30 Disturbing Rules Parents Made Kids Follow That They Only Realized Were Weird Later On In Life

It wasn’t a rule but it was an obvious expectation for me not to bother my parents whether that was asking a question or most days even waving to them as a greeting or when leaving the house. It was obvious because the few times I did ask or tell them something they’d either ask why I was talking with them or ignore it (my father usually ignored while ma would tell me to just do it next time).

That meant everything from making my own dinner every night while getting myself to bed and off to school each day, and just going to papas every summer vacation was to be done without even mentioning it. I did just that and they never bothered to send a card or even call papas to make sure I got/was there though I’d be there over 60 consecutive days in the summer plus many vacations throughout the year.

It wasn’t weird to me since it was all I knew but once I became a parent I realized that I didn’t like it nor find it appropriate for any parent or child to do.

I had to be in by midnight, but if my friends dropped me off one minute after midnight, my stepfather wouldn’t let me in. So I’d have to get back in their car, and get dropped off at the ice-skating rink, the movie theatre, or find one of my friends to go home with. This was a stepfather who was trying to drive me out; I guess I just didn’t know that yet. I moved out soon enough, at sixteen, rented a house soon after. Got a job. Worked for me. I had a lonely Christmas. I missed my three little sisters, and my little brother, and my mother, but no one cared about me. They were my stepfather’s kids. My mother was my stepfather’s wife. After I was able to gain perspective, I understood how one-sided my relationships had been, and everything turned out great for me. If someone doesn’t love you back, you don’t need to be all shocked to find out, and crestfallen. They never did, and you were happy before, when you didn’t know, weren’t you? So be happy still. Nothing’s changed, except your realization, and you might as well know the truth.

Once when our daughter was very young, I almost shut her hand in a car door. It was 40 years ago and car seat were ridiculously easy for kids to get out. After that I made a game of “stick your fingers in your ears” when I went to close the door. I did this because if the fingers were in the ears, they weren’t in the door. Unknown to me, she thought a closing door would hurt her ears which she found out it didn’t when she was with a friend. She said she felt stupid.

I was not allowed to hang out with black friends outside of school. According to my mother, it was perfectly fine to be friendly towards them at school, but it was not appropriate to spend time with them in public or in their home or mine.

As a young child, I accepted this as the way of the world. As I grew a little older I began to question this rule, and my mom justified it by saying it wasn't black *kids* she was afraid of, but their parents. She didn't want me in a home where I was under the supervision of parents that she did not trust or approve of (nevermind that she had never met them).

I offered for her to meet the parents of my (black) best friend in the third grade, Julia, but she was not interested. Now, I went to a very mixed high school, with a population that was about 60% black. Most of my friends were black as a result, and at the risk of being called racist I basically didn't hang out with *anyone* outside of school, black or white. My first boyfriend was white and my mom approved, of course—he was an honor student like me and lived in a decent neighborhood. But when we had our first kiss, I felt nothing—i may as well have been homosexual. I broke up with him shortly after and my mother was baffled. "But you both seemed so happy!"

As I started to go through puberty and become an adult, I realized that most of my sexual feelings were towards black men and I didn't know how to explain this to my mother. She was disgusted and I tried my best to be open with her but it was impossible. Only now was I beginning to realize the depth of my mothers racism, when she told me she would never attend a biracial wedding and would not be a grandmother to mixed children.

I ended up leaving home (in suburban Michigan) to pursue a new life in New York and I'm now beginning to find my path and my goals in life—i still try to convince my mother that the color of someone's skin doesn't determine whether they are a good person. I've been with plenty of people of many colors, good and bad. But I hope that now, raising my two younger sisters, she has done away with her "weird rule."

That it was ok to use swear words as long as we rhymed them. Seriously. F**k a duck, s**t a brick, it was ok because it rhymed. That didn't work so well in school though.

From third grade onward I could stay up as late as I wanted as long as I was quiet As a result, I fixed an old broken tv that my dad found and wired up some military surplus headphones I bought in place of the speaker. I’d watch tv until midnight, which, at the time, was when broadcasting normally stopped.

