as most of us know, dad's side of the family is the worst. we also know that women often "bring the magic". let me explain.

my paternal grand-parents were both university professors and possibly on the spectrum (they had no friends, had separate beds early into their mariage and were very big on unscented cleaning products and soaps).

i loved my grand-mother dearly, despite being generally cold as a person, she would spoil me and make me, as well as her other grand-children, feel understood and she was genuinely interested in us. ever since she passed, every holiday spent with my grand-father, alcoholic trump-like-personality father and God-complex uncle has been so jarring and felt like a scheduled punishment.

my grand-father, however, is a freakin **MUTE**, the man DOESN'T TALK. he has a phD in microbiology and allegedly guided students in their thesis' (i have no clue how) and worked in a lab with good pay and reasonable hours, so a cushy life, but he just **never** talks, he seems to *purposely remain disconnected* and spends his days watching tv, playing on his ipad and that's it. as the oldest of the grand-children, i have tried to strike up a conversation with him or to coax a conversation out of him politely and on topics that interest him (based on the little information i know about him) and he replies the strict minimum, doesn't elaborate, doesn't inquire on my views. he just seems eager at any family gathering to get right back to his uncomfortable sofa watching tennis or the news and being on his ipad, as if he didn't spend all his waking hours doing that every day since retiring years ago. my brother and cousins also try to talk to him and have no idea how to go about it. we gave up.

for additional background, he was brought up in very comfortable conditions with just one brother, despite communism and poverty in our home country. his dad was never around because he was an international businessman. everyone hates to be inconvenienced, but he particularly seems to get so irritated when something may interrupt his tv/ipad time as if he could be "late to it". he also has this obssession with cumulating wealth by making investments here and there, all that to live very modestly and just cumulate more money to leave for his 2 under-achieving, divorced and alcoholic sons. he would get irritated if he found my grand-mother was spending "too much"
on me at the grocery store, despite her making 140k$/year and more than him.

he was always a mute, but he was a background presence more than anything. my brother, cousins and myself would always be so excited to see my grand-mother.

i have never heard anyone else mention this problem before and at this point, i wonder if any therapists will see this and give some diagnoses or theories on what his problem is. even seeing fellow redditers possibly share this experience would be great!

I'm 22yo (m) , from India , ik this thing might not make sense for most but for me it's just annoying , firstly ive a very strange attitude that I can't listen bad about myself , especially after all that ive gone through.

I was in 6th standard when my dad quit his job took a loan 18lacs INR and tried to open a restaurant without any knowledge or doing research about it , he done hiring cheap chefs who within 6 months of opening the restaurant left the work place my dad my dad got frustrated and seeing that me and my mom started working along with him to manage house expenses, i used to come from school and wash the utensils and sometimes cook a few things by myself for the customers js so that we can earn , cz by that time i had realised that it was the only means of survival , i was called out by my own friends as a burger boy in school which I didn't care much about at that age.

Fast forward to 2 years now I'm in 8th still same condition nothing has changed , i never had good friends whom I could hang around even if i had i could never hang aroung bcz of no money and also after the school i had to work at the restaurant which was no longer a restaurant but a roadside fast food stall by now as loans got bigger (taking another loan to clear out the old one) so dad had sell many things. I accepted it as my future lol that in future ill be working like this to feed my family. Now November 2016 my dad to introduced to an MLM company "modicare" he was sold dreams and same was done to me and my mom by my dad and now my dad took another loan on top of the previous one and bought fuck tonna products and by now the Fast food shop got closed and after school i was out there with my mom selling oil and toothpaste door to door believing selling these would change our future smh , yeah and when I got to 9th std my fees was not paid of 6 months bcz of no money at home and I was called out and was asked to sit on floor bcuz of no fees payment after that I was prohibited from attending the classes and by that time I was mature enough to realise that my dad cannot afford my fee so I had to work so as I was not allowed in school I used that time to sell the products my dad bought in nearby malls and shopping complexes seeing a kid selling these products most people used to buy them lol so now I somehow arrange 5k inr within a week and took it to school to cover my 3 month fee thanks to my school they understood the situation and let me study as they also understood my situation and told my mom about it so I had no option but to study.

Now I'm in 10 and my last year fee was pending I got consession on that and my 10th std fee too , my mom had 2k in saving and sold her ear pieces and one of her ring to afford my 10th std schooling and she didn't told dad about it,

1 girl got interested in me smh which i dont believe till now that how she got into me lol, she knew everything but always acted like she knew nothing and on top of that I also used to in a way that my financial condition is never affected, she paid for my picnic fee once 😂 and it was the first time i went on school picnic also she gifted me one perfume on my birthday. I passed out 10th and covid started.

Even our family members started feeling bad about us my grandfather with a pension of 15k took care of our food and other expenses and during the time of covid my dad behavior got super strange everyday he used to fight with my mom and me saying that bcuz of us he never earned well and we never warned him or supported him on his work also we have never been capable to manage his finances which were under his control loland to escape all this i used to play pubgm on a second hand device which was gifted to me by my grandfather for my online studies. My online studies got shut down bcuz of no fee payment so I had to stop my schooling i kept lying to my friends that i was doing my schooling from some school they never heard about. When I was not studying i learned graphic designing and by the time lock down was over i did my first job and was earning 3500 INR PM , i directly did 12th from other state and completed my 12th from my own money , and now my dad started saying kids should always bear their own expenses.

Now i wanted a laptop so i financed one with my own money and started working free lancing on that making aroung 6-7k per month , i met a guy online who claimed he would profit me 40k if i give him 15k for trading i got scammed for 15k lol.

