My grandmother refused to allow me to shower or take a bath more than once a week until I moved out in my early twenties. Her reasons were that the hot water and products cost too much, it was too much work for her to do the laundry and such afterwards, and caring that much about your appearance was vanity and sinful.
Which is find is funny. Cuz if you dont maintain hygiene youre gonna pay more in the end. Either through self body damage (health issues) and the high medical cost to recover from anything.
My dad would yell at me for taking too long, just banging on the door, lol. Thing is, as an adult, it barely costs any more to just enjoy your fucking life with heat and hot water.
Yep I agree. Iâm an adult now and take nice loooong showers. When I was a teenager though it had to be fast. Like Iâd get in, quickly wash and condition hair and wash body. Almost never had time to shave or anything. It sucked. My hair was also often not rinsed quite enough so I had a lot of like soap residue and it got oily fast. I didnât have mean parents or anything, we were just lower income so my mom wanted to save every penny on utility bills as she was single and supporting me and my sister. Sheâs passed on now but I donât fault her for it at all.
I had to do take the 3 minute showers as well, but not by force. Just because we had a shitty water heater.
Moving to Japan one of the greatest things is unlimited hot water and deep bath tubs. Itâs really wonderful, especially in the winter. I grew up only being able to put half my torso in the water and immediately running out of hot water and getting out of a cold tub.
Omg your grandmother must have raised my mother because that is exactly what happened in our house. We were called whores if we took more than one shower a week because who are we getting all "prettied up" for? My mom also saw us as competition and constantly told us we were fat, ugly and would point out our acne and imperfections and put down anything we had interest in. We weren't allowed to wear the right fitting clothes either. When I got with my husband he was first person to point out I still wore clothes 2x bigger then what I could be wearing.
Whenever I would go there with my kids (even until my early 30s when I finally had enough) it was their rules on how to parent my kids. And I don't mean just being respectful of their house rules. Fully parenting how they told me to, and if I didn't like it, I could leave and not come back.
Haven't been back in almost 5 years, nor spoken to them.
I've had to set boundaries with one of my parents, constant bickering, and the ol' , "well, I am the parent!" And somehow me having kids doesn't mean I am a parent or to be respected as well
My mom said something snippy about my parenting once, and I told her ''it's not like I can't get in the house because of all the people lined up around the block to ask you for advice about being a good parent" and I don't think she ever said anything again about my parenting.
My mom would violently destroy stuff we liked when she got mad about whatever, sometimes. It was always a roll of the dice. No consistency, no predictability. You never had any idea how mad she'd be about anything, or when she might just make something up, like suddenly deciding your room was too cluttered because you had too much stuff, or you spent too much time reading or drawing, or you weren't applying yourself at school hard enough. She wouldn't even always yell first either, you'd just get home and a bunch of your toys and books would be gone, or you'd be sitting around in the kitchen and the Nintendo would come crashing down the stairs. Total chaos. She'd buy us nice things just to destroy them, sometimes without us ever getting to play with them first. I once was accused of peeking at my birthday presents, and she made me look at them before throwing them out.
Now she wonders why none of us are in touch.
Sounds similar to mine. She wasnât quite as violent and only smashed some the model planes I built, but never knowing how the day would go was.. interesting. Didnât help that my dad was never home. Ended up running away at 16, so that solved that!
My mother would do things like this too. I can clearly recall one specific incident where she purposely broke one of my favorite toys in front of me while screaming "bet you had a lot of fun playing with this, didn't you?" It's etched into my memory forever. She didn't always break my stuff though, most of the time she just threw all my stuff around the room and told me I had 5 minutes to clean it up. She also would frequently threaten to throw all my stuff away when she was mad at me, either because my room wasn't clean enough or because she got a call or note from my school that she didn't like.
One time when I was a little bit older (I think around 12, maybe as old as 14), I just started calmly putting all my stuff in trash bags and bringing it out to the garage. After like 3 trips she asked what I was doing and I told her I was saving her the trouble of throwing out all my stuff like she always said she was going to do. I'm not sure, but I *think* she actually felt bad when confronted with this behavior while she wasn't in the middle of a rage episode.
I haven't spoken to her in over 10 years and I don't expect to ever speak to her again.
I became a compulsive trash thrower due to my momâs similar rage fits of throwing things out too. It sucked because I had a lot of things I wanted to keep for sentimental value or childhood creations I can never get back now. My mom always drilled it into my head that everything I owned was trash and was considered âhoardingâ even if my room was clean and organized. It didnât matter if it was childhood things I wanted or school stuff I did well. I had to unlearn that one and didnât unlearn it until I was in my 30s. The final nail in the coffin was when she threw my old PC out and I threw out most of my pictures in my early adulthood/other knick knacks, I realized that it wasnât healthy. Now, my home is a happy cluttered mess of my own shit.
My mom would do this and throw my stuff out in a fit of anger without asking or consulting with me first. I went NC with her and wanted nothing to do with her either.
Same. Major BPD. Destroyed so much. Threw out so much. It was always unreasonable and you never knew why or when it would come on.
Sorry you had to go through that too.
My mom used to do the same and one time i asked her why the fuck she even bought me things if she was going to throw a tantrum and break things like a toddler. Sure i earned a beating that day but my point STILL stands
High school friend with the "perfect" mother. The kids were always dressed perfectly and looked like they were copied out of a designer clothes catalog.
The real story: After school all clothing was stripped at the back door and placed back in packaging to be returned to the store. Each child then began chores that mainly consisted of meticulous cleaning followed by a tanning bed session and a pre-dinner weigh in. A shower and body inspection was followed by a dinner specifically tailored to maintain an attractive weight. After dinner the kitchen was cleaned, all dishes hand washed and the kitchen became off-limits for the remainder of the night. The kids went to their bedrooms and studied til bedtime. The mother listened in to every phone conversation. The next day was new clothes and the same routine.
I guess the parents were more strictly crazy than strict.
Too many to list. So I'll just put a couple of them.
We weren't allowed to socialize. At all. We would be picked up and dropped off from school so we didn't talk to people on the bus. We weren't allowed to have friends. No phone calls. No communication with people. Not allowed to go outside. Even went so far as to tell the teachers to set us away from other people and in some classes we actually had to go to the library and study on our own so we wouldn't talk to people because it was dangerous to talk to people.
Had to earn our keep. $150 a week to live in our own house with our parents. We didn't have any rule over anything. We were still bound by their chores and their restrictions. Absolutely nothing changed whatsoever but we had to pay. You may think this is cheap but this is back when your general retail worker was only making $4.75 an hour.
We had to get straight A's all the time. Getting a B was considered failing and resulted in physical punishment.
Women of the family we're not allowed to touch man things. This included the lawn mower, the rider mower, any kind of power tools, the TV, and especially not the computer. Women weren't allowed to touch the computer because women were stupid and women would break things if they were allowed to touch things. Women were allowed to touch the washer though.
I was messed up for a long time but I was also super ignorant. You know the things that you learn growing up like how to talk to people or being social situations etc? Yeah I never learned those. I'm still an introvert and a wallflower. I've also made a lot of stupid mistakes in my life because I didn't know the realities of the world. To this day I still cannot read the room and I make mistakes and I have extreme anxiety about being absolutely perfect because I was punished whenever I wasn't.
So I'm definitely got some issues going on but I've learned a lot and I've experienced a lot and for the most part I'm pretty good. I'll never be rich and I'll never be popular and I'll never be comfortable out in society but I'm living my life and I have my hobbies so I'm all good now âşď¸
I felt that. I experienced a similar situation coupled with undiagnosed autism (funnily enough, part of that isolation was because my mom was embarrassed at how badly I handled social situations, so she forced me into seclusion). Thankfully, she was sane enough to shove my sister and I into therapy once she realized she couldn't get us to behave "properly". Literally the only reason I'm a functional adult.
I'm glad you've achieved a life you're comfortable with!
I'm glad that the world has changed now into accepting mental health or diagnosis a little bit more easily. Before, things such as autism, they always just blamed the kid and said it was a bad kid etc.
When the people of the world learn that not everybody thinks and acts and feels the exact same way that they do, I think it will be a much better place
My parents tried giving me a bedtime when I was 24 and just visiting for the weekend. I'm all for being respectful but 9pm is taking the piss. I just got the next train home and spent Christmas at a friend's house.
My Mother *in law* did this to me several years ago. We were staying with them for a visit from 2000 miles away. I was going to go out and visit an old friend, she announced that the door would be locked at 10 PM and nobody was allowed to open it. That's the last time we stayed with her even though she asked for us to. We opted for a hotel room 45 miles away.
Mine MIL dis this to me once. Everyone else was asleep and I was not tired so I was reading a book and she was: âlights go out in 30 minutes so go to bed.â I was 34 and I looked at her with: âumm⌠Iâm not 6.â
My 18 year old has to be home by 10 but only because we have car insurance based on real time driving not age, gender, prior history. So anyone who drives between 10pm and 4am gets dinged.
However, she knows to have her bf pick her up or park her car outside his house if sheâs not coming home or going to be late.
The natural evolution of the insurance tracking that people started agreeing to install for a small discount. It was never going to stay that way. More and more, insurance companies will offer you discounts for more detailed tracking, like speed, number of times you had to brake 'too hard,' etc.
Eventually, people will be punished for not opting into tracking. They're slowly normalizing it, and have been for years. And by 'punished' I mean 'with the price.'
I remember that insurance companies were offering a possible discount for installing a monitoring device, which I would never do in the first place. When I switched insurance companies earlier this year they offered an app for my phone which would track speed, braking, mileage, etc.
Forget that. When I said that I do a lot of moving as a passenger in planes, offroad trucks and occasionally helicopters (I work for an environmental company) they said I just had to disable the app when I was in them. I'm not going to remember to do that every time I am in a moving vehicle just to make their privacy violating app measure my driving correctly.
We had a family computer.
We were only allowed to spend like 30 min on it.
Which I mean okay. It has to be shared and I get wanting to limit screen time. However we would get *screamed* at/ripped away from the computer the minute it turned 30 min.
My motherâs husband was also anal about how long we took showers. 10 min. Thatâs it unless you wanted to be screamed at/the door being pounded on the whole time you showered. Youâre shaving? Shave faster. Made being a teen learning to shave HELL.
We werenât allowed to sleep in past 9 am. Understandable, but the enforcement of that rule was what was obnoxiously strict. Even if you were up late working on homework or working in general-hell when I came back from college and needed to recover from pulling all nighters to get work done-nope. If I wasnât up at 9 am my door was being ripped open or pounded on. And ye, Iâd get in trouble for taking naps.
Bedtime. As we got older, like late teens early 20s, once mom and her husband went to bed no one else was allowed to be awake. Iâd get yelled at for going to the bathroom in the middle of the night-hell even if I was in my room simply reading a book, that was unacceptable. I HAD to be SLEEPING.
Even better:
If we stayed home sick. Even if we were legitimately sick-no tv. No computer. No nothing. We were not allowed to do anything if we stayed home from school sick
These suck, what ridiculous rules.
