A Letter from Teenagers to their Parents

Aadrita Mahzabeen ।।  

 

Dear parents,

You provide us with unconditional support. You do countless things for us, hiding your pain. You have raised us ever since we were babies. We might never think of telling you that we also love you so much. We always look for occasions or special days to express our love and feelings towards you, but we know that you know your children very well and can sense their love for you.

But dear moms and dads, there are moments when kids don’t feel good, there are thoughts that we can’t express properly, but we always feel if we could!

A letter might be an easier way to express our feelings. In this letter your teenager kids are trying to explain how they feel and what are in their minds. Please take it easy.

Dear moms and dads,

There are times where you do not understand our feelings and our behavior, and sometimes you don’t care about what we really feel inside. And it hurts.

But dear parents, us, teenagers, understand everything, we are conscious of our surroundings. We face countless occasions where you lie to us to may be hide something from us or for many other reasons, but this makes us extremely upset. So please give it a chance, and try being honest with us.

Moms, and dads, please, listen to us and our opinions. We want our opinions to be listened to and seen as equals to yours. We want you to be a bit more supportive of our choices. After all, we are still the same kids you raised. We would like you to support us in the future too.

We would love for you to appreciate our efforts a bit more. Words like “I am proud you tried hard for this exam” sound much more heartening than “I am glad you got perfect marks, it’s expected.” We want you to be proud of us.

Expectations are normal, but sometimes too much of it may put a toll on our mental health by stressing us out and making us depressed. We may not be perfect, but we are constantly trying to make you proud so please understand.

We would appreciate it if you see how we feel from our perspective. We can feel depressed, anxious or just generally upset at times, and we want you to acknowledge that too.

Please stop arguing with each other. Seeing you fight makes us unexplainably upset. We feel like shutting everyone and everything out, and to just disappear completely. We wish you would stop, at least in front of our siblings for their wellbeing.

We wish you would comply with our privacy a bit more. We don’t like the action of inquiring into our personal lives. Please let us have our space. If we’ve done something wrong, we request you to tell us nicely and let us reflect by ourselves for a few days.

We want you to respect us as human beings as well. Please treat us as equal and not as people below you. Our minds do not always work the same, yes, but mistreating us makes us feel very upset, so we would request you to respect us too.

Lastly, we teenagers still don’t know about all the hardships of life, but we know enough to love and appreciate all our parents do for us to keep us living through these difficult days. We just want you to understand us a bit more.

We love you.

Your teenager kids