that phase were you realize your parents were right

not that it necessarily has anything to do with it, but my physical age is 18. and lately i'm going thru that phase were i realize all the rules my parents set as i was growing up, all those long talks and groundings, really WERE because they cared about me and not just to make me miserable.
it seems like most of my friends (whose parents were there when they were growing up) are never gonna realize this.
what age did you realize this at and what caused it?

 

I think it came rather gradually as I probably matured.

There is a saying a long the lines of wishing you were half as smart as your child thought you were and half as stupid as your teen thinks you are.

Today, it still happens. I have kids now and I am sure there are times that my mom is justly rewarded for putting up with the nonsense from my sister and I growing up as we raise our own kids and she gets to sit on the side lines as watch us.

I, at times, sound very much like her now.

 

I always knew deep inside even if I tried not to believe it

 

Unfortunately,mine were never right.

 

I lucked out, they left me the fuck alone. but supported anything I did, crazy as it usually was. My old man would have driven three hours to pick me and my fucked up friends home.

It was when I started paying my dad back, but supporting my son, driving him and his fucked up friends home, that I realized what Dad really taught me

I learned a few lessons the hard way, as is my son. I think I turned out OK and I' sure my son will do the same.

 

I instead reached the age where I wished I had more active parents. But it's not my mum's fault, much of my life she was on her own.
It does, however, make me want to be involved in my own kid's life

 

You parents are pretty much as clueless as anyone else

 

I realized this two years after I graduated.

 

Mine where of the "you can't do that" persuasion rather than giving reasons why! A mistake i didn't make. My children were given the options and told to make there own mind up. Most of the time they realised I wasn't just being a grumpy old fucker but had a serious point to make. But yeah, Uitar9, we did rescue them from a lot of shit, usually at some god-forsaken hour of the night when all self-respecting adults should be in bed

 

Very well put.

I still, shamefully, catch myself trying not to...

 

I feel like a huge fuck up. My parens would do anything for me. I repaid them by failing every year [they had to pay for summer school every summer] and never listening. :/

 

Now the real picture is that I am sure that your parents do not feel that you are. They may want more for you, which is just part of being a parent.

They would do anything for you because they love you, now do your best and make sure they know you love them back.

It all works out.

 

I realized this when I was about 20. My parents were strict on some issues while lax on others.

From the time I was 6 to the time I was 14, they stopped subscribing to cable TV. I was very upset with them when they did that and our TV only had 10 channels. I'd visit my dad's work to watch Cable or my friends' houses. But I actually thanked them for doing that; once I got older and realized how much time my friends growing up spent in front of the TV watching such needless crap.

 

Yeah, gotta give my mom credit for a girl too young to be a parent with me, then having to deal with my "difference" when I became a teenager.

She was a conformist to her generation's ideals - I was a questioning iconoclast who threw out all those ideals and made my own (with a little help from my friends).

Quite frankly, after I settled I still did not go back to my parents bigoted, racist, sexist world view - so much of what they taught me was shit that I threw out.

 

Good on ya-what else is there

I;ve a friend who still sets up a ride for his daughter, when she goes out with the girls-she's married, has two kids- he loves to do it

 

I was only a shit head to my parents between the ages of 13 and 16. After I turned 17 I started realizing that if I was not a huge dick to my parents, they would stop being huge dicks to me. And now years we have a great relationship. But it depends on who you are, my brother is younger and not very mature for his age, still thinks he can be a dick to our folks and then turn around and ask them for shit. To bad they still give him what he wants. We were raised kind of differently.

 

My parents weren't right about everything, but I was probably about 20 when I realized that even the backwards close-minded things they say were not necessarily meant to hurt me, it was just them trying to help the only way they knew how. I had a weird adolescence filled with weird-ass drama and was mentally ill on and off throughout my childhood, so I have to say they did the best they could. I have 1 million times the respect for my dad now and my mom..well...I can say we don't fight anymore. There was a family war going on most of my life involving my mom and her older brother and about the age of 16 or 17, I realized how much of a child my mom was being about the entire situation. I lost a lot of respect for her as an adult (not as a parent) then and we had a lot of falling outs over it because apparently 17 year olds aren't equipped with censor buttons. I still can't say she's really gained any of that respect back, but at the same time, I realize that our relationship is not adult to adult, but mother and child, so I just let it go. She won't change and neither will I, so it's best to just learn to get along as we are.

 

I was a little git as a teenager so they gave up trying to do anything about it after a while.

 

i was pretty good until i started dating. i have done some pretty fucked up things to myself and them and they stuck with me through all of it. they certainly aren't perfect, but i started really being able to relate to their views and rules once i reached my early twenties.

 

My dad was a bitter old fart who could have used some counseling- but I learned early that if I stayed out of his way and under his radar he left me alone. I think I had a good childhood.- but it was Humboldt county in the late 60’s and 70’s