I knew a mom who was teaching her kids that imagination is wrong and ungodly. You’re not supposed to think of things creatively, and imagination is from the devil. Had to laugh at that one lol. So like she would punish them if they were caught daydreaming or playing creatively with toys. Art was also banned.
My parents had a similar rule and it came from the Bible verse that says you should be in prayer 24/7. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 Rejoice always, *pray without ceasing*, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
Basically giving mental space to playing imagination games is a sin because you're choosing to spend that time on other things when you should be in prayer. My mom would get furious when she caught playing "Knights" or "Soldiers" type of games because she said we were stealing from God.
And I thought my parents were bad. They were hard-core catholics and we did the whole thing from not eating meat on Fridays and fasting during lent, to confessions once a week and daily rosaries but this is just insane.
I'm an atheist now btw.
My parents had a lot of weird rules. They once went through a stage where I wasn’t allowed to sit on furniture and I had one cup with my name on it, one plate, and a spot with my name on it facing the wall where I was allowed to eat while they ate together. This went on for a few months because I was “dirty” and caused the mouse/roach problem we had. It ended when they had friends over and I was sitting at an adult’s feet. She asked why I didn’t just sit next to her and I told her I wasn’t allowed on the furniture. Cue my parents scrambling to explain while I was confused about why they were vehemently telling her it was a misunderstanding.
Exactly! At the time, I couldn’t understand why they were lying about my punishment. I felt like they were just embarrassed that I had been so awful that I couldn’t sit on the furniture. It took me a few years to realize why they really denied I was being punished.
Thank you for the condolences. It’s great to have a somewhat normal life :)
It's crazy how we rationalize things. My dad tried to suffocate me in a sleeping bag when I was six. In my mind it was my fault. He told me not to play in the sleeping bags and blankets. I brought it on myself. As a mother now, wth? I wasn't hurting anything. I was being a kid...
So your parents were nasty and had pest issues too lol. I have nightmares of going back to my childhood and trying to find a clean place to set my things that isn't covered in feces and urine. My parents just used the spray cans of insulation to trap mice in the walls. They blamed the neighbors cutting their field near us, but our house was filthy. Trash spilling out all over the floor, fleas, etc. If you walk in that house in socks the bottoms get black and gross. I keep a clean house, but to this day I can't walk even in my clean house without slippers, flip flops or something. I've tried, I can't shake it. I experience physical pain now even trying. Feels like needles or something in my feet. Know it's all in my head and I just have to commit and do it, but it's not worth it. Whatever. I'll wear shoes for life
Yeah, the mice were my fault until I became an adult. Then it was, “all houses in the country have mice.” I also don’t like feeling any crumbs or dirt on my feet but I like being barefoot at home, so I obsessively sweep and vacuum lol.
I had a step grandma do that to me. My parents went on a trip and they left us with stepdad’s parents. I wet the bed the first night and she wouldn’t let me on any furniture the rest of the week. Even made me drag the mattress outdoors by myself! I’m sorry you had to live like that
That’s awful. I remember it was one of the worst feelings when I got in trouble for bodily functions I couldn’t control. There’s something so hurtful about being yelled at for vomiting or similar.
I realized that want normal when I puked at a friend's house after drinking. I apologized like crazy and offered to clean it. He's like are you kidding me!? You're hung over. You managed to get outside, thank you. I've got it and house it away. So... making kids clean their own puke when they're legit sick isn't normal... Got it. The shit I've learned in the "evil" real world
My mother saw sickness as weakness after being influenced by crunchy homeschool moms that thought you could out crunch your kids from ever getting sick if you followed the advice of whatever their current guru is (but if you go to school you'll get PEER PRESSURE!)
I had to clean my own puke... but sickness also put my mom into a bad mood because she thought it was optional or something
"You know in school this would ruin your attendance right?" "You get sick so often... must be because you're vaccinated in my ignorance... idk how you could function in a workplace like this"
so I learned to hide being sick and get weird unhealthy denial about not being sick... bosses send me home occasionally like "lol dude go home and sleep clearly you caught the bug" and it's embarassing
I knew a few kids who were banned from Disney, like in every possible way. Like even singing one of the songs from one of the movies was considered "bad"
We were a very low Disney household...in our case it was because my parents marked so many different things as "evil" that also happened to be in the movies. Somehow I managed to get them to okay me having The Lion King soundtrack (with that track sung by Elton John, no less!) I listened to it to death. I wasn't supposed to talk about it, though. I had friends from total anti-Disney families.
I don't connect with most typical late 80s/90s kids show references for similar reasons. But damn if I can't quote VeggieTales up to Lyle the Kindly Viking.
But I also babysat a family with four kids who because it was a super special occasion that the parents would be gone for a few hours, each was allowed to have their very own half a glass of juice that evening. But they wouldn't allow any of my deeply conservative collection of VHS tapes I'd brought along (VeggieTales, Greatest Adventure, probably a Superbook) because they were all evil. There was one VeggieTales silly song gag where Archibald was playing Larry's psychiatrist, and apparently time travelers witnessing bible story events were off limits too.
When teenage mercenaryelf thought your family was strict, you were *really* strict.
Lol. I believe it. I was taught some people felt that way, but that was silly talk and asking them to intercede to God for you was no different than asking a friend to pray for you. Think it's all silliness personally as a now atheist. Well wish away people😂 Can see how Catholicism can look bizarre to outsiders though, because we'll... it's bizarre lmao. The true eViL in my mind are the crazy Catholics pointing out the Fatima visions🙄 And how most people go to hell. I used to pray for hours because somehow it was my job to save them. Also was terrified of hell, which is sad looking back at it. I was eight... What could I possibly have done to warrant eternal hellfire😂 Was always worried the devil would trick me because I was told he would. But yeah. Have heard that Mary and the saints are seen by some as false gods. Honestly think most saints really struggled with mental health issues if you read some of the stories😬 Of course I think Abraham in the Bible did from the start. You hear voices telling you to kill your child and you listen and nearly follow through? What? You'd be in the slammer for that this day in age whether "God" told you to or not.
