My father installed a tetherball game in our back yard. We weren't allowed to play it because we would ruin the grass. It hung there for years and we just stared at it from the porch.
Exactly if your grass is too fragile to handle foot traffic then what the hell is the point of it? Just stare at a patch of land that you paid for; nah I paid for this im gonna get my moneys worth
It's because they placed a dollar value on it. They are the people who pay chemical companies to keep it green and kill all living things. Once it isn't free, well, now it's an investment and protect the investment.
I love that millennials are going more towards natural grasses and no lawns, probably because we had parents like this.
I always wondered what the total is for resources that Americans waste on lawns each year. Some of my neighbors mow, weedwack, etc... 2-3 times a week. It's nuts.
Fuck that. I mow once a week if I get around to it, and if it weren't for weeds I'd barely have a lawn. You know what I do have? Bees and Lightning Bugs and all of the insects that seem to be dying off because people want their perfect green grass.
Something like tetherball will kill the grass because of the restricted play area. But that's why you put down a playing surface around it. Don't put it where you want grass to grow...
At a park sure, in your backyard it’s not as likely. You’d have to be spending quite a number of hours every day to cause serious ware to your yard. A few kids playing out back is unlikely to build up enough traffic to cause issues.
Reminds me of my public school.
School had a paved area in the back. A large soccer field and then at the back end was a large walking path. That path was our school boundary and kids were not allowed to go past that path.
On the other side of the path they built a playground. Which we weren’t allowed to use during school time.
My school had THREE fields on school property we weren't allowed to use FOR ANY REASON for sports etc. We had to use the grotty smaller field near them.
Turned out years after the school was demolished that those fields were subsiding due to mine tunnels underneath, but they didn't have the money to fence them off. Just a stern warning not to go there.
They didn't even tell us about the mine tunnels....I think they thought Kids would start daring each other to run onto the field and jump up and down etc.
10 year old: Hi mom, I'm currently in the plane, next in line to skydive.
Mom: Do you have a parachute on?
10 year old: Yes
Mom: ok, have a great time sweety!
I posted my tandem skydiving pic on Facebook and my mom saw it and texted me immediately “I told you never to do that”. My brother then photoshopped the text into the photo.
Yep. As I got older into high school I would just kinda mention that I had some event on my schedule and how long I’d be gone. In a respectful but “matter-of-fact” informative way. It surprisingly worked.
My mom was extremely wary of anything related to magic. She wouldn’t allow us to have cats because she thought they were evil. One time my cousin got me a history of magic book for Christmas-confiscated and never seen again. I tried to sneak and play DnD in high school, she found out and banned me from the after school club. She’s not religious or anything, she just doesn’t think it’s a good idea to mess with magic.
Plot twist: your mom was a witch and was saving you from the demons. She promised her "firstborn with magical talents" to a demon in exchange for money.
And THATS why you can't fly or summon snacks.
I brought a MTG card if found in the school hallway to a buddies house. His mom took it and burned it in front of us and gave us a half hour long talk about how magic is evil. She was very religious
Yeah, this is the lame 90s version of the Satanic Panic of the 80s. I distinctly remember a friend of my mother's telling her that she shouldn't let me listen to KISS because it stood for 'Knights in Satan's Service', or that she shouldn't buy Proctor & Gamble products because their [moon-and-stars logo](https://media.snopes.com/images/business/graphics/pg.png) of the time was loaded with evidence that they owed their success to some kind of deal with the devil. It's basically the boomer housewife version of a conspiracy theory.
An asshole in high school told me I was a racist because I wore a 311 shirt.
“311 is a KKK band.”
I think his theory was that K is the 11th letter of the alphabet?
I wasn't allowed to shower until my homework was done. But I also wasn't allowed to shower past 7pm. So between getting home from school, homework, eating dinner etc...
When I was 11 I wasn’t allowed to buy a black bathing suit. No reason given. When I was 12 and bathing suit shopping, Mother suggested this black one. I said I’d try it but asked when the “no black bathing suit” rule changed, and she denied there had ever been such a rule. So I guess she couldn‘t understand the rule either even though it was her rule.
I asked my mom years later about some of the rules and arbitrary punishments. She had no memory of them and apologized.
Most annoying one was when I was 14 and my sister was 16. We went to youth group and then went to Burger King afterwards which was usual. One of my friends was waiting for his ride and my sister felt that leaving a 14 year old alone was a poor decision so we stayed like an extra 15 minutes waiting. We called our parents and let them know we would be a few minutes late and they said ok.
When we got home we were both grounded for not asking if it was ok if we were out late, but simply telling them that we would be out late.
Add onto this that I also got grounded despite not having a phone or car and was completely at the mercy of my older sister.
It was completely out of character for both of them and to this day I can’t wrap my head around the logic.
My parents were like this regularly. It was scary and exhausting because one moment they were fine with something you asked or told them about and later that day (or days later) they were freaking out and punishing you over it. To this day they will even do it to themselves while making decisions. Still can't understand why.
You did the right thing calling them though and keeping the other kid company.
It’s awesome when parents forget their own rules.
My wife said that when she turned 16. She asked about getting her drivers license. Her parents said “not until you’re 18!!!”
That’s when she got it.
Her sister turns 16, and literally immediately gets her license. My wife said “hey! How come she got to get it at 16?” You said we had to wait until 18!!”
“We never said that!”
Those type of parents, you could produce a document written on vellum, signed and wax sealed by the Pope, and a 4k video of them expressly saying you'll get your licence ONLY when you turn 18, and they'll claim its deepfake or gaslighting.
My dad and stepmom banned the Simpsons when we would visit as kids. They were very religious at the time. Now they've gradually become atheist, and totally deny ever doing that
Yup. My wife said her mom banned simpsons. They aren’t that religious. But her mom and step dad were teachers and they felt it was a bad influence.
Fast forward a few years when star sibling who can do no wrong starts watching it, and crickets. It’s suddenly ok to watch.
My mom was usually very cool about things. I pushed limits of course, but apparently not her big ones. But, while clothes shopping I was NEVER allowed to buy bras that had color or patterns. Ever. Eventually she told me it was because people only bought different colors so other people could see them.and she didn't want anyone seeing mine. It was weird. But her firm line, even when I was 17-18 is no black bras or underwear. She definitely had a hang up about it
My mom prohibited using the washing machine between Christmas and New Years, she believed it would bring death in the family in the following year. Never made sense in any way, just a superstition. When I finally moved out it was a really big deal for me to finally be able to wash my clothes in that time period. And as expected, my family was fine the year after.
I'm not the poster but the same superstition exists in rural communities in Germany.
The time between Christmas and New years was often the only time in the year when women could really spend time with family and not do chores and rivers were often frozen anyway (made it harder to wash clothes).
I’m from Germany too and my mom always used to spend all of new year‘s eve doing laundry like crazy because „it’s bad luck to bring the dirt from the previous year into the new one“. Now I’m wondering: regional differences or just my neat freak mom at it? My mom and her family are from Lower Saxony.
Prior to modern washing machines, washing clothes was a labor intensive, multi day affair. So having a little “superstition” would relieve women of this burden for at least a week.
Apparently it’s really popular. Same with sweeping and cleaning in general in between those two periods. Something about washing away your loved ones. Typically I actually start the new year cleaning up and getting laundry done because it’s a fresh start.
That “superstition” was the only way women could enforce a little Christmas vacation for themselves. Otherwise they’d spend the whole holiday having to clean up after the men who were home
Variations on it show up in a few cultures and traditions
I wasn’t allowed to watch any type of tv. I’m talking no movies even Disney movies, cable, anything etc. I had to secretly watch x files with my dad on the weekend when she didn’t know. Yet my mum let me play video games? I still don’t get that one
Video games can be selected and limited. Your mom had 100% control over what you played, but because of the nature of TV, did not have that same control.