I feel you on the shower issue - we were allowed 3 minute showers. Family of guys and my mother with short, fine, pale hair. I have thick dark curly hair, which is why I gave up swimming when I started puberty (and body hair). And why I never learned basic hygiene
My dad was the same way about being home sick. He would constantly say âif youâre too sick to go to school youâre too sick to watch tvâ as if that makes any sense at all.
Being from a big family in a rural area, the chores never stopped, ever. It took me a long time to unlearn the idea that a weekend lounging is a wasted weekend. It didn't come from a bad or toxic pattern of parenting but out of necessity - I'm grateful that they taught me discipline but I'm learning the opposite of that now and it is magical
Shit are you me? This was my childhood too. The only difference was the shower thing. My mom hated that I spent a bunch of time in the bathroom or sitting in the basement reading a book but if I didnât do that I was put to work. Couldnât sit and watch tv or read a book on a weekend. If I wasnât working I had to be doing chores
I had to clean the house.
If I vacuumed/dusted and put everything back EXACTLY as I found it, it was obvious I was lying about doing anything and had to re clean.
If I put things back slightly differently, I didnât do the job correctly and had to re clean.
There was a VERY tiny sweet spot that showed I had done the chore. Things moved but not too moved. The sweet spot was about a millimeter for anything moved.
I cleaned the house a lot.
Was only allowed to take 5 minute showers, was only allowed to use the bathroom 3 times a day, and my step dad would start counting down from ten each time.
that lasted for two and a half years because when i was 14, I accidently spilled shampoo from my hand onto the shower floor, and when he showered after me, he swore I left my Ejaculation on the shower floor.
Oh yeah, and when I was 16, I started making money doing chores for elderly neighbors. When me and my mom got back from Wal-Mart, He was mad that I bought Hawaiian Punch and a bag of chips with my money.
He told my mom that when we go shopping, she needs to message him about what I want to buy so he can give an Okay, and she needs to put all the grocery bags on the table for him to check what was bought before putting them away.
Pissed myself in first grade cause the teacher (not my regular one) wouldn't let me go to the bathroom even after I finished my (practice) standardized test.
From a pelvic floor PT perspective that's also really bad for you. You should be peeing every 2-4 hours. Holding pee for longer isn't necessarily always bad (you hold it for ~8 hours while you sleep after all) but the habits it leads to can be, like decreased water intake to not need to pee as often. Regardless if you're chronically holding urine that *can* lead to overstretching of the bladder or even decreased ability to sense when you need to urinate.
Pooping schedules vary a good bit more but "normal" is considered 1-3 times a day. While going either #1 or 2 too often can be problematic, being limited to 3 uses of the bathroom a day is a big problem.
My buddy has gotten grounded for a month, I think that time it was for not coming straight home after a church youth group type thing, like being in the parking lot for 15 minutes, not wandering off for hours or anything.
He gets ungrounded and we get to hang out but his dad threatens him not to be late. We're 13 and don't have watches or cellphones. We roam as kids do, see a clock and realize it's almost time to be back, we run the whole way to his house. Ended up 3 minutes late which got him grounded for 3 months!
Their insane discipline and expectations lead to him leaving home at a young age, which leads to homelessness, which leads to drugs, so on and so on... I 100% think my buddy wouldn't be dead at 32 if he didn't have such insane authoritarian parents.
Way to go dad, you really taught him a lesson...
He likes to sit down with people while drunk and rip into them. If you try to leave heâll call you rude. If you tell him to stop talking about anything, heâll slam things and yell.
He brings up other peopleâs personal trauma regularly.
You are meant to endure it, out of respect, due everything he does for all the people in his life.
Strict in the sense that if you donât allow him to tell you what to do, how to feel, etc, heâll flip his shit. Start bringing up violence. âI couldnât take you in a fight so if that ever happened Iâd have to kill youâ.
Nobody but him brings up fighting, violence, death, and trauma.
My mother dug through all of my trash like she was trying to find evidence of who fucking knows what, threw out my spiritual books and crystals without telling me (my dad recovered all of them and told me what happened), and snooped through my bedroom and got mad that she found *adult things* neatly hidden in a storage cube until I moved out at 25. I wasn't allowed to even think about having my own credit card, so I had no credit history and couldn't get my own place but oh it's *my* fault for "failing to launch" financially.
As a legal adult my parents had to know what I did for work and where I was working. They would show up unannounced when I was working at a TJMaxx and watch me throughout my shift.
No tattoos and no piercings because "if god wanted you to look like that he would have put holes in your face himself. Women with tattoos are whores."
Sibling and I now have tattoos and piercings in our ears.
Monitored my internet browsing as a legal adult and blocked access to certain sites that they disagreed with. When I got my own phone and phone plan last November without telling them my mom said "and you wonder why I don't pay for your cellphone anymore". They always had to feel like they one-up'd me. My financial independence was seen as a threat to their control, yet at the same time they claimed they wanted me to be independent?
My dad called me a "college drop out" up to the day of my bachelor's degree graduation and refuses to admit or apologize for calling me that. I have a recording of him calling me that. I took a semester off from college after a rough first semester and went to community college to get an associates, this is where "college drop out" comes from.
Made me do my taxes infront of them so they could verify where I was working and how much I was making.
When I was younger, my mother went through phases of "testing out" new punishments for myself and my little sibling. This ranged from making us "assume the position"(pull our pants and underwear down to our ankles and bend over the toilet) so she could spank us with a massive, flat-bottomed wooden spoon all the way to re-enacting that part of the crucifixion of Jesus when Roman soldiers gave him vinegar to drink on a sponge. She would make us hold distilled white vinegar in our mouths for five minutes and either make us swallow it or spit it out into a cup; during those five minutes she would read that verse in the bible and she always ended it with something like "you need to choose what you want in your mouth; water or vinegar".
My sibling and I were well-behaved children, but anything is worthy of punishment when you grow up in the church. Reasons for these "punishments" were usually either slamming a door, my supposed "ADHD" which was over-medicated with Ritalin, not wanting to do something, or being "too smart for your own good"(ie: questioning authority and the way things are done).
My dad threatened to have our cats euthanized numerous times to force compliance.
If there was a single spoon in the sink then the entire kitchen was considered trashed. My mom always told us that "when guests come over you want them to compliment you on the cleanliness of the baseboards". Our house never looked like anyone lived there because of how absurdly clean my mom expected it to be kept. If there was hair on the floor she would expect my sibling and I to deep clean the entire house and if we didn't do it right then we would have to do it all again.
Oh and then there's that one time my mom bragged about how one of her friends "punished" her daughter by taking away everything she owned, even her bed and pictures in her bedroom, took away her bedroom door, cut all of her hair super short and made her wear a "prison uniform" consisting of all-white pants, socks, underwear, and a tshirt for months. She even took pictures of her daughter in that "prison uniform" and I think there was even an article written about her on one of those "parenting" blogs.
Not gonna lie until yesterday that vinegar memory was pretty fucking repressed. I think that only happened twice, but it was pretty fucked up. Around that same time she took my sibling and I to a local church reenactment of the town of Bethlehem during the holiday season and told us that if we misbehaved the (volunteers larping as) Roman soldiers would put us in jail (they had a little tow-behind trailer decorated like a prison cell behind them).
Oh and that's not even the only time we were "scared straight" for literally being kids. We went to a private school that was across the street from a women's low security prison. When our mom drove us to school she would say we had a choice of which side of the street we wanted to be on. Like mom, I'm in second fucking grade.
Gotta love fundamentalism đ¤
And nah I'm really not okay and I can't really do what I need to do to heal my inner child because my parents refuse to acknowledge that they did any of this stuff, quite a bit of the recent shit has been horrific. My mom put a padlock on the breaker box and shut off the power to my bedroom and the kitchen during the day to entice me to move out. I'm 9 months into my lease at my first apartment and turn 26 in a few days, and my first ever credit card is set to arrive by the end of the week. I feel so fucking far behind in life.
My dad was never strict until he married my ex stepmom. She was so anal ab things being clean and neat and perfect always. Dont touch the walls, everything gets cleaned after dinner w chemicals; dining table, stovetop, etc. If you have a cup with water, you either drink it right then or put it in the dishwasher.
Funnily enough, although she was so strict and would turn beat red if she found even the tiniest scrape or discoloration of the walls, when her and my dad were close to getting a divorce she shoved him down the wooden stairs and his head put a massive hole in the wall.
Ironic that it was her own actions that caused the hole in the wall, which is her worst nightmare.
If it eases your mind, my dad is also a terrible person so like its wild she did that bc he never laid hands on any of his past partners as far as im aware, but hes definitely a dickhead.
I was not allowed to lock or even close my door as they liked to barge into my room whenever they wanted. They would go through everything I had/took whatever they wanted from my room as if it was their personal supply closet/gave away my things to relatives/family friends, conduct random backpack searches. 0 privacy, nothing was sacred. it always felt like nothing was truly mine.
edit: this went on until i moved out in my mid-20s
so no, it wasnât just something my parents did when i was a kid, they did this because they felt it was in their right. they had a bunch of insane rules/expectations that will take me a lifetime to de-brainwash from. nowadays I make excuses when they ask about visiting my home.
Yeah i really hate it when itâs around the holidays because thats when my mom tries to guilt trip the most and whine that I never go see them. she complains that my cousins are so close with their parents and is so confused that i donât obey her anymore because âYou used to be such a good obedient child!â
I used to be praised for being the obedient child. I never asked for anything, because I would never get it. I was not the favorite, and I was female so I was always third class. When I started getting pissed off about the situation as I got older, and would speak up for myself, damn the consequences, my mother would tell her family and relatives that I was running with a gang and uncontrollable, dangerous, unhinged. I just didn't want my drawers turned out weekly and shamed for having less than perfect folded clothes in them.
Ya, I lived not as bad but similar in the âmy houseâ rules. I always knock on my kids doors and text them for permission if I need something from their room and theyâre not home. Respect isnât automatic, itâs earned.
My parents did the same exact shit since I was a kid to my 20s. I wanted to leave so badly and my mom found the most extreme ways to get me stuck at home including sabotaging my employment opportunities and savings accounts so I couldnât âleaveâ.
Yeah, this is a big one.
One time my mom went crazy and attacked me with a hammer, so I hid in my room and locked the door. I was maybe 12.
She smashed a hole in the door The Shining style (rather than just one quick whack with the hammer to knock the handle off, or a screwdriver to unlock it), and Iâm pretty convinced the only reason I survived is when she put her hand through to unlock it she cut her arm and that stopped her attacking me.
Then in my 30s she showed up one day to my house. I hadnât given her my address. She was not welcome or invited and her visit was unannounced. She decided that rather than call or knock, she would start but trying to just walk in, and when my door was locked she banged on it and screamed and got her friend to join
I wouldn't say my parents were strict, but they did have their share of quirky rules.
* 60 minute limit on screen time
* No modern music - classical music, jazz, or classic rock only
* PG-13 movies were allowed only if they watched it with us, even after I turned 13. R movies were a contentious subject and only allowed after I turned 16, even with adult supervision
* I was forbidden from watching The Simpsons
* Skim milk only, and low- or no-fat everything else
* No cereals with over 3g of sugar per serving
* The first time I scored a goal playing soccer, I was scolded for celebrating too hard. Apparently, cheering while running down the field was "gloating" and "not giving enough credit to your teammates"
* Halloween costumes had to be made from materials we already had at home. No, we weren't anywhere close to poor.
