“Why should you care whether or not your parents accept that you smoke?”
Here’s a scenario, three teenage college friends are in the bathroom of their dorm smoking marijuana. Everything is going fine until one of the friends’ phones starts to ring and it’s their father. She picks up the phone, they talk for a little bit and she hangs up the phone. She then goes on to express that her father hates marijuana and that he would not react well if he knew that she smoked. She wants to tell him and her mother but she is scared that they won’t accept that she does smoke. Her friend then asks “Why should you care whether or not your parents accept that you smoke?’. She then sits and thinks about why should she care?
Everybody has a different relationship with their parents. Some people have that relationship with their mother is like their best friend. Or some people like me have a relationship with their mother where it’s explicitly expressed that my mother is my mama “not one of [my] little friends”.
I was having a conversation with my friend and she thought about the question at hand: “Why should you care whether or not your parents accept that you smoke?” She expressed that why should she care whether or not her mother accepts what she does because she’s over eighteen.
With that being said, it’s understandable to be afraid to tell your parents that you smoke marijuana when you’re still in high school or under your parent’s roof. But, as a young adult who’s not in their parents home, you arguably should feel no need to lie to their parents about what they do. Wanting your parent’s acceptance after adulthood is seemingly unimportant anymore because you should be figuring life out of your own terms.
To some, it’s not necessary to lie to your parents about something they already suspect that you do. Others may attempt to take on an adult route by sitting down with their parent(s) and having a conversation about their choices.
In another point of view some people rather not tell their parents altogether. This is so because they don’t want their parents to be disappointed by the actions they are taking. Although some parents would be relieved that their child is comfortable enough to talk about the actions the young adult does. Some young adults, on the other hand, fear disappointment from their parents and thus go about hiding aspects of their lives from them.
When it comes to the “acceptance” of parents, teenagers would rather stay to themselves when it comes to certain subjects like the substance they might intake, whether or not if they want to attend college and even when it comes to relationships. So people grow up in different households to where they as soon as they turned 18 they were able to do whatever they wanted. But I on the other hand still have to go by my parents say so.
Accepting your own choices is hard enough, getting someone like a parent to accept them is additional adversity. However, figuring out how to go about it in the way that is best for you will ultimately result in a better understanding between you and your parents.
Being able to talk to your parents about everything is not for all teenagers, but we do know that they (typically) care and know what is best for us. They just want us to succeed.