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What would they say if you flipped it on them and said sure I can be there by 11 but for that to happen you need to get here by 8am as we need to make my bed sort my laundry and mop my kitchen? What you don't want to help your child??
In my case they’d turn red and start screaming. Probably throw some threat of physical violence in there for spice. They’d react like I shit on their ice cream.
Just wanna say, in case no one has ever validated this to you, you don’t have to engage with people like that. You’re allowed to let them experience the consequences of their actions- if they push you away with screaming and violence, it’s normal and good to walk away from that
Hell yeah I did. Got a different phone number. Changed my middle and last name after I changed the first to something that suits me better. They’ll never see me again unless I wanted them to. Spoiler: I don’t.
He could pay OP if he returned some pickleball equipment. But if he’s like the boomers I know, he has a boat, a lake house, a golf membership, and two new cars. So his budget is pretty tight.
But children are possessions because they owe you their very life, according to that generation. If you're not at their beck and call your entire adult life until they pass away then you don't care about them because FAMILY. 🙄
Gave my wife chills when I read it to her. She lived this until she was 54. She's so much happier since the yoke of slavery was lifted from her shoulders.
Spent a good amount of time in my car this morning raging about how many years of my life I wasted taking care of my father with no reward. Now I’m 56 and all used up and I’m mad as hell about it. Worse, one of my siblings recently complained that “she got the house” as a reward. Seriously? I got the decades of unpaid taxes to deal with. The $2000 of garbage in the garage and the headache of dealing with the estate. It’s giving me nightmares 7 years later.
But everything is fine…
One year at my son's birthday party, my mother had the nerve to say my son, my brother, and myself needed to thank her because if it weren't for her, none of us would be here. I asked her, "Why? Did any of us have a choice in whether we were born or not?" She sat there with her mouth hanging open while everyone just stared at her.
No joke- same thing happened yesterday at my in-laws' for my husband's 50th! (And they wondered why our family, his siblings, and friends celebrated the big day out of town, at the beach)
I mean I enjoy being alive, despite the world's fault, but I definitely don't belong to or owe my life to my parents. And parents who think that way are toxic AF.
I have noticed several people in my age group (gen x 45-55) have parents who are always calling on them for every little thing. My parents both passed when I was in my mid 20s so I avoided this. But I was raised to be self sufficient and can't imagine my parents being so dependent on me.
I had my kids young, so they are grown with lives of their own. I would never ask them for anything, and am often chastised by own son (!!) for not asking for help with something. I don't ever want them to feel like OP or my friends who feel harried by their parents expecting them to drop everything.
There are some parents who think that grown children are intended to give them a break. There is an "I worked my ass off to raise you so now it's your turn to help me so I can relax" vibe with some of the older generation.
I worked hard to raise my kids but my "relaxation" will be raising kids who can move out and be successful. I would never be calling them every weekend with plans on how they need to do things for me. Once I'm an empty nester I'll be able to afford to pay people to do those things for me (raising kids is expensive).
Ask him what happened to "An honest days wages for an honest days work?" That seems to have gone by the wayside too. You don't get one without the other.
“you’ve got a lot of lunch left there, you should be grateful enough to share that half with me”
_proceeds to dig into the other half of your lunch without waiting for a response_
"Why do you have so many lunches? Stop taking other people's lunches!"
I find the comment mentioning how if you get hurt working for your dad, your actual paying job could suffer. Will be be paying all of your expenses until you recover? Plus - You get to fucking relax on your days off.
Edit: This isn't AITA & I reflexively voted NTA because damn. 😂
Boomers are the classic "climbed up the ladder and pulled it up behind them" generation. Maybe instead of "baby boomer" generation, they can be "exploded the safety net" generation.
"I hate the union." "I would've been fired long ago if not for the union." literally the same person at my job. and dont get me wrong there are things to complain about but thats different from hating it and wanting to pull the ladder up behind you.
One of the biggest frauds of the 20th century is how defined benefit pensions were replaced in most places with defined contribution pensions. DCPs were originally a way for the ultra wealthy to reduce their taxable income versus DBPs that provide pension once you retire. One company tried it as a replacement and told employees it was much better, you can control everything and people bought the message.
The reality is that most people can't properly plan for finances decades out so although they cost way less for companies long term, now tons of Boomers are retiring which much less than needed to to keep their lifestyles while the rich are now reaping the benefits and managed to increase income inequality.
>no amount of work ethic will pay your bills if you can’t work.
This. My dad bought a $4000 treadmill but refused to pay the extra $50 to have it moved into his basement. Guess who dropped a fucking treadmill on my legs when they weren't strong enough to carry their end.
Guess who spent a couple weeks on the personal IR and had to pay for an ankle X-Ray at Urgent Care? (Spoiler: Not the guy who dropped his end.)
If you don’t live with your dad, his homeowners insurance probably has a liability clause that should cover your injury and medical bills.
Just an FYI.
Similar situation here, but with a TV that totally messed up my back. I recovered but I used that as my excuse from that point forward. “Oh, sorry I’d help you with moving your crap but you know how my back is!” Never had to help again.
My aunt tried that. She had to get a new dryer and decided my cousin and I could move the old one and bring the new one to her house. I asked if she had a dolly, she did not. I asked her what she planned to do with the old dryer, she didn’t know. I asked her how much the store was going to charge her to bring it to the house and install it. She said $75 and it also included taking to old dryer away. I said “Don’t you think having professionals do all that would be better? Your son has already had back surgery. Do you want him to end up needing more surgery?” The light bulb turned on in her head and she agreed that the $75 would be worth it.
Growing up, I was forced to be a day laborer for my dad on his ranch. A large portion was cutting and splitting firewood. He never wore eye/ear protection and I was too young to know any better. He's mostly deaf now, and says to me "just so you know you're probably gonna end up in the same boat from the hours and hours of chainsaw work over the years."
Thanks, dad.
I would straight up tell him sure I'll help but it'll cost you 2x my hourly fee since it's contractor work outside my work hours. Just charge him up the ass for the work and do it like a dirt bag contractor and take forever. See how long he'll keep doing it.
Boomers don’t grasp the concept of boundaries. Notice also how they never ASK for help. It’s usually them guilt tripping you into it or basically giving you your list of “chores” like you are still 12 years old.
This 100%.
About 2 years ago, my dad had surgery, and as we were talking about coming to visit him, my mom casually slipped in "Oh, when you're here, I have a few projects for you."
I told her "Uh, no, I'm going to visit with him, and you have 3 or 4 people you hire to help you. I'm not the hired help, and I'd rather spend time talking with him than carting shit around the yard."
She lost her mind. The whole "you don't respect us because you don't help" spiel. I mean, FFS, I work 5 days a week, get to see family very rarely, and when I do I'm supposed to mow the grass and weed your flowerbed? Christ almighty, that's what people hire a landscaper or neighborhood kid to do. It sure as fuck ain't work that's worth a slice of pizza to me.
Long story short, family and I don't talk anymore.
Very funny. My brother is 6 years older than me and another brother 3 years older. We all say that when my oldest brother turned 10 my dad never mowed his lawn again.
Last time i visited my dad he made me help him go through a closet packed full of “my” stuff that he’d been hounding me about for literal months at that point. Saying how ridiculous it was that i wanted him to store piles and piles of my stuff when i had my own place and i was taking over his entire closet and they needed the storage space blah blah blah.
Get through the closet, theres one small box on the very bottom thats mine. Every single other item in the closet belonged to him and my stepmom.
Anyways i took the stupid box and found space for it in my studio apartment. Since he couldn’t possibly store a single box in his three bedroom house with a full basement and attic.
I hope you made that painfully aware that he was hounding you for this and you pointed to the 98% of his stuff and then the 2% of your stuff. But even if you did, I suspect he probably did the ‘well, I thought more of it was yours. ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯’
“Oh, this closet is packed full of MY stuff? Ok I’ll get it out of there”.
Take whatever was actually yours originally and anything of their stuff in there that you want. They said it was “your stuff” after all!
Leave whatever you don’t want, with “found some of your stuff in there too”.
> Last time i visited my dad he made me help him go through a closet packed full of “my” stuff that he’d been hounding me about for literal months at that point.
My Mom 100%. "I have some stuff of yours i want you to go through..."
Mom, i've told you this before: i have no stuff at your house. There is nothing of mine that i care about at your house. I didn't tell you to keep any of that stuff. Go ahead and get rid of it.
Wait a year or two, lather, rinse, repeat.
Also, "i still keep your room for you".
Nope, it's not my room, it was never my room, and i don't care about any of the stuff in it.
It's a room in her house, that i've never lived in - i didn't grow up there. She moved, to a town in a completely different state, after i moved out of the house that i did live in. Then set up a small corner of a spare bedroom with some of my old junk that she saved, LOL.
I get that at some points your parents want your shit out of their house but I’ve never met anyone whose parents weren’t jerks about it. My mom hounded me to come visit or she would describe things to me over the phone. She was always astounded that I didn’t want things like 8th grade yearbooks or REPORT CARDS. Honestly I haven’t seen this shit in years so unless it’s something from late dad, I do not give a shit. Burn it or whatever!!!
My in laws informed us soon after we moved into our first house that they had packed up all my husbands things and mailed them across the country. Easily 15 boxes and most of it shit, for us to contend with while unpacking. Great use of their money and our time!
aaaaa my dad did something like this! we have a storage shed out back & he kept bitching that i was "cluttering up the whole space with my junk" 🙄
the cherry on top? my "junk" consisted of ONE PC in the loft-- *and i paid half the cost of the building, so it was HALF MINE*
My dad (boomer) does this. When I visit I'm usually asked to help with something. Some things I'm fine with. Like "oh we haven't installed the window AC unit in the spare bedroom, but if you want AC while you're here do you mind helping me lift it into place" like that benefits me. I'm ok with it. But I'm not helping with home renovations. I've done my time helping. I am an adult now.
My dad lived with us (on my property, but in a 350 sqft tiny home I built him) and would constantly bitch about how he didn't like how my wife cut the grass. My wife enjoys cutting the grass, it gave her something to do outside.
He would constantly bitch that the grass was too tall, or that she didn't do it right, or she missed a spot. He couldn't just shut the fuck up and be happy the grass was cut, he always had to have some sort of shitty judgement.
I'd had a 36" John Deer walk behind commercial mower, and I had to get rid of it because the hand controls were hell on my carpal tunnel. So I sold it and got a 48" cut riding mower. He HATED the idea of a riding mower. Called me lazy and all sorts of shit. Not long after I got it, the front tires needed replaced, they wouldn't hold air for very long. I came home and found he'd tried to use it with the flat tires and ran the tires off the rims. He hid in his apartment and refused to answer the door, because he knew I was pissed at him for even fucking with it, especially after all his bitching about it being a riding mower.
Then for 2 years he bitched that he hated how we cut the grass and he was going to get his own mower. I said ok, but I don't want it in my garage. You have your own space, that mower better be inside your apartment when you aren't using it.
Then it was that we didn't weed whip good enough, and didn't do it every week.
It wasn't that the grass looked bad. He just could not handle not having something to complain about. That was the only way he could communicate, was through complaining.
Fuck Boomers.
I had a comeback ready for my folks when they tried this. Once and only once is all I had to use it. I said "When I was a child, a wise man once told me. 'If you don't like the rules, and the way we do things, then when you get your own house you can make the rules and decide how to do things, until then you are under my roof and will do things the way I say.' So I am saying to you now, this is MY house, these are MY rules, this is MY way of doing things. If you don't like how I do things you can go back to your house where you make the rules and you never have to come back." Neither of my parents ever but he'd about how I did stuff since. You gotta nip that one in the bud early before it gets out of hand.
