According to data provided by Census, 19 percent of men and 12 percent of women aged 25 to 34 currently live with their parents, and it’s definitely a historic high. No, it’s not – it’s damn high, by today’s standards. Yesterday’s and the-day-before-yesterday’s children grow up and are not at all eager to change their usual way of life, to leave the house in which they have been so comfortable living all these years and decades.

But how comfortable it is for parents is another question. Because the principle “my house – my rules” works a little differently when your children are not ten, but, let’s say, thirty years old. And then you have to resort to various tricks – as, for example, in this entertaining story told by the user u/Unusual-Peace6878 in the AITA Reddit community a few days ago.

The author of the post says that she shares the roof with her two adult children

Image credits: Jakob Rosen (not the actual image)

The parent has to buy special medicated shampoo which is pretty expensive, so she gets upset when the children take and spill it

Image credits: u/Unusual-Peace6878

The author several times asked the children not to touch it and they vowed they wouldn’t… but time passed and everything just repeated itself

Image credits: Anna Shvets (not the actual image)

Image credits: u/Unusual-Peace6878

Finally the mom lost her temper and decided to take some petty revenge on them

Image credits: Jon Tyson (not the actual image)

Image credits: u/Unusual-Peace6878

The author labeled literally all the bottles in the house with arrowed stickers saying “this side up”

So, the Original Poster (OP) lives under the same roof with her adult children, one already graduated from college and the second being a junior. As the author of the post says, she has to buy a special medicated shampoo because of a scalp condition. Not the cheapest, we must say – eighty dollars a bottle. So it is quite possible to understand and share the parent’s indignation when she several times has faced the fact that her children used her shampoo.

If you suddenly thought that the OP was just a greedy jerk, you were completely mistaken. In fact, there is no problem with one of the children mistakenly grabbing the parent’s shampoo once or twice. The problem is quite different – when the children carelessly put the bottle upside down, because it was designed in such a way that the shampoo will leak out if stored this way.

The author of the post honestly admits that she has tried to convince and exhort her children more than once or twice. They agreed, saying that they would no longer do this – and a day or two later, history repeated again, again… and of course again. The parent had to buy another bottle, then another… did we mention that each bottle cost 80 bucks? Now you probably better understand the whole gamut of feelings that went through the OP every time she entered the bathroom and saw a puddle of spilled expensive shampoo under an upside-down bottle…

So one day the OP felt completely fed up. She went to a nearby store, bought several hundred stickers with the words “this side up” and pointing arrows as well – and, probably maliciously giggling, labeled absolutely all the bottles in the house! No, not only that ill-fated shampoo, but also relish, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, etc. In the end, if you make fun of it, then it’s to the fullest!

Now imagine the children’s emotions when they brought their friends over and saw absolutely everything in the house heavily labeled! This time the children went to their mom, claiming that she made them a laughing stock in front of their friends, and that they only had a problem with the shampoo. The original poster responded that she was willing to remove the rest of the stickers – but only if they agreed to pay for her shampoo. “Thus far they have declined…” the author ends the narrative.

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Image credits: Karolina Grabowska (not the actual image)

“We talk in psychology about emerging adulthood as a new stage in life,” The Hill quotes Carol Sigelman, a developmental psychologist at the George Washington University. “It’s this sort of in-between land.” Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated this situation, because people did not leave their homes for a long time, and living together under one roof became an additional factor.

Moreover, in the post-COVID era, for the first time since the Great Depression, a majority of young adults in the US lived with their parents, according to Pew Research Center. Hence, conflicts are as inevitable as Thanos, and their solution is a significant problem, which should be solved not so much by realtors as by psychoanalysts.

“In this situation, of course, one can easily understand the parent, because no one reimburses her for the cost of a spilled and very expensive shampoo,” says Irina Matveeva, a psychologist and certified NLP specialist, with whom Bored Panda got in touch to comment on this story. “But probably what irritates the author the most is the regular ignorance of her words and requests, especially in her own home.”

“This is where the specificity of different generations comes into play – if today’s parents of adult children were the same ‘kids with keys around their necks’ who cooked meals and did their lessons on their own while parents worked hard, then they unconsciously expect something similar from their own children. But a lot of time has passed, the ‘rules of the game’ have changed so much – and this is also difficult to accept. In any case, if the OP overreacted, it is just a little, to me. Anyway, she managed to attract the children’s attention to this problem. Let’s just see, for how much longer…” Irina says.

However, many commenters admit that they also faced similar problems with their own adult children. Assessing the author’s petty revenge, people say that yes, it was petty, but, firstly, economical and, secondly, pretty reasonable. “Your kids can either learn to leave your stuff alone, put it back the way it was, pay for your medication, or deal with the labels,” commenters pointed out quite reasonably. In any case, the story seemed amusing to most of the people. “It’s a genius solution to a problem; thank you for making me smile,” one of the folks in the comments believes. Do you agree with this assessment?

People in the comments didn’t think the author overreacted, and just enjoyed the witty solution she found

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