friends at school .. now her bestfriend is favouring a new girl who seems to have taken her place .. and my daughter is feeling pushed out .. on Thursday my daughter was made 2 feel like she was in the wrong over the situation.. they ganged up on her and have been gaslighting her .. she wasnt going to go on the trip ..she is currently on a school trip because her best friend said she wanted her there .. away from home .. she has contacted us uphappy as she is feeling pushed out again .. i want her to make new friends .. because I hate the idea that she is feeling like this .. but her anxiety is in the way .. please can some1 advise me ? Thanx in advance x

My kid is not going to college next year. My kid has a full time job making double minimum wage in their chosen career. My kid is going to work for 2-3 years then revisit the idea of college. Yes in order to move up they will require some sort of post, secondary education, but working full-time for a few years is a valid option, and we should be just as proud of those kids as the ones going to College. And those kids should be celebrated just as much at the graduation ceremony and awards banquets as the kids going to college.

My kid (18) has OCD. We are at a family members summer house and he wants to leave due to seeing a centipede in the basement room. This is a beautiful vacation many would pay thousands to be on and we brought my elderly mom. There are not too many more years where we can be together like this. We are supposed to go on another short trip in a week and given that I do not want to have a repeat of this situation, I fear I have to cancel it and forfeit air bnb deposits. This is so debilitating for him and I feel controlled by it. Our lives have gotten smaller and smaller and we cannot even visit with family anymore. Due to an ocd fixation, we missed a funeral where I would have seen cousins I haven't seen in 20 years, he has dropped out of school due to obsessions and does online school. He has lost a lot of weight. He has already been hospitalized once and refuses further treatment. I cannot force a 6 foot, almost 18 year old person to go to therapy. When we are at home he sleeps all day and his only friends are people he insults in online games.

My almost 14 year old daughter is gaining weight rapidly and I am concerned. I am a child of the 90’s/very early aughts and I was very skinny all of my life until post pregnancy. I see myself falling in to the same traps that my mother fell. Every diet ever, seeing multiple nutritionists, using GLP1 until my insurance wouldn’t cover.. I think this may be important to add.

I am very overweight and it’s definitely my fault that my child is in this position. I cook all of our meals but I also buy snacks for her and don’t make her eat dinner.

I started writing this weeks ago and stopped because I realized this is my fault. Does anyone have experience with this? I put money in her Venmo because I can’t really afford to send her to summer camps so she spends a lot of time with myself and her dad. She walks around the city a lot and buys clothes and Starbucks and snacks. How can I stop the iPad/iPhone addiction and help her with her weight?

Ok, my daughter (15 years old) has grown up in Utah her whole life but for some reason, she just doesn't seem to fit in. She has tons of acquaintances but not really friends, if that makes sense. She participates in things and is on a sports team but there's just something that's just not working, and I don't quite get it. We're not mormon, and it is a place that's majority mormon, but that can't be the only thing, can it?

She's not neuro divergent or anything like that. She tries making conversation with other girls and asks them questions about themselves. But she can tell that they don't really want to talk to her and want to go back to their real friends. Luckily, she's pretty resilient and future oriented and is planning on leaving the state for college but I just have felt at a loss. I really don't get it. She's a very nice girl and she is pretty "normal" (I don't mean this in a mean way but just to explain that she's not alternative.) Could this be a Utah/mormon thing or just a normal girl thing? (I did not grow up in Utah.)

My son has been friends with a really nice girl for several years. He's been invited to her house on at least one occasion and they've gone to each other's birthdays, etc., for years.

Over the past year or so, she seems to constantly have lice. It's so bad that other kids in my son's class have noticed it and have even said something to her. Not bullying or shaming, but apparently just asking if she's aware. When they've asked, she's just shrugged it off.

Our school has had at least two lice outbreaks this year and each time I've helped spread the word to parents. Her mom has seemed concerned both times...but the girl's lice are still there. The girl even had to go to the hospital for appendicitis a few months ago, which I figured would mean the lice would be taken care of, since hospitals should be sterile environments. But when she got back to school, the lice were still there.

I've been giving my son prevention treatment each week, and it seems to work. But lately this girl and another boy my son has been friends with for a while have been asking to come over our house. I have no problem with them -- they're good kids and I'd be happy to host them. But I don't want to get lice in my house.

We live in a small-ish apartment, so it's almost impossible to avoid having the kids on soft surfaces like our sofa or on my son's bed to sit down.

Does anyone have any advice about this situation? For instance, why might this girl still have lice? And especially, what, if anything, can I do about having her over and not leaving lice behind?

Any advice would be appreciated.

How do you all try to find things to be proud of/praise if you have one of those teens that seems to not care about anything?

