What's Your Strict Parents' Craziest Rule or Punishment? (r/AskReddit)

redditors who grew up with strict parents what was the craziest rule or punishment you had to deal with I got grounded from an end of year party I was 11 for getting a B on a paper even though I still got all A's I was devastated it was thrown by my best friend and I was never allowed to do anything and I had been looking forward to it all year I had the perfect dress to wear because my aunt's via marriage mother had taken me shopping and bought this cool dress that made me feel like Molly ducking Ringwald I was never allowed to wear it before and it had been in my closet since September I was seriously having a Cinderella moment although I honestly related more to Jane Eyre because I was adopted and a bookworm the day of party I'm bullying I'm a good kid I try to be perfect every waking moment now I'm grounded from my best friend's party the mom of my best friend knows how tough it is at home I'm screamed at belittled it all the time this party was a ducking beaker Arlene the BFFs mom barges in my house tells me to get ready and get my stuff together because I'll be spending the night my mom protests how about I call Child Protective Services about the fifty ducking caps in your house I go to the party and Arlene teaches me to be a badass as the eldest son of a sorcerer and Baptist preacher I was held to some high standards being seen and not heard and that my every action was a reflection of my father as a leader to his congregation I found music to be great outlet but of course any non-christian music was not allowed and immediately destroyed upon discovery spare the rod spoil the child was a mantra ingrained in my daily life once I was into my teens and spankings with stretched out coat hangers was no longer enough to be considered punishment due to the lack of tears my father moved on to shaving my head nothing like the constant reminder of how unworthy one is once their physical source of personal identity is forcibly removed my grandmother was a retired English teacher one day I called my brother stupid I was four also she filled me in on her rule that if I couldn't spell stupid but I called someone stupid then it was really me that was stupid this I should never call someone a name that I couldn't spell so in my four-year-old head rather than avoid name-calling realized that I didn't know how to spell them so that word must be permitted I spent the rest of the day overusing the word dumb and she wasn't quite sure what to do at that point I dealt with a narcissistic / abusive mother most of my punishments weren't huge because I was a really good kid but on my 18th birthday because I asked for gas money the day before the first time ever she took mine and her car keys with her to work and took the shed key no garage so I couldn't even ride my bike and left a note on the kitchen table saying happy 18th now you're an adult so get out of my house I spent my birthday alone trapped and miserable all over $10 my mother is a malignant narcissist obligatory plug Thomas nashe raised by narcissists so the rules in my childhood home went from bad to straight-up disturbing could only shower twice a week we lived on a pig farm I loathed that rule had to wear my clothes at least two to three days in a row regardless of playing outside working or getting dirty school was not fun but I did get in a system where I wore different clothes underneath and shed the outer layers on the bus eventually in my later teens she slightly loosened this rule no phone calls if my friends ever calls I almost always had to say I will see you at school and hang up clean your plate rule I wouldn't give the dog what my mother cooked if I wasn't finished with my meal first she would grab my chair and throw it across the room I then had to take my plate and go to the chair to finish my meal I never stood a chance my siblings could inhale a buffet like a shop-vac and she always gave them whatever portions look the most appetizing first they were of course allowed to belittle me when this happened if I wasn't the first person in the kitchen in the morning to set up breakfast I would have to take my clothes off and eat naked while everyone else ridiculed me my father worked 16 hours a day on the farm and wasn't around for most of this when he saw it one day he put an immediate stop to it damage was done though again the game was rigged for me to lose I had severe insomnia for years laying awake every night for hours going over and over about whatever crap [ __ ] had happened that day and how to fight the next crazy storm coming I could never wake up in the mornings and just bound out of bed we were not allowed to set our own alarm clocks so as soon as the signal went off the rest were already halfway down the stairs before I even realized what was going on I was not allowed to watch the endings of TV show / movies and what we watched was strictly controlled this is one that actually left huge mental scars for years it may seem petty but it's also been well proven that children grow much more attached to a storyline in TV / films than adults do I need to know how that last plot twist ends even if to an adult it is cheesy and predictable my mother knew this and would always barge into the den at the cliffhanger commercial break and turn off the TV it was a form of hijacking information to deliberately keep me confused and reinforcing her absolute control over every aspect of my life to this day I find TV shows I watched as a child and binge the series just to see how each episode ends I was not allowed to use public restrooms I ruined our Disney trip because of how many times we had to go back to the hotel not on site when I was six and I quite honestly had accidents when I was far too old to do so because my parents had my teachers reporting bathroom news