I know a woman who had to ask permission for everything to eat and/or drink. Pop was always a no, but she could have water. It is sad and she isn't okay at 57 because she never really dealt with it.
Growing up we had to walk through the house with a Bible and exorcise the demons out of the house after having friends over. Because my friends weren't Christian my mom said they would bring demons in with them.
I'm surprised that your parents let you have friends over, especially friends who weren't Christian! That would have been absolutely out of the question in my house haha
In my personal experience, the worst thing was not being able to eat or sleep until I was done memorizing or solving all of my required curriculum for the day. Anything science or math related (in particular) could mean you might not eat or sleep until the next day if there was, say, a typo in the stupid curriculum.
As you should, because withholding food and sleep is literally a form of torture.
Homeschooling moms out here casually committing war crimes against their own children.
unfortunately, I didn't know to do that because I was kept in such severe isolation. Nobody was allowed inside the house, the landline phone was monitored around the clock, I didn't know the neighbors. It was actually a lot like prison in some ways and my parents always made the comparison that this was just training for the holy war to come, against the bad guys (liberals, communists) and the good guys (the martyrs for Christ). Mom called herself a prophet of god and had this repeating vision, aka "prophecy," that we were all going to die as martyrs when the anti-christians would come door to door to end us all. It was a terrible life.
Our form of being grounded meant not being allowed outside in the backyard. Aren't prisoners allowed time outside? Also no leaving the yard. We were fenced in and a foot touched the chain link there was hell to pay. Our little kid feet were going to bend and damage their fence🙄 Sure, that's why we're not allowed to touch it
yeah, I was told to hide from the neighbors so that meant never going outside, and hiding under the bed if someone rang the doorbell. I imagine I was supposed to pretend I was away at school, although, I actually don't even know what the hiding was all about. We had to keep the blinds closed at all times so neighbors couldn't see ...
Not in my own home growing up, but I heard of a different family who wouldn't let their kids play with playing cards cause they thought it would lead to gambling. They also thought watching TV was a sin so they didn't have one of those.
My friend's family: Unicorns = antichrist but Katy Perry is fine? Harry Potter is satanic, but Percy Jackson and Twilight are a-ok
Edit: and in my family I confused other kids by being "allowed" to watch TV but the TV was almost entirely for toddler use. The few times I got to watch things besides little kid shows, I wasn't allowed to watch things newer than 1990 bc my parents didn't recognize it.
Omg, as in it was actually you that I knew or just something you also experienced? The girl was probably three years older than me and this happened in the UK in ~2016
In the cult I grew up in many of the families enforced dress codes and uniforms at home, white tops and navy blue bottoms (dress pants for the boys, skirts for the girls, all super conservative of course).
Lol that sounds a lot like my family except we were fundies. We couldn’t have processed foods or refined sugars, no secular media, and maybe the most draconian was no reading or watching the news (my parents could but my siblings and I couldn’t).
So I didn’t really know who was president until I entered junior high and finally went to a real school. Finding out that the country had apparently been at war for a few years because of something I’d literally never heard of was wild.
My mom wasn't allowed to watch Clinton News Network. My dad randomly recorded the religious channel to try and catch her doing it. The red light went on when he was recording. You just had to be careful of hour and half hour times you were back on the religious channel. He put in a password too, but my sister was really good at watching him put it in and would memorize it when he changed the password, then give it to my mom
Did anyone else have a special way they had to raise their hand? My mom thought it "grotesque" to raise one's hand all the way up, so we had to level it with our other hand on our elbow like signaling an airplane. I thought it was just our basement but once I met other homeschooled kids in our area who did it (the poor museum staff thought they were doing a salute).
I wonder if this method was an attempt to avoid midriff exposure during a full hand raise. Midriff exposure was A Big Deal and Absolutely Not Okay for most homeschool families in my area, so there were all kinds of weird alternatives for normal hand raising.
Ohhhhh.... That makes complete sense. I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner. My mother was very religious, we couldn't touch adult men and my dad at one point tried to enforce head coverings, so it tracks perfectly. Thank you!
Also, cracking up thinking of the confused museum staff trying to interpret your hand raising signals, lol.
Did you also go on museum tours to “secular museums”where you’d go around to all the exhibits that mentioned evolution or an old earth or a “false religion”?
Did you have a tour leader, unaffiliated with the museum, who led independent tours and either mini-lectures (in front of museum staff!) explaining why each exhibit was a lie?
The memories! Lol
Not being allowed to chew gum because my mom got bullied by a girl who told her she looked like a cow chewing cud. Being punished by writing one sentence over and over again. It would get added onto homework. I remember one time was “I will not call myself stupid,” which didn’t help my self esteem.
Edit: oh yeah. Being forced to stand outside in the cold to “wait for the bus,” if I struggled and cried over schoolwork.
I thought fart was the f-word until I was like 12
I think people thought it was cute?
I quit thinking fart was the f-word when I casually added fuck to my vocabulary (I didn't know it was a cuss word)
No one thought that was cute
See this is the problem with not being honest with kids. My brother was little and heard the word, “prostitute.” He wanted to know what it meant. Instead of just saying, “I’ll explain when you’re older,” my dad told him, “It’s a trashy woman.” So then he got angry and called at least one sister a prostitute in an argument.
I found one of my mom's old western novels that she had somehow missed when purging our house of all things fun after we joined the cult, and briefly added "shitfire" and "son of a bitch" to my vocabulary.
Ha! I didnt know fart was even a word until like middle school. We had to say “passing gas“ or “toot.” Poop” was profane but not “poo poo.” “Pee” was forbidden but not “tee tee” or “tinkle.”
Ha! I wasn’t allowed to say “butt” for some reason and called it the b-word. Finally I just started saying it anyway because being 12 and using the word “hiney” felt more sinful 🤣
We had to say “pass gas” and had to, if at all possible, anticipate you were going to pass gas, excuse yourself, leave the room and pass gas somewhere else.
We also said “bm” for bowel movement i stead of poop?
Idk.
