“I Thought It Was Normal For Too Long”: 30 Weird And Disturbing Rules Parents Had Their Children Follow
As children, we don’t really give ourselves the luxury to question our parents' decisions. Nor do they allow us that.
Especially when it comes to the rules they set around their house and family life that you have little option but to comply with. Only when we grow up can we take a step back and look at these rules from a whole different perspective. And sometimes, we realize they made zero sense.
“What bizarre rule did your parents enforce that seemed normal, but when you grew up realized was not normal at all?” someone posed a question on the Ask Reddit community. Many people took the opportunity to get their childhood rules off their chest and share the stories with others. Below we selected the most interesting ones.
This post may include affiliate links.
Not me, but this guy in my neighborhood. So the 1st day of high school rolls around and there is this new kid at the bus stop. I try to make small talk, but he doesn't seem interested. I see him around school and he never talks to anyone. Everyday at the bus stop I try to make small talk and slowly, over many weeks, he says more and more.
One morning he says to me that I can come over after school for a snack. I'm like "Sure, dude". After school we go to his house and it is super clean. Like operating room clean. We sit at the kitchen table and his mom sits with us. He looks a little worried, but I don't understand why at the time.
As we eat our snack (sugar wafers and milk do NOT go together) his mom starts to ask me questions. Things like what music I listen to. What does my dad do for a living. What are my grades. What church do I go to. Lots of weird questions for a kid in the 9th grade. With some of my answers she would look to her son, who gave more and more worried looks. Eventually she stopped grilling me and said that her son needed to do his homework and I should leave. I was glad to get out of there at that point.
I go home and mention to one of my older brothers what happened and he was all "Holy s**t! You met the mole kid!". Turns out that this kid had lived in my neighborhood for all these years and I didn't even know it! He was home schooled and not let out in the front of the house.
Over the next 4 years we ruined this kid for his parents. He rebelled against their rules and became one of the guys. We introduced him to the world of sports, beer, weed, and girls.
After high school we lost touch (my fault. rough patch for me).
Hey Jason, if you read this, look up the guy who had all those older brothers back in high school. I miss you.
I will say this once...parents that are really strict with their kids out of fear that they will run with a bad crowd or get in trouble are actually creating the scenario in which they will rebel and run around with the very crowd you are trying to protect them from. If your kids spend their childhoods fearing you, they will never tell you when things go really wrong or ask for help. But they will turn to the people that gave them the most freedom to be themselves. Keep that in mind. I ran around with a bad crowd because I was afraid of my mother. But I will be forever grateful to the friends that gave me a sense of freedom that I never got at home.
We had to wake up whenever my parents got up, even if it was 4 a.m. One of them would yell up the stairs for us to get up. Didn't realize I could get up at my own leisure until I got married and moved out. One day I got out of bed when my husband did and we were sitting in the living room watching tv when I exclaimed that I was still tired, he said "So go back to bed then" and it was like those moments on a show when an actor just looks at the camera with a surprised expression. The sudden realization that I could wake up whenever I wanted was over whelming.
Also now that I have a kid I have no idea why they wouldn't let us sleep so they could have some free time? Like damn if my son is sleeping I'm taking in all the quiet and enjoying myself some free time.
4 minute shower restricted to once a week. This was when I was in high school. This is all my folks did to save money so it was all I was allowed as well. If I exceeded the 4 minutes they would turn off the hot water from the main valve by the water heater. Imagine that- a high school boy allowed one shower a week and only a 4 minute shower.
I now take a shower a day and sometimes two. And sometimes until the hot water runs out.
Teenage boys need to shower more than once a week. Adults too, really. Some people take money saving too far. I bet this saved them very little money.
Trust Game! Mom would hold knives to our necks sometimes and say "it ll all be over in a feeewwww minutes" or wake us up putting a pillow over our face and plugging our noses, same thing " it ll all be over in a fewww minutes" if we freaked out she get upset say we didn't trust her. Hence the trust game.
Normal parents take a toy away until their child's behavior improves, then returns the toy as a reward for good behavior.
My mother just took my stuff and never gave it back. She'd claim that we could 'earn' our toys back with extra chores and good grades, but she never followed through even though I was on honor roll every single semester. I was in college when the closet organizer in our hallway closet had a critical failure, so I came home to help move stuff. I found an entire box of my confiscated books and toys. I s**t you not, my mother picked up a beanie baby and looked at me sadly while she said, "I was waiting for you to earn this back." What, were you going to surprise me with after I walked the stage and got my diploma?
I wasn't allowed to have boys phone or come calling for me because my mom didn't want me to turn out to be "some little s**t".
Joke's on you, mom.
We had a lock on the fridge and were never allowed to help ourselves to anything - you had to ask, usually the answer was 'no'.
I started buying junk food and hiding it in my closet - I think my father was completely clueless about growing teenage appetites and smoked, so his appetite was almost non-existent.
I struggle with binge eating to this day - I still love a good gorge, it means freedom and a giant middle finger to that lock on the fridge.
This is so incredibly sad. My parents kept the snacks in a locked cupboard in the garage; my sis picked the lock and they moved the snacks. My mum used to hoard food in her room, and one time I snuck in there and ate some of it; I got into soooo much trouble over that. I was like 9 at the time.