I have a 17-year-old that makes be disappointed/frustrated more than anything these days. He is not a bad kid. But he basically does nothing stellar ever either. He's a C average student. He is in the stage where he ignores us and his younger siblings and so he's never doing anything nice for them or us that we would praise. He breaks stupid silly rules like no food/drinks in his room because he never brings the trash or dishes out (we had no choice but now he just sneaks things in there because how the hell do you even give a consequence for something he's doing when we're not even home and hides it unless we search?). He avoids every chore until we get mad/nag him. He only comes to talk to me when he wants something and when I try to talk otherwise, I get short responses. He worked a part time job in the winter last year and then quit to play a sport and never got another. Now we're more than a month into summer and he does nothing all day. It's almost 3 pm and my 12 year old told me he's only been out of his room to get food and he hasn't seen him otherwise. My 12 year old basically picked up his slack and did a bunch of chores. Now I'm supposed to go home and have another talk with him and try to get him to care that he is the most unhelpful person in our household and to want to contribute meaningfully and not just lay around all day? Seriously, we were gone all day last weekend while he slept in and didn't want to come to visit my sister's house, we came home and he hadn't even fed our dogs and it was 2 hours past their normal feeding time. How do you all do it without losing your minds!? He knows what he is supposed to do but he doesn't care, because he hates it and has the attitude like it's not "actually his job". If I call him and tell him to go do XYZ he will, but not unless I nag at him about it.

This child last week had the nerve to ask me if I was going to pay him to drive his brother to a summer sports camp. 10 minutes down the road, in the car we paid for and own, with insurance we pay for, with gas we fill.

I know this is par for the course with teens, and I know I need to find positive things to say to him and not always have all our interactions be negative, but what do I do when I cannot find something to say? Tell me he'll break out of this? Because my husband and I remember going through a phase where we thought our parents were stupid for wanting me to do things and extremely selfish and self-centered, but we were like 13/14. Not a few months from adulthood.

My 13-year-old son was recently diagnosed with ADHD and isn’t on medication. One thing that’s been weighing on me is that he doesn’t really have any close friends outside of school.

When he was younger, I always tried to respect his boundaries. He had a lot of anxiety about playdates whether it was having kids over or going to someone else’s house. He’d get invited, but always say no. Eventually, the invitations stopped coming.

Now, he’ll occasionally text with friends someone, but it’s never an actual conversation. He snaps with kids. He doesn’t , play online games with he prefers gaming by himself. Honestly, he seems perfectly content hanging out at home with our family. We do a lot together, and he’s engaged and happy when we’re all together. He’s a really good kid.

What worries me is that I feel like it’s important for him to have at least one peer his age to go through the teenage years with.

The confusing part is that I know he isn’t isolated at school. I’ve worked closely with his teachers this year while getting his IEP in place, and they all describe him as very social. He sits with other kids at lunch, talks a little too much in class, and seems to get along well with his classmates. If we run into kids from school, they’re always genuinely happy to see him and say hi. He says hi back, but then immediately gets embarrassed (I’m guessing because he’s with his mom?)

I keep wondering if I made a mistake by not pushing playdates when he was younger. At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing by respecting his anxiety and his boundaries. Now that he’s 13, I’m obviously not going to arrange playdates for him, and I don’t really have friends with kids his age anyway.

Has anyone else experienced this with their ADHD teen? Did friendships develop later? Is there anything I should be doing, or should I just trust that he’ll find his people when he’s ready?
I’d really appreciate any thoughts or experiences.

About 6 mo ago my son started buying wigs and girls clothes called femboy. The weird thing is he’s not fem at all.
He started watching anime about a year ago and now wants to go to an anime convention in a costume.
Should I be worried about this?
He was once my strait laced athletic son and now he’s acting totally different. Still a nice kid that enjoys working out and sports, but has this weird alter-ego side that I’m not sure is healthy.
Anyone else have older teens that’s into this stuff??

Edit: he is 18. Yes, I know he’s legally an adult but that doesn’t mean I still don’t parent and worry about him. He leaves for college in August.

My 17 year old daughter was arrested for family violence a month ago. I am having a hard time with it. I just want her back the way she used to be before drugs began controlling her. I am finding more and more disturbing things as the days go on. Selling sex videos and possibly engaging in prostitution. I am lost as to how to deal with all of this. I want my little girl back. All I want to do is sleep because I spend my waking moments distressed and depressed and guilty as to where I went wrong. My heart is breaking because I love her and she needs serious help mentally that I can't give her. Has anyone had a child in jail before or gone through any of this?

