Children Of TEEN Parents Share Their Stories Of GROWING UP (r/AskReddit)

our slashes credit children of teen parents what was your life like growing up how is your relationship with your parents now my mom got pregnant with me when she was 17 my dad was the same age maybe a few months younger they both dropped out of high school and tried to make it work it didn't and they split up when I was 2 my dad moved out of state and my mom knew she wouldn't be able to give me a good and stable life so she gave me to my grandma I grew up pretty poor but my grandma always worked two or three jobs plus went to college to make sure she could provide for me at the time I didn't really appreciate it and was always resentful that I didn't have as nice of a life as my friends their fridges were always full they were able to do extracurriculars that costed money they had room for people to come over for a sleepover and their parents had extra time to spend with them I got to spend time with my mom pretty often probably around once a month or so and tended to favor her over my grandma because of that silly resentment thing now that I'm an adult 24 and much past the age my mom and dad were when they had me I have realized that I can't blame them much for how they acted they were definitely kids and I can't imagine going through that even at my age now I still have a good relationship with my mom even though it gets tougher and tougher as I get older because she sort of stayed stagnant in her emotional age having a young cool mom was great as a kid but is sort of frustrating and disheartening when I feel more mature and responsible than her I've also gained a lot of respect for my grandma she's in a lot of debt and doesn't have a lot of friends or free time and I know that's mostly because she put everything she had into making sure I had a good life when she didn't really even have to I paid for college by myself with the help of scholarships grants and loans I started living on my own as soon as I could and now I have a decent job that allows me to help her out with her bills when she needs it we've gotten to the point where we talk on the phone often and most of my wrongly place anger is gone she recently broke down and said I'm the best think she'd ever done with her life and that she was so proud of me I cried a lot my biological mom was 16 when she had me she put me up for adoption to give me a better life than she could provide byah that disappeared when he found out she was pregnant he was 17 adoptive parents brought me home at about 3 months in now 35 I have never and will never have contact with her I reached out once in my teens asking for medical history but somewhat hoping shed want to talk even a little I wasn't expecting or even wanted her to be a big part of my life she gave me the medical history via the agency closed adoption with the stipulation that I never contact her again as she was by then married with a family and they knew nothing about me I can totally respect that she made a tough choice as a teen and she moved on to build her own life I'd like to think that she and I think alike we don't wish anything bad for the other we just know that biology doesn't necessarily entitle you to anything my adopted parents offered to get a private investigator to help find her they still don't believe that I just don't have any interest I Know Who I am I don't need to meet the person who pushed me out in order to feel whole edit a few more facts because there seem to be a lot of people with similar situations I know all of the above from what my parents were told via the adoption agency we had a vague background but no names or anything that really could have identified my be a mom I have a brother who is also adopted from a different family he is three years younger he was told at the same age second grade and feels the same as me we agree that because it wasn't a secret in our family we had no reason to feel like anything was wrong so far as our parents were concerned however my brother knows more about his Bo mom as his adoption wasn't nearly as top-secret I swear I'm an alien or something as mine she wrote him a letter he knows her name and a lot about her from the files but he doesn't care to seek her out then again he doesn't really care to have much to do with our adoptive parents myself or our staff Burris so I think he just doesn't give a [ __ ] my feelings were never hurt by BioMEMS refusal for contact at all she made a really tough choice and I have a good life she cared enough to let me have a nice life I care enough to let her continue hers I mentioned in a comment below that part of the reason I didn't want to meet her is that I honestly was afraid that she would be a terrible person I don't know that I could live with myself knowing I was related to a bad person I don't mean a serial killer although that would be [ __ ] up but what if she were a drug addict or a manipulative money-grubber like my friends by omen what if she hated me this is something I feel okay with not knowing I would not call myself well-adjusted but I've never really suffered with the issues of identity due to adoption I hope I don't come off as cold or detached but it just really didn't matter to me my dad and stepmom raised me taught me how to be a good person and work hard to enjoy life that to me is what matters before anyone asks I do not want