Crazy shit your parents did

[Anonymous]

Letting me and my siblings stay home alone when we were 10 and under, and not getting home until 9pm. We fed ourselves after school, then stayed up late to have a second dinner with our parents. Then keeping us up up past midnight many nights lecturing us for hours.

Beating us with a belt until we were black and blue for things like losing a ballpoint pen or having a messy desk or leaving one of the doors unlocked. Or being caught speaking English at home with our siblings.

Freaking out when I told them I wanted to go to a homecoming dance my junior year of hs. Then they finally relented and told me my dad would go with me as my date and that I could wear one of my moms old dresses. I said never mind and cried for days as my friends all went dress shopping together.

Letting us have entire summers home alone without supervision and with no activities and it being allowed to leave our houses.

[Anonymous]

Some things done in the 80s that would never fly nowadays among the middle class:

-Regular spankings with belt, wooden spoon, or hair brush. My mom would just utter the words "WOODEN. SPOON." and I would instantly clam up and stop acting out, lol
-Sitting in the reverse facing seat of the station wagon at age 7, no seats belts on, hanging out legs out the big rear window. Often wrestling and otherwise roughhousing. Mom would threaten to pull the car over and beat us, if we didn't stop fighting.
-Car seats only through age 2. I don't (currently) have kids and I was honestly shocked to hear recently that kids are in car seats these days until age 7. That's nuts.
-Dad smoked indoors for 20+ years. My brother had severe asthma due to Dad's smoking. When we sold our first childhood home when I was in high school, we had to clean/repaint the walls and saw how yellowed they had become
-My mom would frequently forget to go grocery shopping. She would make something called "Garbage Casserole," which was just whatever was left in the fridge and cabinets. It often included spaghetti noodles, hot dogs, cabbage, and other random half-rotten vegetables.
-My first word was McDonald's because my family went there so frequently. I recognized the Golden Arches (thanks, advertising!)

[Anonymous]

Typo^^ "and not being allowed to leave the house."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some of this stuff was more acceptable back then:

-When I misbehaved at a restaurant, I would be made to sit in the car alone for the rest of the meal. My parents could usually, but not always, see the car from the restaurant. I SO WISH we could still do this one. It totally worked to correct my behavior.
-We definitely just laid down in the back of the car for long road trips with no seat belt.
-Totally unsupervised in the pool for hours. (I was not a great swimmer.)
-During my mom's tennis lessons after school, she would leave me to nap and eat a snack in the back seat. Not in eyesight of her tennis lesson.

Yeah, all this stuff was acceptable back then. I remember doing a lot of this myself. Plus biking all over the place with my parents not know where I was, going to store by myself by age 6, etc. It just wasn't a big deal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^^ the stuff above is awful. My parents were nudists but I don't see that as a bad thing. I definitely got the wooden spoon more so than my brother. My mom would wash my mouth out with Irish Spring soap.

Ew

[Anonymous]

I think that this thread needs to be retitled "Child abuse your parents did". Since that's what most of the responses are about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some things done in the 80s that would never fly nowadays among the middle class:

-Regular spankings with belt, wooden spoon, or hair brush. My mom would just utter the words "WOODEN. SPOON." and I would instantly clam up and stop acting out, lol

A recent study found that over 90% of American three-year-olds had been spanked in the past year. This DCUM idea that it's non-existent nowadays is utterly incorrect.

[Anonymous]

You guys are jogging some memories!
- Being sent on errands at age 5 by my grandma to buy a pack of cigs for her.
- doing homework in a smoke filled living room as my dad puffed away.
- picking out my own whipping stick
- driving to Disney world with the kids rolling around in the back of the station wagon
- riding in the front seat with no seatbelt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of this stuff was more acceptable back then:

-When I misbehaved at a restaurant, I would be made to sit in the car alone for the rest of the meal. My parents could usually, but not always, see the car from the restaurant. I SO WISH we could still do this one. It totally worked to correct my behavior.
-We definitely just laid down in the back of the car for long road trips with no seat belt.
-Totally unsupervised in the pool for hours. (I was not a great swimmer.)
-During my mom's tennis lessons after school, she would leave me to nap and eat a snack in the back seat. Not in eyesight of her tennis lesson.