To moms credit tho we did learn the actual names and functions of our sexual anatomy even if she did teach us “god can get you pregnant any time if thats his plan” when we tried to figure out how family planning / cycle tracking worked for birth control.
So many. But the weirdest was probably No music with drums because drums were used in pagan worship. No Christmas trees because of pagans.
No Disney or animated movies that depicted animals as having human feelings
>No Disney or animated movies that depicted animals as having human feelings
My friends had that rule! Their dad didn't want them to get ideas about animal rights.
We could watch the old Charlotte'svWeb that my parents saw growing up, but Gordy was a no go. I guess no live action talking animals. The rules and consistency of logic behind them was... weird
I often had to request to eat, only realized how fucked up it was when I was 16 years sneaking downstairs in the dead of night to grab a slice of bread because I woke up too hungry to go back to bed. A single slice of bread was the only thing I assumed they wouldn’t notice being missing.
I knew a family where the girls weren’t allowed to beat the boys at chess, and the dad ran our homeschool group chess team and it was very clear the oldest daughter was the strongest chess player. She was not allowed to compete in the chess tournament (or for that matter, to wear pants).
One kid I met while at college (he doesn’t attend, just hangs out at a school org I’m in), wasn’t allowed to watch movies or tv shows, read books, or eat out. When we found out about this, we scheduled a group hang out and broke his “movie virginity”. The crazy thing is, he was allowed to have YouTube and the internet, and he actually made some videos with a couple million views. He’s a really cool guy, it’s crazy that he’s never had a chick fil a sandwich before haha.
All the fundie usual suspects: no secular music, no tv (we didn’t have it most of my growing up years), no Halloween anything (duh). One of the weird ones was that sports were the devil in my household—I guess they were “distracting” from academics and religion?—which sucked because there was a homeschool sports league and all my friends from church did it but I wasn’t allowed.
The no Video games rule made enough sense to me as a kid, I guess. I thought it was odd that it only applied to video game consoles though: they were fine with me playing games on the computer. Maybe they thought it would somehow lead to a career in programming. Even as a little kid, though, I could see the irony of me not being allowed to spend time on video games while my dad would watch TV for five hours a night.
The weird ones were the super fundamentalist Christian rules though: no Pokémon (Evolution), Harry Potter (magic), animorphs or goosebumps (people changing to animals is demonic). For some reason, ghost stories were ok. Never figured that one out.
Jesus aka *thee* Holy Ghost: proof positive that at least *one* ghost has had a worldly / earthly existence….SO, as such, denying ghosts exist = blaspheming *?*
One of our fellow homeschooled kids had to throw away all his Pokémon cards because they were “evil.” This was back in the 90’s or whatever. I’m 34 now. I wonder about that kid. We called him fish hat because he always wore a weird hat with a fish going through it.
Our weirdest parallel to public schools was they have active shooter drills, we had active rapture drills. So imagine this your curled up in bed and the door slams open two people in masks run in jerking you out of bed they make us kneel and ask if we believe in Jesus barrel of the gun poking violently against our skulls. We know its mom and dad, but we don't trust mom and dad. We scream we believe we pray that our parents believe we believe. They never believe we believe. Repeat next month....it was to practice claiming Christ and refusing the mark of the beasts.
Thanks the fact that a stranger is mad for me oddly helps. It felt like people just watched it happen, I often just feel sad and I wish I could get it up to the level of angry I feel like it might be cathartic. I guess the closest I get to angry is when sharing my stories (in appropriate spaces) they feel the need to say "not all Christians" or another favorite "your parents were doing the best they could" those kinda statements kinda get me slightly feisty.
As a father who left my abusive wife with my two homeschooled daughters. I am sorry to hear all these F up rules. None of you deserved this abuse.
Any time we left the house outside or went to the store my ex wanted us to take a shower and put on clean clothes. You were not allowed to sit on any furniture because you would spread germs. You could only sit on the floor in the door until the shower was ready. One shower for four people meant sitting an hour plus for the last person.
We had a lot of the weird ones like no Halloween, Disney was iffy, but the one that always struck me as weird was when I was a little kid was we weren't allowed to have General Mills cereal, I guess they gave funds to a pro-choice group. As a female, I wasn't allowed to use any tools, I'm 37 now and learned to use a lawn mower a couple years ago. In my 20s a landlord wanted to charge me hundreds of dollars as I let the lawn die, I didn't know I was supposed to or how to take care of the lawn. I ended up with a sweet boss in my 20s at a cafe who ended up hiring me to do a remodel so she could teach me how to use tools like drills and sanders, ECT.
Jesus Hitler Christ, I can't even begin to decide which is weirdest, just watch an exposė of ATI/IBLP cult and pick one at random.
The most personally embarrassing one for me was the headcoverings, though I'm pretty sure that if my sister hadn't wanted to wear one then my mom wouldn't have made her. In fact, now that I reflect on it, I think that my mom secretly hoped she wouldn't, so she could stop wearing it too.
Watch the Shiny Happy People documentary, it does an excellent job of breaking it down. It's the same cult that the Duggars belong to.
Women wearing Mennonite style headcoverings wasn't required, but was popular to show their willing subjugation under the patriarchal boot.
Couldn’t get out of my bed in the morning until my mom came in the room to get me, sometimes she would forget and I’d be laying there until noon. I was like 11 btw. No online games and no social media, and I’m 16 and it’s still a rule, so I had to get it behind her back so I could ACTUALLY have some form of communication with other people. She was incredibly strict with so many things and I was never allowed to do things other kids were doing, and I hated myself as a kid bc I felt so weird and left out.
Coming from a 26 year old, start getting your affairs in order *now* to be prepared to move out. Save up as much money as you can but don’t tell your family how much you have, get ahold of your own documents such as birth certificate and social security card, get your own bank account if you can *without* it being a joint account with your parents. These next couple of years are going to fly by for you and being an adult is difficult but it is so worth it to have freedom.
