Salary expectation ? scholar loans ? Mental wellness ? We ’ve all been there .
Sometimes, it’s not until you’re deep into adulthood — managing bills, navigating the job market, or even going to therapy — that you realize just how differently your parents see the world. Maybe they genuinely don’t understand how much rent has gone up, or they think you’re lazy for not sticking with a job that made you miserable. For many of us, what stings most isn’t just the comment itself, but the reminder that someone who raised you might never fully understand what your life actually looks like.
So if you relate to this, we want to know: What’s the most frustratingly out-of-touch comment your parent has made about your life?
Maybe you’ve spent years building a career, balancing gigs and freelancing to stay afloat — when suddenly, you’re offered a salaried role at a company that aligns with everything you care about. You’re thrilled…until your dad says, “That’s it? I thought you’d be making six figures by now.”
Perhaps after years of pushing through anxiety and burnout, you finally started seeing a therapist — and it’s actually helping. But when your mom finds out, she scoffs, “What do you even have to be stressed about?” She tells you to “just go for a walk” or “think positive,” and seems genuinely offended that you’d pay someone to “listen to your problems.” You try to explain it’s about unlearning survival mode, but she just says, “In my day, we didn’t have time to be anxious.”
On the other hand, maybe you’re finally ready to move out, and you tell your parents about an apartment you found: small but cute, close to work, and…$1,900 a month. Your uncle practically spits out his coffee and says, “That’s robbery! I had a whole house for less than that!” And when you try to explain inflation and housing shortages, he just tells you to “look harder,” as if you’re not already sharing a spreadsheet with three friends and subscribed to countless rental sites.
Or perhaps your father-in-law likes to reminisce about how he covered his college tuition by working summers. So when you mention that your student loans total more than $80k, he gasps like you’re lying and insists “you must’ve done something wrong,” until you show him actual tuition rates — and even then, he pivots to how “kids today just choose expensive schools for the vibe.”
Whether it was about your job, your finances, your mental health, or something else entirely — if your parent or older relative said something so disconnected it made you pause and think, “Wow, we really live in different worlds,” we want to hear it.
Salary expectations? Student loans? Mental health? We’ve all been there.
