Just because someone has a kid, that doesn't mean they're qualified to be a parent. Looking back on their childhood, these people realized that their parents' behavior wasn't as parental as it should have been.
He Would Just Refuse To Speak To Them For Months At A Time
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“As punishment, my dad used to do a long-term silent treatment-type thing. The longest he went without speaking to me was two months. I think I had said I hated him when I was in fifth grade. When my brother was in ninth grade, my dad did the silent treatment for three months because my brother cried in front of my dad or something stupid like that.
Forget people who play mind games like that.”
They Were Never Allowed To Make A Sound In The Car
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“As kids, if we made noise in the back seat of the car, Dad (my step-dad, now deceased) would tell us to sit on our hands.
It is basically a stress position; after a few minutes it becomes uncomfortable, a few minutes more, the circulation starts to dwindle, a few minutes more, the fabric of your clothing gets temporarily stamped into your skin. On the upside it helped keep us quiet; even a chuckle could sometimes earn us this punishment.
My step-dad believed in the Victorian value that children should be seen and not heard. I guess his aim was to give us the same upbringing he had; the only downside of this goal was that it turned out that he wanted to kill himself as a teenager, inviting the question, ‘What’s wrong with this picture?'”
He Couldn’t Believe His Father Would Threaten To Do That
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“While growing up, my parents would argue every so often, and it would escalate to screaming matches. This went on until I was four years old. The last time it happened, my father struck my mother, and she decided it was time for us to leave. We lived out in the country where neighbors weren’t around for miles. The closest neighbor we had was about seven miles away. My mother grabbed my baby brother and headed out the door. I was already outside, avoiding them and their screaming. She told me to follow her, so I did. As we were leaving the property, my father yelled out for my mother to come back, which she refused to do.
‘Come back or I’ll shoot him!’
She turned and refused again, and I turned around in disbelief. My father threatened to shoot me if she didn’t come back. I just stood there, not knowing what to do.
‘Alice, come back now!’
I stood there as my mother walked back to grab my hand. As she reached for it, my father pulled the trigger.
The next thing I remember was waking up in the hospital, two and a half weeks later.
My father had shot me in the forehead. I haven’t seen him since. I heard he died seven years ago.”
Mom’s Bedtime Stories Were A Bit Gruesome
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“You know how parents tell their kids bedtime stories? My sister and I badgered my mother to tell us bedtime stories when she didn’t want to.
So, she told us the classic bedtime stories, but with her own twist. She had this massive book of fairy tales that she’d add special themes to. Slavery, genocide, persecution, we were introduced to these difficult, adult themes through bedtime stories. There’s no real record of her versions because she improvised, which is a shame because some of them were great. Wee Willy Winky, the boy who personified sleep in the classic Scottish nursery rhyme, was portrayed as a misanthropic demon who would kidnap and enslave kids who weren’t asleep before 10 p.m.
We asked her about it some time back. I had this theory that my mother was subconsciously teaching us about the horrors that she witnessed as a child growing up in a war zone. Like, the Wee Willie Winky story? Maybe it represented how, when my mother was a child, her uncle was caught by the government forces outside of his home during curfew and was never heard of again.
Turns out, she just wanted us to stop bugging her for bedtime stories, so she tried to scare us away from asking about them. It was kind of a bummer.”
That Woman Should Have Never Been Allowed Around Knives, Let Alone Children
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“My mom had a mess of undiagnosed mental issues. This was the late ’70s and early ’80s. When the kids started getting on her nerves, she’d claim she was about to award the ‘Knife of the Week Award.’ This was always in the kitchen before/during/after dinner. She would wave this serrated steak knife around and pretend she was stabbing one of us.
Years later, when I told my wife the story, this is the one that made her shake her head.”
Their Dad Valued The Dog More Than His Own Children
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“My dad, who I never lived with, had a new dog. When we went to visit him, his new dog bit my little sister. She needed to go to the hospital, but our dad wouldn’t listen; he was convinced she was just whining. He was drinking heavily at this point. My sister was crying and the dog started to rush at her again, so I blocked it and locked it in a room. When I went back to where my sister was, I noticed right away that she had stopped crying and was dead still, which was weird. Then I realized my dad was aiming his weapon at her. When he saw me, he shifted to me and started rambling about the dog. I couldn’t think of what to do, I just froze. He asked me where it was, and I told him it was in a bedroom so it wouldn’t attack us. He said something to the effect of, ‘The dog has more right to be here than you, let it out.’
I said no and then he shot through the floor directly in front of me. Luckily, for me, he was too wasted to aim straight. After that, he sort of looked dumbfounded at the hole in the floor, and I grabbed my sister and got out.”