I wasn’t allowed to say words or phrases that were substitutions for curse words, like darn, dang, crud or shoot. According to my mom, saying these words was just as bad as swearing, because in your heart you really intended to curse. I still instinctively avoid cursing around my mother to this day.

Long but I hope interesting:

Beginning when I was very young 7 or 8, my step-father and mother would take my sister and I to small country stores, restaurants and beer joints (small, dirty, drunks only bars) far into the countryside.

The unnamed “towns” were groupings of a few houses with a combination grocery store and beer joint. Usually a gas station and a tiny Baptist church.

The stores were tiny, gloomy and carried a few groceries, very cheap toys and trinkets. The beer joints (country bars) were for serious drunks and only sold beer and the cheapest rot-gut whiskey called hooch and a limited selection of soft drinks. Unshelled peanuts and pickled eggs were the only food available.

No matter how many bills went unpaid, minimal food bought and clothing was not purchased, they always had enough money to spend hours drinking on weekends and sometimes during the week also.

The beer joints were always small, dark and dirty. They would take us with them. We would either spend hours in the car or play inside on the floor. We would take barbies or board games or books.

We played on the floor among the chewing tobacco juice, mud, spilled beer and whiskey, cigarette and cigar butts, ashes and who knows what else. I don't think the floors were ever cleaned. In fact, there was dust and grime on all horizontal surfaces.

We would always go to the grocery store . While there, we were expected, actually required to steal something.

When we finally left, we would go to the car to compare “who got what”. I was young but knew stealing was wrong so I always took the cheapest thing I could find.

If my sister or I did not steal anything, we would be spanked. I don't mean a little smack on the butt. No, these were beat you on the butt until it was swollen deep red. We be barely able to breathe from crying and screaming so hard. We had to steal two things the next time.

They would continue drinking when we got home.

This was but one rule of many. I'll save the others for another question.

When eating out at a restaurant, everyone has to order something different so that everyone can taste everything. My kids still think that's what everyone does!

RUNNING IN A RACE. Something that is taught by almost every parent. School should be over by 17–18. Graduation should be done by 20–21. Post graduation should be completed by 22–23 By 25 you should be doing a perfect job with handsome salary. By 26–27 you should get married, and have kids by 30. Why? With time I realised, these things don't matter if you don't care. I realised these rules are empty, they have no meaning until you acknowledge the made-up meanings given by the society. As soon as I learnt to say I DON'T CARE, this rule that seemed normal started looking absurd. Liberate yourself from this weird rule. Tell that little kid who's still trapped inside, that you're an adult now, you have the right as well as the intelligence to form your own beliefs. Tell him/her to erase the rules stuffed by the society in that kid's mind. It's okay to let them go, if they don't make any sense. See yourself breathing a little more, living a little more, freely flying a little more. Life will become happier.

We had to announce to the rest of the family any time we were going to use the bathroom, and how long we thought we’d be in there. This was because we only had one bathroom and my father got really mad at us if we interrupted him while he was in there, or if my sister was in there for a long time, as she tended to do when she was a teen.

Some of my fondest memories from childhood are of my sister knocking on the door to get into the bathroom, like it was an emergency, shortly after my father went in there. It was never really an emergency. She just needed to fix her hair or something.

My dad: [Goes into bathroom, newspaper in hand.] Thirty seconds later, my sister comes out of her room and starts knocking like crazy on the bathroom door. My dad: [Godammit I just got in here! Leave me alone!] So, every time any of us needed to use the bathroom for any reason, we’d stand in front of it and say, loud enough for everyone in the house to hear, something like: “I’m going to the bathroom now! I’ll be in there for about ten minutes!” Then we’d pause, in case someone wanted to use it quickly before we went in there.

I didn’t realize until I was an adult that announcing to your family that you were going to the bathroom wasn’t a normal thing to do.

For several years when I was a child, I attended an ultra-conservative “hellfire and brimstone” type of Christian school (of Lutheran denomination); as such, I was taught many things and given many rules which were weird (and hateful, nonsensical, and often downright silly or obnoxious) but which seemed normal to me…up until a defining period in my young life.