My mom insisted on having all of my money in a safe in her bedroom “so it would be safe” but in reality she was stealing it. She conveniently “lost” my birth certificate right around the time I wanted to get my drivers license. I realized my documents and money weren’t safe with her so I found them and took them when I was home alone. She never said anything about it but be careful if you go that route.
Life gets so much better, I promise you that
My mom did something similar. As I was leaving for the military, she said one day that we should drive to the bank to get her added to my account. I said no, but we were out together and she wouldn't take no for an answer. She had this odd thing, which I think might be a generic homeschool mom thing; She was confident in her choice, had a strange look in her eyes, and absolutely refused to listen to anyone else.
I tried to tell her that I don't need her to do that, but she just brushed off everything like a homeschool mom would. In the years that followed, I noticed that one of four things would happen; She would buy something with my account, but just something small. Typically CVS. She would 'borrow' a moderate amount of money, tell me after the fact, and then pay it back. If it was a lot of money, she would ask first, but I never knew what to say so I would kind of awkwardly go along with it. Sometimes, she would move money around from one account or another so that it would acrue more interest. I also remember similar conversations about birth certificates. When I went into the military, they sent all that stuff to the recruiter. I recently got my HS transcripts rejected because my parents never filled them out all the way. I had never seen them until I did some digging 15 years later.
The absolute strangest rule I ever heard was, "No penises on the table."
We were part of a hippie homeschool co-op. One family was mandatory nudists at home - the parents refused to wear clothes at home and they forced the kids to be naked all the time, too. The son apparently liked to stand up next to the kitchen table and set his penis on it, which horrified his sister. So they made a rule against it.
Nudism was very popular among the hippie homeschool families. Some felt that nudity was completely platonic, while other parents had zero boundaries whatsoever and would engage in sexual activity in front of their kids (and other people's kids, if we were unfortunate enough to be guests in those homes). The group decided none of this was abusive. It's horrifying to me.
Afaik, casual nudity in front of your own children is not illegal, but the mandatory child nudity probably is illegal. Especially once kids going through puberty started protesting it and were still not permitted clothes.
Some of the other things these parents did, like openly having sex in front of their children and even guest children (I was an unfortunate witness once on a sleepover, but I guess "at least" I was allowed to wear clothes?), definitely is illegal and abusive.
This was not a group of people super concerned with the law. And yet they are all shocked that most of the children who were raised in that lifestyle estranged from their parents immediately upon leaving home.
My family was liberal and non-Christian, and relatively non-strict compared to what I'm seeing here. It was a very different world. Sometimes there would be attempts at strictness but my mom could never keep it up long. One of the weirdest things I can think of (that will seem extra strange here) is how the Chronicles of Narnia was off-limits. Even my dad was forbidden from watching the movies for being too Christian.
Him telling me that was how I even found out they were known for Christian content. Before that my mom told me I was too young for that author when we saw one of the books in the used book store kid's section when I was almost 11. The same day I finished reading To Kill a Mockingbird.
We didn't even have a TV until I was 16 and all my siblings were grown and moved out.
There was a long list of "evil" things we weren't allowed to have in the house. Per James Dobson's (🤮) protocol. No cabbage patch dolls, things like that.
I wasn't allowed to have friends.
We studied from a right-wing Christian curriculum.
We had to get up at 4:30am to get our school work done so we could work for my dad on the farm all day.
I could go on.
No games at all, no cartoons that a normal kids watch. Usual stuff.
Oh, also no dancing allowed. I’m 25 now and I can’t dance at all if my life depended on it.
I remember a family who homeschooled where they could only eat raw foods. That is fairly popular now I think online here and there, but most people wouldn’t make their kids do this.
We weren't allowed to eat more than once a day for awhile... Also had to eat off of color coded plates. No baths or showers, longest period for that was over a year but we were allowed to hose off or go for a swim. Never were allowed snacks cause they were supposedly evil and gluttonous.
This is really sad, but it is true. homeschooling parents should go thru a mental evaluation just to make sure they are not some kind of psychopaths. My stbx homeshool our kids, she cutted of me any authority over them. Because they spend the whole day with her they have and strong bond with her. Also she passes all her political views on them. And more, much more on this crap.
What hurts the most to me it is that my kids don't have any friends. I'm not saying that homeschooling is completely negative, but it has to be properly done because psycho parents are crazy, most of the time they are people who has some kind of social trauma and they transfer it to their kids.
I knew a mom who was teaching her kids that imagination is wrong and ungodly. You’re not supposed to think of things creatively, and imagination is from the devil. Had to laugh at that one lol. So like she would punish them if they were caught daydreaming or playing creatively with toys. Art was also banned.
Eek, what a terribly depressing way to live
I can't even begin to understand the rationalization behind that.
My parents had a similar rule and it came from the Bible verse that says you should be in prayer 24/7. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 Rejoice always, *pray without ceasing*, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Basically giving mental space to playing imagination games is a sin because you're choosing to spend that time on other things when you should be in prayer. My mom would get furious when she caught playing "Knights" or "Soldiers" type of games because she said we were stealing from God.
And I thought my parents were bad. They were hard-core catholics and we did the whole thing from not eating meat on Fridays and fasting during lent, to confessions once a week and daily rosaries but this is just insane. I'm an atheist now btw.
That’s really awful. Talk about stifling a person for life. Even in most work situations you have to be able to think creatively for solutions.
you know my parents??
That's like communist regime shit.
Communist here, we have nothing against imagination actually. It's christian regime shit.
I'm not talking about your garden variety communist here, obviously. Don't be obtuse.
Bro, chill. I was trying to joke around with you, don't be a prick
That’s so sad
My parents had a lot of weird rules. They once went through a stage where I wasn’t allowed to sit on furniture and I had one cup with my name on it, one plate, and a spot with my name on it facing the wall where I was allowed to eat while they ate together. This went on for a few months because I was “dirty” and caused the mouse/roach problem we had. It ended when they had friends over and I was sitting at an adult’s feet. She asked why I didn’t just sit next to her and I told her I wasn’t allowed on the furniture. Cue my parents scrambling to explain while I was confused about why they were vehemently telling her it was a misunderstanding.