to them - there was no place I could safely use the restroom other than home without getting into trouble finally I got to use public restrooms without punishment when I ducking went to college no I'm not kidding but I got pretty good at hiding restroom use in high school because the high school refused to report it to my parents why did none of these teachers spot the abuse how I refuse to greet my sister's new boyfriend with more than a sob so later that night my mom Hulk smashed my laptop double-fist style I know those feels I wanted to be a scientist when I was a kid my older sister saved up a lot of money to buy me a microscope kit where you could make your own slides it was awesome one day my sister and I got into a fight about doing the dishes my mother punished my sister by forbidding her from seeing her boyfriend my mother punished me by breaking my microscope and to by smashing it into my head with one hand and holding me against the wall by my throat in the other it's shitty how parents can simultaneously abuse you when the things you care about I lost all interest in science after that the word disgusting was banned and could have been considered just as bad as saying duck we weren't allowed to close doors unless we were in the bathroom we weren't allowed to watch Cartoon Network because it was garbage they actually put a parental lock on Cartoon Network the worst punishment was one time they decided that we were such bad kids my sister was like 14 I was 12 ish that they took everything we owned and bagged it up into garbage bags and made us carry them out to a burn pile and they burned everything we owned all of my childhood memorabilia pictures clothes Diaries everything burned it all duck dark when it was done burning the next day or so later my sister and I looked through the ashes and all that was left were two silver rings of hers that we cleaned off and kept crazy [ __ ] I had all the usual punishments no video games for a week no TV for X nights no pocket money this week groundings you name it I probably had it at one point or another one particular punishment tops the rest though for creativity and cruelty day I was at a friend's place with my parents and discovered that if we opened his bedroom window all the way we could squeeze out of it and climb onto his roof his bedroom was on the second floor of their house and they lived on top of a hill so if we had fallen we would have fallen probably seven to eight meters then tumbled another twenty to thirty meters to the bottom of the hill anyway both sets of parents walk outside at one point and hear us talking from the roof they flip their lids and call us back inside we scramble back into his bedroom and are sitting there terrified when our parents storm in we get called down into the kitchen and are told to sit down at the kitchen table and await our punishment my friend's dad opens up the pantry and starts pulling things out things to make a sandwich then it hits us like a ton of bricks our punishment is to eat a sandwich made of the most ill complimenting grotesque food combinations that he had at his disposal the final product ended up being an unholy blend of Vegemite oysters anchovies cheese creamed corn raw beef nuts and hot English mustard I actually don't really recall what it tasted like other than being or for looking back on it as an adult I reckon it was just as much for their entertainment than our punishment but damned if it wasn't creative bit late but one day the news said school might be closed for a cold day like a snow day but for when it's cold enough your exposed skin freezes in less than 10 minutes my mum demanded I start walking to school or she'd report me to the cops as truant we argued TV said school started late that day I decided to go anyways that being better than the arguing she then decided I was to stay home for her to call the cops I shoved past her which she yelled at me was assault and then locked me out of the house halfway to school I was told the school was closed I had to call my dad to be let in the house again that day I promised myself I'd leave home as soon as possible I've stayed halfway across the country from my mum ever since you could earn a fulness whooping for uttering any of the following shut up but accusing someone of lying for any reason we were not permitted to use the words lie Lara lying instead we had to say that's not the truth or that doesn't sound right or any other phraseology that wasn't some iteration of the word lie as punishment my dad would make us face a corner stand on one leg and keep both arms straight up in the air for a certain length of time if our let your arms went down he'd double the time sometimes he'd give you a surprise visit from his belt or shoe if he was particularly best at least I grew up to have fantastic balance my parents once grounded me for two years for getting a B on my report card took everything out of my room besides the bed and I wasn't allowed to do anything with friends a year and a half into it I asked if I could be ungrounded and at that point they had actually forgotten what they grounded me for but refused because I must have done something bad if they grounded me also they refused to let me stay up past eight pm even in high school I have a literal book worth of stories of the abuse I survive through but one time dr. Phil's show told my mother that having a bed was a luxury for kids so she immediately took mine away I slept on a cold wood floor until I escaped that hellhole and cut off all contact my dorm in college was the first real bed I'd slept in for 10 years I didn't own a bed when I moved into my first apartment after college so I was back on the wood floor I'd moved in with the clothes on my back my cat and her staff and my laptop which I used to make money by transcribing at night while I worked for seven