15 People Share Stories About The Weird Stuff Their Parents Did That Still Bothers Them As Adults

Being a parent isn't easy. It's one of the toughest jobs there is. So, we really shouldn't be too harsh when judging other people's parenting styles or ideas. Having said that, just because it's a tough job doesn't give parents the right to throw caution to the wind and do whatever they want in the name of raising kids either.

However, someone forgot to tell these parents that, and now their grown-up children have some pretty crazy stories to tell about their parents' somewhat unorthodox and sometimes sad parenting methods.

Scroll down to read through some stories that will quite possibly make you extremely grateful for your own parents.

#1 But she can do squats for hours

“I don’t have very many memories of my childhood, or really anything in the last 25 years. But I do remember that when we would go in time out, we had to bend our knees and fold our arms behind our backs while staring at the wall. We had to stand motionless and silent for 30 minutes. If we moved or swayed, we got another 30 minutes. This would go on for hours sometimes. My brothers and I would pull muscles and pass out sometimes.”“Also, while we were in the shower, our parents would search our rooms. They did this every day, and if they found anything they didn’t like, they’d make us jump out of the shower, still dripping wet and naked, and come clean up or explain whatever they found.”“And we were always ‘grounded,’ but they would never tell us why. So, since we were already grounded, they would just take away our birthdays or put us in timeout for punishment. I have only celebrated my birthday twice in my life, and both times my mom shut it down within 10 minutes.”Edit; TLDR; leg day, all day. I can do squats for hours.”

#2 Wait... you're not?

“They kept everything. EVERYTHING.”“The moment I walked into my friend’s house and realized you’re NOT supposed to have stuff lining the walls was ridiculous.”

#3 She knows too much

“My mom was always very invested in our romantic lives, partly because that was an area where we didn’t stack up well compared to our cousins. The most insane manifestation of this was when I agreed to go out on a date with a guy, only to find out before the date that he was a sexual predator who’d been fired and arrested after he preyed on four separate freshmen at the school where he taught.”“Mom flipped out, trying to convince me not to cancel the date. ‘He might have grown out of it! You don’t know if you don’t give him a chance!’”“Thankfully, my dad was on my side, and I canceled the date. But Mom sulked the entire rest of the night and demanded I log her into my Facebook account so she could scroll through my friends list to see which of my male friends were straight and single so that she could push me toward them instead.”

#4 Camping in the closet

“When my mother ‘left’ my dad, she pitched a tent in my walk-in closet. I was 7 or 8, and she lived in my closet for months before she got her own place. I still remember her reading her Joyce Meyer books by lamplight.”

#5 We would all howl

“We lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere (at least 35 minutes to the nearest grocery store). I am not sure how it started, because I was a kid, but any time our puppy dog howled, we would all howl. To the point that it was a deafening sound and would kind of make your ears rattle.”“His name was Duke. I would occasionally howl first because then he would follow, and then so would my mother, father, and two older brothers. I thought it was awesome, and it felt invigorating to do. I now realize this is odd.”

#6 Seemed like a good idea

“I was seven, and my brother was five (during the early 80s). We were told to wait in the school parking lot for the babysitter to pick us up. The thing is, we had never met her before and had no idea what she looked like. So we waited until a woman pulled up with a picture of us in her hand. She showed us the picture and asked if it was us. We said it was, and she told us she was our babysitter. We got in the car without thinking twice. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

#7 Not a good idea, Dad

“On the day my dad decided to buy our family’s first PC, he loaded me and my younger sisters into the back of our little two-door Honda and drove the 20 minutes to the store.”“After purchasing the computer, my dad realized there wasn’t enough room in our tiny car for three children, car seats, and the giant 1997 computer. So he LEFT US at the store, apparently thinking that if he bought us all candy bars, that’d be enough to keep a 5, 3, and 2-year-old occupied and out of trouble. He took the new computer home and then turned around to come back and get us, having left us alone for easily 40 minutes.”

#8 They used a murder weapon

“My parents visited underground Atlanta back in the early 90s. Not the safest place. Anyway, my brother was a baby and crawled under a bench they were sitting on. He pulled out an umbrella bag with a very sinister knife inside. My parents didn’t report the knife or anything, but instead kept it, and it became a staple knife in our kitchen. So yeah, pretty sure my parents used a murder weapon to cut the crust off our PB&Js.”