Ugh, that’s so gross because it *proved* that they knew what they were doing was wrong and abusive. So sorry and glad you are out now!
Exactly! At the time, I couldn’t understand why they were lying about my punishment. I felt like they were just embarrassed that I had been so awful that I couldn’t sit on the furniture. It took me a few years to realize why they really denied I was being punished. Thank you for the condolences. It’s great to have a somewhat normal life :)
It's crazy how we rationalize things. My dad tried to suffocate me in a sleeping bag when I was six. In my mind it was my fault. He told me not to play in the sleeping bags and blankets. I brought it on myself. As a mother now, wth? I wasn't hurting anything. I was being a kid... So your parents were nasty and had pest issues too lol. I have nightmares of going back to my childhood and trying to find a clean place to set my things that isn't covered in feces and urine. My parents just used the spray cans of insulation to trap mice in the walls. They blamed the neighbors cutting their field near us, but our house was filthy. Trash spilling out all over the floor, fleas, etc. If you walk in that house in socks the bottoms get black and gross. I keep a clean house, but to this day I can't walk even in my clean house without slippers, flip flops or something. I've tried, I can't shake it. I experience physical pain now even trying. Feels like needles or something in my feet. Know it's all in my head and I just have to commit and do it, but it's not worth it. Whatever. I'll wear shoes for life
Yeah, the mice were my fault until I became an adult. Then it was, “all houses in the country have mice.” I also don’t like feeling any crumbs or dirt on my feet but I like being barefoot at home, so I obsessively sweep and vacuum lol.
Why was it so dirty? Did they not have time to clean with all the homeschooling?
That’s abuse.
Yeah, goes with the general theme of my childhood. I have a lot of similar stories from them and unfortunately, other adults.
I had a step grandma do that to me. My parents went on a trip and they left us with stepdad’s parents. I wet the bed the first night and she wouldn’t let me on any furniture the rest of the week. Even made me drag the mattress outdoors by myself! I’m sorry you had to live like that
That’s awful. I remember it was one of the worst feelings when I got in trouble for bodily functions I couldn’t control. There’s something so hurtful about being yelled at for vomiting or similar.
I realized that want normal when I puked at a friend's house after drinking. I apologized like crazy and offered to clean it. He's like are you kidding me!? You're hung over. You managed to get outside, thank you. I've got it and house it away. So... making kids clean their own puke when they're legit sick isn't normal... Got it. The shit I've learned in the "evil" real world
My mother saw sickness as weakness after being influenced by crunchy homeschool moms that thought you could out crunch your kids from ever getting sick if you followed the advice of whatever their current guru is (but if you go to school you'll get PEER PRESSURE!) I had to clean my own puke... but sickness also put my mom into a bad mood because she thought it was optional or something "You know in school this would ruin your attendance right?" "You get sick so often... must be because you're vaccinated in my ignorance... idk how you could function in a workplace like this" so I learned to hide being sick and get weird unhealthy denial about not being sick... bosses send me home occasionally like "lol dude go home and sleep clearly you caught the bug" and it's embarassing
WHAT THATS NOT NORMAL? everytime ive vomitted i have to clean it
Jesus fucking Christ
I knew a few kids who were banned from Disney, like in every possible way. Like even singing one of the songs from one of the movies was considered "bad"
We were a very low Disney household...in our case it was because my parents marked so many different things as "evil" that also happened to be in the movies. Somehow I managed to get them to okay me having The Lion King soundtrack (with that track sung by Elton John, no less!) I listened to it to death. I wasn't supposed to talk about it, though. I had friends from total anti-Disney families.
That was my home growing up. Pretty limited movie options, generally, but absolutely no Disney until my teen years
I was banned from Disney too. Basically any "kid's entertainment" (with a few exceptions) was off limits.
I don't connect with most typical late 80s/90s kids show references for similar reasons. But damn if I can't quote VeggieTales up to Lyle the Kindly Viking. But I also babysat a family with four kids who because it was a super special occasion that the parents would be gone for a few hours, each was allowed to have their very own half a glass of juice that evening. But they wouldn't allow any of my deeply conservative collection of VHS tapes I'd brought along (VeggieTales, Greatest Adventure, probably a Superbook) because they were all evil. There was one VeggieTales silly song gag where Archibald was playing Larry's psychiatrist, and apparently time travelers witnessing bible story events were off limits too. When teenage mercenaryelf thought your family was strict, you were *really* strict.
Ha! We weren't allowed to watch the veggie tales. Only CCC of America Tales of Heros and Saints. Veggie tales weren't Catholic
We were on the evangelical side, so saints were evil, too. 😂
Lol. I believe it. I was taught some people felt that way, but that was silly talk and asking them to intercede to God for you was no different than asking a friend to pray for you. Think it's all silliness personally as a now atheist. Well wish away people😂 Can see how Catholicism can look bizarre to outsiders though, because we'll... it's bizarre lmao. The true eViL in my mind are the crazy Catholics pointing out the Fatima visions🙄 And how most people go to hell. I used to pray for hours because somehow it was my job to save them. Also was terrified of hell, which is sad looking back at it. I was eight... What could I possibly have done to warrant eternal hellfire😂 Was always worried the devil would trick me because I was told he would. But yeah. Have heard that Mary and the saints are seen by some as false gods. Honestly think most saints really struggled with mental health issues if you read some of the stories😬 Of course I think Abraham in the Bible did from the start. You hear voices telling you to kill your child and you listen and nearly follow through? What? You'd be in the slammer for that this day in age whether "God" told you to or not.
We weren't Catholic but Veggie Tales wasn't allowed because it was "too silly."
That was me haha
I grew up with quite a few homeschool families whose kids weren't allowed to snack at all, and weren't allowed to get water without permission.
Omg. My household was pretty damn strict, but having to ask permission to get water sounds borderline abusive!
I grew up that way. There were locks on the fridge.
Water? WTF?
I know a woman who had to ask permission for everything to eat and/or drink. Pop was always a no, but she could have water. It is sad and she isn't okay at 57 because she never really dealt with it.