My parents are pretty much hoarders so we would get in trouble for cleaning. My mom always blamed our house being messy on her just being "too busy" so once in junior high I thought I would surprise her and have the whole kitchen clean when she got home. I cleared all the piles off the counters, threw away a bunch of decades-old magazines, and took out like 2 giant bags of trash. When she got home she was NOT pleased, but panicked, and promptly went digging outside in the trash can to bring the stuff back in. :/
This is a mental illness - it's so hard for people to let go of stuff. Some people who suffer can clearly see what's wrong with them but can't help them self nor get help by professional. The others don't even see an issue with their behavior
Until the age of 13 myself and siblings each had to take baths with dad to ensure we cleaned everywhere.
My parents wouldn't let me do anything with friends if they felt I had "done enough that week" or "didn't need to" even when I hadn't done anything at all that particular week. My friends started calling it the fun meter. "Wanna come play basketball at the park or is your fun meter full this week?"
I feel this. My parents would arbitrarily let me go out with friends. No reason or rhyme to it.
Not a rule, just something that I never realized was weird until I was an adult. My mom had a phobia of needles, so she managed to find a dentist who didn't believe in giving novocaine shots. For any reason. Didn't even use that numbing gel.When you had a cavity, and needed to have your teeth drilled, he would just tell you to hold onto his assistant's hand, and squeeze when it hurt. Thank God, none of us ever needed to have a tooth pulled. As a result, I developed a phobia of dentists, and after I left my parents house at 18, waited 23 years, before I ever got up the nerve to go to a dentist again. When I finally did, they were shocked. The hygienist said, "Your teeth are beautiful. You don't even have any cavities." I said "I know. I do everything in my power to avoid having to come see you people."
I grew up with the same dentist experience… still have to get full anaesthesia or laughing gas for the most minor things. Thanks mom!
"You eat everything you're served". So if they put a whole lot of food on our plate, and we had already eaten enough and were not hungry anymore, we would have to stay on the table until we were done.
Took me hours.... Mom guilt tripping me (with "other children in the world are starving, how dare you.)... The times I was 4 hours at the table were plentiful, picking my food, then finally giving in. Then rewarded with doing the dishes at 10 or 11 at night... I wasn't even a teen.
I was raised in a fundy Christian household. Though our media options were limited to veggie tales and the like, we always had to ask before watching any video. Usually, the answer was a simple yes or no. But this one time, I was around 14 and asked my dad if I could watch Winnie the Pooh (it was for my little siblings, but I was bored). He told me, dead serious, that he needed to pray about it. Right there, he asked God for wisdom in deciding whether I should watch it or not. I stood there just trying to figure out if he was messing with me. He was not. After about a minute, he looks at me and says, "I guess that would be okay."
Juice always had to be watered down to 50%.
It wasn't a bad rule--saves calories and money--but it totally blew my mind when I found out that other families drink orange juice *full strength*.
Pure juice of any kind is bad for you - soo much sugar!!! A small glass isn't too bad but not loads of it :(
No one was allowed to s**t in our house. We had a large house and all 4 of us had our own restrooms. There was this little girl with special needs I used to play with when I was little and once she had to use the restroom. My mom asked me where she was and I said she's in the bathroom. My mom walked in on the poor girl mid-s**t and told her to go home and finish.
for those confused if you go to the source link then OP clarifies that no outsiders were allowed to s**t in OP’s house.
My dad had several weird ones to this day I still don't understand.
I wasn't allowed to read at the table while I was eating or drinking. Even if I was completely by myself drinking coffee, if he walked in on me he would berate me for having a 'toy' at the table.
No one in the family was allowed to drink at the counter in the kitchen. I have a habit of just draining a glass of water and pouring myself a second one. I didn't see the point of filling a glass, going to sit down, spend about a minute drinking, and then getting back up just to refill the glass. I tend to drain most drinks in a matter of seconds, so I got into the habit of just drinking at the counter. First time my dad saw me doing this he lost it yelling at me about how it wasn't normal and to sit down at the table while I drank.
Reading books before bedtime was forbidden. Everyone in the house throughout the day has to be 'productive'. Reading is for right before you go to bed. Finish all your chores before everyone else? F**k you, your brother/sister is still cleaning, you're just being lazy by sitting down to read a book!
He also had major issues with me just reading in general, even for class assignments. I actually had a full on argument with him a couple of times about The Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye I was reading for my English Lit class. He was trying to prevent me from reading them, but I shot back I had too because it counted towards my grade. The entire class also took a huge test on each book, so NOT reading wasn't an option.
Yeah, he was a bizarre person. Suffice to say we don't talk anymore.
The "duty before pleasure" policy makes sense until he said he had completed all his chores but he couldn't relax because he had to help his sibling completing their chores. It's really stupid, to be honest. It's just going to make the kids work slowly so they won't be the first to finish and have to do more work. If I still have to work after I've done my work how can I be motivated to work faster? It really makes no sense, parents' wise.
