How did you rebel as a teenager?

Nope, I was Miss Goody-Goody. As a result, college was horrible for me. Did all sorts of things that I shouldn’t at the first chance that I could.

I lived with my sister in high school. It is hard to rebel when your parental figure puked on a cop the night before. I was pretty much allowed to do whatever I wanted. Usually that was math.

How did I not? From a very young age if I saw people doing something bad I had to try it. I had sex at a young age, started drinking and smoking pot and doing mushrooms at 12, got arrested 20 something times in high school(twice in New Orleans), got into fistfights constantly, dressed like a punk rocker until everyone else did and then I gave up on that, tried lots of drugs, drank all the time, all while my mom was really sick and on chemo. I am surprised that I am still alive and my parents still talk to me. It has made it to where I think that all teenagers, like my nephew, are up to no good and I can’t trust them. I did make honor roll the whole time though.

I listened to Hank Williams and Aretha Franklin.

One time I went swimming 5 minutes after eating.

I ditched a lot of school, snuck out on most weekends and went to the midnight movies with friends, disregarded any curfew time my parents set for me, forgot (on purpose) to do homework.

My mother didn’t care when I got a tattoo, in fact, she drove me to the tattoo parlor. She likes it when I dye my hair funky colors and even dyed it blue for me for my high school graduation. She likes my goth wear from hot topic and has supported every career choice I decided I was going to do before I even went to college, from doctor to circus girl to archaeologist. You would think nothing could bother this woman. Nope. My biggest act of rebellion was when I was 11 or 12 years old and I decided to stop eating red meat. Now I no longer eat poultry and fish as well and she still gives me hell about it.

I grew my hair long, broke windows, dropped acid at school and did other things. One time when it snowed me and my buddies made snowballs with rocks in them and hide behind a hedge. When a cop drove by we pelted his car with the snowballs then hauled ass out of there. I snuck out of the window at night all the time. This made my dad so angry he eventually screwed my bedroom windows shut.

Didn’t. Older brother was is such an ass,
I thought I’d cut them a break when it came to me.

Years later and he’s still putting them through the ringer.

I had sex. No smoking, no drinking, no sneaking out, no talking back, no stealing – the only thing left was sex.

I used to do things at my mom’s back when she found out she almost dies

I didn’t.

I was a bit of an over-achiever. University has definitely changed things.

@Katawa – Your mom sounds awesome.

@shadling – yeah, my mom is awesome. She even got a tattoo from the same artist who did my koi. :)

My mother could not have cared less what I did. The first pot I ever smoked, I smoked with her at age 8. She bought alcohol for my friends and I. I started smoking (with her knowledge) at 13. Had sex far too early, and far too often. Skipped so much school that she’d wake me up in the morning and ask if I was going. At the time, I thought she was cool. I later figured out that she wasn’t, she just didn’t give a shit (she has Borderline Personality Disorder, and is unable to care about anything but herself). It has had a huge impact on how I’ve approached raising my 3 daughters…perhaps too much. I’d rather err on this side of things, though.

i guess i won’t be able to tell untill i’m a little older
i’m 17

I did drugs, ran way from home and did everything I wasn’t supposed to do. Despite all that, parents stuck by me and i turned out to be a pretty decent person. I was never an addict or anything, but I remember my share of experimentation. And I hitchiked everywhere. My mom used to refer to my 16th year as my “black” year… My friends were more important than my family.
It wasn’t until my 20’s that I had a mohawk with shaved bats in the side of my hair…lol

I avoided my parent’s as much as possible. They worked swing shift so they went to work before we got home from school and came home about midnight. On weekends I either had babysitting jobs or visited friends. I remember weeks going by when I never said more than yes or no to them. Right after my 18th birthday I got a job and my own apartment. I just told them I was moving and left. When they went to my best friend’s house 4 months later at Christmas, her mother gave them my address. My mother and I were chillily polite and eventually had no relationship. My Dad had to ask me for help a couple of years later and we became very close again.

I used to sneak out of my parents house at night to go and party with my friends or sneak into my boyfriend’s bedroom window! That was fun!

