50 Stories From People's Childhood That They Didn't Realize Were Messed Up At The Time

I thought everyone got beat by their babysitters.

My mom would drop me and my sister off at school (age 5 and 3) and not pick us up until the teacher had to call her because it was past closing time and we were the only kids left waiting for their parents to come pick them up. she’d be in a whole different city hanging out with friends, thinking that our teachers would take care of us. my parents were divorced and my mom had full custody, despite neglecting us for the majority of the time.

Was at a boys and girls club, they had a big field behind it so they built this water slide thing. All the kids were allowed to use it (groups at a time) I went there from when I was 6 until maybe 11 or 12. This would have had to happen when I was on the younger side.

I was in my bathing suit and was running from the slide back to the beginning. A big older kid (weirdly I remember him being like the stereotypical neck beard looking guy) steps in front of me and I stop running. It’s just the 2 of us, I don’t see anyone else around. He goes “can I touch that?” And I said “touch what?” And he goes “That” and points in my general direction.

I just looked at him super confused and said “uh, sure?”

He reached down and touched my v****a. Ran his hands between my legs and gripped my v****a through my suit.

He then said “thanks” and ran off. I felt kinda weird about it but kept going on my merry way. Didn’t think twice.

Didn’t hit me until I was in my teens how f****d up that was, and how dangerous that was, and how I definitely should have told someone.

This was 20+ years ago so who knows where he is now!

I didn’t know girls weren’t supposed to have internal exams done at the doctors when you hit puberty, i thought it was just something everyone had to do. Didn’t know it wasn’t until I told my therapist about it in passing.

Recently my husband looked at me and said, “Yeah there’s a lot of social things you clearly missed out on in your childhood and it shows.” This was after a family reunion we’d been at and we’d been joking around and he was telling me stories and such about when he was younger. It hit me pretty hard because I have very few memories of my childhood that have adults in them. Most I do are with my Grandma. I spent most my childhood chasing younger siblings making sure they were safe and having fun. But I mean I was six so where the heck were the adults. Then I remembered my first flight I was deemed to fly without a stewardess assist (I’d been flying solo with a helper since age three). I was 9 and my parents said I was good to go by myself. I flew out of Spokane, Wa (Dad dropped me off) had a 45 min layover in St. Paul, flew into Chicago with 2.5 hour layover with a connecting flight to Milwaukee where I met my mom. There is no way any of my own kids at 9 could’ve actually ended up in Milwaukee with two connecting flights. Plus I spent over three hours in HUGE airports by myself, it was terrifying at nine. I think I don’t have memories of adults because they weren’t there. I was just alone, doing my thing, making pb and Js and ramen to survive while my dad was driving semi and my mom was on benders. How freaking depressing is that?

My nursery school teachers would tape our mouths shut if we talked without raising our hands. It was the 70’s. Honestly more funny than f****d up.

One day when I was maybe 12 years old, I was home alone, and hanging out down in our finished basement, as I often did. Upstairs, I heard the front door open, and was about to call out to say hi when I heard something that gave me pause. It was my father's voice, followed by an unfamiliar woman's voice. I don't know why, but something about it just felt off to me. I decided to just stay quiet downstairs. They eventually left, and when my father later came home alone, I greeted him as if nothing odd had occurred. A year later, I started to become aware of the problems in my family that would ultimately lead to my parents' rather hostile divorce another four years later. I relatively quickly forgot all about that strange occurrence, and I never told anybody about it.

Fast forward to one day when I was 21. I had just gotten into a massive argument with my father. (Now four years later, we still aren't on speaking terms.) He sent me a rambling wall of text messages detailing all the ways he seemed to think my older brother was the reason for the divorce. I showed the text to my mom and asked for her side of things.

She told me that several years before the divorce —and six years before I was even aware of any problems— they started having their issues. Eventually they started seeing a marriage counselor, and with his help, they decided to try an open relationship. They agreed to seven rules regarding that arrangement, and my mom said that my father broke four or those rules within the first month. One of them was that they would never bring their other sexual partners into our home, and she said he broke that one *while I was home.*

As soon as my mom told me that, I was reminded of that unknown voice I'd heard nine years earlier. It's impossible to say, but I just have this terrible gut feeling about how well those pieces fit together.

I wasn't given affection, really. Then as  I got older, I would see friends bring out their childhood photos. I'm talking these kids had ALBUMS. Memorialbilia. Baby books, with their hand and footprints on them. The worse my relationship became with my parents, the more I thought about the fact that they didn't take time to do those things that parents seem to do. One day I asked my mother and her not having an answer sent me into some sort of trauma rage.

I did martial arts as a kid. There was some dude that also did it that was like, in his 30s or 40s. He was special needs and super sweet. Him and I got a long well because he was basically a giant 10-year old. One time, he put his hand on my thigh briefly. Long enough for me to notice, but not for it to really set off any alarms in my 10 year old head. However, after that, my mom had a talk with me about him and him touching me and the other adults seemed to be more, present, whenever he was hanging around us. To my knowledge, he never did anything bad. I like to think it was innocent and he is doing well because he was a really nice dude.

I never saw my parents kiss or embrace in any way. They were married and loved each other until my mother passed and my dad is broken by it. They were so in love, he is still broken years on. I just never saw any visual or auditory affection. It has shaped the way I show love, which is muted and is a problem. I am not open, I try really hard to say it but I am bad at it. I come off as awkward and “forced”. My wife’s family is/was very open and she just does not get it.