dollars an hour twelve hours a week at a deli it was the only place that would hire me since I didn't have access to my own car I cried myself to sleep every night on that wood floor it was a reminder of how much I'd failed leaving myself back in that position my roommate must have heard me crying one night and figured it was back because they lent me an air mattress to sleep on it was like I'd moved into a four-star hotel eventually I saved up a spare 50 bucks and bought a bed off Craigslist sketchy but I hadn't owned my own bed in 16 years before that I still have a bed and refused to part with it because I don't want to end up on the floor again I have many chronic back problems that I don't think will ever be fixed due to being forced to sleep on a floor starting at age 7 I take pain meds when I can and do yoga but it does not help sometimes when I can't sleep in my normal bed I find myself still defaulting to the floor when I wake up I cry because I'm worried I'll always be like this parents have no idea how much they can dunk up their kids when I was 13 no dating until University when I was 18 no dating until I finish University when I am 20 and about to graduate no dating unless it's someone I choose for you what the dark context when I was 12 13 this girl had a crush on me and I have no idea until someone told me so I asked my parents what I should do you know I'm young I didn't know what to do and they forbid me from dating of course the strictest parents create the most rebellious children I've dated a few times during high school and the last relationship in high school had an adverse effect on my academics broke up on the morning before an exit exam in university I met my current girlfriend and under the assumption I was allowed to date in university I thought it was a good idea to introduce her to my parents oh boy that was a bad mistake I got massive backlash saying that it was a bad idea jeopardizing my studies for a silly relationship three years later she graduates the first supposed graduate study for a year and travels the world whilst still maintaining the relationships strength I couldn't drink water from my bathroom my bathroom genuinely had colder water and the best water in the house mom got suspicious when I'd leave to my bathroom for a few seconds every few minutes I don't know what she possibly thought I was doing but no more bathroom water and I had to drink lukewarm peasant water like the rest of my family well this one time I didn't want to finish drinking my milk so my dad threw the cup across the room shattering it and getting milk everywhere while he proceeded to flip my chair oh the while I was still in it then he crouched over my body saying you want a duck with me a bunch and stormed out telling me to clean up the mess and just lots more stuff like that when I was in first grade I had a writing homework assignment my dad used to be weird about me erasing because he wanted me to do it right the first time I ended up erasing a lot on this homework and my dad took the paper from me ripped it in half and told me to start over turns out it was the last sheet of paper in the entire house and I don't remember why but for some reason we couldn't go and buy more paper that night so ironically I ended having to completely erase an old homework assignment in order to have a sheet of paper to start over on I'm 22 now and still give him crap about this no TV not as a punishment just no TV ever because apparently it lets the devil in the second eye as the last kid moved out they started watching TV all the time edit Wow I am astonished of the interest this post has received I am not surprised that no one guessed correctly I will gladly sate everyone's curiosity my parents were a part of a Christian religious offshoot named the move or the move of God it was founded by a man named Sam Fife and is continued today by a man named buddy Cobb these are all facts which can be googled I'm not breaking any reddit rules by putting this out here some things the move believed in that we had to endure as kids women had to wear dresses no TV / video games forced participation and religious ceremonies little to no contact with the outside world all my friends were move 80s exorcisms the school I went to was part of the move group too there was no escape Wow okay just typing this out is kind of bringing me back to that place I gotta stop now and take a break when I was a kid I had dysgraphia but my parents didn't know that so I used to take time to do my homework my mom would threaten to throw my homework out the window if I wasn't done by a certain time I lived in an apartment block and this window was into a service shaft we weren't allowed to have food upstairs but I had food wrappers in my trash can so they searched my whole room ripping clothes off hangers throwing stuff out of drawers etc and for three months I wasn't allowed in my room for anything and less accompanied by one of them I slept on the couch not that crazy just something that stuck with me since I generally considered my parents to be good caring parents mainly just overprotective but when I was 15 I got really depressed and kind of shut down academically and socially my parents didn't know what to do with me at one point they ran out of ways to ground me and my life was consequently made up of just going to school and coming home and lying motionless in bed staring at the wall or sleeping but my grades still hadn't improved so they thought denying me of privacy / solitude by taking away my bedroom door would persuade me to get my grades up spoiler alert it didn't Law [Music]

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Keywords: r/ask reddit, r/ askreddit, best posts and comments, askreddit top posts

Id: LcnxyqKS_mQ

Length: 19min 38sec (1178 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 13 2020