ralefen:

sinesalvatorem:

Reading Ozy’s most recent WordPress post makes me realise they have a different definition of “good relationship with your parents” than I do.

For most people– even people who had pretty good relationships with their parents– it’s something like this.

You carefully filtered the information about your life you gave to your parents. Band practice, favorite movies, and interesting college classes, yes; inner turmoil and struggle, not so much. You felt that your parents were probably as likely to attack or lecture you if you were vulnerable with them as they were to actually be helpful. The deceptions of ordinary teenagers are many: that some of their friends drink; that they sometimes finish their homework in homeroom; that sometimes when they’re going to the mall they’re actually getting felt up by their boyfriend.

My parents knew about my inner turmoil and struggle, that my friends did a variety of drugs (but that I’d give them a heads up if I try any to be safe), that I had completely stopped doing most homework, and that I had a girlfriend I was fucking in our house. (Jokes about our sex life being made to my mother included.)

Which seems to me like a perfectly typical parent-child relationship but, hey, typical mind. I would say that, if this isn’t typical, its lack of typicality is weird because it isn’t a very high bar. Like, if your parents are as likely to attack/lecture you as to support you, then that isn’t a good relationship. If you can’t ask your parent to stop lecturing you for a moment to hear you out, or tell them that the lecturing isn’t helping so they should cut it out, then something is wrong. You deserve better.

Makes me really, really hope my relationship with my kids doesn’t regress to the mean if the above quote is what passes for a “good relationship”. *shudder*

I don’t think that being lectured or yelled at is a ‘good’ relationship, although I suspect it’s a fairly typical one (certainly a lot more typical than the situation you described).  In my case (and those of most people I knew) we avoided raising those topics with our parents not because they’d be hostile but because at best it would be awkward and at worst they’d intervene ‘for your own good’.

I would regularly lie to my parents about going to after-school activities when I was spending the time with my girlfriend; they undoubtedly knew I was lying (perhaps not about the specific timing, but they could guess I was seeing her *sometime*).  I knew they knew, they knew I knew they knew, and to actually talk about it with words was an unnecessary conversation neither of us wanted to have.  Doing anything in the house (that they knew of) was definitely a no-no, because then they’d feel obliged to make sure we were being safe and responsible and nobody wanted them to do that.

Also, creative ambiguity!  My parents didn’t want to know exactly what I did at parties because they would likely disapprove, and I would have to either change what I was doing or admit to doing something my parents didn’t like*.  A polite fiction let us have a far less tense relationship than we would have otherwise.

There was some variation here, but not much.  The thought of your parents knowing about your sex life (or vice versa) pretty much universally ranged from ‘weird’ to ‘mortifying’ to ‘possible grounds for moving out immediately’, even before looking at strict religious/traditionalist families.  Drugs (especially alcohol, because Australia) were a lot more lax and a fair few people had ‘cool parents’ who would supply them, but for the rest of us they were an obstacle to be dodged lest they try to help (i.e. ban you from going to parties or seeing certain friends). 

Given that your average teenager really does make a lot of terrible long-term choices that they’ll later regret (god knows I did) that parents can easily see as such, changing this dynamic would need a lot more parents to have a very strong stance in favour of harm minimisation and non-judgement, and that, sadly, is a high bar.

*This makes them sound like authoritarians that forbid dissent, so I think it’s important to note that the class of things they cared about here were only health-related things like drinking or medical habits.  They didn’t mind disagreement, but they got very stressed about me doing things that Weren’t In My Own Best Interest™ and avoiding this stress was good for everyone.

Interesting discussion.

I could particularly relate to this bit:

Also, creative ambiguity! My parents didn’t want to know exactly what I did at parties because they would likely disapprove, and I would have to either change what I was doing or admit to doing something my parents didn’t like*. A polite fiction let us have a far less tense relationship than we would have otherwise.

That’s more how I thought about it at the time. As an adult out of the situation for years, it started sinking in just what “polite fiction” extremes I was having to resort to, in order to keep the peace–IOW, trying to avoid my mother flipping totally out on me. A way less normal or good situation than I was able to recognize at the time, and I’m afraid that’s way too common as well.

The details were a bit different from anything discussed so far, but I really didn’t feel safe talking about much that was bothering me or the specifics of what I was doing half the time, up through my 20s until I moved away. My parents really were all for harm reduction around drinking, but other than that? Loads of concern trolling over anything my mom didn’t like. She preferred to think of herself as an accepting type of person, but not so much in practice.

In this case, it was actually scarier because my autistic ass did forcibly end up in the psych system in my early teens, thanks to a series of spectacular meltdowns which weren’t recognized as such back then. While the actual stressful life situations fueling the meltdowns (and plenty of other issues) got ignored. It was very easy and tempting to cast anything adults around me didn’t understand or like as some type of hopefully “fixable” symptom of mental health problems I wasn’t actually dealing with. So, of course I was not free to talk about the things that were actually bothering me, other than with a few friends.

Including when I got outed at home one time, by a friend who assumed my mother knew about and was cool with my orientation. Spoiler: she really was not cool with bi (or trans) people at all. They’re all so confused and in need of help, in a very 2nd Wave kind of way. I had to lie my ass off and play it as a joke under threat of forced treatment, which professionals might well have gone along with in the early ‘90s. That didn’t come up directly again for probably 10 years, when I was living on another continent. Gender stuff never really did.

A little different scenario from the more usual run of what Ozy was talking about there, but I knew more than a few other kids in similar situations. (Especially during the “Institutionalized” era; I don’t know so much about more recently.)

Slightly different routes to pretty much the same place, which in retrospect doesn’t necessarily look like it involves nearly as good and normal family dynamics given some other points of comparison. Even if it’s not as blatantly and obviously bad as getting physically abused and/or kicked out of the house–or, indeed, worrying about getting locked up “for their own good” if they admit to having problems–kids really shouldn’t need to be afraid to be open about what’s bothering them. That doesn’t make for a very good relationship, no matter how common it might be.