Living at home with your parents when you’re an adult can come with all sorts of challenges, especially when your parents have different ideas about appropriate boundaries.
But for one woman on Reddit, her parents lack of respect for her boundaries became downright dramatic, when her need to sleep until mid-afternoon due to working nights caused her parents to passive-aggressively wake her up earlier in the day.
She wasn’t sure about how she’d handled the matter, so she went to the AITA (Am I The A**hole) subReddit for perspective.
The Original Poster (OP), who goes by the username Better-Arachnid-7528 on the site, asked:
“AITA for yelling at my parents for waking me up?”
She explained:
“I’m 24f[emale], living with my parents and I work night shifts. I get home around 7:30am and will sleep until around 3.”
“My parents would come into my bedroom and wake me up at 11am so I could still have time to ‘enjoy my day’. I started using the lock on my door and it stopped.”
“Then they began playing loud music to wake me up but I started using ear buds to block out the noise. They’d call me to wake me up so I put my phone on do not disturb.”
“They want me to be awake so I can spend time with family. I get it, but I’m available to spend time with them in the afternoon. I don’t see why it has to be midday?”
“This morning they picked the lock and sent my brother in to wake me up, saying that he misses me. I took him back downstairs and handed him to dad saying that I still need more sleep.”
“Dad started raising his voice about how I’m barely even a part of the family anymore.”
“I began yelling that I need my sleep so I can function during my shifts and that it’s not like I’m unemployed and staying up all night just so I can sleep all day.”
“He couldn’t believe that I yelled back but I didn’t stick around and went back to sleep (this time moving my dresser in front of the door)”
“Neither of my parents are talking to me at the moment.”
OP then came back to the post to add a bit more detail about the situation.
“Edit: Moving out is not an option.”
People on Reddit were then asked to judge who was in the wrong in this situation based on the following categories:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
- NAH – No A**holes Here
Unsurprisingly, most people agreed that OP’s family was way out of line and she did nothing wrong.
“NTA. You should go into their rooms in the middle of the night and wake them up because you “want to spend time with family” and see how much they like that sh*t.” –bluelion70
“I did that to my husband when I was a new nurse and only worked nights. He’d call to talk during his lunch break but it was always way too early for me.”
“So, I decided to show him, not tell him how tired that made me and called him during MY break. After the third night in a row of getting woken up at 0200 he was all ‘alright I get it already!'”
“Sometimes people don’t get what it’s like to work nights or how hard it is.” –sauronscataract
“I normally wouldn’t agree with an aggressive suggestion like this. OP has tried so many things to get a decent day’s sleep, and they keep pushing. It’s entirely justified here.”
“It still may not be a good idea. OP knows more about her living situation, and whether she would risk being kicked out or struck for teaching them a lesson. But she wouldn’t be an a**hole to do it.”
“I wonder if part of this is that they want OP taking care of her brother during the day. Given the description of sending him in to wake her and telling her that he misses her (rather than him speaking for himself), it sounds like the brother might be quite young.” –My_Dramatic_Persona
“This. OP, start calling them a ton every day at 2-3am, whenever you have a break. Tell them that you’re “barely a family” and “want to start spending time with them” by chatting every day.” –crystallz2000
“I would be like that girl Tanisha from Bad Girls Club. Banging pots and pans chanting ‘If I can’t get no sleep ,then you can’t get no sleep’ or something like that. I did it before and it worked,childish but got the point across.” –SgrRed70
“When I worked nights and people didn’t respect the FACT that I NEEDED to sleep during the day…I started calling them between midnight and 2 am just to see how they liked being disturbed during their sleep hours.” –1htroIamvansxlfml1
“A friend and I did something like that to his roommates after we got home from a bar at 2 a.m. and started blasting the stereo and yelling for them to come join us for another beer when they had to go to work later in the morning.”
“At about 7 a.m, as I was passed out on the couch I suddenly hear Devo blasting out of the stereo speakers by one of the guys we had woken a few hours earlier. I very much deserved it too.” –DFG57
“lmao i thought about doing this when my parents pulled this sh*t, despite them being the ones who encouraged me to apply for this job. also did it to my roommate a few times when they lived with me.”
“it’s pretty effective. idk what your parents are like outside of this, but if it’s safe for you to do so, a taste of their own medicine might be what they need. and good luck with the graveyard shift- i like mine personally, but damn if it doesn’t come with struggles” –calipercat
“My mom used to call me during the early afternoon when I worked the night shift. I kept trying to explain that I wasn’t lazy, I was tired and needed sleep. I broke her of the habit after I called her home phone at 3am ‘Just to chat.'”
“OP is NTA, just because you are home, doesn’t mean you need to be awake. Night shift is rough.” –spiffynid
“My husband did something similar with a co-worker who wouldn’t stop calling him to ask questions in the morning. He worked night shift from 3:30 PM – 2:00 AM.”