I wasn't allowed to say anything my parents didn't like - it would result in an immediate grounding or "fine" from my allowance. As for rules, no sleeping past 10 am. Ever. All chores must be done before going out or doing anything. Only one hour of T.V per evening and only one dessert per week. One hour of internet at a time (this was early 2000ish) and only if my dad wasn't using the computer (he always was).
Now for the weird ones...
- no farting
- no ketchup on potatoes or eggs
- no more than a tablespoon or so of a condiment at any given time
- no hiccups
- if you had hiccups, no eating or drinking (edit: or speaking)
- no being "hyper" - ever.
- no getting angry
- no using the washroom upstairs
- no speaking during T.V shows at all (on the rare occasion that I was allowed to watch T.V upstairs).
And the pièce de résistance...
- (For a year or so) no using the word I
I wasn't allowed to sleep over at friends' houses until I was almost in middle school. Why? Because my mother was afraid that we would play Russian Roulette.
Here's a christmas-y one for ya'll!
No christmas presents after you turn 12
- t'was okay since we barely got presents from my mum (who we lived with) and my dad (I don't think I had even seen him in 4 years at the time.)
BUT THEN...
she spread the rule to my abuelita and grandpa (the only other people we got presents from.) ugh.
Oh and we also had to make all our own food since we were 13 which made me take to only binge eating at lunch and nothing else all day.
Oh AANNDD she would hurt our pets if they hurt her. I mean like if a cat ever scratched her (wow really who woulda thought cats do that?) she would scream really loud and bite the cat.
Fun fact: I've never had a full punch on with anyone other than my mum...maybe my sister but ya know...kids.
The cat one is the worst one! It's still just an animal and just reading that the mom hurt the kitty hurts my heart.
Not I, but my father's stepmother used to make he and my aunt clean up the living room, kitchen, and dining room while her and her "real children" were taken to McDonalds, every Friday.
The most f****d up thing is, my father said that the first time she made them clean up, she said that her and the two step-siblings would switch off every week as to who would clean and who would go to McDonalds. He said he doesn't ever remember going to McDonalds. Neither does my aunt.
He was 7, she was 12.
I treated my step kids like my own. No longer with their mom, over 10 years now. None of the three speak to their mother and 2 out of three don't speak to their father either. My stepson (M24) recently asked me for permission to change his last name to mine as he doesn't want to be associated with either birth parent.
Only 3 sheets of toilet paper allowed per visit. This included if you went number 2. I swear my mum used to stand outside and listen and she just knew when I used more and I would get yelled at and the door nearly broken down. This ran into my teens.
That 'the man' was watching us (my sister and I as kids).
Not santa, literally 'the man'.
So say if we were playing up, they'd go 'you'd better stop that, he's watching' and we'd quit immediately for the impending dread this man would bring. How f*****g creepy is that?
No saying "no." As long as someone asks kindly you have to say yes.
I wasn't allowed to be a witch on Halloween because my parents were afraid it would offend actual witches. I also wasn't allowed to be a ghost because they were afraid I would attract actual ghosts and I wasn't allowed to be a vampire because they were afraid a real vampire might mistake me for a real vampire. Both my parents were highly superstitious and into the occult, which I didn't realize until later since we went to temple and I went to hebrew classes, but apparently my father was secretly a practicing wiccan and my mother was just going along with everything. Somehow they both got it into their heads that I was attracting poltergeists that were specifically out to get my mom and so they decided I wasn't allowed to do anything that could attract evil spirits. For some reason this rule didn't seem to apply to my brother...
Your father wasn't a Wiccan, he was a mental case. Oh he may have read something about the Wiccan religion, but he missed entirely the point of what he had read and focused entirely on what could feed his existing anxieties and obsessions until he reached borderline dangerously insane territory. I sure hope you got out of that scene.
My step-dad when I was growing up was a very strange man. We had to sign and date the inside of our toilet tissue rolls because he wanted to make sure we weren't going through TP too fast. Want to borrow a pencil? I did in 7th grade. I had to write and sign a one page lease (with said pencil) outlining the whole scenario and how I would return it, when, in what condition...
My allowance was $1/week. This paid for toothpaste, shampoo, and conditioner. Nice...
My mom had to put receipts of the grocery trips on the fridge and he'd pay her for specific items he deemed were his. He was such a piece of work.
My mother was a bit younger than he, so his children weren't in her children's age bracket, and none of us were very close. In middle school he gave me his daughter's diary from years before when she was in high school. I read about a page and was horrified that he was abusing her privacy in such a way. He loved to mention when I was 16 that I was as pretty as I would ever be and if he were younger and not married to my mother...(as if). I even had to pay rent to live at home IN HIGH SCHOOL.
He was special. And I don't mean that in a good way. The only positive thing about it was I was naturally a very shy person, but he put my hackles up so much that I became very argumentative and adversarial in regards to him. Overall, that wasn't a bad skill to develop. That man's bare feet never touched the ground or felt blades of grass in his life. He was afraid of germs and Catholic guilt and "that one experience in college" with his roommate. He was just a man who couldn't deal with himself so he lorded himself over others in strange ways. What I've mentioned is the tip of a very large iceberg of weirdness.
He was something strange to grow up with. I'm still a people pleaser to a degree, but when my bs meter goes off I have zero patience for it and speak or act accordingly--mostly because I spent my last few years when they were still married being defiant towards him. Who wouldn't?