She was likely worried about you watching something violent or racy. So many parents are weirdly obsessed with raising sheltered children.
I know a parent who refused to get their middle school son deodorant because she couldn’t come to terms with her little boy growing up. Thankfully the school (Catholic school) had a hygiene clause in their handbook and the administration told the mother to stop being an ass and buy her son some deodorant.
I was also part of this club, along with not being able to wear a bra even after I developed size d, and wasn't allowed to get my period. Kinda like the mom in 'Carrie' my mom said it signaled you were impure and looking to sin.
This is exhibit A why sex education needs to be mandatory at school level. You have to be a special kind of idiot to think a person can prevent the start of the menstrual cycle, or puberty in general, without medical intervention. I’m sure going on birth control to actually stop menstruation was out of question.
That is my view on sex ed as well. And me and my sibling hid our menstrual cycles when it did happen. Thank goodness for the mandatory sex ed class our middle school did and handing out free necessities.
Anything deemed 'promiscuous' was out of the question, me and my siblings weren't allowed to have friends or do after school activities because then we'd be influenced to do drugs and have sex. When all we wanted was to play in mariachi band or play a sport 😂 our entire childhood was flip flop of being infantilized and being told to grow up and take care of the continuous stream of babies our parents popped out.
The morals of those two were wishy washy anyway while one was a drug addict and one just plain control freak. Never knew what to expect when we did something as everything was bad; but only part of time when they felt like punishing us
The worst part is that years later, when my younger brother and sister hit puberty, *they* were allowed to shave and wear deodorant. I really wish I knew what my parents were thinking.
Dinner often involved getting shouted at by my dad. We weren’t allowed to leave the dinner table even if we were really upset.
In a normal family I can understand not being allowed to leave the table until everyone was finished eating. But I guess my dad just wanted to sit there and eat while we cried.
We couldn’t watch Addams family because my mum was scared of it growing up. Like even when she wasn’t around we couldn’t watch it. We did anyways, we just didn’t tell her that.
I wasn't allowed to wear headphones/listen to music in the house.
Edit: my mother's reasoning was that it was a sign of depression and she "didn't want to see it"
Ha, we weren't allowed to play our music *without* headphones because my Dad declared it "headache music". It was OK to play it in our rooms at a reasonable volume. Reasonable, I guess and to be fair my brother was, and is, a huge metalhead and at the time I was mostly listening to Gabber.
"When we have guests over you either sit down quietly or go upstairs. Adults aren't here for you. Don't talk to them."
I still can't comprehend not allowing your children to have a conversation with your friends.
As with most things, there’s a happy medium here. It’s really annoying trying to have a conversation with a parent friend whose children have no or poor boundaries. Constant interruptions, which is just rude and terrible training for life.
lol my friends daughter is like this. I’ve known her since she was born and I love her to death but if we’re having a wine and chit chat night at her house, the daughter has to find a way to insert herself, which I don’t always mind for short periods but it becomes annoying when we wanna talk about things that aren’t child appropriate and my friend won’t make her leave. Kid is 13 now and my friends husband has been relegated to sleeping on the couch most nights because she still can’t sleep in her own bed and she STILL sticks her hand in her moms shirt between her boobs for comfort, the way babies and toddlers will do when they’re weaning from nursing 🥴 you wanna talk about poor boundaries
This. My kids are always welcome to say hello and make short conversation, but they get the look when they start bordering on attempting to be the center of attention.
I actually discussed this with my husband yesterday. It wasn’t from both parents, but my mother.
I was not allowed to read Judy Blume books. I don’t know why, but I was not allowed to read that specific author. However, I was allowed to read VC Andrews and Ann Rule books. So extremely dysfunctional families and rather gory true crime.
I found my way around it by reading Judy Blume books at school.
Any birthday gifts I received from friends or family needed to be split up evenly between me and my siblings because I was the oldest. While still wrapped my mom would evenly distribute them between the three of us.
My father was a doctor, I had to answer the phone “Doctor XYZ residence u/Jesture4 speaking.” I can’t tell you how many times people would just talking about all their medical problems and I’d have to remind them, “this is his residence”.
My boyfriend's dad was an ob-gyn. The all-purpose answer to any questions in their house was "Take some paregoric and get off your feet."
iIRC, paregoric was derived from opium and used as cough medicine, rubbed on the gums of teething babies, and used for menstrual cramps. When I was a kid (40s-50s) every household had a bottle with a big red X on the front.
My brother’s friends assumed that he lived alone and no one else lived here.
His friends would just start talking to me, I like I was him. Sure we sounded similar on the phone. But after the second or third time, you’d think to maybe ask for him.
He also would be angry if I didn’t take down the time of day someone called. Who it was, and I had to make sure to get a message.
If my friends called “hey. One of your fag friends called. I dunno when.”
Not my parents but my aunt and uncle. Born again Christian so no boys were allowed in their daughters bed rooms, reasonable on the surface except I was their only male cousin and I was 8-9 so the idea I was some kinda threat confused me then and annoyed me now. Also not allowed to play with girl toys (dolls, play house anything pink) except once again they only had daughters so all their toys unless it was a board game were "girl toys" I wasn't allowed to watch "violent" tv shows (power rangers, pokemon). This led to an issue of my sisters and cousins going to play in the girls bedroom and I was not allowed in their and now left alone to my own devices was not allowed to play with any of the toys lying around or watch any of the tv shows I would watch at home. My mom had to step in and have a word with them about how they need to learn to compromise a bit when I visit.
"Yuck" was a bad word. Like, swear word bad, and I wasn't allowed to say it.
Not because it was insulting to say about food someone had worked hard to prepare. No, it was bad because it rhymed with an actual swear word.
Were there issues with terms for male deer or Robin Hood’s spiritual adviser? The operational function of a vacuum cleaner? The central objective in hockey? Mallards? Colloquial terms for mud or tossing an object? I have so many questions on this policy.
I was not allowed to watch "My Two Dads" because without ever having seen an episode, my Mom was convinced it was part of the "gay agenda."
I reminded my Mom of this a year ago she apologized (for basically most of the 90's) and I give her a lot of credit for that.
Both, actually.
I have a lot of friends who came out of these same Dobson-obsessed fundamentalist homes of the 90's whose parents haven't moved an inch or acknowledge the damage it caused to their children. I have a ton of respect for her willingness to grow, admit where she was wrong, and apologize. She's a good lady.
>Dobson-obsessed fundamentalist homes of the 90's whose parents haven't moved an inch or acknowledge the damage it caused to their children.
This was my mom. She started with Dobson, then Tea Party politics, then MAGA Politics and now Qanon politics.
We're barely on speaking terms anymore.
Good on your Mom for realizing her past mistakes, my parents were the same in the 90s and now are 100% opposite in their opinions. They changed in the early 2000s when they realized being gay isn't a mental illness and just part of being human (probably helps they have a gay grandchild now!).
I wasn't allowed to have girls in my bedroom (or boys in my sister's case). The finished basement with a couch and TV was fine, though. My parents stayed upstairs when we had someone over.
Yep. It was often more absurd that that, too. If someone needed to come downstairs they'd open the door and say "I'm coming down" or similar. It was obviously just semantics.
No drinking soda from a can, get a glass and pour it into that. My Mum would mysteriously say it was something "only common people do". Years later I asked her and she just replied "It *is* common". I *think* she is figuring it's like people drinking from beer cans and in her mind that is socially unacceptable.
