Guys half of these are just child abuse.

Bad parenting is leaving me and my 10 year-old sister home alone for a few hours with 6th month old twins.

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Clown fish

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This one is child neglect same thing but dressed up with a bow

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Mother and father knew my uncle had severe untreated schizophrenia and my grandmother I believe had some sort of untreated mental disorder (maybe bipolar and severe depression) but they still sent us to stay with him and my grandparents for months at a time. It was terrifying at times. I remember crying and begging them not to take us there.

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Nicole

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Every "parent" in this thread should have had you guys taken away, and have to do jail time. While it's not true for everyone with schizophrenia, some who suffer with it hear voices telling them to murder someone. How were they ok with this? Not only did your sorry-a*s "parents" let you down, it sounds like your grandparents didn't help you either. Who could watch their small children cry and say they are terrified to go somewhere, and not be phased at all? They shouldn't have left you alone with your Uncle for an hour, let alone MONTHS at a time! It's not like your Uncle was depressed. Most schizophrenics are not in touch with reality, and should probably be in a psychiatric home.

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jdans10:
Ignoring the awkward conversations.

reginafelangi123:
This also includes the sex and birth control conversations. My mom to this day still gets really uncomfortable.

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Ovata Acronicta

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I asked the "how are babies made" question around five and Mom sat me down and explained it to me. I'm also very grateful for her discussion of periods because I knew what mine was when I started just after my 12th birthday. Talk to your kids.

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This is kind of dark. My parents would buy this hideous smelling flea poison at the vet for our Rottweiler. It had to be diluted with water, I guess. My mother whipped up a gallon of this concoction in a milk gallon. It was a white liquid. She put it in the refrigerator, in the milk gallon. She did not mark the container in any way in order to differentiate it from an ordinary gallon of milk. I ate cereal every morning for breakfast. I am guessing you can figure out easily what happened next, but unbelievably, my mother did not foresee that I would pour this flea poison on my cereal and eat it. I was told that I was pretty silly, because it has a smell! Didn’t I notice the smell? Boy, what a dumb kid! She sent my off to day camp with a box of Tic Tacs to help mellow the terrible aftertaste in my mouth. I think of this often. It always seemed very f****d up, even more so now that I am a parent.

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Zero Chance

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100% done on purpose. she tried to off you and play it off like an accident

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aroaceautistic: That s**t where you aren't allowed to be angry. If I'm gonna make you do some s**t you don't wanna do, then I'm at least gonna let you be pissed.
PepurrPotts: My mom gave allll the lip service to 'it's okay to be angry,' but any actual display of it was immediately shut down and punished. Somehow, that left me a bit emotionally stunted in that area by the time I had grown up.

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Nick Curtis

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oh my god I hated this, my parents would constantly fight with me and yell but any reaction from me was labeled as having anger issues and I just had to accept it.

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Completely shutting down at the slightest display of any 'bad' emotion. ... There's people out there who think that any display of emotion is equal to 'being out of control.

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Farah the Turtle

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My dad: My mum:

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My mom would get tired of my brother and I fighting and make us go into the back yard and fist fight until she felt we had enough. We were under ten years old and this happened several times. My brother and I would both be crying and asking if we could stop but she’d make us keep going. Kids that age shouldn’t have to deal with physically hurting each other.

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Nicole

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What the actual f**k is wrong with the "parents" in this thread? And also, what kind of "mom" wants her young kids to fight, and isn't bothered that they are crying and want to stop. Some people shouldn't be allowed to procreate.

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jester51: Ignoring how [kids] feel because of how [they] feel.

HeyItsNotMeIPromise: My parents did this. They had feelings, and the way I interacted with them made them have feelings. But they couldn’t comprehend that their actions informed my feelings, too. It was like I wasn’t a full person to them. If I was disappointed or upset with them for things they did, or were supposed to do and didn’t, they would get angry with me for making them have to feel guilt or regret. They literally couldn’t handle the uncomfortable feelings associated with the idea that they had parented poorly and would re-direct those uncomfortable feelings into anger at me for causing it. It was a wild ride, let me tell you. Their feelings trumped mine, all day long. I’ll never do that to my kids.

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ORSOrama

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This is horrible for a kid, I know that. You just described my parents.

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Making promises they know they won't keep.

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Andy Cran

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yep this too

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This might be more of a country thing, but we used to ride around on the back of a truck with the tailgate down. I mean, we’d sit ON the tailgate. If we ever got rear ended we’d have lost our legs. Was fun back in the day though.

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Little Wonder

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Yep did that, and sitting on bales of hay to take them down the road to the horses, precariously piled up in the back of a ute or the boot of a peugeot.

