Kids Raised By Parents Who Bickered A Lot Usually Carry 8 Habits Into Adulthood
Dejan Dundjerski | ShutterstockKids need to feel safe at home, both physically and emotionally. If their parents are constantly reacting intensely and fighting with each other, it can take away from that need.
While watching parents resolve conflicts can teach them an incredibly important lesson, being raised by parents who bickered a lot isn't always great. These kids end up bringing these habits into adulthood, still dealing with fear and anxiety towards confrontation.
Habits kids carry into adulthood when they're raised by parents who bickered a lot
1. They avoid most concerns
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Many people who fear confrontation end up suppressing their own feelings. They avoid conversations where they'd otherwise express concerns. They're afraid of how someone might respond, and because of the anxiety they felt at home as kids, they'd prefer to avoid it entirely.
In many ways, they also struggled to regulate their emotions because their parents' feelings were the main priority. So, they avoid the discomfort of expressing complicated emotions altogether.
2. They react strongly
Kids raised by reactive parents tend to have a similar kind of reactivity later in life. They may act defensive when someone calls their behavior out or have generally intense feelings from suppressing their own.
Either all those concerns bubble up at inopportune times, or they're trying to protect themselves by avoiding hard conversations entirely. When you have parents spending more time trying to prove a point than modeling healthy communication to their kids, this is the outcome.
3. They depend on external comfort
When you don't know how to regulate or control what's going on internally, it feels comforting to control everything around you. For some people, that means relying on unhealthy vices or coping mechanisms like avoidance. For others, it's growing dependent on people in an anxiously attached relationship or using validation as comfort.
They've grown up in a house where their well-being was always shaped by external sources, typically their parents' interactions with each other, so they're wired to look outward for safety.
4. They're constantly reading people
Anxiety and hypervigilance often develop from childhood trauma because kids are thrust into fight-or-flight situations during their most formative years. Their parents constantly arguing is another example, where kids learn to fear yelling. They become triggers.
Now, they read people as a defense mechanism. They try to read their body language or sense what they're thinking, so they can protect themselves with apologies or avoidance.
5. They over-apologize
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When someone is over-apologizing to others, it undermines their well-being and personal authority. They make themselves smaller to protect other people's comfort, even when they're the ones who deserve space or an apology.
Usually, it stems from people-pleasing behaviors that many kids with chaotic, reactive parents develop. They want to protect the peace, so they do anything it takes to avoid setting off a parent, shrinking themselves or finding something to apologize for.
6. They replay and ruminate over concerns
Instead of bringing their concerns to a partner or friend when they come up, someone with parents who bickered all the time tend to hold them inside. Growing up, they had no choice when their parents' arguments took up a lot of space.
They're so used to managing their own feelings and trying to explain away concerns that it's followed them into adulthood. While it might feel like a relief to keep these emotions inside, they're just creating more anxiety and stress that direct communication could help solve.
7. They don't always trust people right away
Because there was always a feeling of anxiety or uncertainty when arguing parents were around, they now struggle to trust as adults. The relationship that was supposed to model unconditional love and safety actually modeled arguments and resentment.
They never received the kind of emotional safety that kids with parents who openly communicated in healthy ways had, so they're still compensating in their own relationships.
8. They accept apologies they shouldn't
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When arguments feel more intense than it does for the average person, there's a layer of avoidance that's hard to unwind. They don't want to have an argument or yell with someone for longer than they have to, which is why they tend to accept unrealistic apologies and poor effort from others.
They'd prefer to dismiss their own concerns and feelings than drag on a triggering conversation seeking out a true solution or apology.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a senior editorial strategist with a bachelor's degree in social relations & policy and gender studies who focuses on psychology, relationships, self-help, and human interest stories.