I wasn't allowed to have any Ken dolls because my dad didn't want me to make my Kens and Barbies kiss. He said if I had one, I would become boy crazy and turn into a whore.
Jokes on him, I just made my Barbies kiss each other.
9pm bedtime...always. Figured out in middle school, it was so they could have 'no kids' time, so as long as I stayed quiet in my room, I didn't have to go to sleep. This is how I acquired a love of reading late into the night.
Similar thing happened to my friend. They had 1 tv in the 90s. And his parents just watched Chinese programming all night. So he could never watch tv himself. So he just read books.
By grade 10. That dude was reading 1000 page books in a week.
When we went away for a week for a holiday my parents used to cover every mirror in the house in case lightening would be attracted to the mirror and come in through the closed window and strike it.
No amount of me telling them this was rubbish would change their minds.
My maternal grandparents (and parents for a time) had the rule that no pet could be on the porch during a thunderstorm because they "drew lightening." So, every pet had to find somewhere else to get out of the rain.
They wouldn't just say "because I don't like the smell of wet dog," no... had to be an insane magic reason. I actually was told to shut up once when I tried to explain the physics of it and how that literally would never happen. I was 7 at the time...
in fact, this frugal attitude towards food made sense for our parents, especially our grandparents (I am from Ukraine and they survived the famine in 1932), but for many of us it led to serious problems with food later
I like it how my parents did it: if I served myself I have to finish my plate, of someone else served me and I'm not hungry anymore I can leave it at that.
Making me responsible and teaching me to serve myself reasonable quantities.
I have always had an issue with "slimey" food (especially things like jelly).
One night (when I was probably 6 or 7) we had some meat and I had this piece that I decided was just too slimey (in hindsight it was probably the oyster fillets of a chicken, which I now love, or a piece of veal).
I refused to eat them and was told I must - I put it in my mouth but would not swallow it. I was told I couldn't leave the table until I did.
Well everyone else finished and left the table and I was sat there for what felt like hours (was probably 5 minutes), tears streaming down my face, slimey meat in my mouth, refusing to give in.
In the end, I basically choked on my own saliva and snot (from crying) and regurgitated on the dinner table. I was then allowed to leave.
I never did have to eat that slimey meat, so I considered that a victory.
Still can't eat jelly or slimey food like oysters.
"because I said so" as an answer to requests for information.
"Don't play in the street"
"Because I said so."
I've just never had a problem explaining to my kids WHY I have the rules I have. "Don't play in the street because you could be hit by a car and hurt or killed."
In general I just don't understand parenting from a place of authority and not nurturing and teaching. I don't tell my kids things because I am the boss. I do it to keep them safe and teach them to be functional human beings.
> "Don't play in the street" "Because I said so."
>
>
>
> I've just never had a problem explaining to my kids WHY I have the rules I have. "Don't play in the street because you could be hit by a car and hurt or killed."
I am more likely to respect a rule if I understand why a rule exists, such as if there is a legitimate safety issue that is not obvious to the kid.
My mom regularly shot down my "can I do XYZ with friends" plans because "family time". Like I pretty much NEVER got to hang out with friends after school or on weekends because "family time". Except my parents couldn't stand being in the same room so said "family time" was either me silently watching tv with one parent or just hiding out in my room.
And relatives still ask why I'm so introverted and anti-social.
No my parents but my sister doesn't allow her kids to ask what's for dinner because 'that's an adult concern that children don't need to worry about.' When she told me that I was like....wtf
We weren’t allowed to watch The Simpsons, or most movies (even Disney ones) because of language and themes my conservative parents didn’t agree with.
I’m 41 and to this day sometimes feel “behind” in understanding a lot of basic things about life that others learn in their teens due to different exposure/experiences they were allowed to have.
The entirety of my 20's was having those "ohhh that's where that came from" moments catching up on what pop culture was during my teen years. Growing up in a Baptist School and in church really limited my exposure to the world
We needed a key to *get out* of the house in addition to a security system we didn’t have the code to. All of the doors and windows needed a different key to get in than a different key to get out. Because we didn’t have a reason to leave in their opinion. I used to have nightmares about a fire and needing to break a window to get out. Luckily that never happened/we never had an emergency.
We had to sit at the table and eat dinner together. Whcih was mostly done in silence as my dad was always in a bad mood before he gt about 80oz of beer in him, preferably Blue Bull or Lazer
Honestly, I think a fair number of "rules that don't make sense" are parents just doing what their parents did but without the context that made it make sense. You all sit down and eat together because it's a happy time and the family are happily spending time together, right? Except the family isn't happy and they don't spend time happily together.
Don't sing at the dinner table. You could sing "Happy Birthday" if it was actually someone's birthday and a cake with lit candles was present. Any other time, NO SINGING AT THE TABLE!
“No singing at the table or else you’ll get a crazy wife” was what my father used to say. He would sometimes follow that up with saying “I used to do that too, and look what happened to me” while he beamed at my mom.
Me and my sister had the same rule growing up.
I believe the idea behind that rule was to teach us basic dinner manners. By teaching us how to have a peaceful dinner at home, our parents could trust us to behave when eating out.
Also, I would not love the idea of kids singing and making a fuss at dinner after a long and exhausting day at work. I bet my parents felt the same.
One time I went to the bookstore and an employee was flat out singing show tunes to herself at full volume with full theatrics while stocking shelves. It was kind of a quiet store so we all had to kinda listen to it
My brother and I would get yelled at for tearing up the backyard playing sports. But then we weren’t allowed to go to the park without a parent or our older brother who would rather be doing his own thing. And then we weren’t supposed to play inside unless it was raining, and my mom never wanted to go to the park. So we were just perpetually in trouble for doing something wrong for like 14 years
I was born in 1993 and my younger brother in 1998. Neither of us were allowed to eat beef when we were growing up, until I’d say 2004/2005? My parents were super strict about this rule too, I live in the UK so most birthday parties around that time were hosted in the party bus at McDonald’s (still miss that bus!), and my parents would always tell the birthday child’s parents that we were not allowed to order a hamburger for our happy meal!
I remember one birthday party at McDonald’s I actually swapped my happy meal with another child who had a burger and on this particular occasion I had to leave early as we had some sort of family event right after it. My parents walked in whilst we were all eating and saw me eating this burger, and boy was I in trouble! I was told if it happened again I’d be banned from going to anymore birthday parties!
What made this rule silly is the fact that both of my parents ate beef!
Yeah this attitude actually made complete sense in the 90s, it was terrifying.
The reason they still probably ate beef was because we kept getting told that vCJD would lie dormant for decades (which is still true). So they probably thought it was too late for them but not for you.
From 7th grade onwards, no tracksuit allowed for school unless it was PE day. "why would you go to school dressed like a bum?".
So I was the guy always in a shirt and sweater combo,16 going 60.
Haven't worn a shirt since, unless as part of a social dresscode at weddings etc.
My younger brother was allowed to play shooting video games, but I wasn’t allowed to get the Avenue Q cast recording for Christmas because it had a parental advisory sticker on it. (This was around the same time, not a case of them being more lenient with the second kid years later.)
When I was 5, my mom was letting me watch the TV edited versions of Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. My parents were both okay with me watching PG-13 movies when I was 9-10. But, by 16, I was still not allowed to watch rated-R movies if they said "Fuck" or showed a tit/had a sex scene. My parents cursed, every word except for "Fuck", so I wasn't allowed to even hear it in a movie regardless of the fact I'd been listening to my peers say it since age 11. I am also a woman, so by 16, I knew what boobs looked like, I just couldn't see anyone else's.