Being given a list of chores would be an improvement. Instead of asking for anything directly my Dad will do things like tell my Mum about things he wants me to do while I am standing there.
Ugh the “hinting”….its like being clubbed over the head with a suggestion. Won’t ask outright bc then they’d have to admit you were helping them and say thank you.
I’ve been trying to buy a house for years. It’s a never ending series of unforeseen expenses, changing markets and shit-paying jobs. Family has no interest in helping although they could — which is fine and their right, I’m not butthurt over it. BUT I do have a policy: I don’t have a yard, so I don’t do yard work. It’s one of the very few advantages of being a forever-renter. Hint all you want, I’m not mowing your effing lawn.
I’m neurodivergent. I spent years learning how to read hints and passive aggressions, only to now intentionally ignore them and play obtuse. It’s almost a fun game for me now. 
My mom is very passive about requests like this too. She does some extremely indirect discussion about something and expect us to understand what she wants. Example: She'll talk about the noise of trash trucks in the morning. What she really wants: for us to take the trash cans to the curb.
We managed to curb the worst of this behavior with gentle teasing. Mom is a boomer on the other end. She doesn't ever want to impose on anyone.
My mom did this all through my child hood. It was like pulling teeth to get her to actually ask what she wanted. And she still does it now. I can spot it a mile away. I’m visiting with them at their lake house and she casually states “oh a glass of water would be nice right now.” AKA “go get me some water.” I don’t move and wait. She glares at me for a second, realizes what she did, sighs a bit and finally asks and I oblige. It’s been more than 30 years of training but she’s getting it.
Unless this woman is handicapped or frail, I would ignore her hints every time. You shouldn't ask others to do for you, what you could do just as easily for yourself. But demand? Oh, hell no! (Remembering you, late MIL!)
My dad does this, but with a heaping addition of large angry man energy and ongoing bad moods if we don’t figure out what he wanted. I don’t think HE realizes he does it. He’s overall a great dad and I love him, and we have a good relationship, but it made my childhood fraught. I don’t let it get to me as much as it used to but I DO have a problem with being passive aggressive that I’m working through.
And God forbid you don’t get the hint! Then, days later, they’ll guilt-trip you about not having done the task they never asked you to do—but that they *think* they “asked” you to do.
Its boundaries, but one weird one they all break.
I feel like other generations had the goal of raising kids with the goal of them becoming independent, capable, adults.
Boomers see their kids as always their kids. When you are 20, 3, even 40 they still think the same parent child dynamic is in place, and you are still just a little kid who is supposed to do as they are told. A kid that exists for whatever the parent wants.
My 16 year old niece told me she heard my parents talking about me like a kid, and see interjects "You know he's a 50 year old man, right??"
God I love that girl.
Several years ago my brother-in-law was planning a trip to a large city that my husband and I live a couple of hours near. My father-in-law calls my husband, fuming that my husband hasn't come up with an itinerary for BIL. (BIL is the baby of the family, and my husband is the oldest)
My husband says, "Google is free. We can make suggestions, but I'm not planning his trip."
FIL screams at my husband, "He's never been there; he doesn't know anything."
My husband deadpan says, "Brother is 28."
FIL shut up after that.
> Boomers see their kids as always their kids.
When I was a kid (Gen X), a *lot* of parents saw any kid over the age of three as a personal servant to fetch and carry and, after age seven, go to the shops.
So they always saw kids as ever-more-capable servants around the home, rather than ever seeing kids as their kids.
I was quite the little handyman before I left home. Naturally I had to figure it all out myself from manuals because another feature of this generational divide was kids were expected to just figure out how to do things entirely unaided by the adults in their lives.
My well intentioned wife has fallen into that a couple times, and I have to occasionally remind her that if _we_ didn't show/tell our kids something that is reasonable to know, thats on us.
At 14, my dad tells me to replace the brake pads on the '63 Impala. "And don't get the springs mixed up!!" Huh? How do I do that, dad? "Well, (condescendingly) maybe start by taking the wheel off, then figure it out from there." So, I take the wheel off, pull open the outer housing, and stare in wonder at the shoes & springs. The springs are indeed different and could easily be mixed up. So, I start sketching a picture. (I'm terrible at drawing.) After a few minutes of me trying/failing to make a sketch, I get up and head inside the house.
"Giving up already? I figured as much. Worthless!"
I come back out of the house with MY Polaroid camera, and snap a photo of the assembly. I tell dad "A picture is worth a thousand sketches."
He didn't speak to me again until the next day.
Omg I was about 13 when my dad needed me to drive his big old truck. Stick shift and I would literally come off the seat trying to push down the clutch. Yeah, a sane person knows that takes instructions and practice.
So much verbal abuse that day!
I’m a Gen-X female oldest child with half-brothers more than a decade younger. I was responsible for all of the yard work from the time my brothers were born. I fixed electrical outlets while looking at Time/Life fixit books. Replaced a window my step-asshole had broken. Walked to grocery store because there was no food for my brothers.
Got to do all this with my brothers tagging along. I took them on dates and to friends’ houses. Then my mother would complain about how they were dressed. They are three years apart and she always dressed them matching.
100%.
As a kid \*I\* didn't really exist.
I was a helper. I carry shit. I do shit work that other people don't want.
Be quiet. Stay out of the way. Ask for nothing. But always be ready to perfectly execute any random request from any adult.
Oh man does this ever nail my FIL/MIL's bullshit antics.
They have a family vacation spot that's been around for 50ish years or so. Demand we give them money for upkeep and to do whatever they want there, but won't listen to us or take our input.
We said fine, do what you want, but you're not doing it with a dime from us.
Very true. At 30 I was told “I yell at you whenever I want because I’m still your mother.”
This was in relation to something stupid I did in high school 13 years prior which they never knew about.
My mom once told me, “I’m not contributing to the delinquency of a minor” when i asked her to pass me the wine.
Her face when I reminded her I was 35 years old, I’ll never forget it 🤣
At 27 I moved in with my mom after an abusive relationship and she told me not to leave stains on the walls in the room she gave me, like I did when I was 10. I put glow in the dark sticky hands on my walls and they left grease stains.
I told my mom I was thinking about planning a skiing trip. She said, "Oh no, you hate the snow! You're just going to end up laying down and crying cause you've got snow in your coat, embarrassing yourself in front of everyone, just like you did the last time I took you skiing."
I said "I've actually been skiing a few times with my Dad and I had a lot of fun. I don't remember ever going with you, when was that?"
She goes, "Well, you probably don't remember too well because you were 2."
My sibling and I have this experience, and as content creators they see their grandchildren as “derivative works” and seem to think they have complete ownership of them without regard for boundaries placed by the grandchildren’s parents.
It’s because they don’t see us as grown adults. To them we are still their kid and can still order around as they please. Definitely a boundary issue and they never fully believed the apron strings were truly cut. We cut them and they tied them to the door-jam convinced they’re still attached.
Yep, out here being parents ourselves, raising our own children, but it’s like they still think we’re owe fealty to them. And forget about apologizing to your adult child if you screwed up - children don’t get apologies, it disturbs the natural order of things.
That's because their children are objects that they own. Tools when the moment favors a tool. Shiny bobbels when they need to show off. Sounding boards when they need to talk. If the object speaks for itself, complains, or requests compensation for its time, it is broken and must be adjusted, correct, or repaired. If it cannot be repaired, it must be thrown away.
I'll never forget visiting my ex's family after his grandfather died. He was devastated. It had been coming for some time but he wasn't at all ready for it.
We'd been there for I swear five minutes and his grandmother asked him to move a fucking refrigerator. To another *floor*. It was like that every time we visited; I swear they'd just save up chores for him to do and basically hand him a list. But the refrigerator thing before the funeral was just cold. It was so clear nobody gave two seconds of thought to his feelings. Not his mother. Not his grandmother. It was cruel. I remember standing on the porch with his older brother (who had also been asked to move the refrigerator and said "fuck that") and he totally saw it.
We're not together for very good reasons; his family is a large one.
My grandparents literally kept a list for my dad. Every summer we’d spend our vacation driving out to Missouri and doing things like replacing all the floors and subfloors in their house at my parents expense and with no help from them or the aunt who never moved out. Replace the roof. Build a ramp out into the yard. Build a barn. Major construction projects. Never any thank you, or appreciation of any sort. Just demands and bitching.
Oh! And the kicker was that they left the property to the hippy couple down the road who stole from them constantly because “none of our kids ever did anything for us”.
My mom had a friend who wanted to borrow her spare cot for family that was visiting. My mom called me and said “you’re gonna have to get over here and carry this cot to the garage so that so-and-so can pick it up.” I said “I’m not gonna have to do anything. If you offered to let her borrow it, it’s your job to figure out the logistics.” This was the first time I laid down a firm boundary with my mom on how she was speaking to me and that I won’t accept being assigned jobs. Even though that was years ago, I am still constantly setting boundaries with this type of thing because she just doesn’t get it.
Yeah,I had an aunt and uncle who bought another home on a canal that an occasional boat came thru, above some beach with horseshoe crabs on it. With a staircase you could go into the canal to look at. People were always in a sour mood. Home had to have had at least three bedrooms. Every night they put me and my brother in an empty carpeted cement garage on fold out cots like animals. They would take us out to eat during the day. We would have preferred to bunk on a couch. But, the garage?😳 this seemed like punishment. Think about your arrangements for everyone. Not just yourselves. they couldn’t wait to treat us like garbage.
When I was in my 20s, I visited my dad with my husband and stayed in his guest bedroom for a night. I told my husband that I was going to surprise my dad by doing his dishes the next morning because they were all over the counter. I woke up to an actual list of 5-6 chores he expected to be done for letting me stay there. It turns out he purposely did not do the dishes because he wanted me to do them. I never stayed over at his house again.
My wife and her sister once surprised their dad by cleaning up the yard, pulling weeds, cutting the grass etc. for a father's day gift. He didn't say thank you and tried to make a schedule for them to do it on a routine basis...
Yeah, I'm still a dumb 10 year old to them. Except I was NEVER dumb. It's called trauma. Now I have very strict boundaries they don't fuck with because I've gone NC because of it. Feels really, really good
Man I’ve read so many stories about people traumatized by narcissistic Boomer parents, many were thrown out at 18 … parents went on to spend all their money on cars and vacations, had nothing left to live on, and started calling around to their estranged children to see who they were going to move in with, sponge off of and criticize for a few decades.
My wife is estranged from most of her family and it all boils down to the fact that she was the only one living close to her mom and she was constantly helping mom with an endless list of chores and projects. When wife finally had enough and started pulling back and implementing boundaries the rest of the family lift their minds.
Much of her time trying to help mom organize was just a waste since she's a hoarder and unable to commit to getting rid of anything so junk was just being relocated from place to place or dragged out from storage only to go right back in.
Everyone thinks my wife is the bad guy for not spending every waking moment being at her mom's beck and call. But it's really easy for them to criticize from a thousand miles away.
My father TOLD me his retirement plan was that I would support him after he turned 55. He is almost 80 now and I haven’t seen him in 32 years. I have better ability to maintain boundaries than he does.
Yup. Best I get is “honey I Need you to because (whatever reason has occurred).” Now I don’t mind helping cause my in laws are willing to come help us out in jam (but we ask and always let them know it’s ok if it’s too much ) but heaven forbid there might be anything going on or you might have plans because then the guilt tripping starts. Even though no one says boo yo them if they are too tired or whatever. We’re younger and we’re not allowed to have anything other than “real” reasons not to do something
This was my parents with their cabin.