Every Wednesday, all students from grades 1 through 8 attended mass at the on-campus church; we were seated by grade in ascending order (first graders up in front, eighth graders at the far back), and one of the many sermons I distinctly remember was a rule about how animals go to hell. “Every time a bird chirps, it worships Jesus,” the pastor declared in his stern, self-assured manner as he stood high above us on the foreboding church podium. “Every time your dog or cat greets you, they worship Jesus. However, because they do not know that they are worshipping Jesus—” he continued without missing a beat, looking down at us in the pews and frequently turning to make unnerving eye contact,“—they will go to hell when they die. You must repent your sins and accept Christ as your savior; then and only then will God grant you the chance to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Because animals cannot do these things, they will burn in hell for all eternity.” Many of the younger children seated in the front rows began crying (imagining their beloved pets suffering in hell, I imagine) while my peers seated around me were intently listening to his every word and regarding it as gospel. This was absolutely normal - for them. I, on the other hand, at around age 7, was starting to develop a healthy skepticism about sermons such as this. I grew increasingly aware of the fact that his arguments and the school’s religious views & rules were terrible. I didn’t have an adult’s experience or knowledge, but I had imagination & intuition, and I knew in my heart that this speech was hateful, unfounded, and not in the true spirit of Christianity. It was a defining period of my life during which I realised that I was part of a very small minority of the people I knew and regularly interacted with, both peers and adults. What the majority found normal, I found shallow, craven, and cynical; children were being spoon-fed rules about the universe which boiled its vast complexities down to mere binaries - good & evil, right & wrong, black & white.

While I am not a religious person, I do not outright deny the existence of a god (whatever that concept means to you) because I cannot know. We are all ignorant of whether God or gods exist and are merely fumbling through this life trying to make sense of higher mysteries such as these, let alone getting by on a day-to-day basis. I do know that if I was capable of believing in God in a conventional, nonsecular manner, I wouldn’t think of it/him/her as something to be feared, but something to be loved and to have faith in. I cannot wrap my mind around the mentality of that pastor and those teachers at that school (nor those kinds of Christians) who preached about a wrathful, vengeful god who nonetheless loves everyone yet condemns innocent animals and people who disagree with its rules to hell to suffer for all eternity. Suffice to say, many of the staff members and other students at this school were very narrow-minded, cruel, and psychologically & physically abusive - that period of my life is as close to hell as I can conceive of from personal experience.

I know this doesn’t address your question exactly the way it was worded, but I felt a strong desire to share this slice of my personal life because of how profound an effect it had on me. As traumatic as my experiences at that school were, they did teach me to be a very critical, analytical, and fiercely independent thinker, and for that much, I am grateful. I’m not the only person who’s been through these types of experiences either, and we owe it to ourselves as active participants of this world to question everything we’re told, whether it be from religious institutions, elected officials, the media, our teachers & mentors, and even our friends & family. Life, the Universe, God - concepts such as these are far too abstract & complex to be quantified and categorized in neat little preconceived boxes that define the way we see the world, the people & institutions which comprise it, and what happens to us after we die.

When I was younger if anything went slightly wrong in the house my sibling and I would all be spanked in turns until someone confessed, and then that person would get spanked again the same amount of times that we all already had been. For example, when i was maybe 10 my older sister (11) had a fake toy barbie box that could only be opened with a plastic credit card. one time my mother got mad at my sister and took the card away from her for about three months. So during this time the barbie box was essesntially a useless hunk of plastic. Then, one day, my mother decided to open the box and found a dirty tissue in it and she wanted to know who had put it there. Obviously none of us could remember cause A. we all always put stuff in the box and B. we were 11, 10, 8, 7, and 5. So my mom went on a rant about how liars burn in hell and theres no space in heaven for sinners and we all got spanked around 250ish times each until my younger sister said she did it. (she didnt and we still dont actually know who did). She confessed a lot because she was the nicest I guess and just got tired of it. Either way, that how we were punished for lying as kids.

We had a couch in the living room. But the living room was carpeted so I was not allowed to walk on the carpet. And thus I was not allowed to sit on the couch. I was repeatedly told that the couch was made from Z+3 fabric and that Z was “the best fabric money could buy” but that our poor family where every member was unemployed, living on social security from the time I was five, had somehow purchased one of these.