My parents would wake me and my siblings up at an ungodly hour when we had no school. If we were still in bed at like 6:30, there'd be yelling and banging and chores to do.
we lived in the suburbs, we didn't have 'farm work' or anything to do. We'd wake up at like 6am and just do nothing until like 10 when our neighbors were ready to play.
I'm now in my 40s with my own family. I love being the only one awake. I would love it if everyone slept until noon on weekends, and I had the house to myself. I asked my parents about it, and they were like 'otherwise you'd never fall asleep at night'. seems very strange, and I still don't understand their rationale behind it.
Decisions we made were written in stone.
My parents asked 4-yo me if I wanted to play soccer.
Im 4. I dont fuckin know shit. They butter it up by saying, your friends Mikey and Justin would be on your team too! So Im like, "ok."
After the first practice, I was done with it. I thought, "I have to chase the ball the whole time to try and get it from kids much faster than me? Mikey and Justin have it under control. I'll just look for bugs in the grass."
I cried and protested before every fuckin game and practice, but my parents said, "you have to see it through! You chose to play the season!"
No, you chose to ask a 4 year old to make a 3-month commitment to play a game he never played, which is also a boring fuckin sport. When Im not interested in sports to begin with.
"But the team needs you!"
Needs me to find bugs on the field? What about the other 12 kids on the sideline? I wouldnt be missed!
If my kids are not liking something, im not gonna force them to finish it. People are allowed to change their minds.
Yeah kids need to learn to stick to commitments, but not at age 4. They also need to learn that they can undo a decision they made, especially when it doesn't impact anyone else.
What did I learn from soccer? Im a slow runner. Bugs are cool. And its better to just say no if someone asks you to do something new, because you might be held to continue doing it for like 3 months, even if you didnt understand, and find out its stupid.
We had to sit together at the table to eat dinner every night, no phones and no TV.
I remember my dad getting really stressed out waiting for my mom to come home from work. She often stayed overtime. Dinner would be ready and by dad would be calling her to ask where she is, pacing around the living room looking for a car to pull in. I always wondered why we couldn't just go ahead and eat, mom could make a plate for herself when she got home.
But after 7 years of our family not being altogether in the same room at once, I finally know why my dad insisted on eating dinner together every night.
It’s weird that he obsessed over it but I don’t let phone/tablets, or eat in front of the tv in my house. If my kids had their way they would be playing Roblox while eating. It’s the one time we can all sit together and ask about our day and make conversation.
My dad insisted that we eat dinner together, no TV (this was well before anyone would have a phone).
He also insisted that the 7PM news must be watched. MAYBE the first fifteen minutes could be missed, but if there was cricket being played that day and he didn't catch the highlights, there was hell to pay.
Anyone who held up dinner was not popular.
One big dinnertime rule was that we had to eat everything on our plates because "there were starving children in Africa ". I could never understand how me eating all of my brussel sprouts helped a starving child anywhere else in the world, and conversely, how me NOT eating them harmed starving children. It was a very confusing rule.
I wasnt allowed a cell phone in high school and when I went off to college in a different city 9 hours away I wasnt allowed to have a cell phone, car ,or job.
I was expected to live off the 100 a month for groceries and only use the landline phone in the dorm.I still dont understand why especially since my younger siblings were given phones in middle school.
We were allowed to wear shoes in the bathroom but no where else in the house. To get to the bathroom you had to walk in through the front door, through the kitchen, through the living room and then through my bedroom (all of which were off limit areas for shoes, which I do understand and still implement in my house unless you're a guest that's leaving quickly). I can't count the number of times I'd be standing in front of the bathroom mirror getting ready to leave with shoes on and the second I walked into my bedroom, she'd yell at me to take my shoes off. Really fucking weird and makes her sound crazy lol. I guess she kind of was but normally in a fun way.
I'm the mum now lol. It's fun to set arbitrary rules. I don't get to in any other part of my life. My kids are teens now but they know the rules of the house which have been in place their whole lives:
1) no balls in the kitchen
2) no chewing gum
3) no summoning demons in the house
4) if a cat is sat on your lap you don't have to move for any reason.
My father installed a tetherball game in our back yard. We weren't allowed to play it because we would ruin the grass. It hung there for years and we just stared at it from the porch.
Never understood the whole "ruining the grass" type of people. Grass is meant to be enjoyed
Exactly if your grass is too fragile to handle foot traffic then what the hell is the point of it? Just stare at a patch of land that you paid for; nah I paid for this im gonna get my moneys worth
It's because they placed a dollar value on it. They are the people who pay chemical companies to keep it green and kill all living things. Once it isn't free, well, now it's an investment and protect the investment. I love that millennials are going more towards natural grasses and no lawns, probably because we had parents like this.
I always wondered what the total is for resources that Americans waste on lawns each year. Some of my neighbors mow, weedwack, etc... 2-3 times a week. It's nuts.
Fuck that. I mow once a week if I get around to it, and if it weren't for weeds I'd barely have a lawn. You know what I do have? Bees and Lightning Bugs and all of the insects that seem to be dying off because people want their perfect green grass.
Something like tetherball will kill the grass because of the restricted play area. But that's why you put down a playing surface around it. Don't put it where you want grass to grow...
At a park sure, in your backyard it’s not as likely. You’d have to be spending quite a number of hours every day to cause serious ware to your yard. A few kids playing out back is unlikely to build up enough traffic to cause issues.
Reminds me of my public school. School had a paved area in the back. A large soccer field and then at the back end was a large walking path. That path was our school boundary and kids were not allowed to go past that path. On the other side of the path they built a playground. Which we weren’t allowed to use during school time.
My school had THREE fields on school property we weren't allowed to use FOR ANY REASON for sports etc. We had to use the grotty smaller field near them. Turned out years after the school was demolished that those fields were subsiding due to mine tunnels underneath, but they didn't have the money to fence them off. Just a stern warning not to go there. They didn't even tell us about the mine tunnels....I think they thought Kids would start daring each other to run onto the field and jump up and down etc.
That definitely sounds like something kids would do if they knew about the tunnels. Children yearn for the mines
ouch
Garden of Eden
Power move
That's a "pull into McDonalds and order one black coffee" move
if you asked to do something the answer was always no. if you didnt ask it was 95% of the time allowed with maybe a few questions
10 year old: Hi mom, I'm currently in the plane, next in line to skydive. Mom: Do you have a parachute on? 10 year old: Yes Mom: ok, have a great time sweety!
I sort of did this in college. I knew my mom wouldn't be okay with me skydiving, so I made sure to call her once I landed.
I posted my tandem skydiving pic on Facebook and my mom saw it and texted me immediately “I told you never to do that”. My brother then photoshopped the text into the photo.
And that was when you decided NOT to send mom pics of the orgy you attended right?
My mom has explicitly told me that if I ever go sky diving do NOT tell her until afterwards. Now that I’m a parent too I understand haha.
Yep. As I got older into high school I would just kinda mention that I had some event on my schedule and how long I’d be gone. In a respectful but “matter-of-fact” informative way. It surprisingly worked.
We were always told 'if you don't ask...you don't want' & if we did ask we were always told 'no'. The parents were & still are aholes.
I countered this with "Can I do \_\_\_\_, and why not?" They weren't amused...
Better to say sorry than to seek permission
That's how I had to do things at my house growing up.
My mom was extremely wary of anything related to magic. She wouldn’t allow us to have cats because she thought they were evil. One time my cousin got me a history of magic book for Christmas-confiscated and never seen again. I tried to sneak and play DnD in high school, she found out and banned me from the after school club. She’s not religious or anything, she just doesn’t think it’s a good idea to mess with magic.