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Alltheprettydresses: Complaining about how hard or expensive it is to be a parent. That was all I heard and grew up thinking I was a burden to everyone. Yeah, it's hard and costly, but I made the choice to bring them into the world.

silentsaturn91: This is reminding me of when I was 17 and the crash of '08 was unfolding all over the news. I remember sitting on the top of the basement steps listening to the TV that dad was watching and hearing about how people were losing their money, their homes, everything. I knew my dad had some money invested at the time, and that’s what he was using to keep us going since he didn’t have a job. I remember asking him if our money was ok, and he said to me, 'Nope! We’re broke now.' I remember feeling myself curl up into a ball and start panicking, thinking about what I could sell of my things to help pay the bills. Thinking, 'Okay, I can forget about Christmas this year. Just ask for only the necessary things like clothes and toiletries.' We came out of the crash just fine without having to sell a single thing. I’m 32 now, and it took me YEARS to get comfortable enough to open up my own retirement plan last month. Financial abuse toward a child is fucking cruel, and I will never forgive my father for doing that to me.

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Auntriarch

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That's brutal, and unnecessary.

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My parents had really terrible ideas about safety.

I broke my collarbone as a toddler because they didn't get any sort of safety gate on my twin bed so the first night I slept in it, I fell out. I thought for years that they just didn't make safety gates back then and I was like "Oh yeah, I broke my collarbone, there were no safety gates" and my mom was like "oh they made them but they were so expensive!" OK, well, hope all of those hospital bills from my fractured collarbone were cheap?

And then we'd take big family vacations in the station wagon and I'd have to sit on the flat part in the back wedged by the suitcases. I'd spend most of the trip throwing up because there was no cushioning or seating so I'd feel every vibration and bump in the road. No seatbelt. Nothing. Just me, wedged next to a suitcase.


Oh! I also had a weird health problem when I was little. Tiny little seizures. My mom took me to the pediatrician twice about it and he was like "Hmm, no idea!" and that was that. No further medical visits or doctors. I didn't learn what it was until I was an adult and there was a medication that could have eliminated them had it been diagnosed.

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Kate Jones

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Don't get me wrong, I think sometimes parents take it too far these days. But I agree... back in the day there were almost no safety precautions. We never wore seatbelts. My parents smoked in the car with the windows up. We didn't go to doctors unless we were dying. The biggest change in then and now is the sheer amount of outside alone time I had that I don't think exists today. I'd be gone all day by the age of 7. Out playing. Doing the stupidest and most dangerous things. Used to ride my bike all day. As long as i was home by the time the street lights came on that's all that mattered. In some ways I get it- it's way more dangerous now. But kids almost never just get to play anymore. Use their imaginations. It's partly why so many jump into relationships one after another- they don't know how to just be happy with themselves.

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My mom loved to tell the story of how, when I was an infant, they stuck me and my car seat between their golf clubs in the back of the golf cart. Me and my car seat popped out on a fairway and they didn’t notice until the next hole. If I remember correctly, this story is an extension about what a good baby I was. I guess I was just luck to have a car seat they actually buckled me into.

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AKA AKA

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oh my god, you could hae died. HOW DO YOU NOT NOTICE YOU'VE LEFT YOUR KID IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD

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When I was really little, mom would send us out the front door of our trailer to play in the yard. It didn’t have a fence. So I was three and playing in the street while she was watching General Hospital. When my parents were in the process of a divorce, my mother tried to commit s*icide and put me (six years old) to the task of calling my dad to tell him at work that mom was in the bathroom with a bottle of pills and vodka. He called for an ambulance to meet him at the house and shipped us off to the neighbors for a few days. She got her stomach pumped, and then came home about three days later, and life went on as if that never happened. And then she got custody and he got visitation. When she would send us off to Dad‘s for two weeks at the beginning of summer and two weeks at the end of summer, dad and stepmom just continued to go to work every day like they didn’t have a six-year-old and an eight-year-old at home, with HER two kids who were about the same age. Of course the older kids eventually got into the liquor. And we snuck next-door to go swimming at the neighbors house while nobody was home. We had no adult supervision 90% of our childhood.

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Nicole

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A mother who can calmly sit watching TV knowing her 3-year-old is outside by the road is the ultimate definition of evil. She should have gone to jail.

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Oh s**t. We had absolutely free rein on anything on tv. They tried to say don’t watch that one! Which of course made us immediately watch it. While they went and did whatever non parenting they did.

All the GenX born in the early 70s had this same experience. That’s why we are tv babies, and jaded. Halloween was our favorite movie. I was like 8.