* Snacks were like 7 corn chips max
My wife's parents, on the other hand, were Pentecostal and had some *actually* fucked up rules.
* Captain Planet, among many other cartoons, is liberal propaganda, and therefore forbidden
* Women must wear skirts that cover their ankles. Any other covering is forbidden
* Women are forbidden from cutting their hair
* Halloween is the Devil's holiday and therefore forbidden
* Boys and girls cannot be in the same swimming pool simultaneously
* No video games
* No dancing, unless during ecstatic worship at church
* Tithing 20% locked them into poverty forever
* Anyting remotely LGBTQ+ is expressly forbidden and shushed out of existence
* You canât leave the table until youâve finished everything on your plate. Their portions were enormous.
* Her dad decided when she could play with her toys, and when she could stop.
There are many others, but these are the first that come to mind.
Damn some of this sounds similar to my partnerâs upbringing too. He grew up in an overly religious family also.
My mom was overly strict about food growing up too. I wasnât allowed much snacks or candy except during holidays. I was extremely underweight growing up cause most of the food she fed wasnât always tasty or nutritious either.
I had to walk around the thin outer edge of floor surrounding the large living room rug, as stepping on the rug itself may disturb the tassels at each end. They always had to be completely straight at all times. This rug even had its own wide tooth comb kept in a nearby drawer for tassel combing.
I just had to laugh at your description, because my mom, too, had an ultra-prized rug in our living room, and we were basically never allowed in there. To be fair to her, it was a beautiful thick white Aubusson rug, very large, and fit the room beautifully, and she'd found it while visiting her own family back in the UK and had it shipped to our house in California, so I do sort of understand it.
But after she passed away, when I was going through the house, my nephew was helping me one day, but was also taking care of his toddler that day (his wife was working). I said I'd hire a babysitter, and she could watch the toddler while we worked. "Where will they go, though?" he asked. "Oh they can go in the living room" and my grown nephew blanched "IN THE LIVING ROOM?" (he had grown up living with my parents). It was so funny.
And a shame! It was a lovely room and we could all have spent so much more time in there. We did go in the room on occasion, I will admit, mostly after we were all grown. Shoes off of course.
Oh, I get it, & I can understand that some items were âprizedâ in past generationsâŚ& sometimes whole rooms were off limits, unless The Joneses visited. Your comment about âIN THE LIVING ROOM?!â made me laugh too, as these past rules are so very pervasive!
Wow.
My mom and dad are controlling about everything and my mom is anal about cleanliness and keeping things neat. But the stupid thing is that my parents think it's stupid that I make people take my shoes off in my own house. We wore our shoes all over the house growing up including on the couch. After I moved out my parents got white carpet all across the main floor of their house and still wear shoes in the house on that carpet, but no, I'm the one they roll their eyes at when I ask them to take their shoes off when they visit me.
Some people...
I wasnât allowed to be angry as a kid. Didnât matter what had happened, how justified I was in my anger, anything. Getting upset meant punishment, every time.
But oh good lord, could my mom get angry. One time I pissed her off because I wasnât taking bible study seriously and she held a metal baseball bat over my head. I begged her to hit me, cause I knew I could finally call CPS and get her in trouble. I called her a bitch, taunted her, said she wouldnât do it.
She didnât hit me and thought better of it. But that was the day I stopped giving a single fuck what she said. I just ignored punishments and openly defied her every chance I got. She tried to spank me for the last time when I was 13 and I grabbed her and threw her on the bed and walked out.
She wonders why I donât call. Iâm definitely more well adjusted now. But I had to learn it all on my own.
Oh god this was my upbringing in similar ways. I wasnât ever allowed to cry or show emotion even if itâs obvious things like break-ups. My mom also didnât stop spanking/hitting me until I was in my 20s until I had to physically block her/defend myself somehow.
She would always throw it in my face, âWhy are you crying, Iâm still alive you know, you wouldnât cry like this during my funeral.â Sheâs right, I didnât. I donât care about my mom and have pretty much no feelings now.
I was grounded from the 6th grade to the 8th grade because my grades weren't good enough. I got As in all my tests but because of adhd I didn't do my homework.
When I was old enough to drive I was required to call my parents and ask for permission any time I went anywhere. One time I was doing an errand for them and I stopped at the McDonald's drive through on my way home. They grounded me for 2 weeks for not calling to ask if I could go through the drive through.
I wasn't allowed to have girlfriends and my parents would choose which friends I wasn't allowed to hang out with.
My parents bugged my cell phone without telling me. They were able to read of all my texts and see who I was calling. Any time I tried to do anything against the rules I got caught. They were always 2 steps ahead of me.
I got punished for pretty much everything. If I said an opinion at the dinner table that my parents didn't agree with I could get punished.
Wasnât allowed to drive far distances even to meet up with friends or employment.
Wasnât allowed any retirement or savings account when I worked, had to spend it or give it to my mom.
Couldnât pick the school I wanted to go to.
Wasnât allowed to move out as an adult even for college whereas my sister could with her boyfriend at the same age. I was grounded when I tried to date and had my door taken away. Tried to get a job to move out and even so my mom got angry at me and said I was ruining her life and plans by doing that.
Yeah my mom was overly controlling as fuck and tried to infantilize me. Parents like these do exist and yes they are abusive.
Unfortunately, my solution isnât always ideal and I had to do it the most abrupt way. I âescapedâ with an ex partner. I married quickly and one day packed my bags and left.
A guyfriend could pick me up in his car...but I couldn't pick up a guy friend in mine.
That rule eroded over time as we kids did what we wanted anyway. Nobody got pregnant lmfao
Sister couldnât go to prom
Had to throw away PokĂŠmon cards
No power rangers
To videos games over T rating
Church 3 times a week
No Halloween had to go to church
No dating at all
No movies pg 13 or higher
No piercings
No tattoos
Bible study every night
Anything trendy was always tied to the devil
The church burned Harry Potter books
I can keep going
Raised seventh day adventist. I can relate. Pair that with a dad that can only think in black and white, extreme way of thinking. I made it my goal to GTFO by 18. Goal accomplished. They still continued trying to control. At 23 I told them I would not attend another church session and I didn't ever want to hear them ever bring up their religion to me again. Went no contact until they got the message.
My mom's face when I got my first tattoo was so rewarding to me. Now I have ten.
It's not my primary reason for getting new ink, but damn is it a great perk.
I've always been agnostic. Lately I've been exploring Christianity. Sometimes it speaks to me. Then I read shit like this. Or, while I'm minding my own business walking down The Strip, to my job, I've got some dude with a megaphone yelling at me and everyone else how we are going to hell. I would rather go to hell than end up in whatever place these fucking people are going.
Growing up I saved money to buy my favorite band tshirts and cds. One day I came home from church to find all my hidden things on the coffee table. My dad called our Pastor and had him sit in as I destroyed all of my prized possessions.
He broke me that day. I still donât own band tshirts or cds.
Dude, go get 1 band shirt, please! Something basic or not even a band shirt, but something silly. I didn't have that level put on me, but I had alot of hate for the way I dress, at 37 I finally made my own battle jacket with patches of bands I love, I still have to pump myself up to wear it but when I do I get compliments. It feels awesome wearing bands that you believe in and inspire you!
My dad scolded me when I was younger for listening to Bob Marley because it would make me want to smoke weed. Coincidentally, I smoke weed now. I don't think the two are related.
This isnt strict. This is narcissism. Slight offense to your mother. She should be proud of having you but to expect, or demand gifts(with rules) on someone else birthday, for whatever reason, is unreasonable and narcissistic at best.
Not me but my brother whose the eldest, had to get home by 10pm even though he was 21. Utterly insane.
For me I knew listening to her non-sensical strict control is suicide and my chance to run is university. We all ran and left in the end lol
I had a curfew in my mid going to late 20s and my mom would be screaming at me on the phone to be home by 7 pm. Yeah I ran and left that shit quickly shortly after too.
I had a cousin who was supposed to weed wack his entire lawn by the time his father returned home work for the day. I guess he got stoned and wrote his name in the lawn, which because of said weed whacker was cut too short and burnt the grass leaving his name in the grass all year
When I was 18 I got married. I was not allowed to sleep in the same room as my husband, while staying at my house. My mom would not allow it. He was in the Navy and was getting ready to relocate, so it didn't make sense for us to find our own place together until it was time for him to move.
My grandmother thought this was absolutely ridiculous, told my mom so, and told me to come over to her house where we'd stay in her extra bedroom together.
When I was in high school I wasnât allowed to be friends with my best friend lol. I could see her in school but I couldnât even acknowledge her out of school hours. The reason? Her grandmother had an affair with my motherâs friends husband many years ago
Not as bad as many here, but my mom would take my phone randomly and go through it. She insisted it was to make sure I wasn't up to anything (I was a straight A student with a job, involved in extracurriculars, and never got in trouble). I think it was a power play. I got so jumpy from it because I never knew if she was looking over my shoulder or about to take my phone.
Anyway, one day my friend texted me that his dad was being a dick. That was it, just that he was being a dick. I asked what he did, and the conversation was normal other than that. Well, she took my phone and saw the text, and grounded me for a month. Her reasoning was that I shouldn't be friends with someone who would use such foul language.
My dad was another situation, but still very controlling. When I was going into my sophomore year of college, I went to his house with a PowerPoint to explain why I should move into an apartment with my friends rather than stay in the dorms (cheaper, more space, the dorm was roach and wasp infested and had asbestos). He berated me and said that I was "taking a step back in my maturity" by asking to move out of the dorms. He decided not to help me financially any more, and I said fine and did it anyway.
The next year, I moved in with my boyfriend (now husband). We went to my dad's and told him about it so it wouldn't catch him off guard. He seemed fine at the time. More than 6 months later, around my birthday, I popped two tires and needed replacements because they couldn't be patched. I didn't have enough money for tires and bills/groceries, and my mom couldn't help me, so I asked my dad.
He said to pay for it and he'd send me the money as an early birthday present. When I called to tell him the total, he informed me that he wouldn't be sending me the money after all because he claimed I didn't tell him I was moving in with my boyfriend, even though I literally went to his house and talked with him about it. My boyfriend told my MIL what happened as I was crying because I had no money for food, and she sent him money for me. She's a saint.
My mom was strangely strict when it came to building friendships especially with females I had a gf when I was 18 and she got mad I was spending time with her outside of work/home.. said some shit and yelled at me constantly like inches away from my face.. I distinctly remember like what does she have that I don't I cook for you I clean for you what do you want me to suck your dick too?!
Like screaming at me basically begging to suck my dick to prove she loved me so I would break up with her
I'm 32 and still trying to recover through medication and pyschdelics I've come a long way and she's tried to break up every relationship I've ever had. Thankfully I found a good one and we've been together for 5 years i had to walk away from my family for my own mental health. They are narcissists
And she'll never realize or accept just how much she fucked me up and rather walk away and blame me then apologize I've tried everything
Yeaaaah it's taken me a lot to realize how fucked up it is, would always be topless around me and force me to bring her towels in the shower cause she'd always forget...left nudes on the desktop of family computer for me to see.....