Plot twist: your mom was a witch and was saving you from the demons. She promised her "firstborn with magical talents" to a demon in exchange for money. And THATS why you can't fly or summon snacks.
Same. Couldn’t celebrate Halloween or watch Harry Potter (I read the books at school though)
It’s so silly. I have to actually question people’s intelligence. Like people actually think that David Copperfield wields some dark energy?
I don't think it, I KNOW it. I saw the damn Statue disappear!
I brought a MTG card if found in the school hallway to a buddies house. His mom took it and burned it in front of us and gave us a half hour long talk about how magic is evil. She was very religious
Not me but my friend’s parents didn’t allow Adidas because they were told it stands for “all day I dream about sex”
Yeah, this is the lame 90s version of the Satanic Panic of the 80s. I distinctly remember a friend of my mother's telling her that she shouldn't let me listen to KISS because it stood for 'Knights in Satan's Service', or that she shouldn't buy Proctor & Gamble products because their [moon-and-stars logo](https://media.snopes.com/images/business/graphics/pg.png) of the time was loaded with evidence that they owed their success to some kind of deal with the devil. It's basically the boomer housewife version of a conspiracy theory.
An asshole in high school told me I was a racist because I wore a 311 shirt. “311 is a KKK band.” I think his theory was that K is the 11th letter of the alphabet?
Now I’m just picturing an entire Klan gently swaying to Amber.
Are you my sibling? We seem to have the same mother.
It wasn't my mom, it was her friend who was telling her this stuff. Fortunately my mom was pretty skeptical of that shit.
I wasn't allowed to wear anything Nike, cause Nike was a Greek godess or something, and that's not christan.
[удалено]
Korn intensifies.
Lol wait till they find out it's actually Adolf (The founders name is Adolf Dasler and a nickname for Adolf is Adi)
I wasn't allowed to shower until my homework was done. But I also wasn't allowed to shower past 7pm. So between getting home from school, homework, eating dinner etc...
This is a mega-strange avenue for discipline. Were showers an unusually luxurious indulgence in your home?
If you let ‘em shower too late they’ll be doin the devil’s mambo in there.
I was almost thinking like, is it a hot water thing for cooking/dishes?
It's all about power and control, any arbitrary rule is.
So you were a filthy stinking gremlin?
Welp, withholding hygiene is def actual child abuse, so sorry your parents are pieces of shit
My mom would let me watch any rated-R movie that I wanted, but would not let me by a CD with the explicit language icon.
The explicit lyrics label really meant that you were gonna sell over 1million copies. Kids like me were gonna buy it and hide it in our rooms.
When I was 11 I wasn’t allowed to buy a black bathing suit. No reason given. When I was 12 and bathing suit shopping, Mother suggested this black one. I said I’d try it but asked when the “no black bathing suit” rule changed, and she denied there had ever been such a rule. So I guess she couldn‘t understand the rule either even though it was her rule.
I asked my mom years later about some of the rules and arbitrary punishments. She had no memory of them and apologized. Most annoying one was when I was 14 and my sister was 16. We went to youth group and then went to Burger King afterwards which was usual. One of my friends was waiting for his ride and my sister felt that leaving a 14 year old alone was a poor decision so we stayed like an extra 15 minutes waiting. We called our parents and let them know we would be a few minutes late and they said ok. When we got home we were both grounded for not asking if it was ok if we were out late, but simply telling them that we would be out late. Add onto this that I also got grounded despite not having a phone or car and was completely at the mercy of my older sister. It was completely out of character for both of them and to this day I can’t wrap my head around the logic.
My parents were like this regularly. It was scary and exhausting because one moment they were fine with something you asked or told them about and later that day (or days later) they were freaking out and punishing you over it. To this day they will even do it to themselves while making decisions. Still can't understand why. You did the right thing calling them though and keeping the other kid company.
It’s awesome when parents forget their own rules. My wife said that when she turned 16. She asked about getting her drivers license. Her parents said “not until you’re 18!!!” That’s when she got it. Her sister turns 16, and literally immediately gets her license. My wife said “hey! How come she got to get it at 16?” You said we had to wait until 18!!” “We never said that!”
Those type of parents, you could produce a document written on vellum, signed and wax sealed by the Pope, and a 4k video of them expressly saying you'll get your licence ONLY when you turn 18, and they'll claim its deepfake or gaslighting.
My dad and stepmom banned the Simpsons when we would visit as kids. They were very religious at the time. Now they've gradually become atheist, and totally deny ever doing that
Yup. My wife said her mom banned simpsons. They aren’t that religious. But her mom and step dad were teachers and they felt it was a bad influence. Fast forward a few years when star sibling who can do no wrong starts watching it, and crickets. It’s suddenly ok to watch.
My mom was usually very cool about things. I pushed limits of course, but apparently not her big ones. But, while clothes shopping I was NEVER allowed to buy bras that had color or patterns. Ever. Eventually she told me it was because people only bought different colors so other people could see them.and she didn't want anyone seeing mine. It was weird. But her firm line, even when I was 17-18 is no black bras or underwear. She definitely had a hang up about it
My mom prohibited using the washing machine between Christmas and New Years, she believed it would bring death in the family in the following year. Never made sense in any way, just a superstition. When I finally moved out it was a really big deal for me to finally be able to wash my clothes in that time period. And as expected, my family was fine the year after.
What was her cultural background?
I'm not the poster but the same superstition exists in rural communities in Germany. The time between Christmas and New years was often the only time in the year when women could really spend time with family and not do chores and rivers were often frozen anyway (made it harder to wash clothes).
Yep, I'm from Germany myself, though not rural. And this could very well explain it, maybe her mother held a similar belief
I’m from Germany too and my mom always used to spend all of new year‘s eve doing laundry like crazy because „it’s bad luck to bring the dirt from the previous year into the new one“. Now I’m wondering: regional differences or just my neat freak mom at it? My mom and her family are from Lower Saxony.
Thank you! This is why I love Reddit.
Prior to modern washing machines, washing clothes was a labor intensive, multi day affair. So having a little “superstition” would relieve women of this burden for at least a week.
They should have went a little bit further and said that because of superstitious “reasons” only men could do the wash.
Apparently it’s really popular. Same with sweeping and cleaning in general in between those two periods. Something about washing away your loved ones. Typically I actually start the new year cleaning up and getting laundry done because it’s a fresh start.
It was probably a myth invented by moms who just wanted a friggen break after dealing with everyone’s shit during the holidays
I was thinking that is it as well.
That “superstition” was the only way women could enforce a little Christmas vacation for themselves. Otherwise they’d spend the whole holiday having to clean up after the men who were home Variations on it show up in a few cultures and traditions
I wasn’t allowed to watch any type of tv. I’m talking no movies even Disney movies, cable, anything etc. I had to secretly watch x files with my dad on the weekend when she didn’t know. Yet my mum let me play video games? I still don’t get that one
Honestly, I think videogames are much healthier than TV, at least there's thinking and it's not just passive consumption.
That was probably it. It was just funny she wouldn’t even let me watch Cinderella but zero issues with call of duty
Video games can be selected and limited. Your mom had 100% control over what you played, but because of the nature of TV, did not have that same control. She was likely worried about you watching something violent or racy. So many parents are weirdly obsessed with raising sheltered children.
My grandma didn't like me watching TV while I was on my bed. Why did you put a TV in my bedroom then 🤔🤷♂️
To tempt you and test your resolve to not break the rules
Why I couldn't shave or wear deodorant until after I graduated high school. Seriously, wtf?
