Rules that YOUR parents had

[sleepsforwimps]

Come confess, is there a rule they had for you, no matter how big or small, that the child/rebel in you just refuses to apply to your own kids/household?

I was not allowed to sit on the arms of the sofa... I really wanted to... but apparently I would have broken them. I know it's slightly pathetic but I get a strange delight in sitting on the arms of my sofa, it's my sofa and I'll break the arms if I want to

Anyone else slightly pathetic?

Really, is it any WONDER I talk nincessantly to ANYONE who won't tell me to "shut UP!"???

No swearing - not of itself a problem and quite reasonable - but the list of words which constitued swearing was immense and far beyond what anyone would normally consider unacceptable.

Don't drink the milk?

We were never allowed to play in the garden on a Sunday.....no paddling pool, no kicking a ball, no shouting Etc. This was so that we didn't annoy the neighbours. It wasn't just our family that had this rule all our friends parents were the same. Sunday was a day of rest and children should be quiet. The only place we could run around and play was on the park or in the fields.
It wasn't even as if mum and dad were even regular church goers! Us children were also packed off to Sunday school twice every Sunday to give them some peace.

Also we could only have fruit/jelly with ice-cream if we ate bread and butter with it. DH thinks it's so that the bread would fill us up so we couldn't eat too much ice-cream

My mum would cook liver, heart and brains (cow, of course ) every single week! It makes me cringe every time I remember those eternal sittings until everything was eaten, yuck! It was supposed to make us grow strong and healthy (we are, but not the point! hahaha)

I really hope it doesn't take over me and I end up doing the same with my children (29wks pregnant atm).

No wonder I'm a vegetarian now

LunarSea

No elbows on the dinner table, ever.
Not allowed in their room ever, unless I was dying in the night
Not allowed to rummage in my mums handbag or purse, ever

My ds does all of the above with gay abandon...

Oh and I was alos not allowed out after my bath as I would get a chill, and I was never allowed to be seen on teh doorstep in my dressing gown/PJ's.

No TV on a Sunday till tea time, we had radio 2 instead untill my mum discovered little house on the prairie was on...

No food unless you asked permission (which was always denied, in fact we didn't dare ask most of the time)

No drinks while eating (because we would vindictively "fill up on water" and not eat our food )

Sent out to "play" for hours on end regardless of weather (I used to cry because my toes were freezing off)

No complaining when she snuck up behind us at the breakfast table with her metal hairbrush and ripped our scalps off [petulant exaggeration]

Eat everything on your plate, my stepdad would stand over you shouting "EAT IT!! YOU'RE GOING TO EAT IT!! (I remember my little autistic brother sitting at the table until 2am once, then there was a thud which woke us all up but not as bad as the times my mother used to literally force-feed him, including shoving his regurgitated food into his mouth

If you complained or pulled any kind of face (voluntary or otherwise) while one of them was bawling at you/twatting you over the head, they twatted you again I remember my brother getting thumped once for wiping my stepdad's spittle out of his eye)

No mentioning that our stepdad was not actually our dad (my dad moved overseas after the divorce, she made us call them "home dad" and "abroad dad" and my stepfather would scream "I am your FATHER"

Just really.

My parents had squillions of rules, very few of which I apply to my own children.

The one that makes me laugh though, is that I had a comfort blanket which was very strictly NOT ALLOWED out of my bed EVER. My dd also became attached to a blanket at quite a young age and I spent a good couple of months enforcing the No Comfort Blankets Out Of Bed EVER rule, before it occured to me that, oh yeah! I'm the mummy now! And my rule is 'comfort blankets are allowed wherever the hell a small child wants a comfort blanket'.

Suddenly everyone was much happier, once I worked that out!

My parents were not tyrants like some clearly were (poor you LunarSea and GentleOtter).

But...

Not allowed sweets except a rationed amount on a Saturday. I wasn't even allowed to eat my Easter Eggs in one go but had to break them into portions over a number of Saturdays!

My mother had total control over what we were "allowed" to eat in the fridge - only one type of cheese, one packet of ham etc allowed open at one time. Not allowed more than one yoghurt a day...She even forbade us from eating things to the point that they went off and had to be thrown out! We were not extremely poor, so it wasn't an affordability issue.

Needless to say, I ate far too many sweets as a teenager and now take great pleasure in having numerous types of cheese on the go at the same time!

Oh I love this thread. No Cocopops, don't put feet on the couch. I had friends who lived across the road who had a big fab garden, great for doing handstands on and playing horse jumping, their Dad would bollock us for playing on the grass.
Dr Northerner I wasn't allowed out after a bath either, my parents still tell me not to go out with damp hair or go out straight after washing and drying my hair as I will get a cold. I am 28 FFS and the common cold is a virus not caught by going out with wet hair.

Oh my Mum was good at the no eating ubtil she said so too .

