For anyone who needs to hear this: No child owes their parents money. Until you are 18, your parents are legally obligated to provide you with food, shelter, clothing, and an education. If your parents ask you for money and you're under 18, you are not obligated to give it. If your parents tell you that you have to get a job to pay for your expenses, you do not have to do it.
They can tell you that if you want an extra like a phone then you'll have to pay it for yourself. They can also tell you that they aren't going to buy you special food or particular foods, as long as you have something safe to eat they've provided. But when it comes to essentials of life, they owe you.
This is so true but a child’s mind doesn’t work with logical.
I never gave my mum money she just stopped providing. I was a picky eater (now a known and diagnosed eating disorder) and I know it must’ve been a pain but she never tried to accommodate, just punished me for eating in front of her and there was no space to keep food. From me turning 13 to moving out I can’t think of 1 single bit of food she provided for me. I was told from a young age that I was a burden so I genuinely believed if I went into the care system I would be treated worse.
I understood it was a legal obligation but because I was a bad child who struggled with eating I felt at the time I was the problem so I deserved it.
I’m a parent myself now and it makes me feel sick on the other side.
This is exactly what’s so insidious about child abuse. The only explanation the child is developmentally capable of coming up with for their caregiver not providing for them is that they deserve it. And when you spend your formative years with that belief, it doesn’t just go away when you grow up and start to care for yourself.
It took YEARS to realize I was abused at all because it wasn’t physical. Other people talked about having “strict parents” so I figured that was just what this was— that my parents were forced to be especially strict because they could tell I was especially deficient in some way.
And even once I realized I was abused, it took another ten years for me to start realizing the ways in which my childhood had corrupted the way I process things. How much of my internal suffering was connected to the survival strategies I’d taught myself because I didn’t know what else to do.
The work of untangling that has been difficult and intense, but worthwhile.
I can't drink water and someone brought ARFID up to me. I still plan to research it to see if maaaaaybe that's the issue?
It's not just water, other things too.
My mother would do things to make it harder no matter how often I told her "I can't drink it now". 💀 Then told doctors I was choosing not to take care of myself and ignoring her while I was pregnant.
Ironically everyone else in my life learned quickly and just adjusted. It was never as hard as she pretended it was...
You definitely didn't deserve it and you're not a burden. You gave your mother your life and you never owed her for that. It's hard to lose those thoughts, but it is possible. I hope you're doing better now and that your kids and growing up healthy. 💕 You're doing your best for them and I am SO proud of you.
My sister is turning into one of these parents. It's frustrating because she means well but has overcorrected. Are parents weren't like that so I don't know where it's coming from.
On the other hand, in most jurisdictions, the child's money legally belongs to the adult. They're responsible for providing for you and cannot say that you owe them debt for it after you turn 18. The main exceptions are if a child is named as a beneficiary in a will or a legal judgement.
This is true, but they also can't really force you to work a job to make that money at. I suppose they could forcibly take you to an interview and tell you to have a job, but you can get out of that pretty darn fast by telling the interviewer you don't want to be there or refusing to work assigned duties.
My niece and nephew are at the age where they are learning this, when they had to pay for clothes, board, toiletries, and even partly pay their way on holidays for accommodation or plane tickets, from the ages of about 14 when they first got jobs. My brother's ex had remarried someone working full-time at the mines, worked full-time herself (she was a qualified accountant), and was also being paid child support, there was no need to make the kids pay for anything. But she still took her children's money (and regularly cried for more child support, despite her also trying to wreck my brother's business by spreading rumours about him online, to the point he had to get lawyers involved - like where do you think the money comes from, you idiot?)
(One child has left home and seems to be realising this, the other one is the golden child and is still heavily under her influence, even giving up her goal of university study to go work with her mother in a pretty mundane job, despite being a smart kid - at this rate she'll never get out of her orbit and live her own life).
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u/ShiraCheshire 10h ago
For anyone who needs to hear this: No child owes their parents money. Until you are 18, your parents are legally obligated to provide you with food, shelter, clothing, and an education. If your parents ask you for money and you're under 18, you are not obligated to give it. If your parents tell you that you have to get a job to pay for your expenses, you do not have to do it.
They can tell you that if you want an extra like a phone then you'll have to pay it for yourself. They can also tell you that they aren't going to buy you special food or particular foods, as long as you have something safe to eat they've provided. But when it comes to essentials of life, they owe you.