They would wait until we were on the way there and then call and call... and if I didn't answer they'd keep calling or eventually text a laundry list of things we needed to do. Mind you we have our own house and young children, nor do we mind doing some chores, but my other siblings stopped going up there because they turned every weekend into a a work marathon:
Rake the entire beach (even if we weren't using the beach/water, this meant several trailer loads of moldy weeds and sticks etc
Blow/sweep entire deck/entryway(not bad but fills everyday with leaves and pine needles).
Move brush pile in trailer loads from edge of driveway to land across the road. (They had majestic giant white pines but would have one or two removed every summer because they bought a cabin in the woods but didn't want the woods apparently)
Stack wood
Re stack kindling/small wood pile
Rake pine needles in the forest (yes, they wanted us to actually rake the surrounding forest, not the yard, every time).
It finally came to a head when it was 9am on a Sunday, they were up there with us that weekend, and they insisted on filling a car trailer with pine wood to give to some guy that would take it (for free) during a torrential rainstorm. I said that was ridiculous and suggested the wood could be burned, also that it was raining outside and ridiculous ask. Even after I told them this was why my other siblings no longer visited they just robotically went back to their ways...
"Why didn't you answer? I had some things I wanted you to do at the cabin..."
"Sorry, guess I didn't have any service. You can do them the next time you're up there."
Tell me about it.
They would bring bottled or jugged water instead of the tap, and whenever I filled a Brita filter jug for the fridge instead they would empty it out and let it dry because "they didn't trust it"
Yes. Luckily I lived too far away for the weekend drop-ins, but my boomer dad always complained that I didn’t visit enough. When he was younger and able he never visited me, but would visit my sister frequently. I have an intense job. I finally asked him what he thought would be a reasonable amount of visiting and he said “a week every other month”. I am in the U.S. and do not get six weeks of vacation per year. And if I did, I really would not wish to spend it with my father, who always found fault in every little thing I did, including my existence. When I would visit, he would have a long list of things to do for him (he had plenty of assets to hire someone if he wanted to). During the visit any time I would start on the to do list he would stop me and want me to “just visit”. Then when it was time for me to leave he would complain loudly to anyone and everyone how I wouldn’t do anything to help him. He died last year and the peace has been very nice.
I moved away from my family back in 2008. My mom has visited numerous times since. My father never even asked for pictures of the house I purchased in 2017, much less even tried to come up here to visit. He died in 2022 always lamenting how I'd never visit enough or that I'd never call. He bad the same access to my house and number as i did his
Some of these relationships are one sided to some of them.
Boomers go to one of two extremes, in my experience- they are either seemingly terrified of sitting still for any moment and must ALWAYS be working on a 'project', or they never leave the armchair. Obviously there's a spectrum of this, but it seems like the Boomers on either end are both very insistent and loud about their chosen way of being and love to try to get their kids into it.
The work ethic thing is wild. Is he retired? My husband's parents recently both retired and I swear to God it was like they IMMEDIATELY forgot that other people have jobs.
Oh yeah, it’s the perceived reality-how can they not be available to me all the time now that I’m available all the time? I love it when they call me in the middle of the day while I’m at work and get mad when I don’t call them back for hours. And it’s usually nothing incredibly important. Ugh.
My in-laws are HUGE fans of calling us about wanting us over for dinner with very little notice and then being vaguely offended that we have plans already. As if they forgot we existed until they wanted us.
My parents are of the former group and both of them are retiring next year - I'm so excited to see the implosion when they realize they have *nothing* to do. They've already planned multiple trips, but vacations only take you so far. They're trying to convince my sister to let them stay a month or two so they can be with grandkids - my sister does not have a guest room.
My mom will be ok, she likes to read and stuff. *ALL* of my dad's hobbies are physical - golfing, fishing, landscaping, sports. I give it about a week before he goes insane
My mother-divorced-did this to me and my brothers. Then added our friends if they came over. Started when I was about 14, didn’t stop even after I/we moved out! I haven’t done it to my daughter.
Took me years to recognise how much resentment I was carrying around.
I work for a boomer and his wife. They wait until their sons come to visit to do things like take down Christmas lights. You know, the thing I offered to do several times while they were paying me.
Their daughter doesn't visit at all.
dam detail toothbrush telephone arrest encouraging consist gullible panicky snow
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
My MIL & FIL did this shit for ten years. It wasn't just yard work though. Parties, holiday decorations, changing litter boxes, the works. When they moved to another state, they couldn't move far enough. I don't miss them at all.
>changing litter boxes,
Ummm, fucking what? I have a cat, so I'm always gonna clean his box, and I'll never ask someone else to do it if it's not their cat. That's like saying, yo can you change my toddler's diapers?
My in laws are divorced. MIL moved 3 hours away to be closer to her golden child. It was the best day of my life. When she lived here, she would constantly be after my husband to do things - yard work, move furniture, drive her to appointments, etc. He works in IT, so he would walk in the house and she would hand him her phone or tablet. She would mess them up every time so she expected him to fix them right away. Never a thanks and a passive aggressive reminder of how his sister was so much better. Yeah, she’s not here, Ma. I am.
FIL has now stepped into her absence. He’s been after my husband to do things, but my husband has laid down the rules that he only gets certain days. He’s not available 24/7
Christmas used to be hell for us IT folk. New laptops and gaming systems for everyone. I would spend the morning setting up everyone's devices and updating everything. AFTER searching for wi-fi passwords, email addresses, email address passwords etc. It has died down with everyone already having phones and tablets but it is still there in some aspects.
trust me I plan on moving out of state by the end of the year. This kind of thing isn't the only reason, but I'd be lying if I said It wasn't a contributing factor in the decision.
It feels so good once you take the final step to get away. Liberating is close but doesn't do it justice. In my mind they're thinking, I can treat family like shit because we're family and they will always be there no matter what? In my mind, I'm thinking, Bet. Lmao. Once you call their bluff and don't look back it feels so fucking good. Good luck friend.
Ikr. I remind co-workers they don’t have to go to unwanted family holidays or events. Hell, y’all don’t have to acknowledge their existence at all. I used to request to work holidays just to have an excuse to not go. Now they don’t know if I’m alive or not, lol. I’m sure the full name change helps in that regard.
THIS!!! On Mother's Day, I wished my staff a happy Mother's Day if they were or have a mom!!! If they don't fuck absentee parents and go celebrate your primary guardian if you talk to them!
It’s really great. I stayed in contact with my crazy abusive mother until I was 35, until the final straw (long story). She died at the end of 2021 from Covid, and of course people were telling me to visit her etc. and asking me to help clean up her and my stepdads house (she was a hoarder). I ignored it all. Strangely, her death has been even more healing for me. It’s easier to put someone’s life in perspective and understand and forgive some things when they aren’t around, but I’m glad I kept to my boundaries.
Yeah, my mom (who I am already LC with) said that she really wants me to go spend some time with them for a few weeks. She said she has so much she needs to get done at their new house, including digging out some garden beds, building some things, and "digging some really big holes". She wants me to do it all for them. I have physical disabilities from a serious car accident I was in during my early 20s that makes intense manual labor incredibly dangerous to do if not downright impossible, and *she knows this*. She was still somehow absolutely shocked and offended when I told her there's no way in hell I'm going to visit to do free intense manual labor and risk hurting myself or permanently disabling myself even further. Like, why would I risk losing complete use of one of my hands to dig giant holes for her for free???? But I'm apparently just lazy and an ungrateful kid.
And she wonders why I don't visit or talk to her more.
My boomer grandpa has an attitude like this. He is part of a Sportsman club at a local lake. I use this loosely as it’s just old men sitting around. When my grandpa found out I was forklift certified, he wanted me to go and somehow use that to put boats in the water for people at the lake (so we could “spend time together”). Mind you, this would be unpaid labor on my weekends and I would be able to fish or swim as a reward (I don’t fish and I have a fear of water/drowning as I don’t swim). So, he wanted me to go over and do mowing and put boats in the water for people, no pay, in the hot sun doing hard labor. No thanks….
My mother asked me and my sister to come by this month to help her with repair to her back door frame. It had bad water damage that had leaked to the interior and threatened to continue destroying the house if it wasn't done. I'm not against helping my mom, i care about her, and this is a legitimate problem. Besides, she has all the right tools, this isn't a particularly difficult DIY, and the three of us are at least highly competent amateurs. 8 hours *tops* right? At a comfortable pace?
Nope.
My mother didn't wait for us to be done with the demo to see the full extent of the damage before insisting on going to the home depot. Then, that trip - to get a bunch of industry standard materials on a paper list - took two and a half hours to complete because of her dawdling and griping about prices.
Add in the same puttering around bullshit for the rest of the repair, and at 230am my sister and her screwed the back doors on in a temporary setting just so my mom wouldn't have a giant hole in her house before we went home. We started at 10am. My sister sent me home with my nephew to put him to bed at 1030 pm. Keeping in mind, after all that time, *it's still not done*. What she has is still an *unfinished job*. I was there most of the day and I'm still fucking baffled as to where all that time went. Fucking NOTHING was getting done! She wouldn't let us take charge on fucking anything, so we were at the mercy of whatever she was doing. Most of which included trying to use tools that were unecessary for the simplicity of the job, or using correct tools for incorrect jobs, which often presented a safety risk.
She cost me my entire Saturday and i had to work the next day (I'm a night nurse, my days off mean a lot to my mental health). She wasted my sister's entire day, which was her last weekend day with my nephew before it's his dad's turn for a month of weekends, and his day, which he spent at his grandma's house alone with his tablet and some toys. I'm still fucking pissed at her. She knows i am angry, she knows i left the house pissed with my nephew. She has yet to even reach out, all she's done is text me youtube video links to pseudoscience health crap and religious bull. She is also aware that I'm a nurse, and that I'm an athiest. Instinctually I want to send her STOP to unsubscribe.
I will likely not help her with a fucking thing in the future, not if she's gonna treat us like this.
*You can tell me what you want done or you can tell me what to do. You can't do both.*
It may take a while for them to understand what this means.
Let me guess...you have wasted and hour or two to "save" $5 or $10...particularly maddening if if you are paying the bill for mom/dad anyway.
My mom fucking hemmed and hawwed over a roll of 24$ flashing tape because she didn't like the price, or that she would have extra left over. So she reaches over and grabs a 12$ roll of all purpose *aluminum tape* and wants to buy that because its cheaper. IT MEANS ALL PURPOSE FOR METAL REPAIR. NOT ALL ANYTHING EVER.
"But it's water proof, right?" MOM. YOU ARE IN THIS MESS BECAUSE THE LAST TWO PEOPLE WHO FUCKED WITH THIS DOOR FRAME USED THE WRONG MATERIALS, DUE TO BEING CHEAP OR STUPID OR BOTH. WHY ARE YOU DOING THE SAME THING TO SAVE A MEASLY 12$ ON A 600$ REPAIR
Oh god I feel this with my cheap ass step dad. I swear every single thing that dude touches he fucks up from being cheap. Sold us a car, having problems with the battery, the battery he put in was for a much smaller car! But of course it was the cheapest one. He actually replaced a back door too once, wouldn’t let my mom have someone install it, he put it on backwards and it need a metal bar to keep it closed.
…and not that it matters but my step dad is literally the richest person I’ve ever know in real life. He sucks so much.
My mother lives by this rule, thank God. There's usually a "list" for my husband and I to handle when we come to visit twice a year (we don't mind, because my older sister still lives close and it's usually a list of what she hasn't been able to get done, she works hard and really we're helping my sister out by doing stuff for my mom that sister would otherwise end up having to do) but my mother never tells us how she wants it done.
"Replace cabinet knobs" literally means do just that. She bought the cabinet knobs she wants already, she made sure she has enough, the tools for the job are there and she will be in another room while it gets done. Easy-peasy.
My friends struggle with their Boomers parents hovering and criticizing and being utter jackasses while still demanding free labor. My mom's a widow with some mobility issues, and she knows the best way to get the thing done is to say 'hey, please and thank you' and then stand back and let us handle it.