Sadly, I had a friend from that age whose step-dad was WAY worse than what I had to deal with, but that isn't my story to tell.
I never got an allowance...but I didn't have to pay for my own deodorant or shampoo. I also rarely went to the movies or out anywhere with friends because I had no money. When I was in high school, my friends usually paid for me. I'm forever grateful for them giving me a life outside of my home.
My mom never let us whistle - she sad it would attract mice. I now know she was just making stuff up because whistling was annoying to her lol
I also heard about this superstition, so it's not just your mother. Another one - if you whistle you'll go broke.
My parents made us kids use the back door to get in and out of the house, the front door was for parents and guests only. I thought it was normal for too long.
8:30 bedtime. My. Entire. Damned. Life. Though, I knew as a teenager that making your high schooler go to bed when it was still light out half the time was whacko.
Well into my 20s I'd come back to visit for the holidays and dad would get up to use the toilet at night, see the light on in my room from me being awake reading a book at 10 p.m., and yell at me to go to sleep.
I was raised a Jehovahs Witness, so yeah. Not having friends outside of religion was pretty strictly enforced until I got into my teens.
Everything I read about JWs makes me more and more concerned because I know one and she's really nice. She's also lesbian, does anyone know the JW opinions on that?
We weren't allowed to take our clothes/shoes to mom's. We had to change into what we wore when we arrived. It wasn't until I was in middle school that I learned that other kids *own* their stuff. Weird.
Actually, I get this. When she was 5, my stepdaughter's mom would send her in clothes that were too small, too large, with holes or stains, or didn't match. If we bought her clothes and she took them home, we'd never see them again. About a year or so in, I asked my husband to let me buy her clothes that she kept at our house. When she arrived, she'd wear what I got her that actually fit and were in good condition. When she went home, she had to change back into her home clothes that she came in. Sometimes we would get her things she could take home, but we knew we might never see it again. Sure enough, by the time she was in late elem/middle school, her mom was taking her clothes that we bought her. Sigh. Now, we have full custody so it's no longer an issue.
I was not allowed to hang out with friends, or leave the house with very few exceptions. I spent most of my time at my parents place in the basement reading because it was quiet and I would try to avoid being yelled at. I would be so afraid to ask to do things that after a while I just stopped and gave up.
I was not allowed to argue or stand up for myself in any way.
My mom would often punish me severely for very small things (I forget to close a door, I cooked for myself, cleaned up but there was a fingerprint on the countertop) and it was really unpredictable so I was just often afraid.
Every Wednesday I had to clean for 2 hours. My mom has OCD so everything was already clean but we would have to clean the rooms anyways which included washing dishes that were clean in the cupboards, washing clean counters, walls, ect.
I was not allowed to decorate my room in any way that would potentially have any lasting mark of my existence. No way to make it mine, no posters, no pictures, nothing could touch the walls, nothing could be on my desk, only my phone and alarm clock could be on my dresser.
I would get in trouble for cooking my own food even though they did not feed me.
I was not allowed to sleep in.
When I became depressed and got insomnia and they found out they gave me crafts and I started to get quotas for the amount I had to complete so I wouldn't get in trouble for getting up to 'no good' while I stayed awake.
I wasn't allowed to swear and was afraid what would happen if I said "Oh my god" until I was about 14.
There's many more I'm probably forgetting, but I left home at 16.
* My mom wouldn't let us use water guns. We could only use these things called "squirters" and if the neighborhood kids were having water fights, she would come out and test the strength of the sprays. If it was too strong, we had to go inside..In high school, I went to a pool party with super soakers and basically had an anxiety attack. I was so afraid someone would post photos.
* when people collected canned goods for food pantries, we could only give them creamed corn. I once was grounded for taking some green beans for the homeless shelter. I make it a point to find out what the pantry needs before donating now. Its never creamed corn.
* we could only mow the yard wearing a bathing suit. Finally own my own house and wear shorts and a shirt and it's still not a great chore, but at least I'm clothed.
We couldn't eat what we wanted. We always had to ask for food.
I'm much better off today than my family ever was, and I absolutely NEVER will make my family ask to have food.
*Edit* I was not as detailed as I should have been, as people have pointed out this happened in their life. It wasn't a matter of, "No, you can't eat that, we're having dinner soon," or that kind of mentality from my parent(s), not was it to prevent eating junk food. We had to ask to eat at any time we wanted to eat. And the parent either acted like it was a chore to have to prepare food or would them tell us what and how much we could get out of the fridge. Imagine as a child basically having to remind your mother that you're actually a person that needs sustenance, and sometimes being denied that for days, or given allowance of the bar minimum to survive. There were also many many non-alcoholic foods that my parent(s) wouldn't let me have because they were for them only, because of how selfish they were. Silly example, but u didn't have Pepsi or any other soda until I was 15, but we always had Pepsi in the fridge as grew up.
My brother and I were never allowed to have our doors closed or locked. I'm 18 now and I still can't have my bedroom door closed for longer than the few seconds it takes to get changed.
Don't go out in the full moon because witches would kidnap me.
Always carry a patch of wood on your person while at airports, to prevent witches from cursing you.
