30 People Share Things Their Parents Taught Them That They Later Realized Weren’t Normal At All
Interview
As children, we admire our parents and view them through rose-colored glasses. They’re the coolest, smartest and most amazing people on the planet! But as we get older, sometimes reality sets in, and we realize that Mom and Dad didn’t actually know everything. In fact, they may have even done some harm when raising us.
Redditors have been sharing things their parents taught them that they later realized weren’t healthy, so we’ve gathered some of their honest responses down below. Keep reading to also find a conversation with the user who sparked this discussion in the first place, and be sure to upvote the replies that make you want to be a better parent.
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“No kid should be on drugs” I was 11, diagnosed with ADHD by a psychologist back when that was pretty new…
Yeah… Every teacher stated some version of “if you weren’t so smart, I’d hold you back” and I barely graduated high school. Seriously thought I ‘couldn’t do math.’
Flash forward to 28. Get over the stigma… Take good meds - graduate cum laude with with degree in Finance at 32. Turns out I can do pretty heavy equations in my head when the hurricane isn’t spinning…
That you are at least partially to blame for ANYTHING bad that happens to you.
Get beat up by a bully? It's at last partly your fault and you're to be blamed and punished for it.
Get bit by a dog? It's at last partly your fault and you're to be blamed and punished for it.
Accidently step on a nail, cut yourself, fall, have an asthma attack? It's at last partly your fault and you're to be blamed and punished for it.
A few years ago my younger brother (we are in our 30s now) was out on the town at night and got mugged, I had to drive him to the hospital. I started blaming him for it and had to pause and ask myself WTF was I thinking and right then and there had an epiphany that the way we were raise was totally screwed up.
OMFG THATS SO FÜCKED UP IM SORRY THAT YOU HAD TO GO THROUGH THAT ABUSE
To find out how this conversation started in the first place, we reached out to Reddit user Timdood3, who posed the question, "What did your parents teach you as a kid that you didn't realize was actually [messed] up until you were older?" Lucky for us, Timdood3 was happy to have a chat with Bored Panda. "My inspiration [for asking this question], if you can call it that, was simply a desire to share my own experience and give others an opportunity to share their own," he explained. "After all, everyone has a 'my parents messed me up' story."
If you’re sad that means the devil is inside you and you need to pray for forgiveness.
I was 6 and my cat had just died
After arguing with a girlfriend and not speaking with her for a few days, BOTH my parents told me separately to hold onto my beef with her like a grudge and use it against her later.
I've been married to the girlfriend now 25 years this year, never once took my parents' advice, and have NO IDEA how my parent's marriage survived LOL
"The story that I shared tells of the time my dad taught me the concept of 'micro-murder'," Timdood3 went on to note. "It was the idea that if someone wastes your time, usually through stupidity or incompetence, that is time they've stolen from you, and you should be upset about it. Whether it's someone driving too slow in traffic or standing in front of the item you need at the grocery store, they're killing you one second at a time."
"And being around 10 years is at the time, it made enough sense not to think about it too hard," he added. "But as I grew older and wiser, I came to realize what a backwards perspective it was. For whatever reason, he just needed an excuse to be mad at strangers all the time."
Anytime I felt hurt by a conflict with a friend, my parents would tell me to never talk to them again because they aren't real friends anyway.
I ghosted all of my best friends thinking it was the right thing to do.
Now, I know that real friends talk things out and it makes the friendships even stronger. A very painful realization. I never even considered my parents could have been wrong. :(
"If you ignore bullies they will go away."
But "If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by" part was true
We also asked Timdood3 what he thought of the responses to his post and why he believes parents instill these unhealthy lessons in their children. "Obviously there are far too many responses for me to have kept up with, but the most common ones by far are religious, racist, sexist or outright abusive," he noted, adding that he supposes there are two major factors behind why so many people have stories like these. "First, people are eager to have people agree with them to feel validated. And second, kids are vulnerable, impressionable, and trusting. They don't know any better, and that makes it so so easy to convince them to think the way we do, which feeds our desire for validation."
"While a great majority of responses have probably been brought up in therapy, there were lighthearted responses too, like reframing the fairy tales we all grew up with, like the tooth fairy and Santa Claus," the OP pointed out. "Those really got a laugh out of me!"
