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Imagine being a teenager, and your dad wants a hug. Would you happily hug him or push him away?

It probably depends on your relationship with your dad, but in a healthy parent and child relationship, I’d think a quick hug would be no big deal.

In this story, one teenage boy only wants to hug his dad on his terms, but his dad gets really upset when he doesn’t get his way. He seems to overreact with pretty extreme punishments for very minor issues.

Keep reading for the whole story from the teen’s perspective.

AITA in the conflict with my dad

So I’m 16 and male. I didn’t have quite a good morning and wanted to be alone.

My dad keeps entering my room and he clearly sees me not being in the mood. But he still comes, hugs me and asks what I’m doing in my computer.

Even though he knows, I won’t tell him because that’s like that for months already.

He’s annoyed about a lot of the things his dad does.

So I’m annoyed about things always being the same: Hug against my will (if I’d say, to leave me alone, he’d be mad), asking what I’m doing and insisting on me telling it to him.

He also has this annoying smile, which makes me feel, he likes to annoy me.

Instead of asking what’s going on, he just tries to annoy me (at least imo).

Here’s what happened when he left his room.

I’m done with working on my project, where the hours long progress got lost due to one crash.

I’m relieved and want to go down and prepare some things to eat for everyone.

I see my dad standing in the middle and I smile and hug him.

Then I want to open the fridge, but he pulls me back and keeps hugging me against my will (does it make him feel different being dominant over someone?).

I push him away and get the salad.

His dad ended up punishing him.

He keeps being mad about that I pushed him away and tries to argue with me.

I’m just not in the mood to argue, so I ignore him and don’t say anything.

He then proceeds to get even madder even though I didn’t say anything for him to feel worse.

He ended up sending me to my room, taking out my internet cable and screwing out the door. So he took away an important piece for my projects I work on, my privacy, internet connection and doesn’t allow me to eat.

He breaks down his reactions.

Why am I behaving like this?

First of, Im just not in the mood and not feeling well.

Secondly I had a bit of stress with my project.

The last reason is a big one.

Third reason is that I started being distant to him after an incident around 18 months ago.

I might have a trauma from that and I can’t get over it: He wanted for me to do sports with him. I told him no, I have homework due tomorrow. So he insisted and I kept saying I can’t.

Then it ended up him beating me and taking my phone away. He gave me the old Nokia in a way he hurt me hard. He came to my room and threw the Nokia at me.

I had to cry and yell for the next few hours.

Wow. There’s a lot to unpack here. At first, I thought the teen was the problem. It seemed like his dad just loves him and wants to give him a hug and know what he’s doing.

But then, the dad really overreacted by punishing his son and even taking his door. Then the Nokia incident. Yikes!

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

This person offers some advice.

Another person points out one of the dad’s flaws.

Another person thinks the dad is at fault.

But this sounds like the reality of the situation.

I don’t think the dad is trying to be a bad parent. As the last comment said, the dad may not be ready for his son to grow up. He may not be able to accept that he’s a teenager now, and he may be having a hard time not treating him as if he’s a little kid who can’t make his own decisions.

A hug isn’t a lot to ask, but the dad is really overreacting.

Maybe they could try talking it out. Perhaps they could set some boundaries. It may or may not be helpful.