If you think like that, please don’t ever have children.
Listen, my parents installed a lock on my door so I could lock everyone out of my room if I wanted to at sometime around 8 years old. They had a key of course for safety but they’ve never had to use it and they’ve never used it when they didn’t have to.
I was allowed full access to any books, movies, and internet I wanted fully informed about our family beliefs and practices but I was given no supervision once I reached about 13 because my parents trusted me to stick to the rules or not as I felt and come to them if there was anything that I had questions about.
As long as I said where I was going, who I was with, and when I was going to be back and then phone if anything changed I was allowed to do pretty much as I pleased from 13 onward.
I moved back in with my parents after university and the first conversation we had was my dad telling me that if I felt like they were treating me like a child to please tell them because they had no intention of doing so.
I still live with them and I’m comfortable here as an adult. When I eventually move out again, which I feel no rush to do because I feel respected and given more than enough elbow room, I will probably talk to them often if not everyday. Because they’ve always respected my privacy and my autonomy both physically and emotionally. If you want an independent and fictional child trusting them and giving them their space will do you many more favours than not.
meanwhile, my parents…
- password protected my computer so i had to get permission every time i wanted to use it
- put a passcode lock on our pantry so we couldn’t eat without permission
- regularly checked our internet browsing history
- shut off the internet at regular intervals, including when i needed it for university homework
- did monthly checks of our bank statements and would confiscate money if they didn’t approve of our activities
your children are not your property. they are human beings, and they deserve basic human rights.
Growing up if I wanted to go out with friends I had to tell them exactly where we would be, with who, what their family background was(and sometimes what their school grades were), how long we would be out, what we would be doing in detail and what time I’d be back. And only after giving them all this information I’d maybe be allowed to go out with them. If they didn’t like at least one of my friends(based on their background information I’d give them) I couldn’t go. End of story. It didn’t matter wether or not we were close, or how well behaved they were. I stopped asking friends about their lives. If I didn’t know about their lives and simply said “I don’t know they don’t really talk to me about that” my parents couldn’t deny our friendship. And if I genuinely didn’t know, I wasn’t lying or saying false things about them. Towards the end I began lying about with who I was, where I was and who I was with. This sort of interrogations to see IF I could go out remained until I got a bus pass in college. And once I could move on my own I often didn’t tell them where I was going. They couldn’t stop me anymore.
I love my parents but to this day I don’t tell them if I’m going out of city, out of state or even out of the country. I just leave and hope for the best. Because despite no longer living with them. I don’t feel like I have autonomy over my own life. If anything happened while I was away they wouldn’t know until much later. They wouldn’t know where to look. And I’d much rather take the risk of leaving and possibly not being able to come back for x or y reason than tell them where I’m going. And I sometimes wish I could.
When I was growing up my parents
- Never allowed me to close my door, ever
- on multiple occasions, when I was around 5-7, for reasons I can’t remember, took EVERYTHING I OWNED (every book, extra pillow, stuffed animal, piece of clothing that wasnt my school uniform, every toy etc) and put it in black plastic garbage bags in my room. I was not allowed to open them until the punishment was lifted (usually around 1 month)
- Made me text them every hour INCLUDING during school hours when I was 12
- They then took away my phone altogether because I was having conversations they didnt approve of
- They didn’t give me a phone again until I was almost 17, so when/if I needed them, I’d have to use a payphone (these are hard to find) and sometimes they wouldn’t answer, and I wouldnt have more change. (they only gave me enough for one call) so I ended up waiting at bus stops for several hours sometimes if I needed a ride home.
- My room could be ransacked randomly at any point, for any reason, and I was expected to clean up the aftermath
- Speaking of, every time I cleaned my room, it would have to pass ‘inspection’ which required for everything to be neatly organized in every closet. Books, papers, underwear, socks, everything folded neatly. If it wasn’t, I’d have to start over.