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Uncanny

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I’m a boomer (just) and still remember, when I was in my early 20s, going around to our friends place on a Friday night to watch a video. It was Robocop. Their 4yo son was allowed to watch it with us…you know, scene where his hands get blasted off, he’s slowly turned into bits by the bad guys. Guys gets melted by acid. Etc etc No problem, apparently. Next week, we’re watching another movie together (yes it’s true…my 20s we’re not exactly wild and exciting) and the movie we were watching had two people kissing and both our friends said ‘John! Look away!’ to their son. So..violence, pain and death okey-dokey…but kissing, affection - bad and dirty. That was…sad.

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As an undiagnosed ADHD kid with two diagnosed ADHD kids of my own, I will NEVER use boredom as a punishment. I remember getting put in my room with no stimuli, the time felt like I was in Inception, where one minute of punishment equaled an hour of IRL time. So yeah, my kids are probably a little less 'disciplined' than others, but I'm sorry, I can't inflict the same torture knowing what it felt like. That's why it's so hard for me to understand how those that are abused continue the cycle. It definitely sent me completely in the opposite direction.

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Zedrapazia

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My mother thinks being bored is the best feeling in the world because it means you don't have to do anything. She doesn't understand why I don't feel that sentiment of hers.

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My parents were fundie Southern Baptists who thought rules and restrictions would earn them spiritual merit badges in heaven from James Dobson Himself.

Even their fellow church members thought they were ridiculous.

I was in the sixth grade at a Christian school before I met kids whose parents were as strict as mine.

They were Mennonites.

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Nicole

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Religion causes so many problems. And deaths. And wars. It seems the most religious people are the worst kind of person.

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Summer vacations at the cottage on the lake. The whole family would go bar hoping in a pontoon boat with us kids. They'd give us some coinage to play pinball, video games, or that bowling game with the puck while the adults drank at the bar. Then at night when grandparents, aunts, uncles, patents are all drunk from day drinking all day, us kids would drive them back in the pontoon, in the dark. Through no wake zones, several lakes, under bridges, etc. I was a designated driver at 10.

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Nicole

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You've gotta be Gen X, like me. Driving a pontoon at night when you were only 10! It's funny, buy also sad and extremely s****y parenting.

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We had to be 7 years old to get our own lighter for lighting off fireworks unsupervised for the weeks leading up to the 4th of July. (If you were younger, you only got a punk.).

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BrunoVI

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The punk's name was Sheena.

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When I was 5 (1980), The Shining came out and was on HBO for its cable premiere. Wanting to spend time with my dad, I asked him if I could watch it with him. Arguably one of the most psychologically disturbing movies of its time and He was totally cool with it. Ended up watching 90% of it, peeking from behind his La-Z-Boy. The kicker is knowing how badly it scared me — for a few days after — my father thought it would be funny to stand at the foot of my bed, with dead eyes, waking me up asking if wanted to 'come play with him… forever.' That combo of my father and that movie scared me so bad that I slept with my Fozzie Bear doll until I was about 11 or 12.

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October

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Oh boy, the Shining scarred a whole generation

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My dad broke my brothers twisted sister vinyl album over his knee which was like watching life imitate art.

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BoredPossum

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Evil and very ironic if you've seen the "We're not gonna take it"-video.

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Not recognizing some weird s**t I was exposed to at our evangelical church when I was a teenager.

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Nicole

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You mean people with religious authority did bad things to children? Unheard of! I really hope these religious morons weren't as bad as Catholic priests.

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I always had a knack for playing guitar and I picked it up later but when I first wanted to play my dad said “your fingers are too small, you’ll never be any good”. If I had started playing at 10 instead of f*****g around in college, I feel like I would have been a great guitarist. Looking back, the fact that he would discourage me from doing anything positive for no good reason, I probably would have turned out a lot better.

Plus, he took me to see Full Metal Jacket when it came out. I was 10.

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Lavendar rose

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My 10 year old kicks a*s on his electric guitar! Tiny hands and all! He plays Metallica , heart , Black Sabbath even video game songs ! He rocks !

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Exposed me to very unsavory characters. I had alot of "uncles" one of which held me down tickling me and then licked my face.

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Auntriarch

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A lot of "uncles"!? One would be bad enough

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OMG, I remember my dad occasionally taking me and my brother to smoky pool halls on Saturdays so he could play a few games and have a couple of beers before he did the errands he was running for my mom. I guess she never questioned why we all smelled like smoke when we came home hours later because my dad smoked with us in the truck anyway.

