Be careful, my girlfriend's grandparents do this to her still and she's 27. Her dad was in a similar situation as your mom but he passed shortly after I met her and then they went full on crazy on her when he was out of the picture. Threatening to call her job and force her managers to get her off work when she refused to go to family gatherings in other states during work days (which isn't so much of a real threat so much as a threat of embarrassment), invoking power of attorney that she unknowingly signed when she was like 12, opening disability in her name, etc.

Fuck these people, I have no patience for these kinds of people after battling this crap for 4 years as an already overwhelmed young adult.

That's not a good idea, let's not make the only adults on her side angry at her too

Edit: only adults on her side as in the authorities. Fuck the grandparents but doing the same thing as them doesn't help anyone.

I guarantee if they continue to do this past your age of 18, the response will not be the same. Actually, establishing any sort of bogus pattern may be a hinderance to you if you actually -do- go missing. The cops will one-hundred percent be like, 'She's an adult. She can do what she wants. We do not care.'

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That's not a thing except on shitty made-for-TV crime dramas. You can - and should - report a missing person as soon as you notice they're missing.

As a general rule, don't take legal advice from Law and Order.

You can also report your grandparents missing. I don't recommend this, it's a huge waste of resources, but perhaps a little payback is in order so they learn the embarrassment.

The one thing I haven't seen said here is YOU ARE A MINOR. Regardless of graduating HS or not, you are still a minor. Even with that, I don't agree with their actions in this case at all.

That out of the way. What assholes. Especially to say they'll do the same once you're 18. I'm sorry you're being treated like that. You might have to get a restraining order or something else if they can't have sense talked into them.

That’s a super common myth that even police departments will tell you, because so many “missing persons” end up being found (This incident is the perfect example of this) and ends up being wasted resources.

There is no minimum to report someone missing.

cultural elements don’t really apply here i believe. just a white, lower class family in the south. i definitely don’t know anyone else with a family similar to mine, especially someone who would go through the same things i do, but i just reassure myself it will be over soon enough and that i’ll save up enough money to be able to live my own life. i was worried i was just coming off as a moody teenager with this post but there’s a lot of people who went through the same stuff as me and it’s really reassuring.

My mom did something similar to my brother when we were in our early twenties. My brother went full no-contact for a little over a year.

25 years later, I still have to reset some boundaries from time to time.

To this day I am very careful what information I give her about my work, life, health, etc. She is super nosy and just can't stand not being all up in everyone's business trying to run their lives "for their own good".

Let’s say I have a pet squirrel, and I let it roam free

One day my squirrel finds its way onto your yard, and your new cat decides to attack it, the same way any cat would

After I find out your cat killed my squirrel, I come over to your yard with a gun, and I shoot your cat dead

Is this justified revenge, or am I a crazy person that killed a cat for no good reason?

unfortunately, most of what they’ve got right now is my rent money, my child support, and their retirement fund. but hey, it’s something at least. i would definitely feel guilty for suing them if something did happen that would breach the terms of a restraining order but i do know it would be necessary.

if anything youre underreacting. i dont know if theres a cultural element im missing, but what they did was wildly inappropriate.

Literally the same thing happened to me when I was 18, there were missing posters of my face all over social media, I feel you. I also was embarrassed because I was like, great; now the whole town knows my family infantilizes me.

Now I look back at it and it’s kinda funny. People will forget, but this reflects more poorly on your grandparents than you, really

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The moment you turn 18 get a restraining order. If they continue, sue them for all they got.

i’ll admit that i don’t live in the best, safest town in the world, but it’s an “everyone knows everyone” type of place and there are areas everyone knows not to go to. as you can probably tell the police are pretty responsive too haha. i don’t necessarily think that trust is an issue, especially with my mom, it’s definitely more a control thing for my grandparents and like some other comments have said i may need to consider some underlying issues they have that may never even be addressed.

Hopefully this is a one time thing

Your grandparents really need to understand that by reporting you missing all the time that if something bad really does happen to you, the police might not take it seriously. If you get lost hiking, drive off the road, or worse, the police might look at your situation and consider you a runaway.

Either your family needs to trust you more, or the town you live in is a friggin war zone

Just a comment to say, I don't know you, but I'm proud of you. Youre being more thoughtful than I am sometimes, and it gives me hope for the future. If I ever have kids, I hope I can nurture this same sort of kind and intelligent thoughtfulness in them as you're showing in your comments. Youre doing just fine!

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i don’t know if reddit has a character limit but if it did, i probably couldn’t even finish typing out a list of the things i’ve slept through. i also have “small ear canals” or something so i get routine ear flushings at the doctors to help me be able to hear better. i have a unique vibration sound for calls and alarms on my phone since i try to fall asleep with my phone near me so that i can feel those vibrations instead of relying on my admittedly crappy hearing

My phone is on silent at night because I don't want to be disturbed by the non-stop spam calls everyone gets nowadays. Or the fact that she was just at work beforehand and had it on silent. This is not unusual, and certainly not the problem in this story. The fact that they didn't even ask her mom if she knew where she was means this was entirely about controlling her, if they actually cared they would've woken her mom to check but they just wanted to bully OP for staying at her boyfriends (which they probably assumed and didn't like).

Your suggestion of appeasing people who are being unreasonable and arguably abusive is not a suggestion that will fix things in the long term.

Oh wow that really sucks on their part then. I on the other hand am a very light sleeper. I go to sleep and get awake by someone getting up from the couch or flipping the light switch sound lol