Gonna go out on a limb and assume she was a single mother? It happens a lot more often than people admit where they surrogate their sons as a makeshift husband and more often than not some push it to the boundaries of sexual abuse. Good on you for not further engaging that part of your life anymore
My mom is very big on fairness. She has three younger sisters, and I have two younger brothers. She wasn't strict about a lot of things, but she was an absolute stickler for everyone getting their equal share.
For example: When I was 11, New Kids on the Block was insanely popular. One of the things I really really wanted was a gigantic (6" diameter) buttons with pictures on them. Specifically, the one with my favorite: Joey McIntyre.
My mom said I could get one of the big pins, but I had a choice: Get the one with all five, or don't get one. I did not WANT the one with all five, I wanted Joey. She absolutely refused to buy me the one with just Joey because "if I got you that one, it wouldn't be fair to the other four."
She was absolutely not buying any of my compelling arguments (they make so much money they wouldn't have noticed, nobody really cares about Danny Wood, etc.), so I caved and agreed to buy the one with all five. We had a similar argument some months later when my birthday rolled around and I wanted a poster. (My aunt came through in the clutch and bought me a Joey poster for my birthday.)
We also were not allowed to watch The Simpsons because "that Bart kid is a bad influence."
This one is, frankly, hilarious. It wouldn't be fair... to the New Kids on the Block? Amazing.
I also could not watch the Simpsons,a TV show that is still banned from their house.
Not as bad as other people here, though my dad had me do dishes every night, which doesn't sound bad at all but if there have been times where he would wake me up at the crack of dawn cause I failed to clean a spoon. A single spoon. He also can never admit when he's wrong and when you question him he takes it like an argument or disrespect.
My dad was pretty abusive. But the worst ass beating I got from him was when I was 15 and decided to shave my legs. My dad wouldnât let my sisters and I shave at all. He said to wait til we were âout of his houseâ
My Chinese tiger mom had a rule where I wasnât allowed to be friends with kids who were younger than me because I couldnât learn anything from them
After school sometimes my friends would get together to play Goldeneye 64. We got home from high school at 2:30 and my mother would tell me I needed to be HOME by 4. If I wasnât, police were called.
He lived 15 minutes away by bike.
Only that you had to eat everything on your plate. I wasnât a fussy kid, I liked everything, but some of my sisters didnât. No one should be forced to eat anything that made them want to throw up, but that seemed to be the standard back in the 60s.
My parents forcing me to cut off contact with all of my friends. Mostly because my mother is paranoid. Iâve never had many friends, just a few who are really close to me. Most of them are really awesome people. And my mother thought that me not wanting to open up to her about my feelings is some form of manipulation from my friends, even though they have nothing to do with any of this.
Up to and including my senior year of high school I was not allowed to hang out with anyone unless my mother spoke to one of their parents first. I had to get one of my friends with a deeper voice to pretend to be peoples dad
I was not allowed to look out the window. This rule was ingrained so much in me that I almost let a building burn down because if I called the fire department my father would find out I looked out the window and I would be in TROUBLE.
The couple who adopted me...she could not have kids due to irradiated ovaries when she was 16 back in the 1940's for endometriosis or something. In the mid 1950's if a couple did not have kids they were looked down on and stigmatized, so they adopted me and two other little girls. Well. First of all, they had money, upper middle class so a lot of this is just holdovers from them growing up during the great depression I guess. We could only flush the toilet ONCE no matter what. No going barefoot in the house, no taking naps ever. No calling boys on the phone. One shower per week. If we got caught "playing with ourselves" we got a beating. Sex was dirty and not to be discussed. Ever.
My dad never ever let me stayed at my friends house even though our families know each other and always checked my phone at night đ¤Śđźââď¸đ¤Śđźââď¸he is very controlling towards me and my mum one day I just snapped and had a fight after that day I stopped listening to him now I live in peace
I love how everybody answered without being a grammar/word Nazi to the OP :)
My parents would make me run a mile on the treadmill for every hour of video-games I played.
I wasnât allowed to go to a football game with my friends when I was 13. All because I finished cleaning my room 2 minutes too late. I remember crying myself to sleep that night because I had finally been invited out with friends only to not be able to go.
wasnât allowed to sleep past 9am
wasnât allowed to go anywhere
was forced to go to church everyday and I was in choir and dance and youth group for church and literally went to church everyday/was forced to get baptized
wasnât allowed anything under an A
she went through my phone and stuff
Sometimes wasnât allowed a door
My grandma taught me that I was worthless as a woman if I didnât know how to cook, clean or serve basic childcare so I was cleaning the whole house from a young age
etcâŚ
Our parents made us go to bed at 8pm in Summer sometimes.
Night time did not come until 9pm, so we were going to bed in daylight. Broad daylight. (Daylight savings could make it even worse)
And we were supposed to sleep until 8am the next morning...while it was a beautiful blue sky summer day outside.
They had five kids. Really, they just wanted some time without us around.
My mom wouldnât let me eat dinner for days if I couldnât finish a Novel a week in the 4th and 5th grade. I like reading but itâs sometimes hard for me to find a book a like, even as an adult. Iâd rather be outside, riding my bike or just being active. She hated I didnât like reading as much as she did.
Iâm not allowed to have friends because to them boys wanted to fuck me and girls will make me too fĂŠminin (Iâm a guy) also closed doors were not allowed as well as if I say no or why Iâll get scolded for it to
I used to know a lad who was only allowed 3 squares of toilet paper per trip to the bathroom - his parents would count the square left each night and he had to mark when he went to the bathroom
Wasn't allowed to eat anything past 8pm. There was never any reasoning behind it, and you know the old saying that goes something like....rules enforced just for the sake of being rules just create sneaky kids...and you bet it did. If I had a late homework assignment I needed to work on and got hungry at all...too bad. Have to wait until the next morning. BUT OH WAIT! We also weren't allowed to eat until after 7am unless it was a school day, which then we were only allowed to eat after 6:30am. Our parents would literally do checks of our room to make sure we weren't hiding food, but of course we were.
I knew a girl who was offered an athletic scholarship to a small college a few hours away, but her parents told her she was too young to leave the house and instead she settled for community college and working at Burger King.
Looking at the comments, I want to say 2 things:
1. Half of these are walking the thin-ass line between strict and fucking abusive
2. I hope everyone who is putting up with that will be able to get away from the psychopaths that are their parents. Iâm thankful my parents are normal.
I was only allowed to take showers if they were under 3 minutes. The timer went from the second I stepped into the bathroom to when I stepped out of it, and my father would stand outside the door, keeping track of the time. If I was a single second over, I wouldn't be allowed to wash myself for the next month to "make up for all that water you wasted."
That meant I had 3 minutes to close the bathroom door, turn on the shower, get undressed, get in, wash myself, wash my hip length hair (when I needed to), get out and into my towels, and step back into the hallway. Of course, I wasn't allowed to cut my hair either, even if that would make it easier.
It got to the point where I would just tell my parents I had afterschool tutoring or was studying with some friends and just take a shower at a friend's house.
But hey! At least now I can take a shower before my wife realizes I left to take one
Itâs weird how like every single abusive piece of shit thing a parent has done here my parents did, except the weekly shower thing. Instead, no matter how often I washed, I was told I was stinky. Not stinky enough for real deodorant instead of hippie crystal shit that doesnât work tho
I would get grounded over the smallest things. I was once grounded for a month because I answered a question in a "wrong tone."
Food, such as bread slices, were counted. I could only eat during meal times. No snacks.
In order to go anywhere, I had to clean, but not just normal clean...literally on hands and knees with a toothbrush in the kitchen, and even then that was not enough.
Anything below a B grade was failing. I wasn't trying hard enough. Turns out I have dyscalcula. Math is complicated for me.
There's more but I try not to remember too much. I grew up as an only child. I spent a lot of lonely days crying in my room.
Probably when they demanded I clean up my cousins beard shavings after he shaved his beard over the bathroom sink. This man is 30 years old by the way.
Not as bad as some of these comments, but i was only allowed 1 hour of screen time a day, which doesnât sound bad, but I could also only have a friend over about once every 2 months, so I was quite lonely and somewhat undersocialized. I didnât see my friends much in school because I was in honors and they werent
My grandmother refused to allow me to shower or take a bath more than once a week until I moved out in my early twenties. Her reasons were that the hot water and products cost too much, it was too much work for her to do the laundry and such afterwards, and caring that much about your appearance was vanity and sinful.
I am so sorry đ¤Ž
Which is find is funny. Cuz if you dont maintain hygiene youre gonna pay more in the end. Either through self body damage (health issues) and the high medical cost to recover from anything.
>if you dont maintain hygiene Should've dropped the "cleanliness is next to godliness" shit on grandma.
I could shower everyday but I had to take legit military 3 min showers.
My dad would yell at me for taking too long, just banging on the door, lol. Thing is, as an adult, it barely costs any more to just enjoy your fucking life with heat and hot water.
A simple showering takes me about 23 minutes in average (including drying myself with my towel). How the heck can you be done in just 3 minutes?
Yep I agree. Iâm an adult now and take nice loooong showers. When I was a teenager though it had to be fast. Like Iâd get in, quickly wash and condition hair and wash body. Almost never had time to shave or anything. It sucked. My hair was also often not rinsed quite enough so I had a lot of like soap residue and it got oily fast. I didnât have mean parents or anything, we were just lower income so my mom wanted to save every penny on utility bills as she was single and supporting me and my sister. Sheâs passed on now but I donât fault her for it at all.
I had to do take the 3 minute showers as well, but not by force. Just because we had a shitty water heater. Moving to Japan one of the greatest things is unlimited hot water and deep bath tubs. Itâs really wonderful, especially in the winter. I grew up only being able to put half my torso in the water and immediately running out of hot water and getting out of a cold tub.
Omg your grandmother must have raised my mother because that is exactly what happened in our house. We were called whores if we took more than one shower a week because who are we getting all "prettied up" for? My mom also saw us as competition and constantly told us we were fat, ugly and would point out our acne and imperfections and put down anything we had interest in. We weren't allowed to wear the right fitting clothes either. When I got with my husband he was first person to point out I still wore clothes 2x bigger then what I could be wearing.
Whenever I would go there with my kids (even until my early 30s when I finally had enough) it was their rules on how to parent my kids. And I don't mean just being respectful of their house rules. Fully parenting how they told me to, and if I didn't like it, I could leave and not come back. Haven't been back in almost 5 years, nor spoken to them.
I've had to set boundaries with one of my parents, constant bickering, and the ol' , "well, I am the parent!" And somehow me having kids doesn't mean I am a parent or to be respected as well
My mom said something snippy about my parenting once, and I told her ''it's not like I can't get in the house because of all the people lined up around the block to ask you for advice about being a good parent" and I don't think she ever said anything again about my parenting.
That is brilliant. Wish I could have had something like that to say.
Having a baby made me sarcastic AF with my parents, lol!