- Food I liked was locked downstairs in a cupboard with a padlock
- If I went into the kitchen, they would yell at me in case I was eating unsupervised
- Once isolated me because I was acting too “mentally ill”. I slept on a mattress in the floor in my room, couldn’t go out with anyone, didn’t have a phone, and they shut off my internet.
- Encouraged me to go on exchange to Uganda, and then stole my entire college fund before making me homeless (i also paid taxes on the 20k that they stole)
None of these things were because they were protective or cared particularly about my safety. I was too scared to talk to them if anything bad happened/if I was in trouble, and I was often left alone outside at night after choir etc waiting at the payphone till 11 pm when i was 13-16. and they kicked me out when I was 16/17 anyway. If youre a parent who thinks this way, you’re being controlling, don’t kid yourself into thinking this is for the safety of your child.
Not that anyone has to guess but I give about -78 fucks about my parents and dont speak to them unless absolutely necessary
My parents never allowed me to shut the door to my bedroom.
When I was 19, my parents were so rigid and controlling that I moved out and got an apartment with my then-boyfriend (later husband, now ex-husband) even though I really wasn’t ready because I couldn’t wait to get away from them.
When I tried to explain to my parents that I was unhappy in secretarial school, they screamed at me and wouldn’t listen to a word I had to say. I dropped out without telling them.
I was having serious psychological problems (turned out I had undiagnosed type 2 bipolar disorder which wouldn’t be properly diagnosed until I was almost 40) and my parents’ answer was to show up unannounced and lecture me because I was severely depressed and having trouble keeping my house clean. I also had undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder which, in part, manifests itself as hoarding disorder. Hoarding disorder, BTW, is not laziness. It is a subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
When I ended up with toxemia and had to have labor induced early, my mother’s question to me was “what did you do to cause this?”
My parents hovered in my hospital room the whole time I was in labor, screaming in agony because I was having contractions on par with someone at 8 cm dilation but my dilation never got beyond 3 cm. My mother said to me with a smirk on her face: “well, now you know–it hurts really bad.” To my father’s defense, he was mostly just clueless. Still, controlling.
I also had food poisoning at the time and when I was spending an hour at a time in the bathroom, my parents would just fucking SIT THERE in my hospital room rather than leaving and giving me some privacy. I was so fucking humiliated.
When I was sexually assaulted by my ex-boyfriend (different ex-boyfriend) my parents told me: “well, you got over it before, you’ll get over it again.” (I had been sexually assaulted at 18, and my father told me it was my fault for going off alone with a strange guy.) I was having panic attacks every 20 minutes throughout the day and self-harming. This went on for a year.
When I was finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I tried to tell my parents. My mother asked if I was sure I wasn’t just being overly dramatic like usual.
When my son tried to tell my mother that he was taking a semester off from college, she screamed at him.
When I tried to talk to my mother about the fact that my son is high-functioning autistic, she said he wasn’t autistic because he is socially functional. She said he was “just timid” and “just being overly dramatic.”
I still speak to my mother (my father died 9 years ago) but I don’t tell her anything. She doesn’t even know I quit the last job she knew I had and am freelancing. She doesn’t know I’ve moved. She doesn’t know about my interests. She doesn’t know that I have several published books. (None of them are big sellers, but, nonetheless, I am a published author.) Yes, I stayed in touch with my mother, but she has no idea who I am or what I do because it’s impossible to talk to her. She rants and raves and doesn’t listen.
I’ve found out that there were numerous things that my parents kept hidden from me over the years (i.e. motivational tapes given to me by other relatives such as my grandmother) because they didn’t want me “getting any ideas.”
If this isn’t a dysfunctional relationship, I don’t know what is. What am I going to do to change it? Nothing, because I can’t deal with my mother screaming at me. Living a lie is stressful but she will never fucking drop it if I tell her something she doesn’t want to hear, so living a lie is easier.
The point is, being an overly controlling parent will backfire on you. No, parents should not allow their kids to run roughshod over them. But refusing to allow your kid any autonomy will result in at worst a kid who doesn’t speak to you and at best a kid who only makes small talk because they don’t want you micromanaging their life.
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