My stepdaughters (13, 11) are going to the lake for 10 days. I'm concerned that they might start their period during that time and won't want to get in the water. Has anyone used period swimwear and how did it work for them? They only use pads at this point and I'm not sure how the technology works. Any tips would be helpful. Do they wear a pad with the swimsuit? How well do they work? Etc?

My daughter is 17 and a good kid - has never been in any trouble whatsoever and is college-bound in a year, hopefully. Has her first job and has been there for almost 3 months…it’s a take-out pizza place in a medium-size town. In this amount of time there have been two incidents where police have been called to the location for relatively minor fights. Today her manager (we’ll call her Mandy) relayed a story about her life that made me immediately look up what sort of criminal record Mandy might have. And Mandy did turn out to have a long record of drug offenses, meth, narcotics, failure to appear, even one fentanyl conviction. Not dealing - just using. It looks like the convictions stopped coming about 3 years ago.

There’s a second employee with some less serious violations, also stopping about 4 years ago.

I guess my question is, if this was your kid, what would you advise?

My daughter is turning 15 soon. She’s been teary lately about not wanting to grow up. She’s says she loves being busy with school and stuff but she’s also feeling pressure because more is expected of her as she gets older. She’s also been needing more hugs lately. I love giving hugs; that’s not the problem. I guess I’m just wondering even at this age can they feel scared to “grow up”? Has your teen been through this? Please tell me your kid’s age if you have any advice. Thank you! 🙏

My 15 year old wants to download Life360 so he and his girlfriend (~8 months) can track each other. They already have location sharing on Snapchat and they both have iPhones, but they want the location history.

She was harassed at the pool by some kids they both know yesterday and she said she would feel safer if he has it.

Is this common among teenagers? To me it's a red flag (like if she isn't feeling safe, shouldn't her parents monitor her and not her boyfriend? My kid worries about her cheating on him sometimes (which is something we talk about and he doesn't like that he does it either) and it just doesn't seem healthy or normal to me, but they insist it is.

Would love to know how common this is among yalls teens!

I knew he (15) was on reddit, I don't have a problem with it and trust him to be able to navigate the internet on his own. I gave him the right tools. I feel like I peeked in on his diary.

We sub to the same music stuff, hobbies etc - I try to stay knowledgeable about their interests. I was looking through one (his first concert is this week) and people were downvoting a comment for no reason, you know how reddit is. It was a comment about how excited they were for the upcoming concert. I have this dumb ocd thing where if someone is downvoted for a dumb reason I go to their page and upvote their last few things. I go to the profile and know immediately it's my son. No pics (this is a rule we have and the kids luckily agree with for now) but all of his hobbies/music and before I can back out I see a post. Nothing bad at all, but I still saw it. I did check his most active pages and it's all totally innocent stuff. Then I immediately blocked his profile because he deserves a parent free space (and I deserve a kid free space).

I ended up telling my husband and he immediately asked for his user. I don't even remember it, and told him as much. He grilled me for it because "reddit is a public forum and no one should expect their posts to be private", also because he is still a kid and needs to be checked up on. My thoughts are he has never done anything bad at all, aside from turning in some school work late here and there and he talked back to me literally ONCE. He is kind, empathetic, intelligent, loving, he's a great kid. I won't spy on him unless I am given a reason to. Again, I feel like I raised him well and he should be given privacy unless I feel like he is a danger to himself or others.

That's it. What would yall have done? Would you spy on your kid or give them privacy?

Just graduated high school, accepted to local college for the fall, and will stay living with us (mom and dad) for free while he goes to school. We're also paying his tuition. Minimal responsibility, a part-time job for 6 hours a week, and not many chores, but he still grumbles indignantly at being asked to do anything. He has a girlfriend that lives 20 min walk away, but sometimes we drive him, especially if it's really late at night. I have encouraged him so many times to learn to drive, but he refuses. I ask why, and he just says, "I don't want to." But I'm struggling to understand. A drivers license would be more independence, more freedom. It can be a pain for me to have to stay up late to pick him up or drop him off, and I want him to show a little responsibility. Does anyone have any insight? Or is there a different way I can ask him to get a different answer? I don't want this to become a failure to launch situation.

I have an 18 year old daughter who works at a firework store with her best friend. Collectively they got $600 worth of fireworks as a gift from the owner.

When I got home from work she was thrilled to show me and continued to share that they planned to fire them off when we were gone over the 4th.

She doesn’t understand why I couldn’t just be happy for her (which I initially showed some interest) and I had to go right to concern and negativity.

Ugh. Feeling like I can’t win and also, am I crazy?! Is there any parent out there that would be excited about their 18 year old gathering friends for a firework show when you aren’t home?!