I was literally not allowed to sit on the couch for my first eighteen years. So imagine my shock and horror one day, when one of my friends comes over and sits on the couch. I must have been quivering in horror. He asked me what was wrong and assumed that I was joking when I told him. The rule was absurd but I had been raised and indoctrinated on its reasonableness and validity. I was also used to being beaten by my mom for much smaller infractions. I had never seen her beat a friend of mine but I was ready.

More shockingly she came home, greeted us, and said nothing about the fact that he was sitting on the couch. I was shocked. My friend had stood up to my mom and won. The gears began turning.

Twenty five years later my dad died and I went back to attend his funeral. The (presumably same) couch was still in my mom’s living room, though it was pulled away from the wall because the dog had developed a habit of walking behind the furniture and getting stuck. The result was that my mom’s house smelled severely of mold and urine and had all of the furniture pulled away from the walls like she was packing up to move out. But she wasn’t. This was simply logical to her.

I’ve long wondered if my mom is neurodiverse as my father was. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter but when I stumble upon memories like these and decisions upheld across decades, I feel so justified in how much I acted out during childhood.

The ceremonial manner in which we had to answer the phone: “Hoskinson residence, Andy speaking, may I help you, sir or ma’am?” This was because my father was an old-school career army officer. Everything was “yes sir, no sir,” and god forbid a senior officer call the house and hear a surly teenager answer the phone.

When my brother and I were outside playing my dad would whistle loudly to call us in. We would have to yell out “sir” to let him know we heard, and then we'd run home as quickly as we could… why yes, he was a DI, howd you know?

I once worked with a woman who refused to let her children watch any Peanuts Cartoons. She claimed that the cartoons contained subliminal messages of anti-authoritarian and anti-government nature. Specifically the way all the adults voices were all muffled.

Any item that I selected for myself while we were out shopping had to be red. My siblings and I were each assigned different colors so that we could easily distinguish ownership of each item. I had a red toothbrush, cup, hairbrush, etc. I think that we tended to take it too far. I always selected red cherry lollipops and the others usually selected lollipops of their assigned color too, with each of us claiming that we had selected our favorite flavor.

I wasn't allowed to answer the door, answer the phone, look through windows, or play outside before 3:00pm.

I was homeschooled in a state where doing so was perfectly legal, but still uncommon at the time. The few times we went to the store during the day, old women would follow us around and ask—with dark, disapproving looks—why we were not in school. The looks sometimes got darker when they were given the answer. My mother knew that nosy, helpful strangers could call CPS. She knew folks who'd had to deal with that mess; the intrusiveness, the interrogation, the take-kids-first-ask-questions-later tendency, the fear kids have to live with afterward. So she decided not to tempt fate. When the regularly-schooled kids were out of sight, so were we.

By the time I was a teen, more people were homeschooling. Strangers stopped giving us weird looks and following us around stores. The local skate rink held “homeschooler day” smack in the middle of Thursday. My mother relaxed the rules, and we could act comfortably in our own home. It was at that point that I realized why we hadn't been able to do so before. She had never told me when I was young—didn't want to frighten me, I suppose.

My parents didn't homeschool me to shelter me, to give me some outlandish education, or because they were off-the-grid. They did it because I was a very bright student who was bored to death in a regular classroom and turning to misbehavior for amusement. Just like a million other homeschool parents out there.

I lived through the times when homeschoolers were afraid to peek through the windows. I lived through the changes that allowed us to have support, community, etc. I don't want my siblings to experience those days of weird rules implemented for nosy, helpful strangers. But every time a homeschool family makes the news, it's always the oddball, abusive ones, never the successful ones.

And I'm afraid my little brother won't be allowed to answer the phone or play outside before 3:00pm.

I wasn’t allowed to watch more than one movie (or alternatively one hour) of TV a day, and that hour could not be in the morning. I think this rule really messed me up. I could not believe for a long time that anyone could actually watch two movies a day. Till today, I’m drowned with guilt if I watch two movies in a day and I could never keep up on binge watching any TV show before spoilers started coming in. I think my parents made their point for life.