We have somewhat similar experiences. My parents were mean fucking drunks, and by mean I mean "I was literally diagnosed with PTSD because they got drunk and violent and did shit like threaten to kill me" but other than that they were fantastic parents, no joke! So even after they had begun to chill out they'd do some little seemingly innocuous thing and it would set me the fuck off because it would remind me of things that weren't quite so innocuous and I'd have an uncontrollable fight-or-fight reaction. I'm sure I looked crazy as hell screaming at my moms for what would look to an outside observer like no good goddamn reason, but there was a lot more to it than that going on on my end. And so today I am very cautious about judging people who, like Jenelle, are having an extreme and apparently inexplicable reaction to what appears to be a normal parent acting reasonably. Because a lot of the time, if you look closer you'll see a former abusive parent who is in a situation where they can control themselves, and a child who cannot control their reaction to them because of the damage that has been done to them by abuse.

I'll probably delete this later, because it's kind of personal, but yeah– how Jenelle reacts to Babs makes me think there's more to the story than what meets the eye.