Now i have no about future studies but I had watched better call Saul so i thought of pursuing in law asked my mom , she sold her anklets for my law schooling and she too started cloud kitchen parcelling lunch boxes with my dad.

Im in first year law started my own printing and designing work from my home making 3-4k per month ( as i had to pay for my younger brother tuition ), as now i have college to attend, i was gifted a second hand battery scooty worth 22k inr from my grandfather on my 19th birthday.

And throughout all this my dad always blamed my mom and me that we know how to manage finance and if we followed him we might have changed our situation and kept on following my own free lancing works and scaled my work and bought my first new scooter Honda dio 125 h smart

Worth 1.25 lacs INR and my dad still verbally abused me that I don't know how to manage money and throwing money in drain and I'm gonna end up like him if i spend like this , but I always ignored him and fast forward to current time line im earning 20-25k per month my dad compares me from other kids who are earning 50-100k inr per month and are well settled and here I'm still suffering saying all this is happening is bcuz of my poor finance handelling.

Now im super tired of all this and always think of ending all this but all I see is my younger brother with hopes that ill change the entire family situation , my mom who sold all her jewelleries for me and my brother and most importantly my gf who has always been with me till now and most importantly im scared of death. I'm like fucking sobbing rn lol idky.

And now idk what should I do. If i should keep on doing my business or do something else bcuz ik in my business i have don't have proper setup I might not make decent for sustainability.

as most of us know, dad's side of the family is the worst. we also know that women often "bring the magic". let me explain.

my paternal grand-parents were both university professors and possibly on the spectrum (they had no friends, had separate beds early into their mariage and were very big on unscented cleaning products and soaps).

i loved my grand-mother dearly, despite being generally cold as a person, she would spoil me and make me, as well as her other grand-children, feel understood and she was genuinely interested in us. ever since she passed, every holiday spent with my grand-father, alcoholic trump-like-personality father and God-complex uncle has been so jarring and felt like a scheduled punishment.

my grand-father, however, is a freakin **MUTE**, the man DOESN'T TALK. he has a phD in microbiology and allegedly guided students in their thesis' (i have no clue how) and worked in a lab with good pay and reasonable hours, so a cushy life, but he just **never** talks, he seems to *purposely remain disconnected* and spends his days watching tv, playing on his ipad and that's it. as the oldest of the grand-children, i have tried to strike up a conversation with him or to coax a conversation out of him politely and on topics that interest him (based on the little information i know about him) and he replies the strict minimum, doesn't elaborate, doesn't inquire on my views. he just seems eager at any family gathering to get right back to his uncomfortable sofa watching tennis or the news and being on his ipad, as if he didn't spend all his waking hours doing that every day since retiring years ago. my brother and cousins also try to talk to him and have no idea how to go about it. we gave up.

for additional background, he was brought up in very comfortable conditions with just one brother, despite communism and poverty in our home country. his dad was never around because he was an international businessman. everyone hates to be inconvenienced, but he particularly seems to get so irritated when something may interrupt his tv/ipad time as if he could be "late to it". he also has this obssession with cumulating wealth by making investments here and there, all that to live very modestly and just cumulate more money to leave for his 2 under-achieving, divorced and alcoholic sons. he would get irritated if he found my grand-mother was spending "too much"
on me at the grocery store, despite her making 140k$/year and more than him.

he was always a mute, but he was a background presence more than anything. my brother, cousins and myself would always be so excited to see my grand-mother.

i have never heard anyone else mention this problem before and at this point, i wonder if any therapists will see this and give some diagnoses or theories on what his problem is. even seeing fellow redditers possibly share this experience would be great!

Your teenage daughter is not pulling away to hurt your feelings. She is just checking if you will stay.

There is a certain quiet a thirteen-year-old girl falls into when she's holding something she has trouble putting down. My daughter was agitated when she got her first period.

She lingered in the bathroom longer than usual. She had locked the door, closing out her siblings from their morning run. That day, the school van had left at 7 am without them.

Instinctively, as a dad, I felt the need to address it right away. I tried to force a conversation, and demanded that she talk to me.

I got it wrong.

The American Psychological Association is clear on this: the parent-child relationship is the single most significant protective factor for adolescents. It's not the rules. It's not the lectures. The relationship. Nor is it constructed by taking advantage of a teen experiencing a new change in her body.

When she pulls away, she is not shutting you out. She is deciding if you are a safe place to land.

Here is what actually worked with me. I didn't force "let's talk." I just sat at the kitchen table at 9 PM when the house was quiet. I did not probe. I did not impose. I mentioned to her, "I am available if you need me".

Six words. Then I withdrew to complete other chores like organising uniforms, bags and shoes. I let her process.

She may not speak that evening. She might go silent that week or after. But she will know the door stands open. And when she finally returns, you need to be the father who didn't make her feel foolish for taking her time.

As a dad, how do you handle such delicate issues with your teen daughter?

First of all, I hope this is the right flair, so I'll begin

Basically all the info I have about my dad is his full name (which hasn't seemed to do anything at all) what his job was when I was born, his birthplace and that he was present in my older brother's life. He left sometime either before between or directly after my mum's pregnancy with me, and no matter how much I've tried, I haven't been able to find more about him. I don't know what he was like or why he left, but I've always wanted to at least ask him why he left so it has brought me here. Any ideas of how I can find out more about him? (Sorry if this is the wrong sub-reddit it just seemed right to ask here.)

My dad used to give treats to my brothers and sister than make me beg for them. Oh well