Make a cross symbol out of saliva on your forehead before sleeping to prevent demonic possession.
Open the windows wide open in the morning to let the bad spirits out of the house.
Gotta keep that wood on you at all times, otherwise you might be turned into a NEWT!
My dad would stomp the floor so we could hear how many stomps from the basement. This was to indicate which kid he needed to talk to, instead hollering us up.
2 stomps meant I had to come upstairs for something
3 stomps my brother
4 stomps my other brother
While I can understand the "only X cookies per day" rule, increasing as I got older, I still have no idea why my parents instituted an "only X pickles per day" rule.
I still feel mildly guilty when I eat more than one pickle. `:I`
I had to limit myself growing up if I ate more then three they would kill my stomach. So there's that.
My mother would not allow us to say "um" during a conversation, if we did she'd mentally count each time you said it at the end of the conversation you'd get smacked said amount. Then there was "no scraping your teeth rule" if you scraped your teeth on any dining utensil watch out because something was about to hit you. To this day I refrain from the word "um" and will count when someone else says it. Also the scraping utensils thing gets under my skin now too.
I can't stand the sound of anyone scraping their teeth on a fork. It's like nails on a chalkboard for me.
My parents left all the original protective plastic covers on anything they bought, like lamp shades or plastic film on VCRs.
So they would be in great condition for some imagined future owner?
Not me, but my cousin's parents (also my cousins but they were older cousins) made us takes baths together which I always thought was f*****g strange as s**t. Like I was not allowed to take a bath by myself. I HAD to take a bath with my younger cousin. And I remember being like 7 or 8 at the time. He was probably around 4 or 5.
It was just f*****g strange and I didn't like it and told them I didn't like it. I was chastised for it. I didn't go for overnight visits that much after that.
I didn't realize not everybody's house was spotless. My siblings and I cleaned the whole house every week. Moved furniture to vacuum, dust, etc and we had a house keeper that would come for a full day to clean, dust and vacuum the stuff we did 2-3 days prior every week as well. We also had several old trees in our yard would have to pick up any stick that fell daily. Occasionally the whole family would go through the yard on our hands and knees picking up any stick longer than 1 inch. Once when I was in highschool my mom wouldn't let me go to practice after school because I needed to tighten every screw in the house because things were coming loose.
Edit: Mom got some help she's well adjusted and a rockstar grandmother. It's very different from the woman that I would fear. We would frantically reclean before she got home so we wouldn't get called losers. Every magazine edge perpendicular with the coffee table etc
I also like a clean house but in no way a clean freak.
I like clean homes too because I have a CD and if I'm going to clean room it makes me feel clean and it makes me feel happy :)
My parents only had three since I hit my teen.
1. Don't be homosexual
2. No body modifications
3. No smoking or drugs.
I'm a rural Canadian and when I got to college I realized how odd it was. Suffice to say, I broke them in my first year.
Father in law forbade anyone from drinking a beverage during the first half of any meal. No water, no milk, no juice, nothing, no matter how thirsty you were. He took this very seriously and would berate both kids and adults at the table if they tried.
Imho this ruined the meal experience. The rest of the family tolerated this for some reason. I had to explain to my wife no one else ever did this and we would never use that rule at our own dinner table.
I was visiting some friends from Sudan and they offered me food but no drink. When I asked for water, they explained that the only reason they didn't offer me something to drink was because where they came from that was something only cheap people did. They would give you water to fill up your stomach so they wouldn't have to give you as much food when it was time to eat. Not saying this is the case here, but I thought it was interesting.
When I got home from school, my dad would always ask "How did you f**k up today?"
I was a prissy, straight A student so this was his attempt to keep my ego in check. I later learned normal parents asked "What did you learn today?"
That's abuse. I'm sorry you had to endure that. Your dad was very insecure.
Every sunday we would dress up and go to Big Boy at around 10 am. Every other family in town was also in fancy clothes and at Big Boy. Later I learned that all those other people were at Church, which we did not participate in.... so either we were pretending we were at church, or we worship Big Boy.
I had a really messed up childhood, but I mostly knew the rules were weird even while I was following them. But then as I was reading through other comments just now I realized for the first time that a particular rule was weird. My parents convinced me that media age ratings were the LAW. I thought it was illegal for a kid under 13 to watch a PG-13 movie, for a kid under 14 to watch a TV-14 show, etc. But the really weird part is that this extended to books too. My parents told me that kids' books were for elementary schoolers, YA books were for middle and high schoolers, and adult books were only for people who had turned 18, and then they convinced me that this was a law and I'd be arrested if I read a book I wasn't old enough for.
We were the opposite with books, my family are all avid readers. One time in junior school my sister's reading book she brought from home caused the school to ask my mum to go in to talk about how they thought it was inappropriate for an 8yr old to be reading Agatha Christie. Mum pointed out that either she didn't understand it, so there was no problem, or she did understand it, so there was no problem. They had no answer to that
Had to check in every half hour growing up. It's a real shame the doctor waited till I moved out to prescribe mom xanax.
We could only eat 2 cookies at a time, and no more than 4 in a day.
I was living on my own for like a year abiding by this rule, until one day I was like, "man, I REALLY want three oreos, not two."
