I constantly refer to my parents and in-laws as children. Why? Because they behave exactly like my 11 year old. They have no critical reasoning skills, no emotional intelligence, are easily offended, and can not be reliability left on their own without screwing something up.

At some point around retirement age, humans seem to cognitively revert back to children and those of us in middle adulthood are left to parent our actual children and our childish parents.

And every teenager on the planet. Granted teenagers are huge narcissists, but they are supposed to be.

Honestly, that is just maturity. I read the daughter to be in their 20s and I hope they are because then I can excuse it. If they are in their 40s, we’ll then that is just sad. I certainly looked down on my poor family when I was younger, now that I am older I treat it more as a lesson of how far I have come with hard work and gratefulness for being able to escape it.

As someone who is moderately successful and lives in a major Metropolitan area but had a poor, country upbringing; I get it.

I have tried taking my parents to nice upscale restaurants, both so that they could experience something they otherwise would never have been able to and also as a showcase to them of my success. It was very clear that they did not fit into those environments and I have since stopped trying to bring them up and just meet them where they are, but I do get it.