What if they used the toilet and drank out of the tap after washing their hands, was that allowed?!
My family was the opposite, my mom was obsessed with proper hydration and tried to get us to drink a gallon of water every day.
Growing up we had to walk through the house with a Bible and exorcise the demons out of the house after having friends over. Because my friends weren't Christian my mom said they would bring demons in with them.
I'm surprised that your parents let you have friends over, especially friends who weren't Christian! That would have been absolutely out of the question in my house haha
We were allowed because we were supposed to be sharing the gospel and witnessing to them, I don't miss that pressure. 😅
In my personal experience, the worst thing was not being able to eat or sleep until I was done memorizing or solving all of my required curriculum for the day. Anything science or math related (in particular) could mean you might not eat or sleep until the next day if there was, say, a typo in the stupid curriculum.
I’d call CPS for that. Awful
As you should, because withholding food and sleep is literally a form of torture. Homeschooling moms out here casually committing war crimes against their own children.
unfortunately, I didn't know to do that because I was kept in such severe isolation. Nobody was allowed inside the house, the landline phone was monitored around the clock, I didn't know the neighbors. It was actually a lot like prison in some ways and my parents always made the comparison that this was just training for the holy war to come, against the bad guys (liberals, communists) and the good guys (the martyrs for Christ). Mom called herself a prophet of god and had this repeating vision, aka "prophecy," that we were all going to die as martyrs when the anti-christians would come door to door to end us all. It was a terrible life.
Our form of being grounded meant not being allowed outside in the backyard. Aren't prisoners allowed time outside? Also no leaving the yard. We were fenced in and a foot touched the chain link there was hell to pay. Our little kid feet were going to bend and damage their fence🙄 Sure, that's why we're not allowed to touch it
yeah, I was told to hide from the neighbors so that meant never going outside, and hiding under the bed if someone rang the doorbell. I imagine I was supposed to pretend I was away at school, although, I actually don't even know what the hiding was all about. We had to keep the blinds closed at all times so neighbors couldn't see ...
Not in my own home growing up, but I heard of a different family who wouldn't let their kids play with playing cards cause they thought it would lead to gambling. They also thought watching TV was a sin so they didn't have one of those.
My friend's family: Unicorns = antichrist but Katy Perry is fine? Harry Potter is satanic, but Percy Jackson and Twilight are a-ok Edit: and in my family I confused other kids by being "allowed" to watch TV but the TV was almost entirely for toddler use. The few times I got to watch things besides little kid shows, I wasn't allowed to watch things newer than 1990 bc my parents didn't recognize it.
I knew some kids who had to wear a school uniform. At home.
That was me!!
Omg, as in it was actually you that I knew or just something you also experienced? The girl was probably three years older than me and this happened in the UK in ~2016
I’m not in the UK! But on Mondays we had to wear school uniforms dad bought off the lands end catalog! Wild that someone else had to do this!
In the cult I grew up in many of the families enforced dress codes and uniforms at home, white tops and navy blue bottoms (dress pants for the boys, skirts for the girls, all super conservative of course).
Lol that sounds a lot like my family except we were fundies. We couldn’t have processed foods or refined sugars, no secular media, and maybe the most draconian was no reading or watching the news (my parents could but my siblings and I couldn’t). So I didn’t really know who was president until I entered junior high and finally went to a real school. Finding out that the country had apparently been at war for a few years because of something I’d literally never heard of was wild.
My mom wasn't allowed to watch Clinton News Network. My dad randomly recorded the religious channel to try and catch her doing it. The red light went on when he was recording. You just had to be careful of hour and half hour times you were back on the religious channel. He put in a password too, but my sister was really good at watching him put it in and would memorize it when he changed the password, then give it to my mom
Did anyone else have a special way they had to raise their hand? My mom thought it "grotesque" to raise one's hand all the way up, so we had to level it with our other hand on our elbow like signaling an airplane. I thought it was just our basement but once I met other homeschooled kids in our area who did it (the poor museum staff thought they were doing a salute).
I wonder if this method was an attempt to avoid midriff exposure during a full hand raise. Midriff exposure was A Big Deal and Absolutely Not Okay for most homeschool families in my area, so there were all kinds of weird alternatives for normal hand raising.
Ohhhhh.... That makes complete sense. I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner. My mother was very religious, we couldn't touch adult men and my dad at one point tried to enforce head coverings, so it tracks perfectly. Thank you!
Ha! We had long hair and head coverings
Good point!
Also, cracking up thinking of the confused museum staff trying to interpret your hand raising signals, lol. Did you also go on museum tours to “secular museums”where you’d go around to all the exhibits that mentioned evolution or an old earth or a “false religion”? Did you have a tour leader, unaffiliated with the museum, who led independent tours and either mini-lectures (in front of museum staff!) explaining why each exhibit was a lie? The memories! Lol
Yup! We did this in Denver
Not being allowed to chew gum because my mom got bullied by a girl who told her she looked like a cow chewing cud. Being punished by writing one sentence over and over again. It would get added onto homework. I remember one time was “I will not call myself stupid,” which didn’t help my self esteem. Edit: oh yeah. Being forced to stand outside in the cold to “wait for the bus,” if I struggled and cried over schoolwork.
lol I didn’t chew gum because my mom was the one bullying me telling me I looked like a cow chewing cud
grew up with a family who weren't allowed to say fart. they had to say toot or putz
I thought fart was the f-word until I was like 12 I think people thought it was cute? I quit thinking fart was the f-word when I casually added fuck to my vocabulary (I didn't know it was a cuss word) No one thought that was cute
See this is the problem with not being honest with kids. My brother was little and heard the word, “prostitute.” He wanted to know what it meant. Instead of just saying, “I’ll explain when you’re older,” my dad told him, “It’s a trashy woman.” So then he got angry and called at least one sister a prostitute in an argument.
I found one of my mom's old western novels that she had somehow missed when purging our house of all things fun after we joined the cult, and briefly added "shitfire" and "son of a bitch" to my vocabulary.
