No matter how close someone is to their parents, there’s going to come a time where some friction will develop between them.
And while this can potentially happen at any point in their relationship, issues between parent and child most commonly boil over during the teenage years.
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Part of this has to do with the tendency to crave more independence when we reach that age, but it’s also a time when we start to question the status quo. While this often applies on a societal level, a teen may also start noticing differences between the way things work at home and how they feel those things should work.
And while the student we’re about to hear from was perhaps unintentionally telling about what they were willing to accept, they made a pretty major decision based on what they could no longer tolerate.
Since the student’s aunt and uncle were paying for their cousin’s college education, their dad also saved for a similar arrangement.
But as they explained in a Reddit post , accepting this money would also involve accepting the conditions that they couldn’t score lower than a B, their dad had to pre-approve each class they took, and they’d have to hold weekly meetings with the dad to discuss grades.
That apparently doesn’t cover the extent of it, but it’s already far more than I had to deal with when I went to school. My grade expectations were higher, but that’s about it.
Nonetheless, the student said they would have been fine with all of these conditions if they had a “normal” dad.
However, they don’t feel they can describe their father that way because they reported spending grades six through 12 stressed about their grades because the dad kept screaming at them and grounding them over the matter.
As they said, this included instances beyond their control, such as when assignments were marked “missing” because the teacher didn’t update the online portal.
They also said he would randomly search their bag and their locker due to constant suspicion that the student was hiding something.
So because they were under the impression that this would get worse if the dad could exert financial control over them, they decided to pay for college on their own.
As they said, “I’d rather be in debt than controlled for 4 more years.”
This came up at a family dinner in which the student’s aunt and uncle discussed paying for the cousin’s education and asked the dad how much he was paying for the student.
In response, the student said, “What are you asking him for? I’m the one paying for it.”
This prompted an angry reaction from the dad, who said the student’s statement was out of line and embarrassing. But from their perspective, their dad wouldn’t have known how much tuition cost.
As they said, “I didn’t do it to embarrass him, I was just being honest.”
And while some Redditors thought the student should’ve waited for the dad to answer to see if he’d tell the truth, others didn’t think they owed him even that much.
As one user put it , “So what if he was embarrassed. His emotions are not yours to manage. You told the truth.”
Another felt that the dad would do well to recognize why he was embarrassed rather than treating this situation as his child’s problem.
In their words , “It’s embarrassing to him that you hate his control so much you’d turn down college being paid. And rightly so: he should be embarrassed.”
h/t: Reddit | yeasothat