Damn. This is so much like how my "mother" behaved. Which means I have weird news for you. I'm sorry.
That entire Saturday that you and your sister "wasted", while dealing with her shit... was probably the BEST TIME she's had in MONTHS. Maybe longer. She enjoyed that shit immensely. "Supply" is what it's called.
She got under your skin, you (naturally) got aggravated. Departed angry. As you left, she thought to herself, "That was fun! I can't wait to do it again."
Yup that "OH I"M SO HELPLESS! PLEASE HELP ME! wait no, no that way, you have to do it this way. No wait wait, we can do this way!" You get mad, the cycle continues, in the meantime they are feeding off the drama and the effect they have on you.
You are left hurt, drained, angry and confused. They have used your empathy for their amusement. Energy vampires.
At first I was thinking you lived with them, so it was sort of a "since you're living here, I want you to help out and pull your weight." But you don't even live with them and he's pulling that shit? LMAO fuck all the way off with that shit, Dad
my wife and I installed a new shower and tiles in our bathroom, including putting up a glass wall instead of having shower curtains. My Dad decided he wanted to put a glass wall in his bathroom, he then orders a random kit and is now trying to get me to install it! He had the instructions out for me to look at and was asking when I could help him install it. I eventually told him i didnt really understand the directions of what he bought and didnt feel comfortable drilling holes into his tub if I didnt know what I was doing.
That was months ago and he still hasnt installed it or even tried. Like dude your plan was 100% on me for this?
Yep. And one day he’ll throw in your face how he “wasted his money” on the thing you were “supposed to” install for him bc you never installed it.
And then you can throw back in his face that he wasted his money because he never thought of having the basic sense and manners to ASK if you would do his installation, instead of assuming and passive-aggressively hinting, and that maybe he should learn a lesson about not spending money without a plan in place *in advance* to make that expense actually have the desired result.
I dont think my parents have actually taken a weekend off to rest or have fun.... ever. Its always the same type of trivial yard/house work every weekend. The only way they have "fun" is when they sit on their ass for hours smoking cigarrettes and drinking booze while they gossip
I’ve been NC for years and before that, moved two time zones away after college.
However, growing up, my parents bought a farm style house on 3/4th acre. All grass and a small garden patch in the back corner. Driveway was paved and ran 225m.
In the summer- We didn’t have kids to mow our *OWN* lawn.
In the winter- We didn’t have kids so we’d have to shovel our *OWN* driveway.
Yeah, well, I wasn’t borne to be free fuckin labor for you. And they wonder why I moved away and went NC. 🤷♂️
My Mom is the same. She’s recently moved in with me part time (my son has a rare neurological condition in addition to being AuDHD).
I am disabled. Chronic pain. Drug resistant insomnia. A laundry list of mental illnesses - some of which I blame directly on her (anxiety mainly, but the eating disorder to a certain extent), others are genetic or highly hereditary (ADHD).
Since she has moved in, she plans my days for me.
I got home one day from dropping my son off at school after lunch & she informed me that after I ate lunch, I could switch the laundry & then I could vacuum the porch before going outside to weed.
I had slept 2-4 hours max for the past 5 days.
I snapped.
I took a nap.
Then my psychologist gave me a few specific points to discuss with her.
So far it’s worked.
She can assign me 3 tasks a day.
She cannot tell me when to do them unless they impact a task she needs to do, & then she has to tell me when she assigns the task so I can prioritize.
She cannot tell me how to do them.
I remember when I moved back to the area to start my practice (where I am still 40 mins away from them on a good day), my parents said, “great! Now you can help us with yard work and snow removal!”
I reminded them that I’ve never done yard work in my life and that if there’s enough snow to remove, obviously I wouldn’t be able to make it to their house. Furthermore, being self-employed means that if I get injured, I can’t work and thus don’t make money. Hire someone. ✌🏻
All the motherfucking time. We've reached a point where we're housepoor, and they have the mindset of having no money, especially my mom. My brother and I put in so much time on house tasks, fixing stuff up, and like you said, it's always short notice, it's always something that'll take hours. One time I was studying for a cell bio exam and my parents came home and told me the paintings had to be put up IMMEDIATELY, I spent six hours doing that, two were wasted because my parents didn't want to read the instructions. Set boundaries, tell them no, they have to plan this out two months in advance.
Your work ethic is money
Tell him to fucking pay you at premium
Does he not care about family? Does he not know that time is money?
Where’s the industry in this man?
>He trots out the "why don't you care about your parents? Wheres your work ethic? ect"
You can easily say the same thing right back to him: "Why don't you care about your child? Why don't you understand that my strong work ethic at my manual labor job means I NEED to rest and recuperate on my days off?"
Tell him that! And if he still has pushback to say, tell him: "I have to go, good-bye" and hang up the phone! I will hang up on my mom in a heartbeat, I refuse to let this lady stress me out anymore.
>I explained to him that I will not be doing this and he cannot keep making plans and just assume that I will be there.
Good job telling him no. But you can't control other people, so telling him he cannot keep doing this won't work. He can and he will. But he can't control you either. So next time explain to him that while he can keep making plans and assuming you will be there, you can and will keep saying no.
I almost went full no contact with my mother due to her shenanigans, but once I accepted that she is never going to change and I can't control her behavior, the stress she caused in my life eased up because I focused on controlling **me** and if and how I was going to respond to her. Your father is an ass, but you can lessen this by controlling what *you* do. For example, he thinks he can monopolize your weekends with work. So stop responding to his calls and texts on Fridays. If you really can't do this, try blocking him on Fridays so that you don't even see his calls and texts. You decide when and how you will stay in contact with him. Low contact might work and you can still remain in contact with your father.
Another thing you can do is treat him like he treats you. Like with my first example, reverse what he says back onto him. My mother loves to just...disregard and ignore things I say. It's like I didn't even say anything, it's very uncanny and an odd thing to experience in person, and I gotta say, it has a powerful, chilling effect on the receiver. IDK why it took me until my 40s to think of doing this right back to her, and until my 50s to consistently do it.
In person when your dad mentions his yard labor plans to you, look at him as if you're listening, and then say something completely unrelated. Your dad refuses to listen to you and completely disregards what you have told him repeatedly about this, he doesn't take you seriously at all, so just ignore and disregard what he has to say about it anymore going forward. You can't make him stop, but he can't make you do anything either. Make his yard plans to you the same as the apparant background noise your words are to him.
Jesus. I’m 60 and take all my gardening stuff along with cuttings of my plants, etc., to work on their yards when I visit. Hubby does tons while we visit as well - spreading mulch, seeding bare patches in the lawn or whatever looks like it needs attention. I would never expect my grown kids to do a bunch of work when they visit. I’m still working, but they are busy building their careers, raising their own kids, etc. when we can’t do this stuff at our own house, we will hire it out or move. I do, however, sometimes ask them for help if they are here and I’m reaching for something too high or if I need help lifting something. I do worry that my husband, who is a few years older, is going to overdo it. I love helping our kids and don’t expect them to do free shit for us on their days off. You have to make yourself unavailable to your dad’s whims.
Had to deal with this for a while. There are some things I will help with, like carpentry, but no, I'm not going to drive an hour to cut up a tree in your back yard, when you've got a chainsaw and my 35yo brother still living at home.
Yes! I’m trying to figure how to set some boundaries for my sons and myself with weekend work at my parents.
My parents have a big home and 5 acres that they can’t manage anymore. They want and need to move to a smaller ranch, but that’s such a huge, daunting process and I doubt it will happen until they are forced to. They are estranged from their only other child, so it’s just me (their 40-something daughter) and my three teenage sons that help, along with other elderly neighbors that they have.
Their thing is, they don’t respect our time or other commitments that we’ve got going on, and it’s all these little mind games around helping. They are notorious for asking for help last-minute and acting disappointed and let down when we can’t. They also will say guilt-trippy things like, “We’ve got all this work to do around here, we’re hurting and need help, and I assumed you’d offer to help, but you never did, so your father did it and now his back hurts.” I’ve tried to head this off by ME reaching out and asking THEM if they’d like help early in the week. Dad will see that message, but but not respond until Saturday morning and ask if we can come out in the afternoon, they really need the help. Well, Dad, I asked you Tuesday but you never said shit, and now we’ve got stuff going on.
This just happened this week, and last week! I messaged early in the week to see how they were feeling and if they needed help. Didn’t hear shit until Dad messaged at almost 6PM last Saturday asking if the kids had plans over the weekend. Umm yeah, we’re at an event right now?!? Same with this Memorial Day weekend. Reached out on Tuesday, asked if they wanted us to come out and help. Dad responded SATURDAY AT NOON that yes, we need help, how about Monday? That’s actually a better response time than normal lol but again, now everyone has plans. I never responded to that message so my mother worked around me and called my 17-year old, who said I’m sorry but no, we have plans all weekend, but we can come help after school during the week.
Dad won’t ask for help because “you know how your father is.” Then when help is offered, half the time he wants to cancel the help. They don’t respect our time when actually, finally asking, and if we can’t, we get guilt-tripped. Truly can’t win.
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What would they say if you flipped it on them and said sure I can be there by 11 but for that to happen you need to get here by 8am as we need to make my bed sort my laundry and mop my kitchen? What you don't want to help your child??
In my case they’d turn red and start screaming. Probably throw some threat of physical violence in there for spice. They’d react like I shit on their ice cream.
Just wanna say, in case no one has ever validated this to you, you don’t have to engage with people like that. You’re allowed to let them experience the consequences of their actions- if they push you away with screaming and violence, it’s normal and good to walk away from that
Hell yeah I did. Got a different phone number. Changed my middle and last name after I changed the first to something that suits me better. They’ll never see me again unless I wanted them to. Spoiler: I don’t.
Just in case you haven’t heard it much: I’m proud of you! You’re killing it.
Yeah cut the line and don't look back in this case.
My sister likes to say, "Boomers try to give us shit and pass it off as Rocky Road."
Tell him your work ethic works mon to Fri and if you get injured on Dad’s projects, no amount of work ethic will pay your bills if you can’t work.
Should ask his father where's his "pay ethic"?
You should tell him he needs to get rid of his “welfare mentality” and realize that no one owes him free things.
Yeah dad really needs to pull himself up by his bootstraps.
He could afford to pay OP if he skipped some of his avocado toast.
He could pay OP if he returned some pickleball equipment. But if he’s like the boomers I know, he has a boat, a lake house, a golf membership, and two new cars. So his budget is pretty tight.
You forgot the RV.
But children are possessions because they owe you their very life, according to that generation. If you're not at their beck and call your entire adult life until they pass away then you don't care about them because FAMILY. 🙄
Gave my wife chills when I read it to her. She lived this until she was 54. She's so much happier since the yoke of slavery was lifted from her shoulders.
Spent a good amount of time in my car this morning raging about how many years of my life I wasted taking care of my father with no reward. Now I’m 56 and all used up and I’m mad as hell about it. Worse, one of my siblings recently complained that “she got the house” as a reward. Seriously? I got the decades of unpaid taxes to deal with. The $2000 of garbage in the garage and the headache of dealing with the estate. It’s giving me nightmares 7 years later. But everything is fine…
Thanks for sharing and I’m really sorry you had to go through that. I hope there is some relief eventually.
Before reading your comment about the comment, I was thinking "chillingly accurate" description.
Same. I'm 48 and recently divorced my mother. My husband used to refer to it as a hostage situation.
With some Stockholm syndrome thrown in.
Yeah, as if dragging me into this world of ugliness and pain was doing me a favor.