She Didn’t Care What Happened To Them
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“When I was about four years old, my mother abandoned my brother and me in a car. My father was working out of town and assumed she was taking care of us –as she usually did — being our mom and all. She left us out front of a ‘friend’s’ house. My brother and I entered the foster system in Ohio and it was several days before our dad was able to recover us. I eventually had to testify against her in a court. It was terrifying.
The next time I met her I was 21.
My brother and father died before ever seeing her again, and she didn’t bother to come to my brother’s funeral. After messing with him so royally, she couldn’t find a way to afford the $500 airplane ticket or $200 in gas.
I haven’t talked to her since then, that was five years ago.”
“The Talk” They Had Wasn’t Exactly About The Birds And The Bees
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“When we had ‘the talk,’ it wasn’t about the birds and the bees. Instead, my mother sat me down one day just before the start of sixth grade, and had a serious talk with me about search warrants and police jurisdiction. I was given specific instructions on what to do if the police ever knocked on the door, and was taught strategies on how to stall the police. I was never told why this was necessary. I didn’t think much about it until I got a few years older and started coming across pounds of illegal plants hidden around the house and well, let’s just say A LOT of weird stuff from my childhood suddenly started making sense.
-Why my parents had so many friends who would only visit for five minutes, and sometimes wouldn’t visit at all, but would only thrust $100 bills into my hands and tell me to give it to my parents.
-Why my mom made frequent ten-minute trips to her friend’s house and I had to wait in the car. One time after visiting this friend, my mom randomly revealed to me that the friend had a wall safe and told me where it was.
-How my mom was able to make thousands of dollars a week ‘cleaning houses.’ She did clean houses, but only two: the houses of an extremely rich attorney and the attorney’s boyfriend, who was a circuit clerk judge.
-Why my parents were constantly paranoid and obsessed with maintaining appearances. Church, sports, family vacations to places like Disney and the Grand Canyon, Tupperware parties. On the surface, everything always had to look ‘perfect’ and I used to get so frustrated at how ‘fake’ everything was. That was before I knew the truth.”
Their Dad Didn’t Like Them Treating That Cow Like A Pet
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“My dad raised cattle for beef when I was growing up. It was a hobby rather than a real profession. They were black Angus cows, so when a calf was born that was completely orange, it was a bit strange. Occasionally calves would be born with a red tint that would soon go away, but this calf stayed orange-red into adulthood. As with anything different, my brother and I took a special interest in the cow, decided that specific one would be our pet, and we named it Fireball. We hand fed Fireball most days (some days we’d just be lazy) and basically treated it like a big dog in a fence. About a year or so later, Fireball went missing. After eating burgers one night, our father explained to my brother and I that he’d had the cow slaughtered, and we needed to understand that those animals were not our friends, but instead a resource to harness. While this is a sad reality in most places, and I understand the lesson he was trying to convey, it was a pretty messed up way of teaching it. You’d think he would have just tried to stop us from taking a special interest in the cow or something.”
After Their Step Father Walked Out, There Was A Major Change In Their Mom
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“The year I was 14, my mom had a baby in the beginning of March and my stepfather at the time left, after them being together for two years. My mom experienced extreme postpartum depression and wouldn’t leave her bedroom for a month. One day, she came out of her bedroom, dressed to the nines and told me she was ‘going out.’ She proceeded to come home wasted and passed out on the floor. I was horrified. Besides the new baby, I also had three other siblings at the time. After this incident, she continually got wasted until we lost our house in May because she wasn’t paying rent or bills.
We moved down a block, into a three-bedroom duplex with my cousin’s family, consisting of two adults and three kids, while we had one adult and five kids. It was a little tight on space, you could say. Near the end of May, and my 15th birthday, my stepdad randomly appeared after being gone for three months. My mom was beyond excited. So, about two days before my birthday, they decided to go out partying for the night. Of course, I had to babysit my cousin’s kids and my siblings. Did I mention I had no internet, no TV, no DVD player, no VHS or any sort of technology at all? Not even a phone.
Well, night turned into day and I became worried. I went to a friend’s and called around to find my mom, but no one had seen her. I stayed home and waited. The next day was my birthday, so I was sure she would be home. Nope. I had to call my dad and ask him to send me money so I could buy some food and diapers for the baby because we had none. Two days later, my mom came back and passed out for another day. When she finally woke up, the first thing she asked me was why the house was such a mess, then she told me that I should have cleaned it up. I never asked her about my birthday or where she was, and she never told me or wished me a happy birthday of any kind. Two years later, she accidentally revealed she went on a binge in a city two hours away and just left me to fend for myself and the kids.”