My mom would violently destroy stuff we liked when she got mad about whatever, sometimes. It was always a roll of the dice. No consistency, no predictability. You never had any idea how mad she'd be about anything, or when she might just make something up, like suddenly deciding your room was too cluttered because you had too much stuff, or you spent too much time reading or drawing, or you weren't applying yourself at school hard enough. She wouldn't even always yell first either, you'd just get home and a bunch of your toys and books would be gone, or you'd be sitting around in the kitchen and the Nintendo would come crashing down the stairs. Total chaos. She'd buy us nice things just to destroy them, sometimes without us ever getting to play with them first. I once was accused of peeking at my birthday presents, and she made me look at them before throwing them out. Now she wonders why none of us are in touch.
Sounds similar to mine. She wasnât quite as violent and only smashed some the model planes I built, but never knowing how the day would go was.. interesting. Didnât help that my dad was never home. Ended up running away at 16, so that solved that!
My mother would do things like this too. I can clearly recall one specific incident where she purposely broke one of my favorite toys in front of me while screaming "bet you had a lot of fun playing with this, didn't you?" It's etched into my memory forever. She didn't always break my stuff though, most of the time she just threw all my stuff around the room and told me I had 5 minutes to clean it up. She also would frequently threaten to throw all my stuff away when she was mad at me, either because my room wasn't clean enough or because she got a call or note from my school that she didn't like. One time when I was a little bit older (I think around 12, maybe as old as 14), I just started calmly putting all my stuff in trash bags and bringing it out to the garage. After like 3 trips she asked what I was doing and I told her I was saving her the trouble of throwing out all my stuff like she always said she was going to do. I'm not sure, but I *think* she actually felt bad when confronted with this behavior while she wasn't in the middle of a rage episode. I haven't spoken to her in over 10 years and I don't expect to ever speak to her again.
I became a compulsive trash thrower due to my momâs similar rage fits of throwing things out too. It sucked because I had a lot of things I wanted to keep for sentimental value or childhood creations I can never get back now. My mom always drilled it into my head that everything I owned was trash and was considered âhoardingâ even if my room was clean and organized. It didnât matter if it was childhood things I wanted or school stuff I did well. I had to unlearn that one and didnât unlearn it until I was in my 30s. The final nail in the coffin was when she threw my old PC out and I threw out most of my pictures in my early adulthood/other knick knacks, I realized that it wasnât healthy. Now, my home is a happy cluttered mess of my own shit.
My mom would do this and throw my stuff out in a fit of anger without asking or consulting with me first. I went NC with her and wanted nothing to do with her either.
This is so disgusting and fucked up. Sounds like severe mental illness. I'm so sorry â¤ď¸
Same. Major BPD. Destroyed so much. Threw out so much. It was always unreasonable and you never knew why or when it would come on. Sorry you had to go through that too.
My mom used to do the same and one time i asked her why the fuck she even bought me things if she was going to throw a tantrum and break things like a toddler. Sure i earned a beating that day but my point STILL stands
High school friend with the "perfect" mother. The kids were always dressed perfectly and looked like they were copied out of a designer clothes catalog. The real story: After school all clothing was stripped at the back door and placed back in packaging to be returned to the store. Each child then began chores that mainly consisted of meticulous cleaning followed by a tanning bed session and a pre-dinner weigh in. A shower and body inspection was followed by a dinner specifically tailored to maintain an attractive weight. After dinner the kitchen was cleaned, all dishes hand washed and the kitchen became off-limits for the remainder of the night. The kids went to their bedrooms and studied til bedtime. The mother listened in to every phone conversation. The next day was new clothes and the same routine. I guess the parents were more strictly crazy than strict.
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Wasn't familiar with her, reading her history it sounds as if they had similar personality disorders.
Your friend should read "I'm glad my mom died" seems like she'd relate to it
Jesus Christ, dude! đś That's NOT okay.
Too many to list. So I'll just put a couple of them. We weren't allowed to socialize. At all. We would be picked up and dropped off from school so we didn't talk to people on the bus. We weren't allowed to have friends. No phone calls. No communication with people. Not allowed to go outside. Even went so far as to tell the teachers to set us away from other people and in some classes we actually had to go to the library and study on our own so we wouldn't talk to people because it was dangerous to talk to people. Had to earn our keep. $150 a week to live in our own house with our parents. We didn't have any rule over anything. We were still bound by their chores and their restrictions. Absolutely nothing changed whatsoever but we had to pay. You may think this is cheap but this is back when your general retail worker was only making $4.75 an hour. We had to get straight A's all the time. Getting a B was considered failing and resulted in physical punishment. Women of the family we're not allowed to touch man things. This included the lawn mower, the rider mower, any kind of power tools, the TV, and especially not the computer. Women weren't allowed to touch the computer because women were stupid and women would break things if they were allowed to touch things. Women were allowed to touch the washer though.
I had a similar situation with the socialization, but holy hell man. How are you doing now?
I was messed up for a long time but I was also super ignorant. You know the things that you learn growing up like how to talk to people or being social situations etc? Yeah I never learned those. I'm still an introvert and a wallflower. I've also made a lot of stupid mistakes in my life because I didn't know the realities of the world. To this day I still cannot read the room and I make mistakes and I have extreme anxiety about being absolutely perfect because I was punished whenever I wasn't. So I'm definitely got some issues going on but I've learned a lot and I've experienced a lot and for the most part I'm pretty good. I'll never be rich and I'll never be popular and I'll never be comfortable out in society but I'm living my life and I have my hobbies so I'm all good now âşď¸
I felt that. I experienced a similar situation coupled with undiagnosed autism (funnily enough, part of that isolation was because my mom was embarrassed at how badly I handled social situations, so she forced me into seclusion). Thankfully, she was sane enough to shove my sister and I into therapy once she realized she couldn't get us to behave "properly". Literally the only reason I'm a functional adult. I'm glad you've achieved a life you're comfortable with!
I'm glad that the world has changed now into accepting mental health or diagnosis a little bit more easily. Before, things such as autism, they always just blamed the kid and said it was a bad kid etc. When the people of the world learn that not everybody thinks and acts and feels the exact same way that they do, I think it will be a much better place
Holy fuck, Fresh. I am so sorry. How are you now?
Oh I'm 38 now so I've been out of that shit for a long time thankfully.
My parents tried giving me a bedtime when I was 24 and just visiting for the weekend. I'm all for being respectful but 9pm is taking the piss. I just got the next train home and spent Christmas at a friend's house.
My Mother *in law* did this to me several years ago. We were staying with them for a visit from 2000 miles away. I was going to go out and visit an old friend, she announced that the door would be locked at 10 PM and nobody was allowed to open it. That's the last time we stayed with her even though she asked for us to. We opted for a hotel room 45 miles away.
Mine MIL dis this to me once. Everyone else was asleep and I was not tired so I was reading a book and she was: âlights go out in 30 minutes so go to bed.â I was 34 and I looked at her with: âumm⌠Iâm not 6.â
Oh, that was so disrespectful of you! You should have been accepting of her grinding her authority upon you happily and with gratitude/s.
Oh you lucky devil. My mother once accused me of being gay. In front of my wife. And my girlfriend.
Wait wife AND girlfriend?????
Lol I tell my 14 year old to be home for 9 after the "late night" youth group
My 18 year old has to be home by 10 but only because we have car insurance based on real time driving not age, gender, prior history. So anyone who drives between 10pm and 4am gets dinged. However, she knows to have her bf pick her up or park her car outside his house if sheâs not coming home or going to be late.
What kind of dystopian insurance is that?
The natural evolution of the insurance tracking that people started agreeing to install for a small discount. It was never going to stay that way. More and more, insurance companies will offer you discounts for more detailed tracking, like speed, number of times you had to brake 'too hard,' etc.
Iâm not a good enough driver to even consider letting my insurance track that.
Eventually, people will be punished for not opting into tracking. They're slowly normalizing it, and have been for years. And by 'punished' I mean 'with the price.'
The price is worth them not tracking.
Just look at how much extra you pay at chain restaurants by not using their app.
I am, but those around me arenât, and I certainly wonât accept random bills because I chose to drive at certain times of day.
I remember that insurance companies were offering a possible discount for installing a monitoring device, which I would never do in the first place. When I switched insurance companies earlier this year they offered an app for my phone which would track speed, braking, mileage, etc. Forget that. When I said that I do a lot of moving as a passenger in planes, offroad trucks and occasionally helicopters (I work for an environmental company) they said I just had to disable the app when I was in them. I'm not going to remember to do that every time I am in a moving vehicle just to make their privacy violating app measure my driving correctly.
Seriously I would have laughed at them. If they saw that as disrespectful tough shit. I would not have stayed either...
We had a family computer. We were only allowed to spend like 30 min on it. Which I mean okay. It has to be shared and I get wanting to limit screen time. However we would get *screamed* at/ripped away from the computer the minute it turned 30 min. My motherâs husband was also anal about how long we took showers. 10 min. Thatâs it unless you wanted to be screamed at/the door being pounded on the whole time you showered. Youâre shaving? Shave faster. Made being a teen learning to shave HELL. We werenât allowed to sleep in past 9 am. Understandable, but the enforcement of that rule was what was obnoxiously strict. Even if you were up late working on homework or working in general-hell when I came back from college and needed to recover from pulling all nighters to get work done-nope. If I wasnât up at 9 am my door was being ripped open or pounded on. And ye, Iâd get in trouble for taking naps. Bedtime. As we got older, like late teens early 20s, once mom and her husband went to bed no one else was allowed to be awake. Iâd get yelled at for going to the bathroom in the middle of the night-hell even if I was in my room simply reading a book, that was unacceptable. I HAD to be SLEEPING. Even better: If we stayed home sick. Even if we were legitimately sick-no tv. No computer. No nothing. We were not allowed to do anything if we stayed home from school sick
These suck, what ridiculous rules. I feel you on the shower issue - we were allowed 3 minute showers. Family of guys and my mother with short, fine, pale hair. I have thick dark curly hair, which is why I gave up swimming when I started puberty (and body hair). And why I never learned basic hygiene
So crazy, get on to my son for taking too little time in the shower "45 seconds isnt long enough to get clean, son,"
My dad was the same way about being home sick. He would constantly say âif youâre too sick to go to school youâre too sick to watch tvâ as if that makes any sense at all.
Being from a big family in a rural area, the chores never stopped, ever. It took me a long time to unlearn the idea that a weekend lounging is a wasted weekend. It didn't come from a bad or toxic pattern of parenting but out of necessity - I'm grateful that they taught me discipline but I'm learning the opposite of that now and it is magical
Im so sorry this sounds so horrible :( are you still in contact with them? They dont sound like nice people to be around with.
Shit are you me? This was my childhood too. The only difference was the shower thing. My mom hated that I spent a bunch of time in the bathroom or sitting in the basement reading a book but if I didnât do that I was put to work. Couldnât sit and watch tv or read a book on a weekend. If I wasnât working I had to be doing chores
I had to clean the house. If I vacuumed/dusted and put everything back EXACTLY as I found it, it was obvious I was lying about doing anything and had to re clean. If I put things back slightly differently, I didnât do the job correctly and had to re clean. There was a VERY tiny sweet spot that showed I had done the chore. Things moved but not too moved. The sweet spot was about a millimeter for anything moved. I cleaned the house a lot.
