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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To ask what your teenage life was like?

127 replies

Laraloodoo · 12/12/2019 13:44

Following a thread where I was told my teenage behaviour was abnormal by many’s standards I’m interested in all the different experiences we had growing up as teenagers.

OP posts:
BillHadersNewWife · 12/12/2019 13:45

Mine was pretty bad until age 16...then it was like one long party until I was 20! Why did they think your teen's behaviour was abnormal OP?

partyhatsoff · 12/12/2019 13:47

Dull by normal standards as I was a young carer and very academic, Made of for in ion my 20s when I got the chance though.

Thestrangestthing · 12/12/2019 13:47

The first couple of years locked in my room isolated because of depression due to bullying 12-14, developed an eating disorder, starting hanging around with older people drinking, smoking, didn't do many drugs though. Spent about 3 years being a bit wild through school and a couple of college courses (dropped out of both) until I became pregnant and was left as a single mother at 18.

gingergittable · 12/12/2019 13:48

Mine was crazy. Lots of drugs and festivals, gigs, raves. Bloody great time.

gingergittable · 12/12/2019 13:49

It was also quite miserable at times as I was being severely emotionally abused by my step mother.

BillHadersNewWife · 12/12/2019 13:49

Oh YOUR teenage behaviour...I thought it said your son's! Well mine was like yours OP. Raves, E's and worse...parties on travellers camps...you know...the hippie, crusty type who did outdoor raves...I often travelled with some of them.

Squats in London...dirty clubs in Manchester...loads of fun in Camden too. I lived the 90s as they were meant to be lived.

On here though you'll find a tonne of people who left school, went to University at 18...where they played a lot of netball and studied hard.

Then got married aged 25 having worked in some dull job....

DiaryofWimpyMumm · 12/12/2019 13:50

I started working at 15, started drinking at 17 was sick of pubs and clubs by the time I was 19/20. Started raving at 18 was on the club scene until I married at 21 then it all went downhill

SquareAsABlock · 12/12/2019 13:50

I was very popular.

thecatneuterer · 12/12/2019 13:50

I was a bit of a swot and very 'goody goody'. I seemed to disappoint my mum who was always trying to persuade me to go to parties and generally have more fun. I did take her advice a bit, but really needed a push. She also complained that my various boyfriends were terribly straightlaced and could pass for trainee accountants, and why did I never bring home anyone with green hair and bondage trousers for example. However I saved my phase of totally unsuitable men until I was well into my 30s.

EyeDrops · 12/12/2019 13:50

Dull but nice! Good relationship with family and friends, quiet, didn't do big parties or drinking or anything. Started dating my now husband at 14 (in our 30s now!). I had a period of suffering with anxiety pretty badly, but counselling support helped to a manageable point.

Dull by many peoples standards but looking back I was happy and wouldn't change it.

Original poster
Laraloodoo · 12/12/2019 13:51

In my later teen years I was just a (what I thought typical) middle class girl who went about doing stupid things like shoplifting and raving in fields on different drugs without thinking of the implications my actions had on others. I’d always thought this was pretty standard but others didn’t on a different thread

OP posts:
thecatneuterer · 12/12/2019 13:51

Oh, and I also used to tell my mum off for not dusting her room ...

Theredjellybean · 12/12/2019 13:51

Mine was pretty boring really.. No one I knew went to raves or lived in sqats
Very dull upper middle class... I remember feeling like I was waiting for life to begin

antisupermum · 12/12/2019 13:51

I was a horrible teenager in that I fought with my mum every day from about 12 to 17 (when I moved into my own place). We did not get on at all because I could not stand being preached to. I got my first tattoo at 14 years old and got a black eye for it. (was still worth it haha)

I had great friendships, had loads of fun and enjoyed normal (where I'm from, anyway) teenage life of drinking in fields, smoking weed in shady spots and snogging boys at every opportunity!

I done very well in school and got into my first choice very good university. However, I wasted the opportunity and left Uni after a year to get some crap part time job and marry an abusive waste of space (now ExH hurrah!)

It was my 20s that was the really tough time in my life and the portion of life I would change if I could. My teenage years just felt fun and relatively carefree.

PBo83 · 12/12/2019 13:56

Badly bullied during early to mid teenage years which led to me being a bit of a loner. Very few friends to 'get upto mischief' with. Insular, shy and riddled with self-loathing.

Late teenage years (well...18-19), running away from my previous life as a bullied underachiever at a pompous boys grammar school. Getting a door licence and discovering 'real' mates, self-confidence, parties, cocaine and women (a relatively foreign species up until this point).

I guess we all have the potential to go through the 'wild' stage, I just wasn't able to in my younger teenage years.