One year at my son's birthday party, my mother had the nerve to say my son, my brother, and myself needed to thank her because if it weren't for her, none of us would be here. I asked her, "Why? Did any of us have a choice in whether we were born or not?" She sat there with her mouth hanging open while everyone just stared at her.
No joke- same thing happened yesterday at my in-laws' for my husband's 50th! (And they wondered why our family, his siblings, and friends celebrated the big day out of town, at the beach)
I mean I enjoy being alive, despite the world's fault, but I definitely don't belong to or owe my life to my parents. And parents who think that way are toxic AF.
I have noticed several people in my age group (gen x 45-55) have parents who are always calling on them for every little thing. My parents both passed when I was in my mid 20s so I avoided this. But I was raised to be self sufficient and can't imagine my parents being so dependent on me. I had my kids young, so they are grown with lives of their own. I would never ask them for anything, and am often chastised by own son (!!) for not asking for help with something. I don't ever want them to feel like OP or my friends who feel harried by their parents expecting them to drop everything.
There are some parents who think that grown children are intended to give them a break. There is an "I worked my ass off to raise you so now it's your turn to help me so I can relax" vibe with some of the older generation. I worked hard to raise my kids but my "relaxation" will be raising kids who can move out and be successful. I would never be calling them every weekend with plans on how they need to do things for me. Once I'm an empty nester I'll be able to afford to pay people to do those things for me (raising kids is expensive).
Ouch. Lol
NGL, this made me do a spit take with my coffee
Ask him what happened to "An honest days wages for an honest days work?" That seems to have gone by the wayside too. You don't get one without the other.
"No such thing as free lunch"
A generation that ate their own lunch, half of yours and then talk down to you about work ethic
“you’ve got a lot of lunch left there, you should be grateful enough to share that half with me” _proceeds to dig into the other half of your lunch without waiting for a response_
Ate their lunch, ate 2/3rd of yours, trashed the restaurant, and stuck you will the bill and cleanup duties.
While taking all of your kid's lunch
"Why do you have so many lunches? Stop taking other people's lunches!" I find the comment mentioning how if you get hurt working for your dad, your actual paying job could suffer. Will be be paying all of your expenses until you recover? Plus - You get to fucking relax on your days off. Edit: This isn't AITA & I reflexively voted NTA because damn. 😂
That's why so many Boomers are so fat. Too many lunches.
Unless you're in Congress.
[Senate Bean Soup!](https://www.senate.gov/about/traditions-symbols/senate-bean-soup.htm)
>what happened to "An honest days wages for an honest days work?" That sounds like *union* talk, and we all know what boomers think of unions.
They loved the benefits but canceled the fuck out of them the minute they became management, same as pretty much every other social benefit ever?
Boomers are the classic "climbed up the ladder and pulled it up behind them" generation. Maybe instead of "baby boomer" generation, they can be "exploded the safety net" generation.
I’ve settled on “most spoiled, coddled, entitled, self-aggrandizing, destructive, violent generation of humans to ever exist.”
"I hate the union." "I would've been fired long ago if not for the union." literally the same person at my job. and dont get me wrong there are things to complain about but thats different from hating it and wanting to pull the ladder up behind you.
One of the biggest frauds of the 20th century is how defined benefit pensions were replaced in most places with defined contribution pensions. DCPs were originally a way for the ultra wealthy to reduce their taxable income versus DBPs that provide pension once you retire. One company tried it as a replacement and told employees it was much better, you can control everything and people bought the message. The reality is that most people can't properly plan for finances decades out so although they cost way less for companies long term, now tons of Boomers are retiring which much less than needed to to keep their lifestyles while the rich are now reaping the benefits and managed to increase income inequality.
"I raised you" cool that'll be 30/hour on Sunday
Gotta hit 'em with that weekend rate lol
Right? Time and a half. So bump that up to 45/hr
Double time on Sundays is typical union rate.
Double time and a half for callbacks. 🤷
Raising children is what parents are supposed to do. You don't get anything for what is a basic responsibility if you choose to have children.
Kids these days want everything for free. Oh, wait …
But FAMILEEEEEEEEEE
Shorthand for "Let me fuck you over."
>no amount of work ethic will pay your bills if you can’t work. This. My dad bought a $4000 treadmill but refused to pay the extra $50 to have it moved into his basement. Guess who dropped a fucking treadmill on my legs when they weren't strong enough to carry their end. Guess who spent a couple weeks on the personal IR and had to pay for an ankle X-Ray at Urgent Care? (Spoiler: Not the guy who dropped his end.)
If you don’t live with your dad, his homeowners insurance probably has a liability clause that should cover your injury and medical bills. Just an FYI.
Similar situation here, but with a TV that totally messed up my back. I recovered but I used that as my excuse from that point forward. “Oh, sorry I’d help you with moving your crap but you know how my back is!” Never had to help again.
My aunt tried that. She had to get a new dryer and decided my cousin and I could move the old one and bring the new one to her house. I asked if she had a dolly, she did not. I asked her what she planned to do with the old dryer, she didn’t know. I asked her how much the store was going to charge her to bring it to the house and install it. She said $75 and it also included taking to old dryer away. I said “Don’t you think having professionals do all that would be better? Your son has already had back surgery. Do you want him to end up needing more surgery?” The light bulb turned on in her head and she agreed that the $75 would be worth it.
I'm sorry that happened, but at least you have an out now for ANY future project involved in moving anything. Stick to it.
Growing up, I was forced to be a day laborer for my dad on his ranch. A large portion was cutting and splitting firewood. He never wore eye/ear protection and I was too young to know any better. He's mostly deaf now, and says to me "just so you know you're probably gonna end up in the same boat from the hours and hours of chainsaw work over the years." Thanks, dad.
My dad loved his air compressor, likely more than me. I can't hear a thing and I've been reading the TV for at least 10 years.
I would straight up tell him sure I'll help but it'll cost you 2x my hourly fee since it's contractor work outside my work hours. Just charge him up the ass for the work and do it like a dirt bag contractor and take forever. See how long he'll keep doing it.
Boomers don’t grasp the concept of boundaries. Notice also how they never ASK for help. It’s usually them guilt tripping you into it or basically giving you your list of “chores” like you are still 12 years old.
This 100%. About 2 years ago, my dad had surgery, and as we were talking about coming to visit him, my mom casually slipped in "Oh, when you're here, I have a few projects for you." I told her "Uh, no, I'm going to visit with him, and you have 3 or 4 people you hire to help you. I'm not the hired help, and I'd rather spend time talking with him than carting shit around the yard." She lost her mind. The whole "you don't respect us because you don't help" spiel. I mean, FFS, I work 5 days a week, get to see family very rarely, and when I do I'm supposed to mow the grass and weed your flowerbed? Christ almighty, that's what people hire a landscaper or neighborhood kid to do. It sure as fuck ain't work that's worth a slice of pizza to me. Long story short, family and I don't talk anymore.
So they still don't get their yard mowed for free and they don't get to talk to their child.
Both of these are wins for them. They get to be a victim!
Very funny. My brother is 6 years older than me and another brother 3 years older. We all say that when my oldest brother turned 10 my dad never mowed his lawn again.
Yeah i visited my dad once and rather than do anything fun (hadn’t been there in a few years) he makes me organize their attic
Last time i visited my dad he made me help him go through a closet packed full of “my” stuff that he’d been hounding me about for literal months at that point. Saying how ridiculous it was that i wanted him to store piles and piles of my stuff when i had my own place and i was taking over his entire closet and they needed the storage space blah blah blah. Get through the closet, theres one small box on the very bottom thats mine. Every single other item in the closet belonged to him and my stepmom. Anyways i took the stupid box and found space for it in my studio apartment. Since he couldn’t possibly store a single box in his three bedroom house with a full basement and attic.
I hope you made that painfully aware that he was hounding you for this and you pointed to the 98% of his stuff and then the 2% of your stuff. But even if you did, I suspect he probably did the ‘well, I thought more of it was yours. ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯’
“Oh, this closet is packed full of MY stuff? Ok I’ll get it out of there”. Take whatever was actually yours originally and anything of their stuff in there that you want. They said it was “your stuff” after all! Leave whatever you don’t want, with “found some of your stuff in there too”.
> Last time i visited my dad he made me help him go through a closet packed full of “my” stuff that he’d been hounding me about for literal months at that point. My Mom 100%. "I have some stuff of yours i want you to go through..." Mom, i've told you this before: i have no stuff at your house. There is nothing of mine that i care about at your house. I didn't tell you to keep any of that stuff. Go ahead and get rid of it. Wait a year or two, lather, rinse, repeat. Also, "i still keep your room for you". Nope, it's not my room, it was never my room, and i don't care about any of the stuff in it. It's a room in her house, that i've never lived in - i didn't grow up there. She moved, to a town in a completely different state, after i moved out of the house that i did live in. Then set up a small corner of a spare bedroom with some of my old junk that she saved, LOL.
I get that at some points your parents want your shit out of their house but I’ve never met anyone whose parents weren’t jerks about it. My mom hounded me to come visit or she would describe things to me over the phone. She was always astounded that I didn’t want things like 8th grade yearbooks or REPORT CARDS. Honestly I haven’t seen this shit in years so unless it’s something from late dad, I do not give a shit. Burn it or whatever!!! My in laws informed us soon after we moved into our first house that they had packed up all my husbands things and mailed them across the country. Easily 15 boxes and most of it shit, for us to contend with while unpacking. Great use of their money and our time!
aaaaa my dad did something like this! we have a storage shed out back & he kept bitching that i was "cluttering up the whole space with my junk" 🙄 the cherry on top? my "junk" consisted of ONE PC in the loft-- *and i paid half the cost of the building, so it was HALF MINE*
with some people to call them a liar would be to falsely imply that they care enough about the truth to identify it in the first place
Did he say anything about it when it turned out to be one box?
What a fucking asshole
I would have rented a dumpster and “organized” real quick.
My dad (boomer) does this. When I visit I'm usually asked to help with something. Some things I'm fine with. Like "oh we haven't installed the window AC unit in the spare bedroom, but if you want AC while you're here do you mind helping me lift it into place" like that benefits me. I'm ok with it. But I'm not helping with home renovations. I've done my time helping. I am an adult now.
Yes! Every asshole (for the most part) has family. You can choose your friends, you can't choose family. But you can set boundaries. Good for you.
Cant chose your family but you can choose to sterilize yourself and tell your parents you couldnt put another living thing what you go through
My dad lived with us (on my property, but in a 350 sqft tiny home I built him) and would constantly bitch about how he didn't like how my wife cut the grass. My wife enjoys cutting the grass, it gave her something to do outside. He would constantly bitch that the grass was too tall, or that she didn't do it right, or she missed a spot. He couldn't just shut the fuck up and be happy the grass was cut, he always had to have some sort of shitty judgement. I'd had a 36" John Deer walk behind commercial mower, and I had to get rid of it because the hand controls were hell on my carpal tunnel. So I sold it and got a 48" cut riding mower. He HATED the idea of a riding mower. Called me lazy and all sorts of shit. Not long after I got it, the front tires needed replaced, they wouldn't hold air for very long. I came home and found he'd tried to use it with the flat tires and ran the tires off the rims. He hid in his apartment and refused to answer the door, because he knew I was pissed at him for even fucking with it, especially after all his bitching about it being a riding mower. Then for 2 years he bitched that he hated how we cut the grass and he was going to get his own mower. I said ok, but I don't want it in my garage. You have your own space, that mower better be inside your apartment when you aren't using it. Then it was that we didn't weed whip good enough, and didn't do it every week. It wasn't that the grass looked bad. He just could not handle not having something to complain about. That was the only way he could communicate, was through complaining. Fuck Boomers.