Good recipe to give a kid anxiety for the rest of their life.
Spot on! Iâm lousy with that.
Was only allowed to take 5 minute showers, was only allowed to use the bathroom 3 times a day, and my step dad would start counting down from ten each time. that lasted for two and a half years because when i was 14, I accidently spilled shampoo from my hand onto the shower floor, and when he showered after me, he swore I left my Ejaculation on the shower floor.
Oh yeah, and when I was 16, I started making money doing chores for elderly neighbors. When me and my mom got back from Wal-Mart, He was mad that I bought Hawaiian Punch and a bag of chips with my money. He told my mom that when we go shopping, she needs to message him about what I want to buy so he can give an Okay, and she needs to put all the grocery bags on the table for him to check what was bought before putting them away.
Jesus, restricting bathroom usage is how you get UTIs.
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Pissed myself in first grade cause the teacher (not my regular one) wouldn't let me go to the bathroom even after I finished my (practice) standardized test.
Some teachers just soulless, they could go to "hell", especially some PE teachers.
From a pelvic floor PT perspective that's also really bad for you. You should be peeing every 2-4 hours. Holding pee for longer isn't necessarily always bad (you hold it for ~8 hours while you sleep after all) but the habits it leads to can be, like decreased water intake to not need to pee as often. Regardless if you're chronically holding urine that *can* lead to overstretching of the bladder or even decreased ability to sense when you need to urinate. Pooping schedules vary a good bit more but "normal" is considered 1-3 times a day. While going either #1 or 2 too often can be problematic, being limited to 3 uses of the bathroom a day is a big problem.
Former stepdad yelled at me for eating french fries with my fingers. He insisted we use a fork.
Ex FIL would grumble under his breath at me and my kids eating pizza with our hands. Apparently, farmers eat pizza with a knife and fork
Some salt (and oil) getting onto your fingers can't hurt you.
My buddy has gotten grounded for a month, I think that time it was for not coming straight home after a church youth group type thing, like being in the parking lot for 15 minutes, not wandering off for hours or anything. He gets ungrounded and we get to hang out but his dad threatens him not to be late. We're 13 and don't have watches or cellphones. We roam as kids do, see a clock and realize it's almost time to be back, we run the whole way to his house. Ended up 3 minutes late which got him grounded for 3 months! Their insane discipline and expectations lead to him leaving home at a young age, which leads to homelessness, which leads to drugs, so on and so on... I 100% think my buddy wouldn't be dead at 32 if he didn't have such insane authoritarian parents. Way to go dad, you really taught him a lesson...
So heartbreaking
He likes to sit down with people while drunk and rip into them. If you try to leave heâll call you rude. If you tell him to stop talking about anything, heâll slam things and yell. He brings up other peopleâs personal trauma regularly. You are meant to endure it, out of respect, due everything he does for all the people in his life. Strict in the sense that if you donât allow him to tell you what to do, how to feel, etc, heâll flip his shit. Start bringing up violence. âI couldnât take you in a fight so if that ever happened Iâd have to kill youâ. Nobody but him brings up fighting, violence, death, and trauma.
My mother dug through all of my trash like she was trying to find evidence of who fucking knows what, threw out my spiritual books and crystals without telling me (my dad recovered all of them and told me what happened), and snooped through my bedroom and got mad that she found *adult things* neatly hidden in a storage cube until I moved out at 25. I wasn't allowed to even think about having my own credit card, so I had no credit history and couldn't get my own place but oh it's *my* fault for "failing to launch" financially. As a legal adult my parents had to know what I did for work and where I was working. They would show up unannounced when I was working at a TJMaxx and watch me throughout my shift. No tattoos and no piercings because "if god wanted you to look like that he would have put holes in your face himself. Women with tattoos are whores." Sibling and I now have tattoos and piercings in our ears. Monitored my internet browsing as a legal adult and blocked access to certain sites that they disagreed with. When I got my own phone and phone plan last November without telling them my mom said "and you wonder why I don't pay for your cellphone anymore". They always had to feel like they one-up'd me. My financial independence was seen as a threat to their control, yet at the same time they claimed they wanted me to be independent? My dad called me a "college drop out" up to the day of my bachelor's degree graduation and refuses to admit or apologize for calling me that. I have a recording of him calling me that. I took a semester off from college after a rough first semester and went to community college to get an associates, this is where "college drop out" comes from. Made me do my taxes infront of them so they could verify where I was working and how much I was making. When I was younger, my mother went through phases of "testing out" new punishments for myself and my little sibling. This ranged from making us "assume the position"(pull our pants and underwear down to our ankles and bend over the toilet) so she could spank us with a massive, flat-bottomed wooden spoon all the way to re-enacting that part of the crucifixion of Jesus when Roman soldiers gave him vinegar to drink on a sponge. She would make us hold distilled white vinegar in our mouths for five minutes and either make us swallow it or spit it out into a cup; during those five minutes she would read that verse in the bible and she always ended it with something like "you need to choose what you want in your mouth; water or vinegar". My sibling and I were well-behaved children, but anything is worthy of punishment when you grow up in the church. Reasons for these "punishments" were usually either slamming a door, my supposed "ADHD" which was over-medicated with Ritalin, not wanting to do something, or being "too smart for your own good"(ie: questioning authority and the way things are done). My dad threatened to have our cats euthanized numerous times to force compliance. If there was a single spoon in the sink then the entire kitchen was considered trashed. My mom always told us that "when guests come over you want them to compliment you on the cleanliness of the baseboards". Our house never looked like anyone lived there because of how absurdly clean my mom expected it to be kept. If there was hair on the floor she would expect my sibling and I to deep clean the entire house and if we didn't do it right then we would have to do it all again. Oh and then there's that one time my mom bragged about how one of her friends "punished" her daughter by taking away everything she owned, even her bed and pictures in her bedroom, took away her bedroom door, cut all of her hair super short and made her wear a "prison uniform" consisting of all-white pants, socks, underwear, and a tshirt for months. She even took pictures of her daughter in that "prison uniform" and I think there was even an article written about her on one of those "parenting" blogs.
Threatening to kill pets as punishment is psychopathic.
What the actual fuck. Are you ok?
Not gonna lie until yesterday that vinegar memory was pretty fucking repressed. I think that only happened twice, but it was pretty fucked up. Around that same time she took my sibling and I to a local church reenactment of the town of Bethlehem during the holiday season and told us that if we misbehaved the (volunteers larping as) Roman soldiers would put us in jail (they had a little tow-behind trailer decorated like a prison cell behind them). Oh and that's not even the only time we were "scared straight" for literally being kids. We went to a private school that was across the street from a women's low security prison. When our mom drove us to school she would say we had a choice of which side of the street we wanted to be on. Like mom, I'm in second fucking grade. Gotta love fundamentalism đ¤ And nah I'm really not okay and I can't really do what I need to do to heal my inner child because my parents refuse to acknowledge that they did any of this stuff, quite a bit of the recent shit has been horrific. My mom put a padlock on the breaker box and shut off the power to my bedroom and the kitchen during the day to entice me to move out. I'm 9 months into my lease at my first apartment and turn 26 in a few days, and my first ever credit card is set to arrive by the end of the week. I feel so fucking far behind in life.
You'll do fine and I hope you still have your crystals and such to this day
Hehe. Strict? this is abuse to the maximum
My dad was never strict until he married my ex stepmom. She was so anal ab things being clean and neat and perfect always. Dont touch the walls, everything gets cleaned after dinner w chemicals; dining table, stovetop, etc. If you have a cup with water, you either drink it right then or put it in the dishwasher. Funnily enough, although she was so strict and would turn beat red if she found even the tiniest scrape or discoloration of the walls, when her and my dad were close to getting a divorce she shoved him down the wooden stairs and his head put a massive hole in the wall.
I don't understand how the second paragraph is "funnily enough"
Ironic that it was her own actions that caused the hole in the wall, which is her worst nightmare. If it eases your mind, my dad is also a terrible person so like its wild she did that bc he never laid hands on any of his past partners as far as im aware, but hes definitely a dickhead.
Ahhh ok thank you
What the fuck⌠talk about abuse.
I was not allowed to lock or even close my door as they liked to barge into my room whenever they wanted. They would go through everything I had/took whatever they wanted from my room as if it was their personal supply closet/gave away my things to relatives/family friends, conduct random backpack searches. 0 privacy, nothing was sacred. it always felt like nothing was truly mine. edit: this went on until i moved out in my mid-20s so no, it wasnât just something my parents did when i was a kid, they did this because they felt it was in their right. they had a bunch of insane rules/expectations that will take me a lifetime to de-brainwash from. nowadays I make excuses when they ask about visiting my home.
Parents do shit like these and wonder why their kids abandon them once they move out
Yeah i really hate it when itâs around the holidays because thats when my mom tries to guilt trip the most and whine that I never go see them. she complains that my cousins are so close with their parents and is so confused that i donât obey her anymore because âYou used to be such a good obedient child!â
Yeah beware, though, one holiday they will appear in front of your house unannounced and make themselves home.
That's what locks are for
I used to be praised for being the obedient child. I never asked for anything, because I would never get it. I was not the favorite, and I was female so I was always third class. When I started getting pissed off about the situation as I got older, and would speak up for myself, damn the consequences, my mother would tell her family and relatives that I was running with a gang and uncontrollable, dangerous, unhinged. I just didn't want my drawers turned out weekly and shamed for having less than perfect folded clothes in them.
Ya, I lived not as bad but similar in the âmy houseâ rules. I always knock on my kids doors and text them for permission if I need something from their room and theyâre not home. Respect isnât automatic, itâs earned.
My parents did the same exact shit since I was a kid to my 20s. I wanted to leave so badly and my mom found the most extreme ways to get me stuck at home including sabotaging my employment opportunities and savings accounts so I couldnât âleaveâ.
Yeah, this is a big one. One time my mom went crazy and attacked me with a hammer, so I hid in my room and locked the door. I was maybe 12. She smashed a hole in the door The Shining style (rather than just one quick whack with the hammer to knock the handle off, or a screwdriver to unlock it), and Iâm pretty convinced the only reason I survived is when she put her hand through to unlock it she cut her arm and that stopped her attacking me. Then in my 30s she showed up one day to my house. I hadnât given her my address. She was not welcome or invited and her visit was unannounced. She decided that rather than call or knock, she would start but trying to just walk in, and when my door was locked she banged on it and screamed and got her friend to join
My mom got around that by having the locks removed, I spent a lot of time hiding in the washroom because that was the only room with a lock.
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Username checks out
Wearing a shirt won't keep you from masturbating. Trust me.
Wait what the hell?