I always looked younger than I was (because I was small and cute) and was treated younger than I was because all of my cousins were much older than I. My teenage rebellion was borne from my hatred of being treated like a child. I knew I was older and smarter than everyone was giving me credit for, so I felt the need to prove it.

I dressed really ridiculously when I was in high school (like, way-over-the-top ridiculous), and my style of dress had a very provocative element. I choose actions that I (perhaps subconsciously) associated with adulthood. Since 20 year olds are more likely to dress slutty than 8 year olds, I guess that seemed like a step in the right direction for me. I also was very sexually active and involved with drugs and probably found these initially appealing because, again, adults are more likely to have sex and do drugs than children.

In any event, I’m glad that I don’t dress and act insanely anymore. I guess once I started being perceived as someone who was an adult, I didn’t feel the need to prove it otherwise.

So far, being 16 years old, I haven’t rebelled much. I go to parties and drink occasionally without my parents knowing, but they always know pretty much where I am and who I’m with and what time I’m coming home. A few times that hasn’t happened and things got stuffed up, but they don’t take long to trust me again because they know that I know what I did was wrong.

Quite often my parents leave me at home at night to go to the local casino to gamble away their most recent pay, and I get stuck at home by myself because my sister has moved out. Who, by the way, was far more rebellious than me, and I was an extreme goody-two shoes until she moved out. Anyway, when I get sick of being at home, my boyfriend lives about 20 minutes walk away so we both sneak out and meet each other halfway to just hang for a little while. Though I guess it’s not really sneaking if they’re not home, but sometimes I have to sneak back in or when they are home I stealth ninja out my window ;)

So really, I’m not very rebellious. It’s kind of hard to be here, everyone knows everyone and a lot of the time your parents somehow find out from the grapevine.

I wore black leather, listened to heavy metal, smoked and did some mild experimentation with Mary Jane.

I’m eighteen, and I didn’t do anything even remotely rebellious until like seven months ago. Since then I’ve done some sneaking around, done some stuff I shouldn’t while visiting my brother at college, and drinking. Other than that, I’m pretty good. Better than most, I’d say. To be honest, I didn’t even think that I would have this amount of rebellion. I’m the youngest and my older brother and sister have pulled so much shit over on my parents that I kind of wanted to give them a break. that, and the fact that I’m so scared of the consequences of drugs, sex, etc that I just avoid them all together. (Much to the dismay of past boys…) :)

I think the fact that my parents are so strict about the no drinking, drugs, sex thing has really affected me. They’ve made me scared to do it, but I think that is a good thing. I know that they are just trying to keep me from making mistakes. I’m so scared of messing up my life that I stick to the safe side, just in case. I’m sure it makes me a bit more boring than others…but oh well.

I hope that my little bit of rebellion will keep me from completely losing it in college in a few months!

I was a comfortable suburban kid of hippie parents so I had nothing to rebel about that wouldn’t be laughed down. My reaction was to become a punk, spend as much time cutting school to work instead and then move out on my own which I did.

Hey kids, you want to break your parents’ hearts, give them endless nights of worry and self examination? Move the hell out of the house and support yourself without any of their help. It’ll make them crazy.

I snuck out of the house late at night to see my boyfriend, I pierced my nose myself (while on the phone with that same boyfriend lol), I wore lots of eye makeup, drank, smoked pot, had sex, listened to music my parents hated…. you know, the lame high school crap. I didn’t do all those things all the time, mind you, and I was actually a really good student in high school. :)

am 16 so i do it now. I fight a lot at school, started smoking and try to do extreme sports
I have many arguments with my father and ask for more money.an @hungryhungryhortence that you said aint right. Once I had a fight with 5 guys. I totally broke their faces.. the next day they were 20 my father saved my ass

I’ll tell you as soon as I get out of prison…

I think I turned out surprisingly well considering all the crap I did in high school. I pretty much started all the good stuff at age 14. Granted, I did a few things to rebel, but mostly the stuff I did was in the blind but desperate attempt to escape/dissociate from the persistent unhappiness of growing up trans and in a family that had me so mindfucked I didn’t even realize they were abusive.
I lucked out though because I was never arrested, never hospitalized, and graduated high school at the top of my class and got a scholarship to college. So I could GTFO!