SerenDippitty · 12/12/2019 14:02

Dull. No self confidence, cripplingly shy, gawky. Didn’t go to a local school so very few opportunities to socialise outside of school. Didn’t go to pubs u til I was actually old enough. Lost my virginity at 20. Didn’t have a boyfriend until 21.

MarshaBradyo · 12/12/2019 14:05

Boarding school hit better mid late teens
Social life vastly more fun with day school friends after 16
Drank together, tried cigarettes and maybe a spliff didn’t like it that much
No boyfriend hung around with girl friends
Studied hard did well and enjoyed maths, English and physics best

macaronicheese345 · 12/12/2019 14:09

Terrible.

When I read about co-ercive control within marriages it makes me think of my teenage years. Religious fanatic mother, enabled by father who had given up, using every tactic under the sun “to save your soul from eternal damnation”. She was backed by the Holy Trinity, the Virgin Mary and the whole panoply of saints. One of her best lines was “ God is watching you even when I cannot see you so don’t think you are ever going to get away with anything”. Terrifying.

WwfLeopard · 12/12/2019 14:11

God awful, I have palpitations thinking my teenage son could get up to the same. Shop lifting, tossing school off every opportunity, sleeping in the woods, drinking, smoking, drugs, boys... stealing cars & joy riding

Festivecheeseandcrackers · 12/12/2019 14:12

I was too nervous to do anything truly ‘naughty’ or that would make my parents unhappy. I mostly went shopping with friends, the cinema, e.t.c.., until I was 16. I went to the occasional party where I would drink. I ‘smoked’ sort very occasionally for a very short while.

16-18 I studied for a levels and went to parties on weekends, gigs or hung out with friends.

18 I went to university. I met my husband and some good friends. I was in a Hall’s of residence with 60 people who pretty much all smoked cannabis at the very least. I smoked it a little bit didn’t like it, took up smoking, spent a lot of money on alcohol/going out, I would say the best part of three student overdrafts, some credit cards and my student loan). I paid it all back mind!

My university friends and husband find it hilarious that both me and one other friend are very insistent that we are wrong when we say no one did drugs at our schools. They insist we must have just been oblivious to it but I honestly believe that they just didn’t.

Honeybee85 · 12/12/2019 14:12

It wasn’t pleasant to put it lightly.
I was badly bullied in school and had serious plans to commit suicide. I remember even being in school and not writing down what homework I’d have to do for 2 days later as I was sure I wasn’t going to be alive anymore at that time.
I had no support at home since I come from a dysfunctional, toxic family. I think it’s why I got bullied. I was actively discouraged at home to have my own opinion, I was told to stick up to others outside my family but had no idea how to do that, other then completely beat the crap out of anyone that laid a hand on me (fysically abusive father). I was very insecure and had acne that my mother didn’t help me solve. I was an easy target.

Life got better after I left that shit school and went to another one, at least when I was outside my home.

Looking back, it was hard and it has scarred me for life but I’m very happy I didn’t commit suicide.
I hoped that the best was yet to come in the future and it did.

formerbabe · 12/12/2019 14:12

Horrible

My mother was dead and I had zero support or guidance from my dad. If I had a problem, I had no one to ask for help. I had no one to ask for advice. I wasn't allowed to be upset.

We had plenty of money though and I didn't go without anything.

Sunflowersok · 12/12/2019 14:14

Horrible. My mum fell ill mentally, had to shoplift to feed myself at 11, started drinking and hanging around on the streets getting up to all sorts at 12, left home at 13, moved in with dad who drinks, started self harming around that age, got addicted to painkillers, made stupid decisions regarding boys and sex, fell in love and got obsessed with a boy for my own self esteem who never loved me back. I HATED myself. Got in to an emotionally abusive relationship at 17, pregnant at 20. didn’t want to be here.

If Only I had the right support back then, I wouldn’t have spent ten years wondering what the hell was wrong with me. Turns out I have bipolar.

I now have a wonderful family, partner, support, a better relationship with my mum. I love my life and I love who I have become as a person today and it will take every ounce of me to make sure my girl doesn’t feel the ounce of loneliness and misunderstanding that I felt back then.

decisionsindecisions · 12/12/2019 14:18

Horrible. Father died when I was 13 years old. My mother is not a nice lady and was cold, uninterested and emotionally abusive. I left home at 15 to move in with my boyfriend, who turned out to be physically and psychologically abusive. I left him when I was 18 and he then proceeded to stalk me (including climbing on my mother's roof with a gun, smashing windows, smearing the outside of the house with dog shit every weekend, sitting in a tree in the garden, following me to work and back every day). I was miserable for most of my childhood/teenage years and I have never really got over it.

SabineUndine · 12/12/2019 14:20

Miserable. Little or no money, pressure from parents to do well at school, controlling father, few friends. I remember the last six months living with my parents, I couldn't wait to leave and go to uni. If I hadn't been going to uni, I would have moved out as soon as I had a job.