kids at all I like them but um I'm not super responsible with money and stuff so I just think it's better I don't not also I have chronic health issues that keep me from being very active I don't know how well I do with a kid but if I did I would adopt interesting topic I was a teen father 16 and I'm sitting here with my son discussing the purchase of his first car he'll be 14 this year and we are looking for a small project to start we could have it fixed up and running before he turns 15 and gets his permit his mother and I fought a lot while he was young and I wonder if that's why he doesn't say I love you he says you too my wife and I worked through a lot of issues together we grew up into adults together we learned how to be adults together we are still here together standing next to each other at every obstacle life hands us leading each other and our family along I hope we've showed him and our daughter how to fight how to love how to work how to be strong enough when you don't think you can be we still fight but we've learned how and what battles to pick sometimes we argued at the grocery store this weekend over what size bottle of ketchup to buy haha most importantly we've learned together how to make up and love each other even if the other is an ass that day anyways it's an interesting time to reflect on how he's been brought up and everything I have tried to offer him he's active in sports well he tore his ACL in December so he's out for a bit has an ax slash B average in honors classes he has almost everything he wants I guess maybe not everything he wants but certainly everything he needs and then some has a little lazy butt what kid isn't we fight and bicker he won't leave his younger sister alone all at her say even the slightest thing wrong without correcting her hell they argued over her borrowing a pencil to do her homework earlier just kind of hit me that I'm doubting his responsibility level if I buy him something and make it nice and he ruins it gotta let him fly eventually though right he's a good kid he's got this has a smart kid with a level head probably the only 13 year old kid I can confidently say doesn't say a single swear word out of earshot and one day he won't have me to guide him through it he'll need the freedom now while I'm here my mother was 18 when I was born my dad said she died giving birth to me and so my father who was 17 at the time raised me on his own he was the youngest of seven children but all of his siblings were much elder had lives of their own and lived in different places around the country my grandparents weren't exactly the most supportive people they tried to convince my dad to tell my mom to have an abortion but he refused so I didn't really grow up around them either one of uncles live not too far from us though so he was able to help take care of me from time to time now I don't know how he did it but despite being a single dad at 17 he was able to finish high school on time and go to college if my uncle wasn't babysitting me my dad would just bring me to his classes my dad was a mechanic a carpenter an electrician he basically did everything he worked multiple jobs for a as long as I could remember despite all of that we were still struggling financially and while my uncle did try to offer us a place to stay my dad just really wanted to at least try and make it on his own he fixed up a truck and from the time I was about five until I was almost seven that truck was our home we basically lived on the road for two years always driving to different places for his job I wasn't able to go to school because we were all over the place but my dad was able to find time to teach me how to read and write as well as some math that was his favorite not so much mine though since he always took me to work with him all I did was read and read and read to pass time just after I turned 7 my dad was able to get a small one-bedroom house near my uncle's place for a great price he fixed that up by himself I like to think that I contributed in some way but thinking back now I probably broke more than I helped ficks law the neighborhood was actually pretty good and I was able to go to school the following September I started the second grade and I loved it my teachers were actually surprised that I was doing so well despite it being my first time in school ever they didn't know it was because I had a fantastic teacher at home : closed bracket over the next few years that followed things started to get better for us we lived efficiently with little to no excess and soon my dad had saved up quite a bit of money we were no longer living from paycheck to paycheck so he started a college fund for me he wanted to make sure that I wouldn't struggle so he prioritized that first unsurprisingly my grandparents started to treat us nicer my aunts and uncles started to visit us more I was just a kid but I knew how badly they treated my dad I knew they were only nice now that he proved to all of them that he wasn't just a worthless kid who became a father too early I probably hated them more than he did but he told me that some people are just like that and it would be a waste of time trying to make them change then when I was 12 my uncle pulled me out of school to tell me that my dad had been in a car accident on the way to work it was a hit and run and the person left my dad alone on the side of the