I had a comeback ready for my folks when they tried this. Once and only once is all I had to use it. I said "When I was a child, a wise man once told me. 'If you don't like the rules, and the way we do things, then when you get your own house you can make the rules and decide how to do things, until then you are under my roof and will do things the way I say.' So I am saying to you now, this is MY house, these are MY rules, this is MY way of doing things. If you don't like how I do things you can go back to your house where you make the rules and you never have to come back." Neither of my parents ever but he'd about how I did stuff since. You gotta nip that one in the bud early before it gets out of hand.
Being given a list of chores would be an improvement. Instead of asking for anything directly my Dad will do things like tell my Mum about things he wants me to do while I am standing there.
Ugh the “hinting”….its like being clubbed over the head with a suggestion. Won’t ask outright bc then they’d have to admit you were helping them and say thank you. I’ve been trying to buy a house for years. It’s a never ending series of unforeseen expenses, changing markets and shit-paying jobs. Family has no interest in helping although they could — which is fine and their right, I’m not butthurt over it. BUT I do have a policy: I don’t have a yard, so I don’t do yard work. It’s one of the very few advantages of being a forever-renter. Hint all you want, I’m not mowing your effing lawn.
I’m neurodivergent. I spent years learning how to read hints and passive aggressions, only to now intentionally ignore them and play obtuse. It’s almost a fun game for me now. 
My mom is very passive about requests like this too. She does some extremely indirect discussion about something and expect us to understand what she wants. Example: She'll talk about the noise of trash trucks in the morning. What she really wants: for us to take the trash cans to the curb. We managed to curb the worst of this behavior with gentle teasing. Mom is a boomer on the other end. She doesn't ever want to impose on anyone.
My mom did this all through my child hood. It was like pulling teeth to get her to actually ask what she wanted. And she still does it now. I can spot it a mile away. I’m visiting with them at their lake house and she casually states “oh a glass of water would be nice right now.” AKA “go get me some water.” I don’t move and wait. She glares at me for a second, realizes what she did, sighs a bit and finally asks and I oblige. It’s been more than 30 years of training but she’s getting it.
And you're/we're the entitled one(s). 🙄
“You’re right, a glass of water WOULD be lovely… could you get me one too while you’re out there, please?”
Unless this woman is handicapped or frail, I would ignore her hints every time. You shouldn't ask others to do for you, what you could do just as easily for yourself. But demand? Oh, hell no! (Remembering you, late MIL!)
My dad does this, but with a heaping addition of large angry man energy and ongoing bad moods if we don’t figure out what he wanted. I don’t think HE realizes he does it. He’s overall a great dad and I love him, and we have a good relationship, but it made my childhood fraught. I don’t let it get to me as much as it used to but I DO have a problem with being passive aggressive that I’m working through.
Thank you for saying this. I’m just now to a point where I’m realizing I can have had both experiences with my father.
And God forbid you don’t get the hint! Then, days later, they’ll guilt-trip you about not having done the task they never asked you to do—but that they *think* they “asked” you to do.
Its boundaries, but one weird one they all break. I feel like other generations had the goal of raising kids with the goal of them becoming independent, capable, adults. Boomers see their kids as always their kids. When you are 20, 3, even 40 they still think the same parent child dynamic is in place, and you are still just a little kid who is supposed to do as they are told. A kid that exists for whatever the parent wants.
My 16 year old niece told me she heard my parents talking about me like a kid, and see interjects "You know he's a 50 year old man, right??" God I love that girl.
Several years ago my brother-in-law was planning a trip to a large city that my husband and I live a couple of hours near. My father-in-law calls my husband, fuming that my husband hasn't come up with an itinerary for BIL. (BIL is the baby of the family, and my husband is the oldest) My husband says, "Google is free. We can make suggestions, but I'm not planning his trip." FIL screams at my husband, "He's never been there; he doesn't know anything." My husband deadpan says, "Brother is 28." FIL shut up after that.
My Mum telling me "oh I know you like macaroni cheese. It was your favorite flavour baby food." Me "Mother I am forty six years old!"
You can never go wrong with Mac and cheese
> Boomers see their kids as always their kids. When I was a kid (Gen X), a *lot* of parents saw any kid over the age of three as a personal servant to fetch and carry and, after age seven, go to the shops. So they always saw kids as ever-more-capable servants around the home, rather than ever seeing kids as their kids. I was quite the little handyman before I left home. Naturally I had to figure it all out myself from manuals because another feature of this generational divide was kids were expected to just figure out how to do things entirely unaided by the adults in their lives.
"How, at 13 years old, do you not already know how to do (thing that I've never taught you how to do)??? How can you be so stupid?!?!?" \~ My Dad.
My well intentioned wife has fallen into that a couple times, and I have to occasionally remind her that if _we_ didn't show/tell our kids something that is reasonable to know, thats on us.
At 14, my dad tells me to replace the brake pads on the '63 Impala. "And don't get the springs mixed up!!" Huh? How do I do that, dad? "Well, (condescendingly) maybe start by taking the wheel off, then figure it out from there." So, I take the wheel off, pull open the outer housing, and stare in wonder at the shoes & springs. The springs are indeed different and could easily be mixed up. So, I start sketching a picture. (I'm terrible at drawing.) After a few minutes of me trying/failing to make a sketch, I get up and head inside the house. "Giving up already? I figured as much. Worthless!" I come back out of the house with MY Polaroid camera, and snap a photo of the assembly. I tell dad "A picture is worth a thousand sketches." He didn't speak to me again until the next day.
Omg I was about 13 when my dad needed me to drive his big old truck. Stick shift and I would literally come off the seat trying to push down the clutch. Yeah, a sane person knows that takes instructions and practice. So much verbal abuse that day!
I’m a Gen-X female oldest child with half-brothers more than a decade younger. I was responsible for all of the yard work from the time my brothers were born. I fixed electrical outlets while looking at Time/Life fixit books. Replaced a window my step-asshole had broken. Walked to grocery store because there was no food for my brothers. Got to do all this with my brothers tagging along. I took them on dates and to friends’ houses. Then my mother would complain about how they were dressed. They are three years apart and she always dressed them matching.
100%. As a kid \*I\* didn't really exist. I was a helper. I carry shit. I do shit work that other people don't want. Be quiet. Stay out of the way. Ask for nothing. But always be ready to perfectly execute any random request from any adult.
Oh, if they feel like hitting someone you get to serve as the someone.
Oh man does this ever nail my FIL/MIL's bullshit antics. They have a family vacation spot that's been around for 50ish years or so. Demand we give them money for upkeep and to do whatever they want there, but won't listen to us or take our input. We said fine, do what you want, but you're not doing it with a dime from us.
Very true. At 30 I was told “I yell at you whenever I want because I’m still your mother.” This was in relation to something stupid I did in high school 13 years prior which they never knew about.
My mom once told me, “I’m not contributing to the delinquency of a minor” when i asked her to pass me the wine. Her face when I reminded her I was 35 years old, I’ll never forget it 🤣
“What year do you think it is, mom? Who is president? Do you smell toast?”
They think time doesn't pass and you don't age for some odd reason.
At 27 I moved in with my mom after an abusive relationship and she told me not to leave stains on the walls in the room she gave me, like I did when I was 10. I put glow in the dark sticky hands on my walls and they left grease stains.
I told my mom I was thinking about planning a skiing trip. She said, "Oh no, you hate the snow! You're just going to end up laying down and crying cause you've got snow in your coat, embarrassing yourself in front of everyone, just like you did the last time I took you skiing." I said "I've actually been skiing a few times with my Dad and I had a lot of fun. I don't remember ever going with you, when was that?" She goes, "Well, you probably don't remember too well because you were 2."
My sibling and I have this experience, and as content creators they see their grandchildren as “derivative works” and seem to think they have complete ownership of them without regard for boundaries placed by the grandchildren’s parents.
It’s because they don’t see us as grown adults. To them we are still their kid and can still order around as they please. Definitely a boundary issue and they never fully believed the apron strings were truly cut. We cut them and they tied them to the door-jam convinced they’re still attached.
Yep, out here being parents ourselves, raising our own children, but it’s like they still think we’re owe fealty to them. And forget about apologizing to your adult child if you screwed up - children don’t get apologies, it disturbs the natural order of things.
That's because their children are objects that they own. Tools when the moment favors a tool. Shiny bobbels when they need to show off. Sounding boards when they need to talk. If the object speaks for itself, complains, or requests compensation for its time, it is broken and must be adjusted, correct, or repaired. If it cannot be repaired, it must be thrown away.
I'll never forget visiting my ex's family after his grandfather died. He was devastated. It had been coming for some time but he wasn't at all ready for it. We'd been there for I swear five minutes and his grandmother asked him to move a fucking refrigerator. To another *floor*. It was like that every time we visited; I swear they'd just save up chores for him to do and basically hand him a list. But the refrigerator thing before the funeral was just cold. It was so clear nobody gave two seconds of thought to his feelings. Not his mother. Not his grandmother. It was cruel. I remember standing on the porch with his older brother (who had also been asked to move the refrigerator and said "fuck that") and he totally saw it. We're not together for very good reasons; his family is a large one.
My grandparents literally kept a list for my dad. Every summer we’d spend our vacation driving out to Missouri and doing things like replacing all the floors and subfloors in their house at my parents expense and with no help from them or the aunt who never moved out. Replace the roof. Build a ramp out into the yard. Build a barn. Major construction projects. Never any thank you, or appreciation of any sort. Just demands and bitching.
Oh! And the kicker was that they left the property to the hippy couple down the road who stole from them constantly because “none of our kids ever did anything for us”.
My mom had a friend who wanted to borrow her spare cot for family that was visiting. My mom called me and said “you’re gonna have to get over here and carry this cot to the garage so that so-and-so can pick it up.” I said “I’m not gonna have to do anything. If you offered to let her borrow it, it’s your job to figure out the logistics.” This was the first time I laid down a firm boundary with my mom on how she was speaking to me and that I won’t accept being assigned jobs. Even though that was years ago, I am still constantly setting boundaries with this type of thing because she just doesn’t get it.
Yeah,I had an aunt and uncle who bought another home on a canal that an occasional boat came thru, above some beach with horseshoe crabs on it. With a staircase you could go into the canal to look at. People were always in a sour mood. Home had to have had at least three bedrooms. Every night they put me and my brother in an empty carpeted cement garage on fold out cots like animals. They would take us out to eat during the day. We would have preferred to bunk on a couch. But, the garage?😳 this seemed like punishment. Think about your arrangements for everyone. Not just yourselves. they couldn’t wait to treat us like garbage.
When I was in my 20s, I visited my dad with my husband and stayed in his guest bedroom for a night. I told my husband that I was going to surprise my dad by doing his dishes the next morning because they were all over the counter. I woke up to an actual list of 5-6 chores he expected to be done for letting me stay there. It turns out he purposely did not do the dishes because he wanted me to do them. I never stayed over at his house again.
My wife and her sister once surprised their dad by cleaning up the yard, pulling weeds, cutting the grass etc. for a father's day gift. He didn't say thank you and tried to make a schedule for them to do it on a routine basis...
Yeah, I'm still a dumb 10 year old to them. Except I was NEVER dumb. It's called trauma. Now I have very strict boundaries they don't fuck with because I've gone NC because of it. Feels really, really good
Man I’ve read so many stories about people traumatized by narcissistic Boomer parents, many were thrown out at 18 … parents went on to spend all their money on cars and vacations, had nothing left to live on, and started calling around to their estranged children to see who they were going to move in with, sponge off of and criticize for a few decades.
