Depending upon your age, that’s not too surprising. When I was about 25 I kind of felt the same way. I’m now 50+ My mom is little over 20 years older than I am. I’d say she understands me pretty well and I understand her.

The older you get the more wisdom you get and you start to understand the other side just a little more

I understand my father fairly well, we’ve had several long conversations with each other about important things with the goal of understanding each other better. I would even say, that besides for a core belief difference, he’s a good person too. My mother, though, is very hard to talk to, so I don’t understand her as well.

I never really understood my parents. I don’t think they understood me, either. Then mom died and I inherited her diaries. Like a fool, I read them. Now I do understand her, and I hate so much more than I ever did when she was alive. She was both a terrible person but also legit crazy. So that happened

Neither as much as I’d like. My mum died 5 years ago, and my dad is in his late 70s and likely suffering from dementia. So between that and my own issues, there’s not really much opportunity to develop our understanding of each other.

Kids are hard to keep up with. I know a lot about what my 12 year old is into, but I’m pretty much the last to hear what my 18 year old is up to.

How much info do you share with your parents?

I used to think I knew my parents pretty well, but the older I’ve gotten, I’ve realized you can’t really completely know anybody more than what they want you to know. If that makes sense? With my dad at least, he can have his moments of wow what an asshole (and I can too). But I also know that no matter what, even if he’s pissed off about something, he can take a breather, set the anger aside and try to do whatever he can to help out if I need him to be there for me. He’s always been like that and it really means a lot to me. Definitely more than all the things he could have and probably should have done differently at various points.

I know he is also kind of blinded by how he sees me as “his daughter,” and he doesn’t always seem to give my opinion the same level of respect he does my brother or even my husband. Like sometimes if he has a question about something, he’ll automatically default to my husband even if my husband doesn’t know anything about what he’s asking. Or like if we disagree about something political he just kind of tunes out what I’m saying or gets really defensive if I disagree with him. But then my brother can tell him the exact same thing and he just kind of takes it in as new information or a different opinion to consider. I know it would probably hurt his feelings (and just lead to another argument) if I pointed that out, so I usually just don’t. I just kind of joke about it with other people, and roll my eyes when it happens, but that also means that implicitly he doesn’t really know me as well as he might believe he does.

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I don’t really understand my parents and they don’t understand me. And I don’t really understand my kids and they don’t really understand me.

I feel like the only person who really understands me is my wife.