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laura lee

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Probably just glad everyone alive and the errands got done, sometimes the bar gets lowered to the floor

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My mom would take me with her to bingo but leave me in the conversion van to read while she played a set. I must’ve been about 7 or so.

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Nicole

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What is a conversion van? And was it securely locked so no one would snatch you? Why couldn't you sit where they were playing? How could she relax and enjoy the game knowing you were out there?

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Being passive aggressive. I was in a college communications course when I learned the phrase 'passive aggressive,' and a light bulb went off in my head. I finally had a term to describe my family’s dysfunction. I thought we were a perfect family because we didn’t yell. Sometimes I think the yelling might have been preferable because at least it would’ve been honest.

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robin aldrich

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Yeah yelling or passive aggressive shouldn't be the only two options in the family ....typically they seem to be though

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Its not really laughable, since it's actually quite serious and a pretty severe form of emotional abuse, but I'd have to say the worst part of their parenting -- even worse than all the drinking, drunk driving, d***s, adultery, fighting, etc. -- was all the Parentification and emotional incest. My childhood is mired in it, and I got it severely from both parents because they were both immature, dysfunctional people that had no business ever having children. And my ability to ever be carefree was stolen by it.

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Nicole

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Just when I thought it couldn't get worse? I'm afraid to ask what emotional incest is, but if it has the word incest in its name, it's obviously something terrible. Do they know/care how much your struggling as an adult because they failed you so miserably when you were little?

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My Dad used to pull my sled with a rope behind the car. Same car was diesel and my Dad would drive ahead of me with about 5-10 feet of clearance while helping me train for cross country. Yep, my Dad was rolling coal on me from high school to college. Thanks 1983 Datsun 810 wagon.

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robin aldrich

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Calling that rolling coal...oh my gosh, I'm sorry.. it's so inappropriate that I chuckled at that...

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The lack of any car safety. Letting us ride in the truck bed, loading 8 people in the front of the truck, stuffing as many people as you can in any vehicle, sleeping on the back window ledge of cars. Toddlers standing on and walking back and forth on the front seat while driving, holding babies while driving. Things like that.

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notlikeyou1971

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'First ' yeah seat belts weren't mandatory. We rode in station wagons way in the back with no seat belts or trucks. It was fun.

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My father believed that the best way to learn to ride a horse was to fall off. He’d put me on the back of horses that were even too much for him to handle, and laugh as I was thrown around like a rag doll. I hit the dirt so often I should be an Olympic gold medalist. (Spoiler. I’m not!).

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Abinaash

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Holy c**p, that could've ended badly. Imagine having fallen on your head or breaking a bone!

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Mom took me on a way out of the way & deserted beach trip with her friends, I was like 8. Lots of food, lots of beer but minimal water. First time I got drunk.

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Nicole

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You were surrounded by "adults" yet you still managed to be drunk at 8?!

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At bedtime, my father would come into my brothers and my bedroom and make patterns in the dark with a lit cigarette. Oh, happy memories.

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Auntriarch

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Wrong, but sweet.

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Not as much of a childhood thing, but an adult thing... Investing in kids' adult lives as well. My parents were all around good parents. But once they had an empty nest, they absolutely loaded their lives with other social obligations, and feel like distant extended family now. My wife and I are suffering from a lack of any support system. Our marriage is suffering because we get alone time, like, two weekends a year. When my kids were babies, the tone for visits was ALWAYS 'bring the boys over to see us. But you know, stick around so you can handle them, and take them with you when you leave.' They're fantastic during the couple times a year I bring the kids there. Hiking, crafts, they buried treasure in the yard and made treasure maps...like, really cool stuff to interact with them. But the day to day 'it takes a community' shit doesn't exist. I will not do that to them. I will support their adult relationships by not waiting for them to beg for help. I'm not going to be intrusive (I know some grandparents who are way too involved). But I will be available. I will insist that the kids spend overnights, weekends, summer weeks, with me. Because I know how valuable breaks, and vacations, and mental health are. And not just babysitting. I want to stay close to my boys into adulthood. Let's catch a game, have a drink, come on over, and I'll grill some steaks.

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We are in a similar situation, to the point where I can actually see our kid deciding to go childfree

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When I was ten my family traveled with another family cross country in a rented RV from Maryland to California and back. One night I woke up and everyone was asleep except my dad and the other dad who were taking turns driving. I joined them and saw that they were passing back and forth a “cigarette.” My dad handed to me when I asked why they were sharing and said take a puff. Years later I realized that it was NOT a cigarette! I was ten!

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Nicole

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I usually think pot is harmless, but not if you are TEN YEARS OLD. What the actual f**k is happening in this thread?

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