My favourite was when she had done a shop she would spend the entire day screaming at us of we tried to take an apple or bag of crisps "Stop it I just bought them".

p

Lol at I just bought them! My mum did this too. And she would go balistic if you dared put anything in the laundry basket on the day she did her washing - "Who put this in the landry bin? I've just done the washing"

Oh God Dr Northerner, is your Mum my Mum, the shopping thing I forgot about that. I wasn't allowed raw vegetables , they would make me ill and give me stomach ache. I actually hate cooked veg, apart from cauliflower and sweetcorn, my Mum used the boil the shit out of it and mash it with butter and pepper urggg. I love raw veg like carrots and mushrooms. She also never fed us anything SHE didn't like either, she still asks me "what has baby Wigglesworth had for dinner?" and when I reply she says urgh "I don't like that, did he like it?", good job I'm not feeding her then isn't it.

Sorry for crap typing . DD was helping .

millions, but relate to the don't eat that I've just bought it, thing. Or she would say I'm not buying that you'll only eat it.... which I never understood till much later. She was is a compulsive eater, and couldn't have stuff in or she would just wolf the lot. It was very confusing actually, all the weird rules about what we could and couldn't eat, deffo no sweets, etc, then she would have a bad day and start eating raw jelly squares or making saucepans of semolina or butter cream to sandwich ginger biscuits together!!!!!!...we could join in then, but were oddly reluctant to...needless to say i grew up with anorexia and then bulimia and my very skinny sis has ishoos with food too....

But, I hated that fact that she used to make us do all the domestic chores she hated, one was hoovering down the stairs, and the other one was going round all the fringed rugs and combing them out with a wooden salad fork so that they were all tidy and even....how totally anal is that?

My mum is totally shocked that ds has been allowed to help himself out of the fridge since he could toddle over to it, but he is totally at ease around food, and is just as happy to eat fruit as biscuits and sweets, coz they're not 'forbidden' or severly restricted.

My home life is so diferent to my parents. As a kid my parents only went out once a year on their anniversary. They each had a night out in the week but seperatley so they hardly ever used a babysitter. They were both home on an evening, and we would all sit and watch TV. At 7pm I was allowed a treat from the cupboard (crisps/chocolate) and at 9pm my Dad made a cup of tea. They still do this to this day!

My house is like a mad house in comparison, its very rare we sit down together to watch Tv on an evening, as either dh or I are usually out at committee meetings/gym etc etc. Even at my house she expects s brew at 9pm!

Plus my mum had tidy draws - mine are very messy!

My mum and dad semed to just hate us. God knows why they had three children.

One of the more ridiculous rules was that we were never, ever allowed to open the windows in the car, no matter how hot or stuffy or smelly it was. And they both smoked away like chimneys in the front.

LOL Just remembered another . We had a massive mirror on the wall next to the table and my Mum had the rule "No watching yourself eat" she would go loopy if she caught us looking in the mirror while we ate food .

SBBC We also had to hoover the stairs and clean up dog poo because she wouldn't walk the dog .
She still tries to get me to clean up when I visit now !

We were never allowed to go into my mum's hand-bag either and I must admit, I don't let my dc's go into mine without permission. When my mum died and we had to sort through her things, it felt so wrong to go into her bag.

No books/toys at the table, no eating in front of the tv, no sitting on the arms of the sofa, shoes off before you go inside, no swinging on the banisters, no feet on the coffee table,.......

I used to think my parents' rules were petty, annoying and a waste of time.

Now I'm grown up, I have exactly the same rules in my house.

I was the oldest of 7 children very close together in a one parent family (Dad died young)...I thought it was chaotic, noisy, busy etc... I craved rules...there were no rules that I can remember but everything got done. I have loads of rules in my house. Shoes off, dont ask to leave table until everyone is finished - then plate cleared to diswasher, eat and drink only at table. Can only help yourself to fruit bowl, icecreams on Fri, sweets on sat. Dont have treats etc in the house... as I would eat them...find it really hard to believe that there could be endless supplies of junk and children would eventually self regulate their eating??...maybe its because I cant....but worry that I will create "cravers" due to the restriction....but where does this sit on the obesity issue?...think I would prefer to direct their food in take as children as well as giving them healthy eating advice to save their teeth and waists then... as adults if I have instilled healthy eating its up to them...but maybe I should train them to resist temptation??...how wold you do this?

Mulranno, I've always felt that my parents' restriction on my junk food intake has increased my craving for them. They were less strict on my brother, who can take it or leave it. DH's parents were also not strict, and he can regulate his consumption of junk better too.

DD (3) is allowed to have "treats" frequently, i.e. she can have Nutella on toast for breakfast every morning if she wants. For a while she did have it every morning, but now she is not fussed and will often choose a banana or marmite on toast instead. The same has happened with ice-cream and crisps. Contrast this with me who, at 13, made myself sick because I ate a whole box of chocolates as I was finally allowed to.

Amazing how much of this "rules" discussion centres on food...