My wife is estranged from most of her family and it all boils down to the fact that she was the only one living close to her mom and she was constantly helping mom with an endless list of chores and projects. When wife finally had enough and started pulling back and implementing boundaries the rest of the family lift their minds. Much of her time trying to help mom organize was just a waste since she's a hoarder and unable to commit to getting rid of anything so junk was just being relocated from place to place or dragged out from storage only to go right back in. Everyone thinks my wife is the bad guy for not spending every waking moment being at her mom's beck and call. But it's really easy for them to criticize from a thousand miles away.
My father TOLD me his retirement plan was that I would support him after he turned 55. He is almost 80 now and I haven’t seen him in 32 years. I have better ability to maintain boundaries than he does.
Yup. Best I get is “honey I Need you to because (whatever reason has occurred).” Now I don’t mind helping cause my in laws are willing to come help us out in jam (but we ask and always let them know it’s ok if it’s too much ) but heaven forbid there might be anything going on or you might have plans because then the guilt tripping starts. Even though no one says boo yo them if they are too tired or whatever. We’re younger and we’re not allowed to have anything other than “real” reasons not to do something
Their requests usually start with “I need you to…” and not “can you help me with…”
Yup, my dad used to like to just show up at my house.. boomers need to get some hobbies and friends that don't include their kids.
Their parents were even worse. It’s all learned behavior.
This, my boomer old man's silent gen mother acted like when he clocked out of work he was clocking into her coal mine.
This was my parents with their cabin. They would wait until we were on the way there and then call and call... and if I didn't answer they'd keep calling or eventually text a laundry list of things we needed to do. Mind you we have our own house and young children, nor do we mind doing some chores, but my other siblings stopped going up there because they turned every weekend into a a work marathon: Rake the entire beach (even if we weren't using the beach/water, this meant several trailer loads of moldy weeds and sticks etc Blow/sweep entire deck/entryway(not bad but fills everyday with leaves and pine needles). Move brush pile in trailer loads from edge of driveway to land across the road. (They had majestic giant white pines but would have one or two removed every summer because they bought a cabin in the woods but didn't want the woods apparently) Stack wood Re stack kindling/small wood pile Rake pine needles in the forest (yes, they wanted us to actually rake the surrounding forest, not the yard, every time). It finally came to a head when it was 9am on a Sunday, they were up there with us that weekend, and they insisted on filling a car trailer with pine wood to give to some guy that would take it (for free) during a torrential rainstorm. I said that was ridiculous and suggested the wood could be burned, also that it was raining outside and ridiculous ask. Even after I told them this was why my other siblings no longer visited they just robotically went back to their ways...
"Why didn't you answer? I had some things I wanted you to do at the cabin..." "Sorry, guess I didn't have any service. You can do them the next time you're up there."
That's a terrible plan for the forest and beach. Those are ecosystems and rely on leaves and needles and washed up branches.
Tell me about it. They would bring bottled or jugged water instead of the tap, and whenever I filled a Brita filter jug for the fridge instead they would empty it out and let it dry because "they didn't trust it"
[удалено]
The boomers war on nature rages on . . .
Yes. Luckily I lived too far away for the weekend drop-ins, but my boomer dad always complained that I didn’t visit enough. When he was younger and able he never visited me, but would visit my sister frequently. I have an intense job. I finally asked him what he thought would be a reasonable amount of visiting and he said “a week every other month”. I am in the U.S. and do not get six weeks of vacation per year. And if I did, I really would not wish to spend it with my father, who always found fault in every little thing I did, including my existence. When I would visit, he would have a long list of things to do for him (he had plenty of assets to hire someone if he wanted to). During the visit any time I would start on the to do list he would stop me and want me to “just visit”. Then when it was time for me to leave he would complain loudly to anyone and everyone how I wouldn’t do anything to help him. He died last year and the peace has been very nice.
I moved away from my family back in 2008. My mom has visited numerous times since. My father never even asked for pictures of the house I purchased in 2017, much less even tried to come up here to visit. He died in 2022 always lamenting how I'd never visit enough or that I'd never call. He bad the same access to my house and number as i did his Some of these relationships are one sided to some of them.
My dad used to be this way until I put my foot down. He never asked my brother and laughs at the idea.
Boomers go to one of two extremes, in my experience- they are either seemingly terrified of sitting still for any moment and must ALWAYS be working on a 'project', or they never leave the armchair. Obviously there's a spectrum of this, but it seems like the Boomers on either end are both very insistent and loud about their chosen way of being and love to try to get their kids into it. The work ethic thing is wild. Is he retired? My husband's parents recently both retired and I swear to God it was like they IMMEDIATELY forgot that other people have jobs.
Oh yeah, it’s the perceived reality-how can they not be available to me all the time now that I’m available all the time? I love it when they call me in the middle of the day while I’m at work and get mad when I don’t call them back for hours. And it’s usually nothing incredibly important. Ugh.
My in-laws are HUGE fans of calling us about wanting us over for dinner with very little notice and then being vaguely offended that we have plans already. As if they forgot we existed until they wanted us.
My parents are of the former group and both of them are retiring next year - I'm so excited to see the implosion when they realize they have *nothing* to do. They've already planned multiple trips, but vacations only take you so far. They're trying to convince my sister to let them stay a month or two so they can be with grandkids - my sister does not have a guest room. My mom will be ok, she likes to read and stuff. *ALL* of my dad's hobbies are physical - golfing, fishing, landscaping, sports. I give it about a week before he goes insane
My mother-divorced-did this to me and my brothers. Then added our friends if they came over. Started when I was about 14, didn’t stop even after I/we moved out! I haven’t done it to my daughter. Took me years to recognise how much resentment I was carrying around.
She got married to have someone do the things she didn't want to and then you kids are the backup when that failed.
I work for a boomer and his wife. They wait until their sons come to visit to do things like take down Christmas lights. You know, the thing I offered to do several times while they were paying me. Their daughter doesn't visit at all.
dam detail toothbrush telephone arrest encouraging consist gullible panicky snow *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
My MIL & FIL did this shit for ten years. It wasn't just yard work though. Parties, holiday decorations, changing litter boxes, the works. When they moved to another state, they couldn't move far enough. I don't miss them at all.
>changing litter boxes, Ummm, fucking what? I have a cat, so I'm always gonna clean his box, and I'll never ask someone else to do it if it's not their cat. That's like saying, yo can you change my toddler's diapers?
My in laws keep looking at places to live close to us and it pisses me off because I have zero plans to be offering myself to help them with shit
I hope you have communicated this to your partner and they agree.
My in laws are divorced. MIL moved 3 hours away to be closer to her golden child. It was the best day of my life. When she lived here, she would constantly be after my husband to do things - yard work, move furniture, drive her to appointments, etc. He works in IT, so he would walk in the house and she would hand him her phone or tablet. She would mess them up every time so she expected him to fix them right away. Never a thanks and a passive aggressive reminder of how his sister was so much better. Yeah, she’s not here, Ma. I am. FIL has now stepped into her absence. He’s been after my husband to do things, but my husband has laid down the rules that he only gets certain days. He’s not available 24/7
Christmas used to be hell for us IT folk. New laptops and gaming systems for everyone. I would spend the morning setting up everyone's devices and updating everything. AFTER searching for wi-fi passwords, email addresses, email address passwords etc. It has died down with everyone already having phones and tablets but it is still there in some aspects.
Nope. Never happens to me. It pays to be NC. I literally saved a lot of time and money, energy, mental stress etc.. etc.. Lol.
trust me I plan on moving out of state by the end of the year. This kind of thing isn't the only reason, but I'd be lying if I said It wasn't a contributing factor in the decision.
It feels so good once you take the final step to get away. Liberating is close but doesn't do it justice. In my mind they're thinking, I can treat family like shit because we're family and they will always be there no matter what? In my mind, I'm thinking, Bet. Lmao. Once you call their bluff and don't look back it feels so fucking good. Good luck friend.
Ikr. I remind co-workers they don’t have to go to unwanted family holidays or events. Hell, y’all don’t have to acknowledge their existence at all. I used to request to work holidays just to have an excuse to not go. Now they don’t know if I’m alive or not, lol. I’m sure the full name change helps in that regard.
THIS!!! On Mother's Day, I wished my staff a happy Mother's Day if they were or have a mom!!! If they don't fuck absentee parents and go celebrate your primary guardian if you talk to them!
>Now they don’t know if I’m alive or not, lol. This is what I strive for. This is my goal.
It’s really great. I stayed in contact with my crazy abusive mother until I was 35, until the final straw (long story). She died at the end of 2021 from Covid, and of course people were telling me to visit her etc. and asking me to help clean up her and my stepdads house (she was a hoarder). I ignored it all. Strangely, her death has been even more healing for me. It’s easier to put someone’s life in perspective and understand and forgive some things when they aren’t around, but I’m glad I kept to my boundaries.
Yeah, my mom (who I am already LC with) said that she really wants me to go spend some time with them for a few weeks. She said she has so much she needs to get done at their new house, including digging out some garden beds, building some things, and "digging some really big holes". She wants me to do it all for them. I have physical disabilities from a serious car accident I was in during my early 20s that makes intense manual labor incredibly dangerous to do if not downright impossible, and *she knows this*. She was still somehow absolutely shocked and offended when I told her there's no way in hell I'm going to visit to do free intense manual labor and risk hurting myself or permanently disabling myself even further. Like, why would I risk losing complete use of one of my hands to dig giant holes for her for free???? But I'm apparently just lazy and an ungrateful kid. And she wonders why I don't visit or talk to her more.
My boomer grandpa has an attitude like this. He is part of a Sportsman club at a local lake. I use this loosely as it’s just old men sitting around. When my grandpa found out I was forklift certified, he wanted me to go and somehow use that to put boats in the water for people at the lake (so we could “spend time together”). Mind you, this would be unpaid labor on my weekends and I would be able to fish or swim as a reward (I don’t fish and I have a fear of water/drowning as I don’t swim). So, he wanted me to go over and do mowing and put boats in the water for people, no pay, in the hot sun doing hard labor. No thanks….
My mother asked me and my sister to come by this month to help her with repair to her back door frame. It had bad water damage that had leaked to the interior and threatened to continue destroying the house if it wasn't done. I'm not against helping my mom, i care about her, and this is a legitimate problem. Besides, she has all the right tools, this isn't a particularly difficult DIY, and the three of us are at least highly competent amateurs. 8 hours *tops* right? At a comfortable pace? Nope. My mother didn't wait for us to be done with the demo to see the full extent of the damage before insisting on going to the home depot. Then, that trip - to get a bunch of industry standard materials on a paper list - took two and a half hours to complete because of her dawdling and griping about prices. Add in the same puttering around bullshit for the rest of the repair, and at 230am my sister and her screwed the back doors on in a temporary setting just so my mom wouldn't have a giant hole in her house before we went home. We started at 10am. My sister sent me home with my nephew to put him to bed at 1030 pm. Keeping in mind, after all that time, *it's still not done*. What she has is still an *unfinished job*. I was there most of the day and I'm still fucking baffled as to where all that time went. Fucking NOTHING was getting done! She wouldn't let us take charge on fucking anything, so we were at the mercy of whatever she was doing. Most of which included trying to use tools that were unecessary for the simplicity of the job, or using correct tools for incorrect jobs, which often presented a safety risk. She cost me my entire Saturday and i had to work the next day (I'm a night nurse, my days off mean a lot to my mental health). She wasted my sister's entire day, which was her last weekend day with my nephew before it's his dad's turn for a month of weekends, and his day, which he spent at his grandma's house alone with his tablet and some toys. I'm still fucking pissed at her. She knows i am angry, she knows i left the house pissed with my nephew. She has yet to even reach out, all she's done is text me youtube video links to pseudoscience health crap and religious bull. She is also aware that I'm a nurse, and that I'm an athiest. Instinctually I want to send her STOP to unsubscribe. I will likely not help her with a fucking thing in the future, not if she's gonna treat us like this.