Parents and other related adults would give me awful s**t any time I didn’t want to kiss/hug my male cousins and relatives or deal with them physically touching me to “wrestle” or “play,” saying that I was hurting their feelings. Basically just teaching me that my feelings didn’t matter about my own body.
Exactly how I felt when my mum and brother kept tickling me when I was a kid, even though I said no (and would wet myself).
Do not ever be a bother to anyone. Solve all your problems by yourself.
I tend to do this mostly because other people do not want to prioritise me (or anyone else apart from themselves anyway), so it's just more efficient. I'm not saying it's a bad thing , just realistic. It's rare to find someone else who is efficient and willing to prioritise someone else's projects/needs.
"My partner and I agree that we're not ready for kids for a variety of reasons, but a lack of parenting wisdom isn't one of them," Timdood3 went on to share. "I think the most important lesson to impart on kids above all else it to treat everyone with respect and compassion, and not in the 'let people take advantage of you' way. Understand that every person you see is living their own life, just like you. No one is better than anyone else. Everyone deserves kindness. Be kind, especially to yourself."
My dad was “teaching” me about credit cards and said you can just make the minimum payment every month. It blew my mind, made it seem like free money. Thank god I didn’t take that advice. I pay my credit card off every month and he’s drowning in credit card debt.
I always told my kids that when you use a credit card, you aren’t spending money, you are borrowing money, and you will need to pay it back.
Situation awareness, what seems odd or out of place. Felt like i was being trained by batman when I realized what he was doing… dads from a ruff part of mexico with a lot of Narco gang wars… so, he was just teaching me to read if a place or a situation was “out of the ordinary”.
Let boys think they're smarter than you. Nobody wants to go out with a smart girl.
Upon hearing stories of my childhood my husband had to break it to me that it was not in fact normal for moms to share their anti-psychotic meds (or “chill pills”, as she would call them) with their young children.
That there was nothing that could be done about my superheavy periods, that it ran in the family and that was it. Found out when I was thirty that there are literal doctors for that and got on birth control and just like that, normal periods. I had missed so much school and work and suffered in pain and nausea since I was 12 for nothing. Thanks, Mom.
If it ran in the family maybe she had been told the same thing or just didn't know?
That anytime something bad happened, it was just a dream and if I talked about it, then I was just seeking attention and no one would believe me. It wasn’t until I was in my 20’s when my brother brought up some of the terrible things that happened to me that I realized I wasn’t going crazy.
1. Mental illness is not real. You are just thinking of it, and you dont pray enough.
2. Being gay is wrong.
Ah yes. I got the "mental illness isn't real" schtick from my mom too, except her reasoning is that depressed people "just want attention" and "can feel better whenever they WANT to". At least I didn't get any forced praying/religious indoctrination along with it, for what that's worth.
"If a boy is mean to you, that means he likes you!"
Took me a while to learn what a healthy relationship was when I hit adulthood.
That every interaction with other people is transactional in some way. Nobody ever wants to be around you just because they like you.
My parents told me that I had a limited number of words and when I got to that limit I would die. I guess it was an easy way to make me shut up.
May be ... may very well be, tbh, but we don't really know the context. Kids who have silence issues can speak all day, and it's kinda frightening how much blabbery it takes to tire them out the slightest bit. By then, your ears are ringing, you gathered every bit of knowledge about some cartoon you don't care about, had the menu of the recent week recited a few times, slightly changing every round, then you take a look at your watch and discover that there's another 10000 words to survive left... And then, ... you may end up using wicked predictions like this one. Or, you just walked in, it's your own kids, and you're not of the loving kind, so you tell them whatever shuts them up... I don't think these are the same, but very different in when and why such a threatening, made up, circumstance is issued to them.
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That sounds like something I would have told one of my younger siblings to be honest....
thats horrifying! almost as bad as my friends mom telling her that if she talks about illness to anyone she will die from it. in case ur wondering my friend was hospitalized alot as a kid cuz she took her parents words seriously until she was 13. i told her all about me and didnt die boy was she mad. it caused quite the drama at her house.
Ancient Chinese thought you only had so many orgasms and then you died. Which is why they developed so many sexual positions and styles to prolong the pleasure without cumming.
What the....? That's a super messed up and creepy thing to say to a kid.