road in his total truck he was in a coma for weeks before they finally took him off life support just like that my dad was gone and in summary you could say that I was too my uncle helped to cover most of the medical bills then sold a house and put everything under my name despite the major setback I was still financially set for college and probably a good couple of years after that but my father's death left me completely devastated I lost all of my motivation to go school I really just wasn't the same anymore my dad made me who I was and without him I couldn't be myself I lived with my uncle for the first few months after my dad died but soon my grandparents started offering to take care of me my uncle was a busy guy and was rarely ever home so it seemed like the best choice to make I was barely going to school anyway I ended up leaving everything behind and moved across the country to live with my grandparents like I said before they were pretty nice to me at first but things quickly went downhill my grandfather would tell me that because of my dad's mistakes I was now their burden to bear he was an alcoholic and often physically and verbally abusive - for the rest of my teenage years I lived in that hellhole admit that I wasn't the world's greatest teenager and for the first couple of years I was just downright depressed by the eleventh grade I started to pick everything up again because I realized that I was around the same age that my dad had me I started to focus more on school and spent more time there or in any after-school program I could find than at home I also kept trying to go back to living with my uncle but my grandparents kept pushing it off and eventually I just stopped asking somehow they managed to get their hands on the money my dad had saved for me and as you could probably expect they just blew it all on god knows what I didn't even realize that they did that until I was applying for college and realized I didn't have the money to pay for it I had no idea what to do from there if there was a way to get it all back I didn't know what it was nor did I know who to ask I called gotten alone but the fact that they threw away everything my dad had worked for was just too much I absolutely resented my grandparents after that and I felt like I was on the brink of another downward spiral so as soon as I graduated from high school I took everything I could bring with me in a backpack and suitcase and moved back in with my uncle he wanted to help me start another college fund but he was already giving me free food and rent and I didn't think it was right that he'd have to put me through college too so after I graduated high school I took a break from school I wasn't nearly as crafty as my dad so I just worked as a waitress and picked up every other job I could find I did that for about two years then saved up enough money so I could go to university to become a nurse fast forward to when I was around 27 my life was looking pretty all right I had a stable job my own house had just gotten married and then another big bombshell was dropped into my life again I found out that my mother was actually still alive I wasn't planned and my mom wasn't financially nor emotionally ready for a kid so she planned to put me up for adoption my dad begged her not to and said he'd take care of me if she wouldn't so when I was born she literally just handed me over to him and left they didn't make a case out of it or anything my dad just took full responsibility without any hesitation my uncle says that my dad made up the whole story of her dying so that I wouldn't grow up thinking my own mother didn't want me and possibly also to not go looking for her nonetheless she managed to find one of my aunt's on FAFSA book and creeped her way to find me my guess is that she saw some of our wedding photos or something I was pretty upset with my uncle about the whole thing at first since he knew all along and never bothered to tell me at least when I became an adult but then I realized that had I been in my mum's position when I was 18 I probably won't doubted my ability to properly raise a child - I thought that maybe things wouldn't have been the same for me if I grew up knowing the truth also it's not like I missed out on much anyway my dad and I were fine without her we had the whole world at our feet with just the two of us my mother and I never ended up meeting in person and to this day we still aren't very close she has a family of her own and she's always asking if we could meet one day but I just don't feel like I'm ever going to be ready even after so many years my kids do however know she's their grandmother and they send each other gifts / cards on Christmas fast forward to now I'm 34 and happily married with three kids under six and a fourth on the way my husband's a pharmacist and I'm the head nurse of the hospital where my dad passed away we are well-off and living a life I never really imagined would be possible for me I just wish that my dad was here to see it none of it world been possible without him I'm still close with my uncle and catch up with him regularly but I distanced myself with my grandparents and don't really see my other relatives except on certain occasions for instance weddings etc my husband and in-laws are amazing though and I'm thankful for them every day PS sorry for the long post but thank you to anyone