“His co-worker was day shift, doing a standard 9-5 type shift. She’d call him at 9:00 AM with questions that she could’ve easily just sent in an email, that didn’t require immediate response.”
“One day, at around 1:00 AM, he had a question. So he figured turnabout was fair play, and he called her to ask instead of sending an email like he normally would have. She was not happy, but she stopped calling him at 9:00 AM after that.” –NightB4XmasEvel
“I did something similar. I used to work nights, and mom (who worked nights for many years) would call me and ask me to run some errands for her.”
“I kept telling her I needed sleep, but it was always something important and it would only ‘take a few minutes.’ Yeah. If you don’t include the 90 minute drive time (Los Angeles).”
“So one time I was at work and called her at 3am. Told her I needed her to pick something up from the store and bring it to me to work. It would only ‘take a few minutes.'”
“She was so pissed. Starting yelling at me. DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS??? Oh. You’ve only been asleep for a few hours, right? You need more sleep? KINDA LIKE WHEN YOU CALL ME AFYER IVE ONLY BEEN ASLEEP FOR 3 HOURS.”
“She never did that to me again.” –fishwithsticks
“This worked for me. My mom would call saying, ‘I know you’re home and besides you can just go back to sleep. Ha ha!'”
“My husband started coming home at noon to make himself lunch. Just a cold cut sandwich. He made so much noise and angered me so much that it was impossible to get more sleep.”
“I asked him to make a sandwich before work and leave me to sleep. He refused. He was an a**hole the entire time we were married.”
“I got sick of these two deliberately interrupting my sleep on a daily basis. For a week I went home at my 2:30AM lunch and jumped on the bed until husband was wide awake and fully annoyed.”
“Also called my mom every night and flung her words right back at her. It worked with my mom. Husband stopped coming home for lunch but started scheduling service people and insisting I do favors for his family because in his mind I was available.” –WatercressTart
“I am a nurse. When I was working the night shift, people would call me because, ‘I knew you was home’. In return, I would call them at 2am, because, ‘I knew they were home’. The calls stopped.” –JadedWolverine2592
“Your parents are literally insane. Whenever moving becomes an option please use it and get far away.”
“I’m a mom of a 21 yr old who works a nightshift as a security guard. I would never do this to him.”
“I often tell him to get some rest and not be up all day when he gets off. If they aren’t speaking to you then good.”
“Maybe they’ll leave you tf alone now. Take it as a blessing.” — Brilliant_Rain5181
“I don’t get what is so hard to understand about night shift. My mom used to call me in the middle of the day when I worked nights.”
“When i got mad she stopped calling all together stating that she didn’t know when I would be up. Actually, I had threatened to call her on my dinner break at 2AM.”
“I literally told her to pretend I worked a 9 to 5 as she would never call me while I was working (so why call when I am sleeping!). Why don’t they get this?”
“If you worked day shift you wouldn’t be home at all and couldn’t spend time with them.”
“NTA. A body needs sleep. Maybe you should start waking them in the middle of the night to chat… worked for me!” – Maleficent_Cup_1204
“NTA – When I was in college I worked until 1:30 am, but sometimes it would be 2-3 before I’d get out of work, get home, go to bed and have to get up the next day for class and do it all over again.”
“My sister had a job that started at 4:30 am at the Golden Arches fast food joint. She’d wait until 4:30 to leave the house, so they would call my house and wake me up to see where she was at.”
“After 3-4 times of this I chewed out the manager and asked if they called kids who lived with their parents in the middle of the night to find out why they weren’t at work.
“‘Uh, no’. Ok, so don’t call me and wake my a** up. Deal with her when she gets to work and stop calling!”
“They did. A week later she was fired for being late and blamed me.” – Jennabear82
“NTA. Your parents are selfish and inconsiderate bullies.
“You may be living with them, but you’re still an adult who has responsibilities and a right to a healthy amount of sleep.”
“I’m glad you defended yourself- take their silence as a win and go with it. I know you said moving out is not an option, but do whatever you have to save up funds/put yourself in position to move out.” – SilentCounter6750
“WTAF? They expect you to get maximum 3.5 hours sleep a day so you can be with them instead?”
“That is pretty much literal torture. As someone who’s suffered extreme insomnia, not getting enough sleep is devastating to your health and mental wellbeing.”
“I HATE people who treat being awake in the morning like it’s some kind of f’king virtue. I’ve been a night owl all my life, I struggle to wake early for my weekday 9-5, and don’t get enough sleep during the week because I literally cannot fall asleep early enough to get a good enough sleep.”
“So at the weekends I sleep til noon. But telling people that makes them react like I’m some sort of morally corrupt sloth.”
“I get as much done on the weekends as most people, just later in the day, but because I’m not springing out of bed at 6am like some goddamn milkmaid, I’m lazy.” – Katie00pupz
Hopefully OP can get her parents to be more respectful of her sleeping hours.