And I did it.
Edit-Let me take this opportunity to say that, had I eaten 3 every day, I would not be obese. Why? Because my parents did their best to provide me with a healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner. I was also very active in sports and skateboarded as a hobby. Sure, learning portion control IS important. But learning to have a health lifestyle in all aspects is worth more. Eating 2 cookies and not doing any exercise is not better than eating 3 and being active.
Now that you’re an adult of course you can have as many cookies as you want…and you’re correct in assuming you wouldn’t have turned obese if you had more cookies considering your otherwise healthy lifestyle. However, controlling your child’s sugar intake and junk food consumption is actually a rather normal thing for a parent to do…it’s okay to have limitations.
My mom never let me eat any push pops, ring pops, etc.
She said she did it because she didn't want pedophiles getting bad ideas. I always thought it was weird.
My mom has set prices that are a "deal" for produce, and we could never buy anything more expensive than that price. Grapes had to be less than $1.19 a lb. Corn had to be at least 6 for $1. It wasn't until I was well into adulthood that I realized I could buy whatever I damn well pleased no matter what the price.
Interestingly, her "deal" prices haven't changed since I was a kid in the 80's.
Where the hell does she get food from then? Does inflation not exist where she lives??
Not me but my friend. His mom made him take her on "dates" to dinner or movies or whatever. Now in his 30s he found out from his sisters that she has histrionic personality disorder and what she was doing is known as "covert incest." It sparked a reexamination of his entire life, leading to him converting from Baptist to atheist. He has a master's degree in theology.
while i am sure that there are moms with that 'covert incest' issue i used to take my son on "dates" to practice good manners as a gentleman. being a single parent there wasn't a man to teach him some of the ettiquette of being a gentleman such as opening doors, holding chairs, etc. fortunately, my dad could help with some of the more intimate information when he was not deployed overseas but other than him it was just me, my mom, and grandmom. i am sure that single dads have similar kinds of issues when raising daughters. you do what you have to do for raise a good man. guess i did okay as he treated his girlfriends w/respect and cherishes his wife.
I would get grounded if u were a minute late or more. A week per minute.
Example: I would be told I could go to my buddy Ty's house till 7 and I got back at 7:03 grounded for 3 weeks. No friends, no video games, other things were taken.
They also were very conservative and when I reiterated things they said like presidential choices and what not they would ask why and if it was just things they said or opinions they spouted, they told me I should think for myself and do some research because they don't want to raise sheeple. So I mean I think even if they were to harsh for somthings I'm pretty thankful for my parents. Also I'm never late now.
My parents refused to let me go to an r&b concert with friends because they thought the black people would riot if they saw white kids listening to "their music"
Had to go to church 4 times a week to set an "example". Anytime I asked to go out with friends to do something that would have mixed genders or could be construed as a party, I was asked "Would Jesus do something like that?"
Fun fact, Jesus hung out with a prostitute quite frequently. So joke’s on that mum
We weren't allowed peace signs growing up. My mom remembers some speech from when she was a kid about how communism would come under the sign of peace so peace signs were banned in our house. Those troll figurines were banned too.
I wasn't allowed in the basement. Turns out they were smoking weed down there.
We weren't allowed to sit on the cushions on the lounge. They were for display purposes only. We also had a sink that was never allowed to have any water in it. We called it the dry sink and it was a running gag with my friends and I. We gave my mum so much s**t for it lol.
that is one weird parent... why have a sink that you dont put water in???
The kitchen is closed at 9 p.m.
We had this rule in the house. Ours closed at 8pm. But it was because my mother was very obsessed with having a spotless kitchen. Even to the point that when she got into a car accident in which she had to be cut out of the car, she still, with a broken foot, broken ribs and fractured shoulder blade, would hobble into the kitchen and complain if there were any crumbs on the counter.
Had to eat cheese strings the same way you might eat a banana, with the plastic still on the bottom half, just taking bites off the top
I just wanted to make a Wacky Wildthing™
Okay so my parents were pretty normal BUT
I had this one friend who was never, under any circumstances, allowed to sleep on the livingroom couch and if she did she would be punished. It was so f*****g bizarre and I never understood why because it wasn't a formal livingroom, we were allowed to hang out in there as much as we wanted but if she ever happened to fall asleep on the couch and her parents found her there the next morning, it was game over and I would be sent home and she was grounded!!!! From what I understood this rule stood even when friends weren't over and the only place she was ever allowed to sleep was in her bed, or else.
WAT?!
My dad used to make my sister and I rake leaves in our woods.. our f*****g WOODS!!
Oh where to start?! My sister and I would secretly refer to my stepdad as Hitler, so that will give you an indication of where this is going.
- Washcloths were 100% mandatory when showering; soap or body wash didn't work as well unless it was on a washcloth. (He would check to make sure the washcloth was wet after I would leave the bathroom)
- Socks weren't allowed to be worn in the house. We had hardwood floors and apparently wearing socks on hardwood floors creates holes in your socks. Shoes and bare feet were acceptable.
- Sitting. We would get in sooo much trouble if we were sitting "incorrectly" in chairs. I'll never forget when he yelled at a friend of mine for putting her leg up on the arm of our lazy boy recliner.