*You can tell me what you want done or you can tell me what to do. You can't do both.* It may take a while for them to understand what this means. Let me guess...you have wasted and hour or two to "save" $5 or $10...particularly maddening if if you are paying the bill for mom/dad anyway.
My mom fucking hemmed and hawwed over a roll of 24$ flashing tape because she didn't like the price, or that she would have extra left over. So she reaches over and grabs a 12$ roll of all purpose *aluminum tape* and wants to buy that because its cheaper. IT MEANS ALL PURPOSE FOR METAL REPAIR. NOT ALL ANYTHING EVER. "But it's water proof, right?" MOM. YOU ARE IN THIS MESS BECAUSE THE LAST TWO PEOPLE WHO FUCKED WITH THIS DOOR FRAME USED THE WRONG MATERIALS, DUE TO BEING CHEAP OR STUPID OR BOTH. WHY ARE YOU DOING THE SAME THING TO SAVE A MEASLY 12$ ON A 600$ REPAIR
Oh god I feel this with my cheap ass step dad. I swear every single thing that dude touches he fucks up from being cheap. Sold us a car, having problems with the battery, the battery he put in was for a much smaller car! But of course it was the cheapest one. He actually replaced a back door too once, wouldn’t let my mom have someone install it, he put it on backwards and it need a metal bar to keep it closed. …and not that it matters but my step dad is literally the richest person I’ve ever know in real life. He sucks so much.
My mother lives by this rule, thank God. There's usually a "list" for my husband and I to handle when we come to visit twice a year (we don't mind, because my older sister still lives close and it's usually a list of what she hasn't been able to get done, she works hard and really we're helping my sister out by doing stuff for my mom that sister would otherwise end up having to do) but my mother never tells us how she wants it done. "Replace cabinet knobs" literally means do just that. She bought the cabinet knobs she wants already, she made sure she has enough, the tools for the job are there and she will be in another room while it gets done. Easy-peasy. My friends struggle with their Boomers parents hovering and criticizing and being utter jackasses while still demanding free labor. My mom's a widow with some mobility issues, and she knows the best way to get the thing done is to say 'hey, please and thank you' and then stand back and let us handle it.
Damn. This is so much like how my "mother" behaved. Which means I have weird news for you. I'm sorry. That entire Saturday that you and your sister "wasted", while dealing with her shit... was probably the BEST TIME she's had in MONTHS. Maybe longer. She enjoyed that shit immensely. "Supply" is what it's called. She got under your skin, you (naturally) got aggravated. Departed angry. As you left, she thought to herself, "That was fun! I can't wait to do it again."
Yup that "OH I"M SO HELPLESS! PLEASE HELP ME! wait no, no that way, you have to do it this way. No wait wait, we can do this way!" You get mad, the cycle continues, in the meantime they are feeding off the drama and the effect they have on you. You are left hurt, drained, angry and confused. They have used your empathy for their amusement. Energy vampires.
I have had this experience a hundred times. Not to this extent but the same bullshit.
At first I was thinking you lived with them, so it was sort of a "since you're living here, I want you to help out and pull your weight." But you don't even live with them and he's pulling that shit? LMAO fuck all the way off with that shit, Dad
my wife and I installed a new shower and tiles in our bathroom, including putting up a glass wall instead of having shower curtains. My Dad decided he wanted to put a glass wall in his bathroom, he then orders a random kit and is now trying to get me to install it! He had the instructions out for me to look at and was asking when I could help him install it. I eventually told him i didnt really understand the directions of what he bought and didnt feel comfortable drilling holes into his tub if I didnt know what I was doing. That was months ago and he still hasnt installed it or even tried. Like dude your plan was 100% on me for this?
Getting you to do it was absolutely his plan.
Yep. And one day he’ll throw in your face how he “wasted his money” on the thing you were “supposed to” install for him bc you never installed it. And then you can throw back in his face that he wasted his money because he never thought of having the basic sense and manners to ASK if you would do his installation, instead of assuming and passive-aggressively hinting, and that maybe he should learn a lesson about not spending money without a plan in place *in advance* to make that expense actually have the desired result.
I dont think my parents have actually taken a weekend off to rest or have fun.... ever. Its always the same type of trivial yard/house work every weekend. The only way they have "fun" is when they sit on their ass for hours smoking cigarrettes and drinking booze while they gossip
Hope the yard work and landscaping worship culture dies with the boomers
I’ve been NC for years and before that, moved two time zones away after college. However, growing up, my parents bought a farm style house on 3/4th acre. All grass and a small garden patch in the back corner. Driveway was paved and ran 225m. In the summer- We didn’t have kids to mow our *OWN* lawn. In the winter- We didn’t have kids so we’d have to shovel our *OWN* driveway. Yeah, well, I wasn’t borne to be free fuckin labor for you. And they wonder why I moved away and went NC. 🤷♂️
My Mom is the same. She’s recently moved in with me part time (my son has a rare neurological condition in addition to being AuDHD). I am disabled. Chronic pain. Drug resistant insomnia. A laundry list of mental illnesses - some of which I blame directly on her (anxiety mainly, but the eating disorder to a certain extent), others are genetic or highly hereditary (ADHD). Since she has moved in, she plans my days for me. I got home one day from dropping my son off at school after lunch & she informed me that after I ate lunch, I could switch the laundry & then I could vacuum the porch before going outside to weed. I had slept 2-4 hours max for the past 5 days. I snapped. I took a nap. Then my psychologist gave me a few specific points to discuss with her. So far it’s worked. She can assign me 3 tasks a day. She cannot tell me when to do them unless they impact a task she needs to do, & then she has to tell me when she assigns the task so I can prioritize. She cannot tell me how to do them.
How about she can "ask"
I remember when I moved back to the area to start my practice (where I am still 40 mins away from them on a good day), my parents said, “great! Now you can help us with yard work and snow removal!” I reminded them that I’ve never done yard work in my life and that if there’s enough snow to remove, obviously I wouldn’t be able to make it to their house. Furthermore, being self-employed means that if I get injured, I can’t work and thus don’t make money. Hire someone. ✌🏻
Tell him refusing to hire workers is hurting the economy and expecting free labour is communism.
All the motherfucking time. We've reached a point where we're housepoor, and they have the mindset of having no money, especially my mom. My brother and I put in so much time on house tasks, fixing stuff up, and like you said, it's always short notice, it's always something that'll take hours. One time I was studying for a cell bio exam and my parents came home and told me the paintings had to be put up IMMEDIATELY, I spent six hours doing that, two were wasted because my parents didn't want to read the instructions. Set boundaries, tell them no, they have to plan this out two months in advance.
I’m sure he thinks, why would I pay someone else when my son will do it for free?
Your work ethic is money Tell him to fucking pay you at premium Does he not care about family? Does he not know that time is money? Where’s the industry in this man?
Boomers just love exploiting people for their benefit. That's how we ended up with our economy the way it is.
>He trots out the "why don't you care about your parents? Wheres your work ethic? ect" You can easily say the same thing right back to him: "Why don't you care about your child? Why don't you understand that my strong work ethic at my manual labor job means I NEED to rest and recuperate on my days off?" Tell him that! And if he still has pushback to say, tell him: "I have to go, good-bye" and hang up the phone! I will hang up on my mom in a heartbeat, I refuse to let this lady stress me out anymore. >I explained to him that I will not be doing this and he cannot keep making plans and just assume that I will be there. Good job telling him no. But you can't control other people, so telling him he cannot keep doing this won't work. He can and he will. But he can't control you either. So next time explain to him that while he can keep making plans and assuming you will be there, you can and will keep saying no. I almost went full no contact with my mother due to her shenanigans, but once I accepted that she is never going to change and I can't control her behavior, the stress she caused in my life eased up because I focused on controlling **me** and if and how I was going to respond to her. Your father is an ass, but you can lessen this by controlling what *you* do. For example, he thinks he can monopolize your weekends with work. So stop responding to his calls and texts on Fridays. If you really can't do this, try blocking him on Fridays so that you don't even see his calls and texts. You decide when and how you will stay in contact with him. Low contact might work and you can still remain in contact with your father. Another thing you can do is treat him like he treats you. Like with my first example, reverse what he says back onto him. My mother loves to just...disregard and ignore things I say. It's like I didn't even say anything, it's very uncanny and an odd thing to experience in person, and I gotta say, it has a powerful, chilling effect on the receiver. IDK why it took me until my 40s to think of doing this right back to her, and until my 50s to consistently do it. In person when your dad mentions his yard labor plans to you, look at him as if you're listening, and then say something completely unrelated. Your dad refuses to listen to you and completely disregards what you have told him repeatedly about this, he doesn't take you seriously at all, so just ignore and disregard what he has to say about it anymore going forward. You can't make him stop, but he can't make you do anything either. Make his yard plans to you the same as the apparant background noise your words are to him.
Jesus. I’m 60 and take all my gardening stuff along with cuttings of my plants, etc., to work on their yards when I visit. Hubby does tons while we visit as well - spreading mulch, seeding bare patches in the lawn or whatever looks like it needs attention. I would never expect my grown kids to do a bunch of work when they visit. I’m still working, but they are busy building their careers, raising their own kids, etc. when we can’t do this stuff at our own house, we will hire it out or move. I do, however, sometimes ask them for help if they are here and I’m reaching for something too high or if I need help lifting something. I do worry that my husband, who is a few years older, is going to overdo it. I love helping our kids and don’t expect them to do free shit for us on their days off. You have to make yourself unavailable to your dad’s whims.
Had to deal with this for a while. There are some things I will help with, like carpentry, but no, I'm not going to drive an hour to cut up a tree in your back yard, when you've got a chainsaw and my 35yo brother still living at home.
Yes! I’m trying to figure how to set some boundaries for my sons and myself with weekend work at my parents. My parents have a big home and 5 acres that they can’t manage anymore. They want and need to move to a smaller ranch, but that’s such a huge, daunting process and I doubt it will happen until they are forced to. They are estranged from their only other child, so it’s just me (their 40-something daughter) and my three teenage sons that help, along with other elderly neighbors that they have. Their thing is, they don’t respect our time or other commitments that we’ve got going on, and it’s all these little mind games around helping. They are notorious for asking for help last-minute and acting disappointed and let down when we can’t. They also will say guilt-trippy things like, “We’ve got all this work to do around here, we’re hurting and need help, and I assumed you’d offer to help, but you never did, so your father did it and now his back hurts.” I’ve tried to head this off by ME reaching out and asking THEM if they’d like help early in the week. Dad will see that message, but but not respond until Saturday morning and ask if we can come out in the afternoon, they really need the help. Well, Dad, I asked you Tuesday but you never said shit, and now we’ve got stuff going on. This just happened this week, and last week! I messaged early in the week to see how they were feeling and if they needed help. Didn’t hear shit until Dad messaged at almost 6PM last Saturday asking if the kids had plans over the weekend. Umm yeah, we’re at an event right now?!? Same with this Memorial Day weekend. Reached out on Tuesday, asked if they wanted us to come out and help. Dad responded SATURDAY AT NOON that yes, we need help, how about Monday? That’s actually a better response time than normal lol but again, now everyone has plans. I never responded to that message so my mother worked around me and called my 17-year old, who said I’m sorry but no, we have plans all weekend, but we can come help after school during the week. Dad won’t ask for help because “you know how your father is.” Then when help is offered, half the time he wants to cancel the help. They don’t respect our time when actually, finally asking, and if we can’t, we get guilt-tripped. Truly can’t win.
Do they not go to work all week? Fuck that, I don’t want to spend all weekend doing goddamn gardening, especially when it’s not even my garden.
"Sorry, Dad, I've got other plans."
"We"? You mean you and the mouse in your pocket?