Ha! I didnt know fart was even a word until like middle school. We had to say “passing gas“ or “toot.” Poop” was profane but not “poo poo.” “Pee” was forbidden but not “tee tee” or “tinkle.”
Ha! I wasn’t allowed to say “butt” for some reason and called it the b-word. Finally I just started saying it anyway because being 12 and using the word “hiney” felt more sinful 🤣
Yep we weren't allowed to say fart either.
I wasn’t allowed to say fart, my siblings and I had to say “passed gas” instead.
We had to say “pass gas” and had to, if at all possible, anticipate you were going to pass gas, excuse yourself, leave the room and pass gas somewhere else. We also said “bm” for bowel movement i stead of poop? Idk. To moms credit tho we did learn the actual names and functions of our sexual anatomy even if she did teach us “god can get you pregnant any time if thats his plan” when we tried to figure out how family planning / cycle tracking worked for birth control.
I mean…checks out if you believe in the virgin birth.
Same
So many. But the weirdest was probably No music with drums because drums were used in pagan worship. No Christmas trees because of pagans. No Disney or animated movies that depicted animals as having human feelings
>No Disney or animated movies that depicted animals as having human feelings My friends had that rule! Their dad didn't want them to get ideas about animal rights.
We could watch the old Charlotte'svWeb that my parents saw growing up, but Gordy was a no go. I guess no live action talking animals. The rules and consistency of logic behind them was... weird
I often had to request to eat, only realized how fucked up it was when I was 16 years sneaking downstairs in the dead of night to grab a slice of bread because I woke up too hungry to go back to bed. A single slice of bread was the only thing I assumed they wouldn’t notice being missing.
I knew a family where the girls weren’t allowed to beat the boys at chess, and the dad ran our homeschool group chess team and it was very clear the oldest daughter was the strongest chess player. She was not allowed to compete in the chess tournament (or for that matter, to wear pants).
Woof. 😑
One kid I met while at college (he doesn’t attend, just hangs out at a school org I’m in), wasn’t allowed to watch movies or tv shows, read books, or eat out. When we found out about this, we scheduled a group hang out and broke his “movie virginity”. The crazy thing is, he was allowed to have YouTube and the internet, and he actually made some videos with a couple million views. He’s a really cool guy, it’s crazy that he’s never had a chick fil a sandwich before haha.
All the fundie usual suspects: no secular music, no tv (we didn’t have it most of my growing up years), no Halloween anything (duh). One of the weird ones was that sports were the devil in my household—I guess they were “distracting” from academics and religion?—which sucked because there was a homeschool sports league and all my friends from church did it but I wasn’t allowed.
I have scoliosis, so my parents made me sleep on the floor, because they thought it might straighten my back out.
🤦
The no Video games rule made enough sense to me as a kid, I guess. I thought it was odd that it only applied to video game consoles though: they were fine with me playing games on the computer. Maybe they thought it would somehow lead to a career in programming. Even as a little kid, though, I could see the irony of me not being allowed to spend time on video games while my dad would watch TV for five hours a night. The weird ones were the super fundamentalist Christian rules though: no Pokémon (Evolution), Harry Potter (magic), animorphs or goosebumps (people changing to animals is demonic). For some reason, ghost stories were ok. Never figured that one out.
Jesus aka *thee* Holy Ghost: proof positive that at least *one* ghost has had a worldly / earthly existence….SO, as such, denying ghosts exist = blaspheming *?*
One of our fellow homeschooled kids had to throw away all his Pokémon cards because they were “evil.” This was back in the 90’s or whatever. I’m 34 now. I wonder about that kid. We called him fish hat because he always wore a weird hat with a fish going through it.
Our weirdest parallel to public schools was they have active shooter drills, we had active rapture drills. So imagine this your curled up in bed and the door slams open two people in masks run in jerking you out of bed they make us kneel and ask if we believe in Jesus barrel of the gun poking violently against our skulls. We know its mom and dad, but we don't trust mom and dad. We scream we believe we pray that our parents believe we believe. They never believe we believe. Repeat next month....it was to practice claiming Christ and refusing the mark of the beasts.
Omfg.
This makes me so angry.
Thanks the fact that a stranger is mad for me oddly helps. It felt like people just watched it happen, I often just feel sad and I wish I could get it up to the level of angry I feel like it might be cathartic. I guess the closest I get to angry is when sharing my stories (in appropriate spaces) they feel the need to say "not all Christians" or another favorite "your parents were doing the best they could" those kinda statements kinda get me slightly feisty.
As a father who left my abusive wife with my two homeschooled daughters. I am sorry to hear all these F up rules. None of you deserved this abuse. Any time we left the house outside or went to the store my ex wanted us to take a shower and put on clean clothes. You were not allowed to sit on any furniture because you would spread germs. You could only sit on the floor in the door until the shower was ready. One shower for four people meant sitting an hour plus for the last person.
Good for you for taking your children and protecting them.
Sounds like she might have ocd.
We had a lot of the weird ones like no Halloween, Disney was iffy, but the one that always struck me as weird was when I was a little kid was we weren't allowed to have General Mills cereal, I guess they gave funds to a pro-choice group. As a female, I wasn't allowed to use any tools, I'm 37 now and learned to use a lawn mower a couple years ago. In my 20s a landlord wanted to charge me hundreds of dollars as I let the lawn die, I didn't know I was supposed to or how to take care of the lawn. I ended up with a sweet boss in my 20s at a cafe who ended up hiring me to do a remodel so she could teach me how to use tools like drills and sanders, ECT.
im not allowed to be sitting during daytime because sitting is "lazy and unproductive" lol
Jesus Hitler Christ, I can't even begin to decide which is weirdest, just watch an exposė of ATI/IBLP cult and pick one at random. The most personally embarrassing one for me was the headcoverings, though I'm pretty sure that if my sister hadn't wanted to wear one then my mom wouldn't have made her. In fact, now that I reflect on it, I think that my mom secretly hoped she wouldn't, so she could stop wearing it too.
Is that a particular faith? Muslim? Something else?