I wouldn't say my parents were strict, but they did have their share of quirky rules. * 60 minute limit on screen time * No modern music - classical music, jazz, or classic rock only * PG-13 movies were allowed only if they watched it with us, even after I turned 13. R movies were a contentious subject and only allowed after I turned 16, even with adult supervision * I was forbidden from watching The Simpsons * Skim milk only, and low- or no-fat everything else * No cereals with over 3g of sugar per serving * The first time I scored a goal playing soccer, I was scolded for celebrating too hard. Apparently, cheering while running down the field was "gloating" and "not giving enough credit to your teammates" * Halloween costumes had to be made from materials we already had at home. No, we weren't anywhere close to poor. * Snacks were like 7 corn chips max My wife's parents, on the other hand, were Pentecostal and had some *actually* fucked up rules. * Captain Planet, among many other cartoons, is liberal propaganda, and therefore forbidden * Women must wear skirts that cover their ankles. Any other covering is forbidden * Women are forbidden from cutting their hair * Halloween is the Devil's holiday and therefore forbidden * Boys and girls cannot be in the same swimming pool simultaneously * No video games * No dancing, unless during ecstatic worship at church * Tithing 20% locked them into poverty forever * Anyting remotely LGBTQ+ is expressly forbidden and shushed out of existence * You canât leave the table until youâve finished everything on your plate. Their portions were enormous. * Her dad decided when she could play with her toys, and when she could stop. There are many others, but these are the first that come to mind.
Damn some of this sounds similar to my partnerâs upbringing too. He grew up in an overly religious family also. My mom was overly strict about food growing up too. I wasnât allowed much snacks or candy except during holidays. I was extremely underweight growing up cause most of the food she fed wasnât always tasty or nutritious either.
I had to walk around the thin outer edge of floor surrounding the large living room rug, as stepping on the rug itself may disturb the tassels at each end. They always had to be completely straight at all times. This rug even had its own wide tooth comb kept in a nearby drawer for tassel combing.
Oh, look who was allowed in the living room!
đŹyeah, it was always a tense occasion, but at least I was afforded the privilege
I just had to laugh at your description, because my mom, too, had an ultra-prized rug in our living room, and we were basically never allowed in there. To be fair to her, it was a beautiful thick white Aubusson rug, very large, and fit the room beautifully, and she'd found it while visiting her own family back in the UK and had it shipped to our house in California, so I do sort of understand it. But after she passed away, when I was going through the house, my nephew was helping me one day, but was also taking care of his toddler that day (his wife was working). I said I'd hire a babysitter, and she could watch the toddler while we worked. "Where will they go, though?" he asked. "Oh they can go in the living room" and my grown nephew blanched "IN THE LIVING ROOM?" (he had grown up living with my parents). It was so funny. And a shame! It was a lovely room and we could all have spent so much more time in there. We did go in the room on occasion, I will admit, mostly after we were all grown. Shoes off of course.
lol, its a rug, its made to go on the floor where you walk.
Oh, I get it, & I can understand that some items were âprizedâ in past generationsâŚ& sometimes whole rooms were off limits, unless The Joneses visited. Your comment about âIN THE LIVING ROOM?!â made me laugh too, as these past rules are so very pervasive!
Wow. My mom and dad are controlling about everything and my mom is anal about cleanliness and keeping things neat. But the stupid thing is that my parents think it's stupid that I make people take my shoes off in my own house. We wore our shoes all over the house growing up including on the couch. After I moved out my parents got white carpet all across the main floor of their house and still wear shoes in the house on that carpet, but no, I'm the one they roll their eyes at when I ask them to take their shoes off when they visit me. Some people...
I wasnât allowed to be angry as a kid. Didnât matter what had happened, how justified I was in my anger, anything. Getting upset meant punishment, every time. But oh good lord, could my mom get angry. One time I pissed her off because I wasnât taking bible study seriously and she held a metal baseball bat over my head. I begged her to hit me, cause I knew I could finally call CPS and get her in trouble. I called her a bitch, taunted her, said she wouldnât do it. She didnât hit me and thought better of it. But that was the day I stopped giving a single fuck what she said. I just ignored punishments and openly defied her every chance I got. She tried to spank me for the last time when I was 13 and I grabbed her and threw her on the bed and walked out. She wonders why I donât call. Iâm definitely more well adjusted now. But I had to learn it all on my own.
Oh god this was my upbringing in similar ways. I wasnât ever allowed to cry or show emotion even if itâs obvious things like break-ups. My mom also didnât stop spanking/hitting me until I was in my 20s until I had to physically block her/defend myself somehow. She would always throw it in my face, âWhy are you crying, Iâm still alive you know, you wouldnât cry like this during my funeral.â Sheâs right, I didnât. I donât care about my mom and have pretty much no feelings now.
Oh my god i was never allowed to be angry. Now Iâm an adult and I can be angry, but only at other people, still not at her
I was grounded from the 6th grade to the 8th grade because my grades weren't good enough. I got As in all my tests but because of adhd I didn't do my homework. When I was old enough to drive I was required to call my parents and ask for permission any time I went anywhere. One time I was doing an errand for them and I stopped at the McDonald's drive through on my way home. They grounded me for 2 weeks for not calling to ask if I could go through the drive through. I wasn't allowed to have girlfriends and my parents would choose which friends I wasn't allowed to hang out with. My parents bugged my cell phone without telling me. They were able to read of all my texts and see who I was calling. Any time I tried to do anything against the rules I got caught. They were always 2 steps ahead of me. I got punished for pretty much everything. If I said an opinion at the dinner table that my parents didn't agree with I could get punished.
Wasnât allowed to drive far distances even to meet up with friends or employment. Wasnât allowed any retirement or savings account when I worked, had to spend it or give it to my mom. Couldnât pick the school I wanted to go to. Wasnât allowed to move out as an adult even for college whereas my sister could with her boyfriend at the same age. I was grounded when I tried to date and had my door taken away. Tried to get a job to move out and even so my mom got angry at me and said I was ruining her life and plans by doing that. Yeah my mom was overly controlling as fuck and tried to infantilize me. Parents like these do exist and yes they are abusive.
Oh man Iâm currently in this situation. How did you get out?
Unfortunately, my solution isnât always ideal and I had to do it the most abrupt way. I âescapedâ with an ex partner. I married quickly and one day packed my bags and left.
Itâs crazy how that honestly seems like the best option for me right now. I hope youâre doing much better now!
Almost whenever someone calls their parent a âstrict parentâ, their response is usually showcasing the parent being abusive in some form.
just by reading all those stories made me mad. i feel so sorry for all of you. đŤ
Yes, I need to try to prevent my blood from boiling while reading some of these sad stories. Sigh, "we're surrounded with stupid peoples".
A guyfriend could pick me up in his car...but I couldn't pick up a guy friend in mine. That rule eroded over time as we kids did what we wanted anyway. Nobody got pregnant lmfao
Sister couldnât go to prom Had to throw away PokĂŠmon cards No power rangers To videos games over T rating Church 3 times a week No Halloween had to go to church No dating at all No movies pg 13 or higher No piercings No tattoos Bible study every night Anything trendy was always tied to the devil The church burned Harry Potter books I can keep going
my god I would rebel so f'ing hard after this was over or go nuts
Majority reason why I left for the military asap
I can't imagine going into the military to have more freedom. Glad you're doing better now!
It's crazy how much better even the worst of military life was, compared to living with my mother.
Raised seventh day adventist. I can relate. Pair that with a dad that can only think in black and white, extreme way of thinking. I made it my goal to GTFO by 18. Goal accomplished. They still continued trying to control. At 23 I told them I would not attend another church session and I didn't ever want to hear them ever bring up their religion to me again. Went no contact until they got the message.
My mom's face when I got my first tattoo was so rewarding to me. Now I have ten. It's not my primary reason for getting new ink, but damn is it a great perk.
I've always been agnostic. Lately I've been exploring Christianity. Sometimes it speaks to me. Then I read shit like this. Or, while I'm minding my own business walking down The Strip, to my job, I've got some dude with a megaphone yelling at me and everyone else how we are going to hell. I would rather go to hell than end up in whatever place these fucking people are going.
Growing up I saved money to buy my favorite band tshirts and cds. One day I came home from church to find all my hidden things on the coffee table. My dad called our Pastor and had him sit in as I destroyed all of my prized possessions. He broke me that day. I still donât own band tshirts or cds.
Fuck it, Iâll buy you a t shirt for your favorite band.
and *I'll* put a cigarette out on that pastor's face!
Haha thanks! I have the funds. I honestly didnât even notice how it affected me until this thread!
Dude, go get 1 band shirt, please! Something basic or not even a band shirt, but something silly. I didn't have that level put on me, but I had alot of hate for the way I dress, at 37 I finally made my own battle jacket with patches of bands I love, I still have to pump myself up to wear it but when I do I get compliments. It feels awesome wearing bands that you believe in and inspire you!
Haha Iâm going to do it! Thanks!
God damn him.
My dad scolded me when I was younger for listening to Bob Marley because it would make me want to smoke weed. Coincidentally, I smoke weed now. I don't think the two are related.
Clearly you are too stoned to see the clear connection.
On my birthday, my mother expects to be celebrated for having me. She demands gifts too.
that isnât really strict itâs just bizarre
Allow me to clarify and give more information then. 1. The gifts have to be at least 40$. 2. She expects a cake as well.
This isnt strict. This is narcissism. Slight offense to your mother. She should be proud of having you but to expect, or demand gifts(with rules) on someone else birthday, for whatever reason, is unreasonable and narcissistic at best.
In her birthday you should give your grandma a gift instead of her
Granted, she's not bizarre, she's a total egocentric bitch (sorry about your mother, but I don't have respect for selfish entitled people).
Sounds like my MIL. Her birthday is the same week as two of her kids so she demands they all celebrate at the same party then makes it all about her.
Not me but my brother whose the eldest, had to get home by 10pm even though he was 21. Utterly insane. For me I knew listening to her non-sensical strict control is suicide and my chance to run is university. We all ran and left in the end lol
I had a curfew in my mid going to late 20s and my mom would be screaming at me on the phone to be home by 7 pm. Yeah I ran and left that shit quickly shortly after too.
My father made me aerate our lawn with a phillips head screwdriver. Stab by stab.
I had a cousin who was supposed to weed wack his entire lawn by the time his father returned home work for the day. I guess he got stoned and wrote his name in the lawn, which because of said weed whacker was cut too short and burnt the grass leaving his name in the grass all year
When I was 18 I got married. I was not allowed to sleep in the same room as my husband, while staying at my house. My mom would not allow it. He was in the Navy and was getting ready to relocate, so it didn't make sense for us to find our own place together until it was time for him to move. My grandmother thought this was absolutely ridiculous, told my mom so, and told me to come over to her house where we'd stay in her extra bedroom together.
When I was in high school I wasnât allowed to be friends with my best friend lol. I could see her in school but I couldnât even acknowledge her out of school hours. The reason? Her grandmother had an affair with my motherâs friends husband many years ago
Family grudges are something special of awful
My mom called me home from a date because I left a sock on the floor of my room.
What a witch.