who took the time to read through it all I've read a lot of books in my life but my dad's story is my favorite one to tell : close bracket my father had my oldest sister with his first wife when he was 18 and his wife was 17 my sister's life was pretty unbearable at the age of three my father then 21 abandoned them and married another woman who he had twins with and when those twins were 9 months old he abandoned that family - meanwhile my oldest sister went on to be molested by a string of creeper her mom was dating not sure if she was born a lesbian or if she just had so much sexual trauma with men not even she knows but she definitely doesn't care for men she was 13 when I was born and it just so happened to coincide with her telling her mother that a new step that had been raping her her mother responded by putting her on a Greyhound cross-country to live with my dad my 23 year old mom and me my mom beat the [ __ ] out of her and verbally slash emotionally abused her so badly she ran away at about 15 when she came back my dad gave her $20 and put her back on a Greyhound cross-country again to her mom's I think at that point she just moved in with a friend and joined the army as soon as she could it didn't work out though and she was dishonorably discharged can't remember why though anyways turns out the twins ended up getting a pretty tough break too though he wasn't a team when he had him their mother became a crackhead and by the time they were 15 they were living on the streets in the same city as us but neither they nor us were aware of their presence funny enough despite that my father had no contact with them my mother had been sending them child support for decades by the time they found us they were grownups and our Father had abandoned us to silver lining the first time we met my mother asked them before the door even shut if they had received the money she'd been sending the LA County for them one of them got on the phone apparently the money had just been sitting appreciating in an account for them for almost two decades and they both received a check for upward of dollar sign 35 K not that that makes up for the shitty childhood and [ __ ] excuse for a father but it was nice that our first interaction involved just a little bit of retribution so regardless of how they feel about our Father they definitely loved the poop out of us and my mom in fact even the oldest one has reconciled with my mother who has had a lot of therapy and apologized profusely for her completely egregious behavior she was very abusive when her and I were little one CPS got involved when I was in middle school she mellowed out but she's always been a rager I was the product of a 15 to 16 year old and her 19 to 20 year old stoner boyfriend they broke up during the pregnancy and he was erased from my record mein because he at the time was dealing with some mental and drug abuse issues and my mom didn't want him to use legal power to see me if he would be in that condition ended up living with my mum's parents a little sister 14 years and my mom while she finished up her Jed worked as a waitress and tried doing the whole community college thing home life was pretty strange in retrospect that felt ideal as I lived it my entire family archetypes were kind of skewed I had the parental relationship with my grandparents and viewed my mom and aunt as sisters my mom's boyfriend's always felt like brothers or cool dude friends the boyfriend that she would eventually marry was like my childhood best friend that I would ride dirt bikes and hunt with my grandma passed away from cancer when I was 10 grandpa became pretty alcoholic / depressed so my mom and fiance / husband not married at the time got a house and I went with lived a regular lower-middle-class life after that mom became a banker her BF was a construction worker / welder it wasn't until I was 14 that my mom had a kid with her husband and then another when I was 19 that I realized just how strange our relationship was I don't think they tried to push me away but I always felt like an outsider like my mom became involved in the church and hung out with all of the other good Imams with their kids that were all in the age groups of my younger half-brothers and I was just a reminder of what she did and it's no secret I look just like my biological dad he was pretty infamous in his prime so anyone who was at least in high school during the mid-90s in my town can tell I'm my father's daughter and I'm similar to him too I started seeing him when I was about 5 which was when he began to straighten up we are both similar in that we don't have a lot of emotional depth like we traveled through the UK together two years ago and see each other be monthly but I still wouldn't consider us very close it certainly isn't as bad as it could have been I really wouldn't change anything my grandparents all way of parenting was locking the outside to play in the yard all day I did a lot of drawing and climbing trees my bedroom was the laundry room so I grew up sleeping next to an old water heater but they did a damn fine job at making me really independent because they were both gone by the time I was 12 and I managed just fine found my predominant parental figure in my band director who I would meet when I joined band at age 11 ended up breaking the statistics for daughters born to teen moms and graduated at the