When talking to new parents, one of the biggest changes they would mention about becoming a parent is how they are no longer only living for their own sake. Having a kid means that your existence and purpose in life do not revolve around you anymore, but it revolves around this completely separate human being. This creates a firm distinction between good and bad parents – Good parents see this change as beautiful and meaningful, and bad parents teach themselves to resent their kids for it. It s…

"They hand me all their work and leave the office at 2pm"

You won't find many people who would argue with you for wanting a child-free wedding—except, of course, those parents who think their little darlings are the exception to any and every rule. It can get a little harder to sell this idea, however, when you try and pass the “child-free” rule for one specific individual: your “bad apple” 9-year-old cousin. Let's consider here that in most cases, for a kid that young, the problem is actually the parents themselves… regardless of what “attempts” they…

Everyone likes free stuff, and what's not to like? It's free! However, some people really like free stuff—like, really, really like free stuff—and they'll go to great lengths to ensure they get it, even fighting dirty and using tools such as guilt and anger to do so. This is one of the reasons why it's, unfortunately, best not even to bother offering free stuff online; you're bound to be inundated with people who have too much time on their hands and are combing buy/sell pages trying to be the…

Money solves most problems in life, but it seems like there's just never enough of it. Even the richest people in the world just want more and more cash. You can never have too much! However, when you've been wealthy for a long time, you start to forget what it's like to be a “normal person." Most people can't just throw money at their problems.

We all have the idyllic When you grow up and realize that your kid's grandparents are also your in-laws, everything gains a new perspective. What's somehow even stranger, though, is coming to find that you're either “dad's side” or “mom's side” of the family for your sibling's kids. If a kid is telling you in earnest that they don't feel comfortable going to grandma's house, that alone is saying something.

As the saying goes, the punishment must fit the crime, and if the repercussions are too severe, no one is learning anything, and you're simply going to create a bad memory and lifelong resentment that will get brought up in 20 years at tense family dinners and when your kids attempt to talk to you about the trauma that you unintentionally caused them. Of course, as a parent, even if you have the best of intentions, you're not going to get everything right all of the time . And as teenagers, we'…

The holiday season might be just around the corner, but this family does not have much to celebrate these days. After the 17-year-old daughter of the family managed to convince her parents to let her go on a trip with some friends, her father mentioned that he would be on a “business trip” in the same city that weekend and could check in on her. Well, it turns out that she needed to be checking in on him because, on the final night of the trip, the Redditor went out to dinner with her friends,…

Memories are a funny thing in that each memory is shaped and reformed every time you recall it, making them easily susceptible to suggestion. Essentially, every time you recall a memory, you destabilize it and partially “destroy” it with your brain, then completing a process called reconsolidation to re-store it with your current thoughts and emotions added. As a brief tangent, this one one of the reasons why witness testimony is so problematic. This fluidity and fallibility of memory and abili…

This mom isn't 100% sure that she's doing the right thing here. After her son ate an inordinate amount of pizza, she turned to the internet to steer her in the right direction. After that, read about the ridiculous requests that hotel guests had, like one guest who “demanded a room upgrade because ‘their aura didn’t vibe' with the one they booked.”

Regardless of whether or not you've achieved immaterial enlightenment or are neck deep in the current iteration of the social-media-fueled consumerist frenzy, it's more than likely that you possess things that are your favorite. Chances are these items have some sort of sentimental value—a keepsake from a loved one or photographs that are irreplaceable despite having no measurable value. They may have some monetary value, too, regardless of whether or not you'd ever want to sell them. Heck, may…

It really should go without saying that you can't just go around renaming people just because you don't like their name for some reason. Even if—no, especially if—that person is a foster kid under your care. Some things like this are so outrageously laughable and out-of-pocket that they would be silly if they weren't so cruel… This 16-year-old foster child found himself facing hostility from his new foster family's extended family, who apparently came to the decision that his name, “Nico,” was…

As a kid, bedtime is one of the ultimate constraints; being forced to go to bed right at an exact time every night feels like authoritarian oppression, almost symbolic of the limitations being imposed upon you. Of course, when you're seven years old, your bedtime is really for your own good, it's not really like you can be trusted to make your own decisions at that point for whether or not you're tired. But still, who among us didn't “cheat” our bedtimes, playing in our rooms long after our par…

Spending the holidays with your husband's ex-wife sounds like prime material for a straight-to-streaming holiday-themed romantic comedy, but the reality is that it's not nearly as funny when it is your reality. This stepmother turned to this online community for advice on a complex personal problem she was facing and wondered if she was in the wrong for encouraging her 19-year-old stepdaughter to speak up about ending their joint family holiday gatherings with the stepdaughter's mother, her hus…

It's hard to be on the receiving end of questionable parenting habits. When your mom or dad is being ridiculous, frustrating, or just all-around crazy, calling them out on their nonsense does not always help the situation get any better. These Redditors understand that conundrum all too well. Some of these frustrating parenting habits can range from universally annoying ticks to uncharacteristically specific quirks and eccentricities. For instance, we've got plenty of folks discussing their par…

Are you even a real family if you DON'T have at least one argument during Thanksgiving dinner?