The Parents Were Avid Smokers
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“My parents smoked a lot, all the time, and us kids never noticed. I was oblivious until I was 13 years old. They did lots of things to creatively hide it. The oddest two I can think of: They used to have a ‘freeze out’ while driving down the road in the old car. They had us believing there was exhaust leaking in the car and we had to roll all the windows down for about five minutes to clear it out so we didn’t inhale it. My parents, being closest to the ‘leak’ would cough a lot as the car cleared out. They’d do this on long car rides, dead of a Michigan winter or not; didn’t matter.
The other thing, and the way I found out they were smokers: One of my after-school chores was dusting. My mom had lots of knick-knacks and small shelves, with Indian things all over the living room. I was to dust everything, except a large, ornate dream catcher. It wasn’t to be touched, as it was made by a great-grandfather. My brother turned up the bass on our living room stereo one day to the max and it vibrated off the wall. No big deal, I picked it up, straighten the feathers, ascertain the beads are in the same spots and hung it back up. There was a chunk of leather with feathers still on the floor. I picked it up, panicking we broke it, and realize I was holding a pair of roach clips. They clipped them there for storage, and the thing blended right in.”
He Never Knew That Family Could Be Kind
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“There was constant fighting that would sometimes get physical. That was normal in my household. The first time I went over to a friend’s house and the parents touched and said loving things to each other, I was shocked. Then her parents floored me by actually listening to what she was talking about, asking her questions about her day, and answering her when she had a question. I had no idea that adults listened to kids. Ever. I also had no idea how abusive my family was until then. It was shocking to me.
I moved out when I was 16 and in with my grandmother. I was consistently getting good grades, so my grandmother bought me a present for doing well. Positive reinforcement was so strange a concept that I asked what did I have to do to repay her for the gift.
As an adult in my 30s, I see the way a person is supposed to behave towards children and my niece, who lives with me, is being treated like a person, not a burden. When her friends come over, I can see the ones that are being raised like I was and try to be the best role model I can for them.”
The First Time He Had Chocolate Milk, It Was Like He Tasted Mana From Heavevn
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“We weren’t allowed to eat dairy products because my mom said they all caused cancer, psychosis, heart attacks and brain damage. This meant – no chocolate, no ice cream, no cake, no nothing. She would threaten us with whoopings and groundings for months if we were caught eating dairy. I would often go to people’s houses, warning them of the dangers of dairy. One day I drank chocolate milk at school and felt like I found heaven. Never looked back since. Mom is crazy.”
She Was So Terribly Mistreated By The Ones Who Should Have Cared For Her Most
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“I never realized this was abuse until I told my husband (then boyfriend) about it, and he was beyond floored. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t realize that most people aren’t treated this way:
-I wasn’t allowed to eat dinner with the family because I didn’t deserve it. So when they were done, I was called down and had to eat dinner standing at the sink, in the dark. Then I had to clean up the dinner dishes/mess.
-I wasn’t allowed to sit in the front seat because I didn’t deserve it. I was only allowed in the back seat. My other siblings were allowed in the front seat.
-When I got my first period, I bled on my pants. I got grounded for three months for ‘not respecting the money they paid for my clothing.’
-My dad would do weekly ‘room tosses’ where he would barge in at 3 a.m., wake me up, strip my bed, empty my drawers, search through everything and anything to look for anything they didn’t approve.
-My dad dropped off my siblings at high school (closer to his work) and my stepmom would drop me off at middle school (closer to her work). She’d begin screaming at me from the second we pulled from the driveway until I got to school. Every. Single. Day. She’d tell me my mom got cancer because I was such a terrible child. That my mom wanted to die because she couldn’t stand being alive around me. That I was a waste of life. That they were giving me up for adoption.
This was all on top of the repeated physical abuse. I was slapped across the face for anything. My dad hit me so hard in the stomach I threw up for a week. My stepmom hit me in the mouth while I had braces and my braces cut my lip and I needed stitches. They told the dentist I fell off my scooter.
My father used to be a good person. When he met my step-mother, he turned into a monster. My sister finally broke down and told a teacher what was happening. I was pulled out of class by cops. Taken into state custody. My aunt ended up getting full custody of my siblings and me. I got the full brunt of their treatment and I’ll never know why. My siblings did get occasional physical abuse, but nothing like the psychological abuse I went through.
I have absolutely zero contact with my father. I sent him a wedding invitation with all the pertinent information cut out with an Exacto knife. He got cancer and I sent a card saying that I hope he died. Sadly, he didn’t.
He’s a millionaire. Still married to the step-beast. Has my family convinced I’m a terrible child who’s turned his children against him. He’s a pathological liar and literally cannot see any wrongdoing on his part.”