- We had to pay taxes from our allowance. I clearly remember fighting and retaliating against this one. I think this rule only lasted about a year.
- We had one of those big trampolines and none of my friends were allowed to be on it without a written consent/liability waiver signed by their parents. I remember my mom printing them out and I would give them to my friends if I knew they were coming over.
- No sleeping in past 8AM on weekends. Ever.
I know there are tons more, but I'm sure I've blocked them out for obvious reasons. I always knew his behavior wasn't normal, but as a kid I just kind of dealt with it. I've had lots of therapy since so all good!
Being grounded from the library.
My stepdad would hide my library card if he found it in the washer. I had a bad habit of leaving it in my jean's pocket.
He also constructed a locked electrical type panel in his bedroom closet that controlled all of the various tv and phone lines in the house. He would get pissed and turn them off. Eventually, I found his hiding spot for the key and would sneak and turn it on while he was at work.
I think people who do this (trying to stop their kid from reading) have like fragile masculinity or narcissistic tendencies and don’t want their kids growing up to be smarter than them. That’s my theory anyway :/
My parents were pretty normal but my cousins' mom had the following rules:
1. Once the bed was made no one could touch it, sit, lay, etc on it because it would get wrinkled.
2. Once they were showered and dressed they could only play on the "play rug".
3. They had to change to old clothes to eat so they wouldn't get the ones they had on dirty.
4. They couldn't leave the shower cabin/bath or the sink wet when they used the bathroom
and so on, she was insane.
Some people are "clean freaks" to extent where it become mental disorder.
as a girl, I had to have long hair. my dad lost his.mind when I cut it short at 14. I spent all of my 20's with short hair. I'm 33 and it's long for the first time in like 18 years.
We were not allowed to say these words: "shut up", fart, duh, and stupid.
My siblings and I are all adults now and my mother still gets angry when we say any of those things. She gets particularly upset when we ask the question, "[insert name] did you fart?"
I ask that question all the time now just to f**k with her.
Why not say "hey stupid, shut up and tell me if you farted", hoping the other one would reply "well du-uh"
'If you say "I'm bored" you're grounded' didn't matter when or where. Didn't matter if the power was out and the street was flooded, or if mom had dragged you to a jewelry shop.
My little brother would have been grounded for so long that he would have lived and died there😂
I had to work in my parents factory from about age 11, physical work with a nail gun and everything. Both my sister and I (also a female).
I totally thought it was normal until I was about 15 and realised none of my friends did it so I got myself a different job so they couldn't insist I work. And so I got paid...
Don't get me wrong, my parents are amazing people and I had a great childhood but this is definitely questionable.
I wasn't allowed to watch sad movies as a kid. When I was 3, I watched Charlotte's Web and was inconsolable after the spider died. My engineer father and German mother were baffled by this display of emotion, so they took away any movie that might make me sad.
My sister and I also weren't allowed to go into the bushes at the neighborhood park. My mother later explained that she found used needles and bullet casings there, and the park was a frequent spot for drive bys and gang shootouts.
When I had the day off school sick I had science and maths text books I had to do pages out of for several hours. I never understood why people would pretend to sick because of it
I was not allowed to go anywhere alone until like 14. Seriously. Not even allowed to walk to school with friends. I assumed everyone was that sheltered until I started high school and realized it was just me.
My mom made us immediately wash, dry, and put away every single dish we used after eating. Seems like a reasonably thing to do if you're say living alone or with a roommate, but expecting the rule to be abided by in a house with FIVE children is pretty ridiculous. Also, we had a perfectly fine dishwasher that she taped off so we couldn't use it. Why.
Couldn't play video games unless it was the weekend. Seems normal at first, but then you realize that it just enforces bad habits: my brother and I would wait until the weekend, and then binge the ENTIRE weekend playing video games. And even if we didn't feel like it and though it would be better to do something else we always said "well we better play anyway because we won't be able to after"
Also what were we supposed to do when the homework was done? It isn't like homework took up the entire day
I have this rule for my kids b/c they prioritize games over all their school work and chores. On occasion I'll allow them to play them but I usually make them wait until the weekend and even then they aren't allowed to binge them the entire time. When they get a little older and now how to prioritize their time then they can make these decisions for themselves.
My Dad is a very VERY introverted guy, and he never liked to be in large crowds. So unless it was a school event, I was forbidden from going to any large crowded events/places like the mall, concerts, sporting events.
I was told that this was for my own safety.
No running after you just eat -> you will get appendicitis
No sleeping with wet hair -> you will get lice
Good old fob science :')
Still persists in my home. I'm 25 years old, my siblings are even older and we can't say any curse words. Period. My mother also doesn't let anyone drink alcohol in our home..unless it's a bottle of wine on Christmas. No matter what age you are or even if you're not my parents child. They will treat you like a child. It's gotten so bad that I never really learned how to talk to adults on a normal level because I'm used to an authoritative life. I can be shy and feel awkward around other peoples parents and bosses. I'm so used to having overly conservative parents that I just never learned how to exist in a world of people that are old people. I know old people/parents talk s**t, drink and curse. But my parents are overly religious and think OTHER people are weird for being like that. We have told my mom she's not normal, she pretends to ignore what we said, is in denial and assumes everyone else we know is trash. So when I hear my boyfriend say f**k to his mom, my immediate reaction is to be like "Omg you said that to your mom?".
