Whether you want to admit it or not, parents DO treat their kids differently.
Which can be good and bad, I guess…
But what happens when you try to prove this point to your parents?
Read on to see what one teenager did.
AITA for mimicking my brother’s tantrums to prove my parents treat us differently?
“My brother is 14 and I’m 15. Its always been really obvious to me that he’s the favorite child and my parents treat him differently to me.
His room is twice the size of mine, he gets money to go out with his friends and eat but if I want to go out I have to use money I saved from my birthday or Christmas or when grandma visits, I get in trouble for things he doesn’t get in trouble for, there’s higher expectations on me, if my parents need help with something its always me they ask not him, stuff like that.
I’ve been trying to explain to them that we get treated differently and they don’t agree. They think its just in my head. I would give them examples like how my brother is always really grumpy and barely speaks to them but if I’m in a bad mood and barely speak to them for one day I get in trouble. But they said its different and got annoyed when I tried to get them to explain why.
My brother has been doing this thing lately where he gets annoyed about something (I think it’s when he loses in a video game or his game freezes or something but I’m not sure because its always in his room) and he starts swearing and slamming his hand on his desk, then he stomps around the house slamming doors for like an hour.
This happens maybe once a week. It scares my cat and honestly it scares me too. But my parents just ignore it.
He did it yesterday while I was holding the cat and my arms got shredded because the cat panicked. I asked my mom if she’s gonna talk to him about his outbursts and she said I should just ignore it and he’ll grow out of it.
So today I decided I’d test out what happens if I do the exact same thing as him. I waited until the cat was in the other end of the house so I didn’t scare him and I swore and thumped my hand on my desk.
I didn’t even get to do anything else like slamming doors because my mom got so angry right away and burst into my room and started yelling at me. When she took a breath I said “ok so now you’ve practised with me, you can tell (my brother) off next time he does it, right?” and she got even more mad and said I need to grow up and stop focusing on my brother so much and I should just focus on myself because its up to my parents to decide how to deal with our behavior not me.
So now I’m grounded for swearing once and thumping my hand on my desk once, but my brother does that and then slams doors and stomps around the house like once a week and has never even been told to stop.
And still my parents won’t admit they treat us differently. My dad even came in later to tell me off all over again for copying my brother just to prove a point but wouldn’t acknowledge I did actually make my point, he just kept saying I was just being immature.
AITA?”
This is how readers reacted on Reddit.
One person said that this kid is not to blame but they should try to get as much as they can out of their parents.
Hmmm…
Photo Credit: Reddit
Another reader said that this kid shouldn’t even have to be fighting this battle.
Photo Credit: Reddit
This individual made a good point: a lot of times the older kid in a family is the one where the parents make their mistakes and learn everything.
Photo Credit: Reddit
And finally, this Reddit user said that, quite simply, this teen’s parents are pretty terrible.
Photo Credit: Reddit
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Thanks a lot, friends!