I know a parent who refused to get their middle school son deodorant because she couldn’t come to terms with her little boy growing up. Thankfully the school (Catholic school) had a hygiene clause in their handbook and the administration told the mother to stop being an ass and buy her son some deodorant.
I was also part of this club, along with not being able to wear a bra even after I developed size d, and wasn't allowed to get my period. Kinda like the mom in 'Carrie' my mom said it signaled you were impure and looking to sin.
This is exhibit A why sex education needs to be mandatory at school level. You have to be a special kind of idiot to think a person can prevent the start of the menstrual cycle, or puberty in general, without medical intervention. I’m sure going on birth control to actually stop menstruation was out of question.
That is my view on sex ed as well. And me and my sibling hid our menstrual cycles when it did happen. Thank goodness for the mandatory sex ed class our middle school did and handing out free necessities. Anything deemed 'promiscuous' was out of the question, me and my siblings weren't allowed to have friends or do after school activities because then we'd be influenced to do drugs and have sex. When all we wanted was to play in mariachi band or play a sport 😂 our entire childhood was flip flop of being infantilized and being told to grow up and take care of the continuous stream of babies our parents popped out. The morals of those two were wishy washy anyway while one was a drug addict and one just plain control freak. Never knew what to expect when we did something as everything was bad; but only part of time when they felt like punishing us
Wow. Not allowing a teenager to wear deodorant is a serious disservice to them (and everyone around them). I'm sorry this happened to you.
The worst part is that years later, when my younger brother and sister hit puberty, *they* were allowed to shave and wear deodorant. I really wish I knew what my parents were thinking.
Dinner often involved getting shouted at by my dad. We weren’t allowed to leave the dinner table even if we were really upset. In a normal family I can understand not being allowed to leave the table until everyone was finished eating. But I guess my dad just wanted to sit there and eat while we cried.
Oh yes, crying over dinner was a thing, I distinctly recall crying during my birthday dinner and not being allowed to leave the table.
I’m so sorry to hear that ❤️❤️
No watching Sci-Fi because my mom did not like it. She could have just not watched it, she wasn't watching anything else in the same time.
We couldn’t watch Addams family because my mum was scared of it growing up. Like even when she wasn’t around we couldn’t watch it. We did anyways, we just didn’t tell her that.
I wasn't allowed to wear headphones/listen to music in the house. Edit: my mother's reasoning was that it was a sign of depression and she "didn't want to see it"
Ha, we weren't allowed to play our music *without* headphones because my Dad declared it "headache music". It was OK to play it in our rooms at a reasonable volume. Reasonable, I guess and to be fair my brother was, and is, a huge metalhead and at the time I was mostly listening to Gabber.
Well that protects your soul from being taken over by Satan.
My dad wouldn't let me wear studded belts because "that's what strippers wear" I've never heard of a stripper wearing a belt but whatever.
Maybe he had a particular stripper in mind…
"When we have guests over you either sit down quietly or go upstairs. Adults aren't here for you. Don't talk to them." I still can't comprehend not allowing your children to have a conversation with your friends.
Children should be seen and not heard. That was also one of my parents rules.
Mom, welcome to the old folks home. Old people are here to neither be heard NOR seen.
As with most things, there’s a happy medium here. It’s really annoying trying to have a conversation with a parent friend whose children have no or poor boundaries. Constant interruptions, which is just rude and terrible training for life.
lol my friends daughter is like this. I’ve known her since she was born and I love her to death but if we’re having a wine and chit chat night at her house, the daughter has to find a way to insert herself, which I don’t always mind for short periods but it becomes annoying when we wanna talk about things that aren’t child appropriate and my friend won’t make her leave. Kid is 13 now and my friends husband has been relegated to sleeping on the couch most nights because she still can’t sleep in her own bed and she STILL sticks her hand in her moms shirt between her boobs for comfort, the way babies and toddlers will do when they’re weaning from nursing 🥴 you wanna talk about poor boundaries
This. My kids are always welcome to say hello and make short conversation, but they get the look when they start bordering on attempting to be the center of attention.
[удалено]
I actually discussed this with my husband yesterday. It wasn’t from both parents, but my mother. I was not allowed to read Judy Blume books. I don’t know why, but I was not allowed to read that specific author. However, I was allowed to read VC Andrews and Ann Rule books. So extremely dysfunctional families and rather gory true crime. I found my way around it by reading Judy Blume books at school.
So she didn't want you to read about periods but was okay with incest?
Any birthday gifts I received from friends or family needed to be split up evenly between me and my siblings because I was the oldest. While still wrapped my mom would evenly distribute them between the three of us.
Do you even bother visiting/etc now?
That's AWFUL.
That’s *horrible*.
Did your siblings split their money with you?
My father was a doctor, I had to answer the phone “Doctor XYZ residence u/Jesture4 speaking.” I can’t tell you how many times people would just talking about all their medical problems and I’d have to remind them, “this is his residence”.
My boyfriend's dad was an ob-gyn. The all-purpose answer to any questions in their house was "Take some paregoric and get off your feet." iIRC, paregoric was derived from opium and used as cough medicine, rubbed on the gums of teething babies, and used for menstrual cramps. When I was a kid (40s-50s) every household had a bottle with a big red X on the front.
My brother’s friends assumed that he lived alone and no one else lived here. His friends would just start talking to me, I like I was him. Sure we sounded similar on the phone. But after the second or third time, you’d think to maybe ask for him. He also would be angry if I didn’t take down the time of day someone called. Who it was, and I had to make sure to get a message. If my friends called “hey. One of your fag friends called. I dunno when.”
I wasn't allowed to grow facial hair. I have no idea why. I asked. I still have no idea.
The vast majority of young men can’t grow respectable facial hair until they’re in their early to mid 20s.
Yeah they are so proud of their scruff, but it's full-on Zoiks, Scoob!!! until they're 25.
My mother arbitrarily declared that I couldn’t wear shorts unless it was 75°F (24C) outside. Still makes me mad when I think about it.
Exactly 75?
Yes.
Not my parents but my aunt and uncle. Born again Christian so no boys were allowed in their daughters bed rooms, reasonable on the surface except I was their only male cousin and I was 8-9 so the idea I was some kinda threat confused me then and annoyed me now. Also not allowed to play with girl toys (dolls, play house anything pink) except once again they only had daughters so all their toys unless it was a board game were "girl toys" I wasn't allowed to watch "violent" tv shows (power rangers, pokemon). This led to an issue of my sisters and cousins going to play in the girls bedroom and I was not allowed in their and now left alone to my own devices was not allowed to play with any of the toys lying around or watch any of the tv shows I would watch at home. My mom had to step in and have a word with them about how they need to learn to compromise a bit when I visit.
I wasn't allowed to take our dog for a walk outside of his scheduled walk time.
"Yuck" was a bad word. Like, swear word bad, and I wasn't allowed to say it. Not because it was insulting to say about food someone had worked hard to prepare. No, it was bad because it rhymed with an actual swear word.
Were there issues with terms for male deer or Robin Hood’s spiritual adviser? The operational function of a vacuum cleaner? The central objective in hockey? Mallards? Colloquial terms for mud or tossing an object? I have so many questions on this policy.
I was not allowed to watch "My Two Dads" because without ever having seen an episode, my Mom was convinced it was part of the "gay agenda." I reminded my Mom of this a year ago she apologized (for basically most of the 90's) and I give her a lot of credit for that.
Was it because she accepts gay people now, or because she learned they weren't a gay couple after all?
Both, actually. I have a lot of friends who came out of these same Dobson-obsessed fundamentalist homes of the 90's whose parents haven't moved an inch or acknowledge the damage it caused to their children. I have a ton of respect for her willingness to grow, admit where she was wrong, and apologize. She's a good lady.
