I just imagined a world where for 10 years I told my child I loved them and then for them to within less than a year, stop responding and then actively shame you for doing so.
Fuck, I really wish my parents humanised themselves a bit more when I was younger. It took me far too long to rationalise that adults weren’t different from me.
Especially because it seems like the overwhelming majority of adults have forgotten how much it sucks to be a kid. A kid or teen’s world is much smaller. Sure, their biggest problems might be next week’s science fair and what that one girl from math class thinks about them, but those are huge insurmountable problems to someone who has never had to worry about being unable to feed their family. The problems are comparatively smaller but that doesn’t mean they’re any less emotionally devastating. I remember being a teen. I remember the emotional and spiritual pain I went through trying to talk about the things I care about, or were worried about, only to be told that my problems weren’t problems and weren’t a big enough deal to matter. In the Grand Scheme? Sure, maybe they weren’t such a big deal. But at the time they mattered to me a lot.
Most adults have forgotten what it was like to be a teenager and they dismiss them out of hand.