This made me laugh a little. I could see a really tired, frustrated parent of a chatterbox kid coming up with something like this. Though I'd tone it back a bit from "or you'll die". Sometimes it's a case of parents trying whatever trick works to quiet them down.
If they said it once, yeah it’s wrong, but parents forget how much little things they say impact their kids. If they said this repeatedly - that is f****d up
Not abuse at all. Think about it idiot, we all do intact have a certain amount of words to speak before we die. If they were not specific to that number then they were right!! It was just a way to get a chatty kid to s**t his/her hole with out beating the dog s**t out of them. There’s your abuse you whiny c**t.
And you think you're stable enough to have kids. Castrate yourself please
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How to lie or avoid situations where truthful responses would get me in trouble.
Anytime I spoke up about anything really id be ridiculed and put down by my mother so I stopped talking. If I told her something good happened at school she'd ask why I was still getting such bad grades.
So I just stopped talking.
That having and expressing emotions was shameful. Thats some b******t.
My dad instilled crippling perfectionism in me, which I realized was insane when I got older and people told me to just “do my best.”
When I was in grade school, I would come to my dad with A’s all super excited. But, if it was anything less than a 100%, he would ask for the missing percentage. So, when I had a 98%, he’d say “well where’s the 2%?” And now, if I do anything less than perfect, I beat myself up
One of my colleagues has a learning disability and was put down by her family. I found a few ways to boost her self-confidence: show her how to do something that she doesn't know and make her try it so she learns it; if I don't know something, I suggest she do research and get back to me; tell her "It was hard for me, too, when I started learning that". By the way, sometimes she teaches me and she does love learning new techniques. When I had self-confidence problems at another job, the boss gave me "easy" assignments. That made it worse for me.
My mom taught me that when you have bug bites, you should scratch them until they bleed, and then rub salt on them to make them stop itching.
It wasn't until I was 23 and passed that "home remedy" on to a friend and they immediately told me how masochistic it was that I realized something was weird about it.
or you can get antihistamine cream, which works better and doesn't leave you with scars.
My Dad told me he could drink beer in the car if he drank it while the car was stopped. It’s only drinking and driving if the car is in motion. I was like makes sense. I was around 4.
Apparently healthy conflict resolution doesn't involve complete avoidance in the form of locking yourself in the bedroom for days on end.
Or the flip side, get locked in your room against your will for the whole day and "you can come out when your dad gets home and it's time for dinner...then you'll do the dishes and go back to your room to think about what you've done."
"Only TV families resolve their problems and apologize after a big fight. Real families just act like it never happened."
That if you're not bleeding, vomiting, or broken, you don't get to cry about it
"If someone ever touches you hit them back and don't stop hitting until they stop moving"
-> my dad who is facing his third attempted [criminal] charge.
I'm assuming that it's a murder charge. Getting awful tired of Bored Panda "sanitizing" everything. Do they think their readers are six years old?
Definitely not as bad as a lot of these other ones, and I know it wasn't done on purpose to be malicious, but to eat when I was sad or upset. It's easier and faster to tell a kid to go eat something as a distraction than it is to sit down and deal with it - especially if said kid is upset a lot due to living in abusive environments, getting bullied at school, etc. It definitely really f****d up my relationship with food, leading to emotional eating, overweight turning into obesity, even more bullying, disordered eating and other mental health issues. I realized probably 15 years ago that this was an issue/the cause of it but even though I know that, it's still something I'm working on unlearning.
My mom would ask what would cheer us up, and then we would do it, whether its watching TV, making a cake or farting in a jar. If it made us happy when we were upset, we did it
That parents are completely infallible. know exactly whats best for you, should never be questioned and you should do everything they ask you to do. Including being effectively a slave
My mom told me that “you can fall in love with anyone.” The context was like go marry rich because you can fall in love with anyone. Terrible advice. I would tell my kids to find someone who is kind and makes them laugh.
Don't look for someone right now. Look for someone who is just right: My mom
Men use their head and hands for the will of god. Women use their hearts and bodies for the will of man.
That all adults should be blindly obeyed.
Jesus Christ! My mom would have gone to each of these people in all of these posts and slapped the stupid out of their parents!