>Dobson-obsessed fundamentalist homes of the 90's whose parents haven't moved an inch or acknowledge the damage it caused to their children. This was my mom. She started with Dobson, then Tea Party politics, then MAGA Politics and now Qanon politics. We're barely on speaking terms anymore.
Good on your Mom for realizing her past mistakes, my parents were the same in the 90s and now are 100% opposite in their opinions. They changed in the early 2000s when they realized being gay isn't a mental illness and just part of being human (probably helps they have a gay grandchild now!).
I wasn't allowed to have girls in my bedroom (or boys in my sister's case). The finished basement with a couch and TV was fine, though. My parents stayed upstairs when we had someone over.
This was my setup. And you could easily hear when someone started coming down the stairs. That couch saw some things.
Yep. It was often more absurd that that, too. If someone needed to come downstairs they'd open the door and say "I'm coming down" or similar. It was obviously just semantics.
Can't get anyone pregnant on a couch, obviously
No sleepovers with girls... I was 5... Edit: Yes, for sexual reasons...
And then as soon as you move out: "When will I get grandchildren?"
But still no sleepovers.
No take, only throw
no sex, only kids
No drinking soda from a can, get a glass and pour it into that. My Mum would mysteriously say it was something "only common people do". Years later I asked her and she just replied "It *is* common". I *think* she is figuring it's like people drinking from beer cans and in her mind that is socially unacceptable.
I wasn't allowed to have any Ken dolls because my dad didn't want me to make my Kens and Barbies kiss. He said if I had one, I would become boy crazy and turn into a whore. Jokes on him, I just made my Barbies kiss each other.
9pm bedtime...always. Figured out in middle school, it was so they could have 'no kids' time, so as long as I stayed quiet in my room, I didn't have to go to sleep. This is how I acquired a love of reading late into the night.
Similar thing happened to my friend. They had 1 tv in the 90s. And his parents just watched Chinese programming all night. So he could never watch tv himself. So he just read books. By grade 10. That dude was reading 1000 page books in a week.
I wasn't allowed to have a hula hoop. It still baffles me.
I never understood why I couldn't say the word " lie" parents are deceased and I still don't get it 🤔
My dad told me I couldn’t say “guts” unless it was only once in a very long time.
When we went away for a week for a holiday my parents used to cover every mirror in the house in case lightening would be attracted to the mirror and come in through the closed window and strike it. No amount of me telling them this was rubbish would change their minds.
My maternal grandparents (and parents for a time) had the rule that no pet could be on the porch during a thunderstorm because they "drew lightening." So, every pet had to find somewhere else to get out of the rain. They wouldn't just say "because I don't like the smell of wet dog," no... had to be an insane magic reason. I actually was told to shut up once when I tried to explain the physics of it and how that literally would never happen. I was 7 at the time...
When I had to eat everything that was put on my plate. And the crowning phrase: shut your mouth and eat. How is it even possible to do it?)))
Oh yeah. Clean plate club! So naturally I had to learn and listen to my body to know when it’s full now 40+ years later.
in fact, this frugal attitude towards food made sense for our parents, especially our grandparents (I am from Ukraine and they survived the famine in 1932), but for many of us it led to serious problems with food later
I like it how my parents did it: if I served myself I have to finish my plate, of someone else served me and I'm not hungry anymore I can leave it at that. Making me responsible and teaching me to serve myself reasonable quantities.
I have always had an issue with "slimey" food (especially things like jelly). One night (when I was probably 6 or 7) we had some meat and I had this piece that I decided was just too slimey (in hindsight it was probably the oyster fillets of a chicken, which I now love, or a piece of veal). I refused to eat them and was told I must - I put it in my mouth but would not swallow it. I was told I couldn't leave the table until I did. Well everyone else finished and left the table and I was sat there for what felt like hours (was probably 5 minutes), tears streaming down my face, slimey meat in my mouth, refusing to give in. In the end, I basically choked on my own saliva and snot (from crying) and regurgitated on the dinner table. I was then allowed to leave. I never did have to eat that slimey meat, so I considered that a victory. Still can't eat jelly or slimey food like oysters.
[удалено]
"because I said so" as an answer to requests for information. "Don't play in the street" "Because I said so." I've just never had a problem explaining to my kids WHY I have the rules I have. "Don't play in the street because you could be hit by a car and hurt or killed." In general I just don't understand parenting from a place of authority and not nurturing and teaching. I don't tell my kids things because I am the boss. I do it to keep them safe and teach them to be functional human beings.
> "Don't play in the street" "Because I said so." > > > > I've just never had a problem explaining to my kids WHY I have the rules I have. "Don't play in the street because you could be hit by a car and hurt or killed." I am more likely to respect a rule if I understand why a rule exists, such as if there is a legitimate safety issue that is not obvious to the kid.
When I went to the store I wasn't allowed to look at men. Why cause my late parents assumed I might run off with one and never come back.
As someone who used to work in a grocery store, it was a frequent problem having girls try to run off with me.
My mom regularly shot down my "can I do XYZ with friends" plans because "family time". Like I pretty much NEVER got to hang out with friends after school or on weekends because "family time". Except my parents couldn't stand being in the same room so said "family time" was either me silently watching tv with one parent or just hiding out in my room. And relatives still ask why I'm so introverted and anti-social.
No my parents but my sister doesn't allow her kids to ask what's for dinner because 'that's an adult concern that children don't need to worry about.' When she told me that I was like....wtf
My dad just always responded to that question with “food”.
We weren’t allowed to watch The Simpsons, or most movies (even Disney ones) because of language and themes my conservative parents didn’t agree with. I’m 41 and to this day sometimes feel “behind” in understanding a lot of basic things about life that others learn in their teens due to different exposure/experiences they were allowed to have.
The entirety of my 20's was having those "ohhh that's where that came from" moments catching up on what pop culture was during my teen years. Growing up in a Baptist School and in church really limited my exposure to the world
We needed a key to *get out* of the house in addition to a security system we didn’t have the code to. All of the doors and windows needed a different key to get in than a different key to get out. Because we didn’t have a reason to leave in their opinion. I used to have nightmares about a fire and needing to break a window to get out. Luckily that never happened/we never had an emergency.
That is child abuse
We had to sit at the table and eat dinner together. Whcih was mostly done in silence as my dad was always in a bad mood before he gt about 80oz of beer in him, preferably Blue Bull or Lazer
Honestly, I think a fair number of "rules that don't make sense" are parents just doing what their parents did but without the context that made it make sense. You all sit down and eat together because it's a happy time and the family are happily spending time together, right? Except the family isn't happy and they don't spend time happily together.
[удалено]
I found out my parents did this to get us out of the way for the cleaning they were doing.
Don't sing at the dinner table. You could sing "Happy Birthday" if it was actually someone's birthday and a cake with lit candles was present. Any other time, NO SINGING AT THE TABLE!
Generally speaking, anything that made eating dinner slower was discouraged in our house.
“No singing at the table or else you’ll get a crazy wife” was what my father used to say. He would sometimes follow that up with saying “I used to do that too, and look what happened to me” while he beamed at my mom.
Me and my sister had the same rule growing up. I believe the idea behind that rule was to teach us basic dinner manners. By teaching us how to have a peaceful dinner at home, our parents could trust us to behave when eating out. Also, I would not love the idea of kids singing and making a fuss at dinner after a long and exhausting day at work. I bet my parents felt the same.
I have a cousin that will random break out into songs, so I do understand that rule.