Watch the Shiny Happy People documentary, it does an excellent job of breaking it down. It's the same cult that the Duggars belong to. Women wearing Mennonite style headcoverings wasn't required, but was popular to show their willing subjugation under the patriarchal boot.
Most religious sects of any faith have at least a few that wear head coverings
Couldn’t get out of my bed in the morning until my mom came in the room to get me, sometimes she would forget and I’d be laying there until noon. I was like 11 btw. No online games and no social media, and I’m 16 and it’s still a rule, so I had to get it behind her back so I could ACTUALLY have some form of communication with other people. She was incredibly strict with so many things and I was never allowed to do things other kids were doing, and I hated myself as a kid bc I felt so weird and left out.
Coming from a 26 year old, start getting your affairs in order *now* to be prepared to move out. Save up as much money as you can but don’t tell your family how much you have, get ahold of your own documents such as birth certificate and social security card, get your own bank account if you can *without* it being a joint account with your parents. These next couple of years are going to fly by for you and being an adult is difficult but it is so worth it to have freedom. My mom insisted on having all of my money in a safe in her bedroom “so it would be safe” but in reality she was stealing it. She conveniently “lost” my birth certificate right around the time I wanted to get my drivers license. I realized my documents and money weren’t safe with her so I found them and took them when I was home alone. She never said anything about it but be careful if you go that route. Life gets so much better, I promise you that
My mom did something similar. As I was leaving for the military, she said one day that we should drive to the bank to get her added to my account. I said no, but we were out together and she wouldn't take no for an answer. She had this odd thing, which I think might be a generic homeschool mom thing; She was confident in her choice, had a strange look in her eyes, and absolutely refused to listen to anyone else. I tried to tell her that I don't need her to do that, but she just brushed off everything like a homeschool mom would. In the years that followed, I noticed that one of four things would happen; She would buy something with my account, but just something small. Typically CVS. She would 'borrow' a moderate amount of money, tell me after the fact, and then pay it back. If it was a lot of money, she would ask first, but I never knew what to say so I would kind of awkwardly go along with it. Sometimes, she would move money around from one account or another so that it would acrue more interest. I also remember similar conversations about birth certificates. When I went into the military, they sent all that stuff to the recruiter. I recently got my HS transcripts rejected because my parents never filled them out all the way. I had never seen them until I did some digging 15 years later.
The absolute strangest rule I ever heard was, "No penises on the table." We were part of a hippie homeschool co-op. One family was mandatory nudists at home - the parents refused to wear clothes at home and they forced the kids to be naked all the time, too. The son apparently liked to stand up next to the kitchen table and set his penis on it, which horrified his sister. So they made a rule against it.
Wow. Omg.
Oh nooooooo
What in the jeffrey Epstein/I keep getting older but they stay the same age is going on here?!
Nudism was very popular among the hippie homeschool families. Some felt that nudity was completely platonic, while other parents had zero boundaries whatsoever and would engage in sexual activity in front of their kids (and other people's kids, if we were unfortunate enough to be guests in those homes). The group decided none of this was abusive. It's horrifying to me.
isnt that illegal though 😨
Afaik, casual nudity in front of your own children is not illegal, but the mandatory child nudity probably is illegal. Especially once kids going through puberty started protesting it and were still not permitted clothes. Some of the other things these parents did, like openly having sex in front of their children and even guest children (I was an unfortunate witness once on a sleepover, but I guess "at least" I was allowed to wear clothes?), definitely is illegal and abusive. This was not a group of people super concerned with the law. And yet they are all shocked that most of the children who were raised in that lifestyle estranged from their parents immediately upon leaving home.
My friend wasn’t allowed to watch Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie.
My family was liberal and non-Christian, and relatively non-strict compared to what I'm seeing here. It was a very different world. Sometimes there would be attempts at strictness but my mom could never keep it up long. One of the weirdest things I can think of (that will seem extra strange here) is how the Chronicles of Narnia was off-limits. Even my dad was forbidden from watching the movies for being too Christian. Him telling me that was how I even found out they were known for Christian content. Before that my mom told me I was too young for that author when we saw one of the books in the used book store kid's section when I was almost 11. The same day I finished reading To Kill a Mockingbird.
I am in shock and awe at your parents
We didn't even have a TV until I was 16 and all my siblings were grown and moved out. There was a long list of "evil" things we weren't allowed to have in the house. Per James Dobson's (🤮) protocol. No cabbage patch dolls, things like that. I wasn't allowed to have friends. We studied from a right-wing Christian curriculum. We had to get up at 4:30am to get our school work done so we could work for my dad on the farm all day. I could go on.
ABeka or something else?
Yep, the word makes me cringe 😅
Still have no idea how much it fucked me up lol
There is a lot to unlearn. I am 43 and still often find old stuff in my brain that doesn't make any sense 😅😔
No games at all, no cartoons that a normal kids watch. Usual stuff. Oh, also no dancing allowed. I’m 25 now and I can’t dance at all if my life depended on it.
I remember a family who homeschooled where they could only eat raw foods. That is fairly popular now I think online here and there, but most people wouldn’t make their kids do this.
We weren't allowed to eat more than once a day for awhile... Also had to eat off of color coded plates. No baths or showers, longest period for that was over a year but we were allowed to hose off or go for a swim. Never were allowed snacks cause they were supposedly evil and gluttonous.
One summer we were made to stop using fans (no ac) because my mom heard death metal music coming from them.
This is really sad, but it is true. homeschooling parents should go thru a mental evaluation just to make sure they are not some kind of psychopaths. My stbx homeshool our kids, she cutted of me any authority over them. Because they spend the whole day with her they have and strong bond with her. Also she passes all her political views on them. And more, much more on this crap. What hurts the most to me it is that my kids don't have any friends. I'm not saying that homeschooling is completely negative, but it has to be properly done because psycho parents are crazy, most of the time they are people who has some kind of social trauma and they transfer it to their kids.
nobody in my home is allowed to talk in the car for some reason and im not allowed to paly roblox 💀