Self hatred. My mom had problems with her weight and projected those feelings onto me about my own body. She restricted my food, forced me to go to a dietitian at 12 years old, and was obsessed with making me exercise, and would fixate on the fact that I was growing out of my clothes because of my weight. There was one time when she wouldn't buy me new clothes until I lost weight. I felt very self conscious about my personal style when I was in middle school and I desperately wanted to change it but she refused to buy me new clothes unless I lost 10lbs or more. I was a little curvy but definitely not overweight at that time. I am now because I struggled with over eating to compensate for my emotional problems, I was also starving and snuck a lot of food in the middle of the night when I was still living at home. I developed an ED because of all of it, which I'm recovering from. I still struggle with self-confidence to this day. Even through all of that, the one thing I currently fixate on the most was when my mom scolded me for gaining weight before my wedding, and she was mad I had to get my wedding dress altered. I felt broken, incredibly flawed, and couldn't stop sobbing.
this. My mom even did the whole "bought you a new outfit!" but it's a size too small as an "incentive" to lose weight. I never did wear those clothes.
I asked my dad why he doesn't have friends over like I do. He told me "adults don't have friends, we have acquaintances." And it stuck with me for so long in my formative years that as an adult it's very hard for me to make friends. I'm personable, and I enjoy hanging out with people, but I don't really make friends.
During a car ride my dad once explained to me the concept of "micro-murder." It was the idea that the seconds spent in traffic behind someone driving below the speed limit (and other instances of people inconveniencing you) were seconds of your life that you couldn't get back, and should be upset about.
I realize as an adult that he's got some issues and just needed an excuse to resent random people on the street.
Emotional self sufficiency. In other words don't show your emotions, don't feel your emotions, don't be swayed by others emotions, empathy is bad and for the weak
Basically also reenforce these teachings by making me having to do bloody and demoralizing task (carrying entrails bare handed without being allowed to use buckets or [taking out] animals), lots of physical punishment, verbal abuse, isolation from others.
Stepmother insisted I should remain pure so when the rapture took place I would be a warrior saint.
Yeah when I moved out and found out people don't have to live like this it took me a week just to decompress what I escaped from
Religious fanatics are a blight on humanity. Even God is sick and tired of them!
That it’s totally ok to abuse everyone and everything around you. If you aren’t physical with them.
Keep secrets to protect family. No matter what they are.
Ancestry.com and 23andMe are kicking down those closet doors and showing the 'perfect' world that conservatives long for never existed! The perfect nuclear family living in a cottage with a picket fence is a filthy lie and an unattainable ideal. If you peel back the surface of the 1950's, you see the only difference between then and now is; Now we don't lie about the affairs and the abuse in order to maintain a veneer of respectability.
To be in constant survival mode. Like as in always worrying about the end of the world. Why? Why am I constantly as a child looking over my back in fear of what I will offer to a group if “the apocalypse happens”. Weird stuff. I thought I was savvy in “bunker mode” but really it’s trauma inducing.
This hits home. My parents still, to this day (I'm 41), in every conversation, bring up some bat$h1t crazy conspiracy doomsday nonsense. I was TERRIFIED about the world ending every single day growing up and had no one around me to point out that this was ridiculous. I'm still working through the trauma and my inability to long-term plan, which has prevented me from career advancement, buying a home, commitment, etc. And for @censorshipsucks, yeah, we were Christian....it's likely a correct assumption.
They made me distrust my own intelligence. They talked down to me and treated me like an airhead, giving me a smirk every time I tried to be serious about anything. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I learned that I am intelligent and gained self confidence despite the negative self esteem they had instilled in me.
In an effort to teach me to be considerate, or not selfish, I guess, my dad said, “Love yourself last” more than a few times to me. That’s a mess I’ve been untangling for about 35 years.
Not entirely bad advice in a western culture which teaches people to be huge individualists. It teaches humility. BUT in the case when you're getting abused or taken advantage of, no.
I remember my Dad outright saying he did weaponized incompetence "If you do the job badly enough she'll do from then on"
That the police were going to come and take me away unless I hid. Nothing sinister - he just thought it was funny.
It was either the police, the "black man" down the street (not that there were any black people in my neighbourhood) or, in extreme circumstances, the devil himself
I always had anxiety as a child and my mother said the only way to get over it is to deal with the situation head on. Sounds great until I told her my dear of escalators and she pushed me down and I fell and almost got my hair caught.