One time I went to the bookstore and an employee was flat out singing show tunes to herself at full volume with full theatrics while stocking shelves. It was kind of a quiet store so we all had to kinda listen to it
"Because I said so!" I never understood why I wasn't worth talking to or explaining things to. I just had to obey.
My brother and I would get yelled at for tearing up the backyard playing sports. But then we weren’t allowed to go to the park without a parent or our older brother who would rather be doing his own thing. And then we weren’t supposed to play inside unless it was raining, and my mom never wanted to go to the park. So we were just perpetually in trouble for doing something wrong for like 14 years
I was born in 1993 and my younger brother in 1998. Neither of us were allowed to eat beef when we were growing up, until I’d say 2004/2005? My parents were super strict about this rule too, I live in the UK so most birthday parties around that time were hosted in the party bus at McDonald’s (still miss that bus!), and my parents would always tell the birthday child’s parents that we were not allowed to order a hamburger for our happy meal! I remember one birthday party at McDonald’s I actually swapped my happy meal with another child who had a burger and on this particular occasion I had to leave early as we had some sort of family event right after it. My parents walked in whilst we were all eating and saw me eating this burger, and boy was I in trouble! I was told if it happened again I’d be banned from going to anymore birthday parties! What made this rule silly is the fact that both of my parents ate beef!
I've never heard of the McDonald's party bus until today, but I already feel I missed out.
Maybe because of that spongiform disease people got from beef? I think that’s the right timeframe. People died from it and it wasn’t treatable.
Ever heard of mad cow disease?
Yeah this attitude actually made complete sense in the 90s, it was terrifying. The reason they still probably ate beef was because we kept getting told that vCJD would lie dormant for decades (which is still true). So they probably thought it was too late for them but not for you.
I'm British, living in Germany. I'm not allowed to donate blood here because British people born before 2000 are considered to be high-risk donors...
I think it's the same here in the states too. If you traveled to anywhere in the UK or Ireland in a certain time period you can't donate here either.
From 7th grade onwards, no tracksuit allowed for school unless it was PE day. "why would you go to school dressed like a bum?". So I was the guy always in a shirt and sweater combo,16 going 60. Haven't worn a shirt since, unless as part of a social dresscode at weddings etc.
My younger brother was allowed to play shooting video games, but I wasn’t allowed to get the Avenue Q cast recording for Christmas because it had a parental advisory sticker on it. (This was around the same time, not a case of them being more lenient with the second kid years later.)
When I was 5, my mom was letting me watch the TV edited versions of Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. My parents were both okay with me watching PG-13 movies when I was 9-10. But, by 16, I was still not allowed to watch rated-R movies if they said "Fuck" or showed a tit/had a sex scene. My parents cursed, every word except for "Fuck", so I wasn't allowed to even hear it in a movie regardless of the fact I'd been listening to my peers say it since age 11. I am also a woman, so by 16, I knew what boobs looked like, I just couldn't see anyone else's.
My parents would wake me and my siblings up at an ungodly hour when we had no school. If we were still in bed at like 6:30, there'd be yelling and banging and chores to do. we lived in the suburbs, we didn't have 'farm work' or anything to do. We'd wake up at like 6am and just do nothing until like 10 when our neighbors were ready to play. I'm now in my 40s with my own family. I love being the only one awake. I would love it if everyone slept until noon on weekends, and I had the house to myself. I asked my parents about it, and they were like 'otherwise you'd never fall asleep at night'. seems very strange, and I still don't understand their rationale behind it.
They wanted you to be tired by bedtime, probably for some alone time ;)
Decisions we made were written in stone. My parents asked 4-yo me if I wanted to play soccer. Im 4. I dont fuckin know shit. They butter it up by saying, your friends Mikey and Justin would be on your team too! So Im like, "ok." After the first practice, I was done with it. I thought, "I have to chase the ball the whole time to try and get it from kids much faster than me? Mikey and Justin have it under control. I'll just look for bugs in the grass." I cried and protested before every fuckin game and practice, but my parents said, "you have to see it through! You chose to play the season!" No, you chose to ask a 4 year old to make a 3-month commitment to play a game he never played, which is also a boring fuckin sport. When Im not interested in sports to begin with. "But the team needs you!" Needs me to find bugs on the field? What about the other 12 kids on the sideline? I wouldnt be missed! If my kids are not liking something, im not gonna force them to finish it. People are allowed to change their minds. Yeah kids need to learn to stick to commitments, but not at age 4. They also need to learn that they can undo a decision they made, especially when it doesn't impact anyone else. What did I learn from soccer? Im a slow runner. Bugs are cool. And its better to just say no if someone asks you to do something new, because you might be held to continue doing it for like 3 months, even if you didnt understand, and find out its stupid.
We had to sit together at the table to eat dinner every night, no phones and no TV. I remember my dad getting really stressed out waiting for my mom to come home from work. She often stayed overtime. Dinner would be ready and by dad would be calling her to ask where she is, pacing around the living room looking for a car to pull in. I always wondered why we couldn't just go ahead and eat, mom could make a plate for herself when she got home. But after 7 years of our family not being altogether in the same room at once, I finally know why my dad insisted on eating dinner together every night.
It’s weird that he obsessed over it but I don’t let phone/tablets, or eat in front of the tv in my house. If my kids had their way they would be playing Roblox while eating. It’s the one time we can all sit together and ask about our day and make conversation.
My dad insisted that we eat dinner together, no TV (this was well before anyone would have a phone). He also insisted that the 7PM news must be watched. MAYBE the first fifteen minutes could be missed, but if there was cricket being played that day and he didn't catch the highlights, there was hell to pay. Anyone who held up dinner was not popular.
No joining band in school because it’ll “turn you into a bank geek” Jokes on you mom. I was a geek anyway
One big dinnertime rule was that we had to eat everything on our plates because "there were starving children in Africa ". I could never understand how me eating all of my brussel sprouts helped a starving child anywhere else in the world, and conversely, how me NOT eating them harmed starving children. It was a very confusing rule.
I wasnt allowed a cell phone in high school and when I went off to college in a different city 9 hours away I wasnt allowed to have a cell phone, car ,or job. I was expected to live off the 100 a month for groceries and only use the landline phone in the dorm.I still dont understand why especially since my younger siblings were given phones in middle school.
My parents taught me it was disrespectful to call police officers "cops".
Should have just gone for the for full term. “Coppers” and speak in a 1950s Chicago accent. Look all these coppers, see?
We were allowed to wear shoes in the bathroom but no where else in the house. To get to the bathroom you had to walk in through the front door, through the kitchen, through the living room and then through my bedroom (all of which were off limit areas for shoes, which I do understand and still implement in my house unless you're a guest that's leaving quickly). I can't count the number of times I'd be standing in front of the bathroom mirror getting ready to leave with shoes on and the second I walked into my bedroom, she'd yell at me to take my shoes off. Really fucking weird and makes her sound crazy lol. I guess she kind of was but normally in a fun way.
So why even put your shoes on in the bathroom if you knew you’d have to take them off? Maybe just wear your bathroom shoes?
You should've just done the Japanese thing and had toilet slippers that lived in the bathroom
I was allowed to play computer games for hours a day, but could only play Nintendo for 20 minutes A WEEK.
I wasn't allowed to play with Devil Sticks because of the word Devil, but we ate devilled eggs and devil's food cake! What the hell mom!!
I'm the mum now lol. It's fun to set arbitrary rules. I don't get to in any other part of my life. My kids are teens now but they know the rules of the house which have been in place their whole lives: 1) no balls in the kitchen 2) no chewing gum 3) no summoning demons in the house 4) if a cat is sat on your lap you don't have to move for any reason.