I think a lot of people are uncomfortable with this idea of going against their parents. However, I genuinely feel like parents are humans too - they make mistakes and need to be told how their actions are affecting other people, especially their kids, if they don’t notice it themselves.

Personally, my dad is very old fashioned in his thinking and it is really hard for me and my siblings to deal with his strict ideologies. When we were younger, standing up to my dad was incredibly difficult because it was intimidating. However, as my siblings and I got older, my sister led the way for all three of us to feel more comfortable calling out my dad.

We would call him out on his ways of comparing us siblings, putting so much pressure on us for school and his old-fashioned perspective on dating and relationships. The main reason why we felt so compelled to have these hard conversations with our dad was that we felt like what he was doing was stressing us out more than helping us.

We knew our dad had positive intentions but, in the end, how he was telling us to live our lives simply wasn’t feasible as we were growing up in a very different environment than how he was raised. Thus, we felt like we want to be able to do what we feel is right and need to inform our dad why we are going against what he is saying.

In my opinion, it wasn’t blatantly disobeying but rather feeling like what we were being told was wrong and not applicable to our lives.

I know some of you who are reading this probably get where I am coming from because we all have things that our parents have told us that we disagree with. Most people, I would assume, choose to just let it go in one ear and out the other. However, I encourage people to really talk to your parents about what you disagree with because I think it creates an opportunity for your parents to explain why they are doing what they are doing and for you to be able to express how you feel as a result.

Realistically, most times your parents won’t really change how they act because that is something that they have gotten comfortable doing a certain way. However, there will be times when you can make a difference in how they think and I think having that impact some of the time is worth having these conversations.

Overall, these types of conversations are never easy but I believe are necessary in some situations. The best advice I can give is to be honest and to be prepared for some backlash. If this is something you truly believe in, it may take more than one conversation to get through to your parents, but I encourage you to not give up. You have the right to express how you feel to your parents!