Another thing she loved to teach me is how self defense is necessary. Great! Where do I take lessons? There were no lessons.. she said being with my abusive ex was enough of a lesson. I should have learned then.
I have a fear of escalators. No idea why, it’s only come on since I’ve been an adult had no problems until my mid twenties. I just avoid them. It’s easier these days because places tend to be disability friendly so need to provide elevators.
My dad basically conditioned everyone to hide in the room when he had guests over. Now as an adult I have to fight the urge to not hide in the room when we have guests over because it’s considered rude or whatever
What was he hiding: illegal or amoral activities? Or was he making a fool of you?!
so many abusive parents out there. They really should make a course that you have to go on before you have a child. Maybe also a license.
But the thing is - the people who most deserve kids, often do not want to have them
Load More Replies... I'm going to point out that I had mental problems with my emotions when I was little and would very frequently burst in episodes of extreme rage and violence. I got treated for it and from the age of 4 until I was 17 I was in a lot of therapy. I had1 abusive dad who fixed his alcoholism out and has been awesome since, making up for what he did, and 2 very violently abusive stepdads. I'm 52 now and have gained so much in my lifetime that I am always happy to share and help. I hope that anyone having these kinds of problems gets the help they need and deserve. My heart goes out to them all
The employer is NEVER wrong no matter what they do to you. You're lucky to have a job. My mom is still like that to this day and it took me years of being abused by my employer to leave and not put up with all their c**p. Now I don't suggest that jumping from job to job is a viable way to live but at some point you need to look out for yourself and stop taking all the c**p an employer throws at you.
That saying about boys being mean to you means that they like you should be changed to : if a boy is mean to you because he likes you, don't get involved with him
My first marriage (24+ years) was mentally abusive to me and our kids. 2 people that came into my life opened my eyes to what was going on and I moved on. One child immediately ghosted the ex-wife. The other eventually saw what kind of person she is although the damage is done. Her effect on him is causing some issues with his wife. I tell any newlyweds or soon to be weds, "No cheating, no lying, no secrets, no arguing. You can disagree but arguing solves nothing and just creates more problems." These are the things I told my second wife before we married, she agreed and this will be our 11th year together and we're both the happiest we've ever been and not one argument, no lies, no cheating, no secrets.
My Grandparents will say stuff like "you are happy" or "you do want to go stop crying" when I do NOT. They seem to think they know my emotions better than me. I can't "stop crying" I'm not a faucet. I was 5.
so many abusive parents out there. They really should make a course that you have to go on before you have a child. Maybe also a license.
But the thing is - the people who most deserve kids, often do not want to have them
Load More Replies... I'm going to point out that I had mental problems with my emotions when I was little and would very frequently burst in episodes of extreme rage and violence. I got treated for it and from the age of 4 until I was 17 I was in a lot of therapy. I had1 abusive dad who fixed his alcoholism out and has been awesome since, making up for what he did, and 2 very violently abusive stepdads. I'm 52 now and have gained so much in my lifetime that I am always happy to share and help. I hope that anyone having these kinds of problems gets the help they need and deserve. My heart goes out to them all
The employer is NEVER wrong no matter what they do to you. You're lucky to have a job. My mom is still like that to this day and it took me years of being abused by my employer to leave and not put up with all their c**p. Now I don't suggest that jumping from job to job is a viable way to live but at some point you need to look out for yourself and stop taking all the c**p an employer throws at you.
That saying about boys being mean to you means that they like you should be changed to : if a boy is mean to you because he likes you, don't get involved with him
My first marriage (24+ years) was mentally abusive to me and our kids. 2 people that came into my life opened my eyes to what was going on and I moved on. One child immediately ghosted the ex-wife. The other eventually saw what kind of person she is although the damage is done. Her effect on him is causing some issues with his wife. I tell any newlyweds or soon to be weds, "No cheating, no lying, no secrets, no arguing. You can disagree but arguing solves nothing and just creates more problems." These are the things I told my second wife before we married, she agreed and this will be our 11th year together and we're both the happiest we've ever been and not one argument, no lies, no cheating, no secrets.
My Grandparents will say stuff like "you are happy" or "you do want to go stop crying" when I do NOT. They seem to think they know my emotions better than me. I can't "stop crying" I'm not a faucet. I was 5.
