What Is Something Your Family Does That Drives You Insane?

February 16, 2026

What is something your family does that drives you insane?

For me, it is the incessant screaming for no reason.

Do not want to go grocery shopping? Scream.

Do not like dinner? Scream.

Your brother is breathing your air? Scream.

Drop your veggie straws on the floor? Absolutely scream.

I know it bothers me more when I am tired. Which is pretty much all the time. I know my kids do not understand what they are doing. They are not calculating how to chip away at my sanity. They are reacting to the world with the emotional range of a smoke alarm.

Still.

Yesterday I looked at my son after he screamed over a fallen snack and said, “Scream again and I am going to scream louder. Now knock it off.”

Not my finest parenting moment.

There is something strange about the way family can press the exact buttons no one else can find. I can sit in a meeting at work and stay calm while someone talks in circles for forty five minutes. I can handle technical issues, deadlines, and unexpected chaos without raising my voice.

But a three year old screaming because his sister touched the wrong crayon? That is the thing that unravels me.

Part of it is proximity. We are close. We are constant. There is no professional mask to hide behind. There is no polite version of myself that gets deployed. They get the real thing. The tired thing. The impatient thing.

And if I am honest, sometimes what drives me insane is not the behavior itself. It is what it represents.

The noise feels like a lack of control. The repetition feels endless. The screaming feels like it will never stop. In those moments, my brain jumps ahead. Is this what the next ten years are going to sound like? Am I always going to feel this stretched?

That is the overwhelm talking.

Because the truth is, this phase will pass. The screaming will change. It may turn into door slamming or eye rolling or silence. Each stage has its own soundtrack.

But in the moment, it feels permanent.

There is also the uncomfortable reality that the things that irritate us most often reveal something about us. My kids are loud. I crave quiet. They are impulsive. I like order. They escalate quickly. I prefer measured responses.

So when they scream, it clashes with the way I want the world to operate.

And when I am exhausted, I do not have the margin to absorb that clash gracefully.

The question is not whether something drives you insane. If you live with other humans long enough, the answer is yes. The question is what you do with that insanity.

Do you let it build? Do you label them by their worst habit? Do you escalate until everyone is louder and angrier?

Or do you pause and recognize that this is what closeness looks like sometimes. It is friction. It is repetition. It is being known well enough that people feel safe enough to fall apart around you.

That last part is hard to admit.

My kids scream because they feel safe. They know the house will not collapse. They know I am not leaving. They know dinner will still come. The meltdown happens in the place where they feel secure enough to lose control.

That does not make it less loud.

But it does reframe it.

So today’s question is not just about irritation. It is about awareness. What is the thing that sets you off at home? What pattern makes you tense up before it even begins?

And when you answer that, ask one more thing.

Is it really about them?

Or is it about your capacity in that moment?

I am still working on that one.

In the meantime, I am trying to respond one decibel lower than I feel.

Some days I succeed.

Some days I threaten to out scream a toddler.

And then we try again tomorrow.