top of my class got into a good university and am now in the middle of an engineering degree I still have contact with everyone I see my mom about twice a month since we live within an hour of each other I see her kids and husband maybe once every two to three months hanging out with my mom is literally like any other date with a friend we usually go to the mall and she gossips we talk about sex and money and shenanigans I think for what she went through she did all right she's built herself into something she likes I think and is doing good for herself she's a trouper man i whould the bought it myself or given myself up for adoption that she did it and I didn't have that shitty of a childhood my mom had me at 15 she had just turned 15 actually my dad was 19 they met at a skating rink my mom said she told my dad how old she was that day that he still acted surprised that she was only 14 and pregnant with his baby my grandmother dad's mom loved me wholeheartedly but she was terrible to my poor mom she called my mom a [ __ ] and a [ __ ] blaming her for seducing my dad she was constantly threatening to take my brother and I away from our mom even as a weeks old baby my dad's mom would demand that I stay with her for weeks at a time after everyone found out about the pregnancy my parents got married in my grandfather's backyard and moved in with my grandfather and his wife's from a second marriage my mom's family moved away to another state and it was just her and my dad's family when I was born apparently everyone was all happy and I did have a good childhood because I was completely loved but they left to get and my fifteen-year-old mom almost died because she started to bleed out they thought she was just a kid which she was and never took her seriously my mom always talked about a career as an actress in my dad's mom and tell her to get out of the clouds my parents had my brother and soon divorced we didn't always have electricity and I distinctly remember my mom counting pennies to buy us hamburgers from McDonald's and bruises on her arms from abusive boyfriends but we made it through today my mom is my closest friend more like my sister she actually grew up to become a photographer and a model and I sort of got to witness that today she has given up that world in 28 and she's 43 and she has a degree she always watched me get my degrees I have an MFA and recently she got an a a of her own and she's working as an occupational therapist it's almost like I have to give her up a bit like she's a child so she can go live the life she wants with her new husband I don't approve of every decision but she is the first call I make for any question or any problem or just a need to chat we live States apart now so that's difficult but she will always be my best friend my parents were both 18 when they had me my mother was wonderful when I was a child she handmade my baby food put it in ice cube trays and thawed when needed she put her needs above my own she had a great job and works hard for every penny she tried to give me the life that she couldn't have her father sexually abused her and her mother let it happen she promised me that she would never put a man above me that she would make sure I grew up with everything I wanted needed one Christmas she wasn't well off she bought me a kitchen playset she wrapped every piece separately so I would have a lot of presents to open she was a wonderful mother and I appreciate every single thing she did for me my father left when I was six emerald never grew up he has two other daughters now when I turned 11 my mother and I moved across the country with her boyfriend for work they had a new baby and my aunt moved in with us so me and my aunt will one unit and they were a family and that was okay I didn't mind too much her boyfriend leaves when my brother turned to my mother fell into a deep depression and I took care of my brother at 14 years old my mother started drinking to excess and abusing prescription medication she started insulting me calling me fat anything to make me hate myself when I was 15 my mother first told me she hated me I was also 15 when my mother first tried to kill herself she told me I was the reason she was killing herself from age 15 until now 21 I've watched my mother tried to kill herself probably around thirty five times I dropped out of high school from stress taken care of her and my brother watched her be tackled to the ground by police to sedate her seen my brother be put in foster care twice seen my mother hit her boyfriend with a shovel lose all of my family because she pushed them away watched her an abusive relationship after abusive relationship I had to clean up the house after her suicide attempts throw out my deceased dog's seizure meds so she won't abuse them not take my medications in fear she would steal them my dog who was one of the only good things in my life was hit by a car on the highway and killed because she was too drunk and high to go find him so I appreciate how much she gave up for me but I don't think I can get over what she has and continues to put me through thank you so much for watching please like and subscribe the channel

Channel: Slime King

Views: 185,548

Rating: 4.9435706 out of 5

Keywords: high school, reddit stories, reddit

Id: nEPS8eGFL-E

Length: 28min 8sec (1688 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 24 2019