Yeah, all this stuff was acceptable back then. I remember doing a lot of this myself. Plus biking all over the place with my parents not know where I was, going to store by myself by age 6, etc. It just wasn't a big deal.

PP you are responding to. I also biked everywhere starting in about 4th grade. Really far distances. I probably told my parents where I was going?

Not a big deal.

[Anonymous]

I grew up on a farm so my things are a little different:

By the ages of 3&4, my brother and I were pushing/pulling bales of hay out of the hay loft and onto the wagon for my dad to stack. It took two of us to wrangle the bales. If you've ever seen a hay loft stacked with hay, you'll know why this was crazy.

We also rode on top of the hay stacked on the wagon and pushed it off to the waiting cows while my dad drove the tractor around the 200 acre pasture the cows were in. We did fall off one time when my dad hit a rut - that's a story for another time.

I regularly cut grass from the time I was 8. I wasn't tall enough to push the mower like an adult so I crawled through the top bar to push it from the bracing (horizontal) bar. My parents did make me wear closed toe shoes - had to any time we were in the barn/farm area.

Since my older brothers were tall enough to reach the truck pedals, my younger brother and I worked them while my older brothers steered.

However, my parents also did some things that were right on the money:

Never allowed us to go barefoot outside - parents were well aware of hookworm and other diseases/infections you could pick up going barefoot or through cuts on feet.

Had to wash our hands every time we came in from outside.

We knew what trichinosis and contaminated meant by about age 3.

Got us tetnus shots/boosters on a regular basis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When I was 13 my mom threw me out of the car in a parking lot in a town I didn't know (about 45 mins from where we lived) and she just drove off.

I stood there feeling frightened and self conscious and 30 mins later she came back and let me back in the car.

And she said "don't stand in the street looking like a prostitute"

which of course I had no clue about at the time.

Wow, I had to look at the date and make sure this wasn't an old post that I had written!
My mom did similar--kicking me out of the car in other towns and driving away...
She would also tell me that I'd become a prostitute--threatening to kick me out of the house and I'd have to become a prostitute. She also had a cousin that had a child out of wedlock; She'd often tell me to "go walk the streets like your cousin Melissa." Melissa was her cousin (so my cousin once removed, I guess?) And I'm pretty sure she didn't "walk the streets"--just got pregnant out of wedlock. Still, my mom said this type of thing to me several times when I was in my teens.


She also left me in cars while she ran errands when I was very young....and beat me with wooden spoons and hair brushes....but I think that was fairly typical 70's parenting from what I have read here.

[Anonymous]

Op back again. The thing is, I didn't realize how terrible my parents were until I had my own child and was in therapy for postpartum depression and anxiety. I just accepted what my parents did as normal, partially because my best friend at the time was also regularly beaten by her mother and frequently locked in the bathroom as punishment.

Anyway, in response to a pp, my DH knows about some of these things but nomenof mu friends do. My sisters have different memories just because they were younger-I got the worst of it because I am the oldest. I'm in therapy which has helped.

One thing that has stuck with me is that my parents routinely made/make me feel like I don't matter. So it's hard to deal with when my own kids matter more to me than anything else in the world. It's hard for me to like my parents because I don't think they are good human beings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:


She also left me in cars while she ran errands when I was very young....and beat me with wooden spoons and hair brushes....but I think that was fairly typical 70's parenting from what I have read here.

No.

[Anonymous]

Some of these are so heart-breaking. I'm going to give my parents a long, lingering hug the next time I see them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We immigrated here from South Asia when I was 6, so lots of crazy things, but my favorite one was not allowing me to sleep over at my white friends' houses because "if there was a fire, the parents would save the white children first" WTF

Lol. That's awesome!