They would not enjoy a night with my family then - mum practically pours gin down our throat while be swear like sailors - it's great fun
Dad had a problem with us kids saying bloody in front of him, for some reason he thought it was the worst swear word, had no issue with f**k or s**t.
When I was around 22, I was chatting with my Mam, and said something about a 'bloody finger'. She hit the roof, and told me not to use such language in her house. I apologised, and rephrased. "I was doing some woodworking, and a chisel slipped. It nicked the side of my finger. There was blood everywhere. You might even say I had a 'bloody finger'." She glared at me. I asked if I had used the adjective correctly. She replied that whilst I had used it correctly, she still didn't like the word. I nodded, and we moved on.
My parent's did not allow any type of toy guns in our house hold. They forbade those fire cracker guns, nerf guns, bb guns, and even water guns. I am now 22, and just ordered myself a nerf gun for this coming Christmas. Needless to say, it's going to be a magical Christmas this year. :^)
Talking to my auntie recently, I found out that if anyone sent us any gun toys for Christmas, birthdays etc, my dad would just send them straight back without us even knowing about them. If one got through, he would just throw it away and us four kids would inevitably end up blaming each other for taking/ losing it. Found this out aged 43!
Never turning on the lights inside of a car while it's moving.
I know a girl who had a kid in high school. Her parents wouldn't let her move out until she got married. My best friend is married to her.
I was never allowed to go anywhere New Years Eve. Even in the morning. My mother was convinced that there were drunks on the road at 10 a.m. New Years Day was fine, but not on the Eve. I'm over 40 and she still complains if I go somewhere that I'm going to get hit by a drunk.
I wasn't allowed to eat dunkaroos. This wasn't a blanket ban on junk food, my mother specifically had a grudge against dunkaroos.
I wasn't allowed to watch tv on week nights, all the way through high school. I remember it was a HUGE deal because my mom let me have one exception so I could watch the friends series finale live.
My parents made me and my brothers plug our phones in downstairs, at 8:00 every single night. They said it was to "make sure we don't stay up late", but because of that we stayed up later on other platforms like computers or playing games. I figured out my junior year that they only did that to snoop through our photos and messages. Kinda s****y.
My siblings and I weren't allowed to wear shorts until the first day of Summer.
I wasn't allowed to watch Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Ghostbusters, or anything that had to do with spiritism or the occult.
Yet somehow I got my mom and dad to watch the first two Twilight movies and I was allowed to watch anime. 12 year old me loved Black Butler. Hell yeah.
Edit: just realized it's not that strange. Just odd how they were lenient in certain things.
I wasn't allowed to drink kool-aid because my mother said it was "unhealthy." Yet we could eat captain crunch, kraft mac and cheese, all types of desserts, and drink capri sun, soda, etc to our hearts content. Literally any other unhealthy thing was allowed or even encouraged. now that I'm older I think it was a racial thing tbh :/
My parents would not let me buy music that had a parental advisory sticker on it.
But I could watch any R rated movie or play and mature rated video games and what not.
But for some reason they just hated music that had cursing in it lol, so I had to download all my music from kazaa and napster and listen to it with headphones
My very liberal mother did not allow us to watch the Simpsons. Never really understood why.
My mom used to make us kids organize the silverware perfectly and would have a fit if it wasn't. This consisted of carefully balancing the small forks on top of each other in a stack, and stacking the large forks in their own stack right next to it. This also meant that if you opened the silverware drawer at normal speed the stack would all fall over and you just lost 5 minutes of your ~~time~~ life restacking forks and spoons. Total craziness.
We also had to pay a verbal homage to an imaginary being each night before we consumed food.
Mine were not nearly as bad as a lot here, but definitely some weird stuff that I thought was normal at the time. Like our bathroom window had only a half-curtain on it. It blocked visibility, but the light shone into my parents' bedroom and woke them up, so we could only use the heat lamp. Like, why didn't we just get proper blinds? Or not letting us drink from the "good" water glasses in case we broke them. In high school. Or not wanting us to eat at home alone (in high school) in case we choked. Lots of other "small" stuff that I didn't know was weird.
After he discovered that I'd been watching p*rn, my dad routinely checked my internet history. Not the browser history, the DNS logs, which only he had access to. I was confronted multiple times in high school because I'd been looking at content that he didn't think was suitable. I wasn't allowed to get a smartphone until college because it would have been possible to browse the internet unmonitored.
Omg people on this thread are annoying. That's a very normal thing. You weren't abused because you couldn't watch porn on the family computer as a child
So many of these posts are examples of abusive behaviour, so sad and sorry for all involved X
I didn't have the patience to get through all of them but from the ones I saw, I agree. Some of these parents have no business have children under their care.
Load More Replies...
So many of these posts are examples of abusive behaviour, so sad and sorry for all involved X
I didn't have the patience to get through all of them but from the ones I saw, I agree. Some of these parents have no business have children under their care.
Load More Replies... 