Wait, Everyone Didn’t Do This? Bizarre Childhood Rules People Shared

I wasn’t allowed to look in the mirror for a long time so that I wouldn’t think I was too cute and get haughty.

Whenever the Schwann’s guy would come through our neighborhood my Mom would scream at my sister and I to go downstairs. Even she would lay on the floor to avoid being seen. We always thought she just didn’t want to answer the door.

Nope— Schwann’s Man was [an offender] and commented to my Mom about how “breathtakingly beautiful” my sister and I were. My Dad’s employee recognized him when he came to deliver an order to our house. Dad told Mom to never open the door for him again.

When I was young my mom made us go to bed at 6pm. I remember the sun being out and hearing kids outside playing. She got married soon after and the guy had a daughter so that rule went away but I really think she just didn’t want to deal with us. We spent all day outside playing when we weren’t at school and wasn’t allowed to come in until she called us in for dinner and then it was baths and bed. I can’t imagine just napping, never checking on my kids and having your young kids roaming the neighborhood all day. I had a friend who lived down the street. Her mom was like my second mom. I remember rollerskating and falling on my knee and scraping it pretty bad and her cleaning and bandaging it because I knew I wasn’t allowed to go home. And on school days we were in after school child care until they closed so then home, dinner, bed.

My mother would force me into extended periods of silence. She was terrifying so of course I complied.
She would tell me that there might come a day when being silent would save our lives and if I couldn’t be quiet she’d have to smother me like the baby from MASH.

My mom told me a dragon lived behind the town houses at the end of the cul de sac. It was really just becoming a bad neighborhood and that’s where they were dealing [illegal substances].

I wasn’t allowed to have sleepovers at my grandparents after i turned 8, even though my brothers were allowed to go all the time. found out as an adult it was because my grandpa SA multiple women in the family when they were children. so… yeah.

When social media started becoming a thing and I made a fb account in hs, my parents said to not share where we were because people would use it to see when we were home and when we weren’t. I thought they were being ridiculous (because they always had unreasonable rules but that’s for other reasons) since so many people shared when they were on vacation and when they were at dinner, etc. Sure enough, there were people watching our house and the house got broken into when I was in 11th grade.

In my teen years, I had to wear clothes many sizes larger than what I actually was to hide my figure. Like, pants were size 8-12 and shirts size large.

From 3-5 years old, my mom made it a rule that we had to attend all church related things. She would make us go with her to a place called "The Shock House". It was a small home owned by the church we attended, where they did "exorcisms". They mostly exercised demons out of women. The reactions were quite horrific- vomiting, sobbing, screaming, seizing. And yet no one could figure out why I had crippling anxiety and a never ending sense of doom following me around by age 7.

Couldn’t watch The Simpsons because they were evil.

I thought this was normal for a Christian household - on Halloween my mom would make us all sit in the living room together, turn off all the lights, and watch passion of the Christ. Every year. She would get mad at us if we didn’t cry when Christ was crucified and we would get hit for falling asleep because it was disrespectful. If any trick or treaters came to the front door we were to pause the movie all gather at the front door and pray that the evil spirit possessing them to celebrate Halloween would return to h**l where it belonged and then we had to confess our love to God until they left.

Meals would be done in order of age, my parents ate first, then my older brother and sister then me. We never ate together.

My mom wouldn't let me touch my brother. A side hug was ok for pictures and making up after a fight but no cuddly stuff. And her definition of cuddly was him leaning on me on the couch when he's sick. He's 5 years younger than me and we rarely got along so anything like that was rare. It kind of messed with me when I was younger, she made me feel like I was being a pervert but I still had no idea what I was doing. Once on a car trip (I was super sick with whooping cough) I was sprawled across the back seat and my head was touching my brother's leg. She flipped out. "No. No. That's not right. Not ok. Get on your side." He was 10! I was 15! WTH mom??

No Britney, Harry Potter or That’s So Raven for me until I was older. (Magic & psychics)

Never talk to strangers.
Sounds obvious, but me and my sister were very likely nearly the victims of a kidnapping once. A random guy once pulled up in his car right next to where we were playing.
Thankfully my dad wasn’t far away. This dude was VERY unhappy to see him, and drove off soon after.
Years later, I often think about that man. We called the police, but never heard about him again.

We weren't allowed to eat in anyone else's house, even extended family, because my dad didn't want us to be inconvenient to anyone. If we were at our cousins' for lunch, we were supposed to sit and watch them eat. We would get questioned about it later when we got home.

Not to tell people where we lived. Turns out in my 20s I found out I had a half sister from my bio dad. I learned this because of the amber alert sent out about him kidnapping her so I get it now.

When a thunderstorm was coming, my mom unplugged everything in the house and sat us all on the couch...no feet touching the floor.
That was to prevent lightning from hitting us!

If my siblings and I did something that dad didnt like, he would get his friend with one arm to play an innocent bystander in which our poor behavior caused him to lose said arm in an accident.

I was taught to never approach or try to help a man, as he'd target me. I was taught men might trick me by saying they had a lost puppy or pretend they couldn't hear me to get closer. If one grabbed me, I was to go "boneless" to make him drop me, kick his [private parts], scream, force my nails into his eyes, and possibly urinate to deter him.
I was different and distinct, with gold curls and big blue eyes, all of which would've caught predators' attention. My mom caught strangers photographing me.