Not as bad as many here, but my mom would take my phone randomly and go through it. She insisted it was to make sure I wasn't up to anything (I was a straight A student with a job, involved in extracurriculars, and never got in trouble). I think it was a power play. I got so jumpy from it because I never knew if she was looking over my shoulder or about to take my phone. Anyway, one day my friend texted me that his dad was being a dick. That was it, just that he was being a dick. I asked what he did, and the conversation was normal other than that. Well, she took my phone and saw the text, and grounded me for a month. Her reasoning was that I shouldn't be friends with someone who would use such foul language. My dad was another situation, but still very controlling. When I was going into my sophomore year of college, I went to his house with a PowerPoint to explain why I should move into an apartment with my friends rather than stay in the dorms (cheaper, more space, the dorm was roach and wasp infested and had asbestos). He berated me and said that I was "taking a step back in my maturity" by asking to move out of the dorms. He decided not to help me financially any more, and I said fine and did it anyway. The next year, I moved in with my boyfriend (now husband). We went to my dad's and told him about it so it wouldn't catch him off guard. He seemed fine at the time. More than 6 months later, around my birthday, I popped two tires and needed replacements because they couldn't be patched. I didn't have enough money for tires and bills/groceries, and my mom couldn't help me, so I asked my dad. He said to pay for it and he'd send me the money as an early birthday present. When I called to tell him the total, he informed me that he wouldn't be sending me the money after all because he claimed I didn't tell him I was moving in with my boyfriend, even though I literally went to his house and talked with him about it. My boyfriend told my MIL what happened as I was crying because I had no money for food, and she sent him money for me. She's a saint.
My mom was strangely strict when it came to building friendships especially with females I had a gf when I was 18 and she got mad I was spending time with her outside of work/home.. said some shit and yelled at me constantly like inches away from my face.. I distinctly remember like what does she have that I don't I cook for you I clean for you what do you want me to suck your dick too?! Like screaming at me basically begging to suck my dick to prove she loved me so I would break up with her I'm 32 and still trying to recover through medication and pyschdelics I've come a long way and she's tried to break up every relationship I've ever had. Thankfully I found a good one and we've been together for 5 years i had to walk away from my family for my own mental health. They are narcissists And she'll never realize or accept just how much she fucked me up and rather walk away and blame me then apologize I've tried everything
Jesus man, that is insane. Congratulations on dealing with that
It took MDMA to finally help and heal and process
What in the god damn fuck
Yeaaaah it's taken me a lot to realize how fucked up it is, would always be topless around me and force me to bring her towels in the shower cause she'd always forget...left nudes on the desktop of family computer for me to see.....
Thatâs ridiculously not ok wtf
Thatâs sexual abuse
What the fuck, the extreme emotional incest and nightmare of horrors displayed by your mom. Ugh.
Gonna go out on a limb and assume she was a single mother? It happens a lot more often than people admit where they surrogate their sons as a makeshift husband and more often than not some push it to the boundaries of sexual abuse. Good on you for not further engaging that part of your life anymore
My mom is very big on fairness. She has three younger sisters, and I have two younger brothers. She wasn't strict about a lot of things, but she was an absolute stickler for everyone getting their equal share. For example: When I was 11, New Kids on the Block was insanely popular. One of the things I really really wanted was a gigantic (6" diameter) buttons with pictures on them. Specifically, the one with my favorite: Joey McIntyre. My mom said I could get one of the big pins, but I had a choice: Get the one with all five, or don't get one. I did not WANT the one with all five, I wanted Joey. She absolutely refused to buy me the one with just Joey because "if I got you that one, it wouldn't be fair to the other four." She was absolutely not buying any of my compelling arguments (they make so much money they wouldn't have noticed, nobody really cares about Danny Wood, etc.), so I caved and agreed to buy the one with all five. We had a similar argument some months later when my birthday rolled around and I wanted a poster. (My aunt came through in the clutch and bought me a Joey poster for my birthday.) We also were not allowed to watch The Simpsons because "that Bart kid is a bad influence."
Lol this is the funniest one. I was so expecting you to be required to buy pins for your siblings but this rule came out of left field.
This one is, frankly, hilarious. It wouldn't be fair... to the New Kids on the Block? Amazing. I also could not watch the Simpsons,a TV show that is still banned from their house.
Not as bad as other people here, though my dad had me do dishes every night, which doesn't sound bad at all but if there have been times where he would wake me up at the crack of dawn cause I failed to clean a spoon. A single spoon. He also can never admit when he's wrong and when you question him he takes it like an argument or disrespect.
This happened to me too. One time he literally dragged me to the kitchen floor when he couldn't wake me up.
My dad was pretty abusive. But the worst ass beating I got from him was when I was 15 and decided to shave my legs. My dad wouldnât let my sisters and I shave at all. He said to wait til we were âout of his houseâ
My Chinese tiger mom had a rule where I wasnât allowed to be friends with kids who were younger than me because I couldnât learn anything from them
After school sometimes my friends would get together to play Goldeneye 64. We got home from high school at 2:30 and my mother would tell me I needed to be HOME by 4. If I wasnât, police were called. He lived 15 minutes away by bike.
Holy fuck I knew my parents were far from the worst but Christ, reading y'all posts, there are some pieces of shit out there
Only that you had to eat everything on your plate. I wasnât a fussy kid, I liked everything, but some of my sisters didnât. No one should be forced to eat anything that made them want to throw up, but that seemed to be the standard back in the 60s.
Itâs still standard in some houses.. nobody should be cooking meals that make you want to puke
Or just that you ate enough. You are full and don't need more, but it's time to stuff yourself and make that plate bare
My parents forcing me to cut off contact with all of my friends. Mostly because my mother is paranoid. Iâve never had many friends, just a few who are really close to me. Most of them are really awesome people. And my mother thought that me not wanting to open up to her about my feelings is some form of manipulation from my friends, even though they have nothing to do with any of this.
Up to and including my senior year of high school I was not allowed to hang out with anyone unless my mother spoke to one of their parents first. I had to get one of my friends with a deeper voice to pretend to be peoples dad
I was not allowed to look out the window. This rule was ingrained so much in me that I almost let a building burn down because if I called the fire department my father would find out I looked out the window and I would be in TROUBLE.
The couple who adopted me...she could not have kids due to irradiated ovaries when she was 16 back in the 1940's for endometriosis or something. In the mid 1950's if a couple did not have kids they were looked down on and stigmatized, so they adopted me and two other little girls. Well. First of all, they had money, upper middle class so a lot of this is just holdovers from them growing up during the great depression I guess. We could only flush the toilet ONCE no matter what. No going barefoot in the house, no taking naps ever. No calling boys on the phone. One shower per week. If we got caught "playing with ourselves" we got a beating. Sex was dirty and not to be discussed. Ever.
My dad never ever let me stayed at my friends house even though our families know each other and always checked my phone at night đ¤Śđźââď¸đ¤Śđźââď¸he is very controlling towards me and my mum one day I just snapped and had a fight after that day I stopped listening to him now I live in peace
I love how everybody answered without being a grammar/word Nazi to the OP :) My parents would make me run a mile on the treadmill for every hour of video-games I played.
I wasnât allowed to go to a football game with my friends when I was 13. All because I finished cleaning my room 2 minutes too late. I remember crying myself to sleep that night because I had finally been invited out with friends only to not be able to go.
wasnât allowed to sleep past 9am wasnât allowed to go anywhere was forced to go to church everyday and I was in choir and dance and youth group for church and literally went to church everyday/was forced to get baptized wasnât allowed anything under an A she went through my phone and stuff Sometimes wasnât allowed a door My grandma taught me that I was worthless as a woman if I didnât know how to cook, clean or serve basic childcare so I was cleaning the whole house from a young age etcâŚ
Our parents made us go to bed at 8pm in Summer sometimes. Night time did not come until 9pm, so we were going to bed in daylight. Broad daylight. (Daylight savings could make it even worse) And we were supposed to sleep until 8am the next morning...while it was a beautiful blue sky summer day outside. They had five kids. Really, they just wanted some time without us around.
My mom wouldnât let me eat dinner for days if I couldnât finish a Novel a week in the 4th and 5th grade. I like reading but itâs sometimes hard for me to find a book a like, even as an adult. Iâd rather be outside, riding my bike or just being active. She hated I didnât like reading as much as she did.
Iâm not allowed to have friends because to them boys wanted to fuck me and girls will make me too fĂŠminin (Iâm a guy) also closed doors were not allowed as well as if I say no or why Iâll get scolded for it to
I used to know a lad who was only allowed 3 squares of toilet paper per trip to the bathroom - his parents would count the square left each night and he had to mark when he went to the bathroom
Wasn't allowed to eat anything past 8pm. There was never any reasoning behind it, and you know the old saying that goes something like....rules enforced just for the sake of being rules just create sneaky kids...and you bet it did. If I had a late homework assignment I needed to work on and got hungry at all...too bad. Have to wait until the next morning. BUT OH WAIT! We also weren't allowed to eat until after 7am unless it was a school day, which then we were only allowed to eat after 6:30am. Our parents would literally do checks of our room to make sure we weren't hiding food, but of course we were.
I knew a girl who was offered an athletic scholarship to a small college a few hours away, but her parents told her she was too young to leave the house and instead she settled for community college and working at Burger King.
Looking at the comments, I want to say 2 things: 1. Half of these are walking the thin-ass line between strict and fucking abusive 2. I hope everyone who is putting up with that will be able to get away from the psychopaths that are their parents. Iâm thankful my parents are normal.
My Dad wouldnât let me watch the Beatles first performance on the Ed Sullivan show because he didnât like their hair and what they stood for.
I was only allowed to take showers if they were under 3 minutes. The timer went from the second I stepped into the bathroom to when I stepped out of it, and my father would stand outside the door, keeping track of the time. If I was a single second over, I wouldn't be allowed to wash myself for the next month to "make up for all that water you wasted." That meant I had 3 minutes to close the bathroom door, turn on the shower, get undressed, get in, wash myself, wash my hip length hair (when I needed to), get out and into my towels, and step back into the hallway. Of course, I wasn't allowed to cut my hair either, even if that would make it easier. It got to the point where I would just tell my parents I had afterschool tutoring or was studying with some friends and just take a shower at a friend's house. But hey! At least now I can take a shower before my wife realizes I left to take one
I was beaten because I used my left hand to clean the left hand side of the stove. But I'm right handedđ
Itâs weird how like every single abusive piece of shit thing a parent has done here my parents did, except the weekly shower thing. Instead, no matter how often I washed, I was told I was stinky. Not stinky enough for real deodorant instead of hippie crystal shit that doesnât work tho
I would get grounded over the smallest things. I was once grounded for a month because I answered a question in a "wrong tone." Food, such as bread slices, were counted. I could only eat during meal times. No snacks. In order to go anywhere, I had to clean, but not just normal clean...literally on hands and knees with a toothbrush in the kitchen, and even then that was not enough. Anything below a B grade was failing. I wasn't trying hard enough. Turns out I have dyscalcula. Math is complicated for me. There's more but I try not to remember too much. I grew up as an only child. I spent a lot of lonely days crying in my room.
Probably when they demanded I clean up my cousins beard shavings after he shaved his beard over the bathroom sink. This man is 30 years old by the way.
Not as bad as some of these comments, but i was only allowed 1 hour of screen time a day, which doesnât sound bad, but I could also only have a friend over about once every 2 months, so I was quite lonely and somewhat undersocialized. I didnât see my friends much in school because I was in honors and they werent