#9 Definitely not okay

“My godbrother’s parents used to lock us in his room for hours to days at a time. His little brothers learned to pee in the trash can instead of on the floor when we couldn’t get them out. We eventually learned how to unlock and re-lock the hatch from inside the room so that the four of us could get out for pee breaks and for snacks when we were feeling really ballsy.”“I didn’t realize how abnormal this was until I was watching a news story in the work break room with a bunch of coworkers about a ‘neglected’ child being removed from an unfit home. My initial response was ‘that’s nothing!’ as I launched into what I just wrote above. I looked around, waiting for everyone else’s stories, but instead, they all just stared at me…”“Edit: Quite a few people have been very kind and offered sound advice to me. Therapy is definitely worth its weight in gold.”Edit 2: People keep asking; a godbrother is the son of one of your godparents, or so I was taught when I was growing up.

#10 Dad was a pimp

“My brother and I would be locked in our room for hours at a time and told to be absolutely silent. This went on for a few years.”“One morning, I woke up super early, earlier than normal, and was hungry. So I went to ask my mom for oatmeal. I opened the bedroom door, and my mom was rubbing the back of a shirtless, sleeping man who was NOT my dad. Mom panicked, jumped out of bed, and gently pushed me out of the room. I kind of stood in the kitchen confused when my dad came in from another part of the house and asked what I was doing, then sent me back to my room.”“They finally divorced a couple of years ago, and my mom confided that my dad made her prostitute herself to pay the bills for a while when we were kids. A lot of memories made sense after that.”

#11 Punk rockers slept in our beds

“Let homeless punk rockers live with us. Several. And some of them slept in our beds with her permission. Two of my sisters were teen moms.”

#12 Chill out, Mama

“My mom is very controlling. She would make me turn my diary over to make sure I wasn’t writing anything she didn’t approve of. So I saved up enough money by skipping school lunch and bought a secret diary at the book fair.”“I came home to her sitting on my bed and yelling at me for writing ‘Mom is a JERK’ or something like that. She would have grounded me, but I wasn’t allowed out of the house without her escorting me until age 16. She then wondered why I had no friends.”“I was allowed only 30 minutes on the computer in the computer room, and I would have to record which websites I went on and what usernames and passwords I used. She would use the password book to go on the websites and look at who I was talking to.”“I also just kind of accepted that it was normal for parents to charge rent when you turned 18 and only allow you to eat one meal a day (dinner) while having to pay for the others yourself.”“Edit: The rent thing doesn’t bother me as much. It started out at $500 a month and went up every year, so now I’m at $700 a month. That’s pretty normal rent around where I live, and I don’t have to pay for heat, electricity, or internet. I’m trying to move out, but I also have to pay for college out of pocket, and it adds up. :(”

#13 Starved

“Kinda relevant, but I’m still gonna post this.”“When I was in 6th grade (I think), my mom decided we needed to understand what it was like for people in third-world countries. We ate oatmeal for breakfast, beans and rice for lunch, could have one fruit for a snack, and beans and rice plus some romaine lettuce for dinner. All of this for a month, and we were only allowed 3 cheat meals.”“In high school, looking back, I just thought she was batshit nuts. But once I started having bills and such of my own, it occurred to me that my parents were just that broke. They just didn’t want us to think of it that way. Damn, do I love those two people.”

#14 She shaved her head

“Mom got mad at my sister for missing curfew and shaved her head as punishment.”

#15 I was an afterthought

“I have a brother with disabilities. He’s relatively low-functioning and requires regular attention, both inside the home and out. I love him to death, but it made for a pretty untraditional childhood.”“I didn’t realize until my late teenage years that other families were…happy. And relaxed. Which isn’t to say that they didn’t have their problems. Just that they weren’t constantly preoccupied by one family member who requires more care and attention than others at all times.”“To be clear, my brother is a wonderful person. I cherish every moment that I get to spend with him now. But, at the same time, I spent a disproportionate amount of my childhood in waiting rooms while he went to various therapies. And I spent very little time with my parents growing up because all of their attention was focused on my brother. I was an afterthought because I was lucky enough to be an afterthought and still function.”

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