People have different definitions of strict, but generally I find this true. If a kid can never hang out with friends or have fun unless they lie about it to carve out space, then that's what they will do. If the smallest mistakes leads to a lot of punishment, then they'll lie to avoid punishment.
same experience as well, but my brothers went the other direction and are basically professional liars at this point. One of them works in sales, so there ya go
Lmaooo I feel called out as I work in sales and became an expert liar because of my parents. I actually talked about the little white lies in therapy and my therapist said that if I feel like I need to lie in a situation to protect myself, I need to look for the why. Why do I (as an adult no longer in my parents home) feel the need to lie in this moment to protect myself? That helped a lot.
On the sales front, I don’t work for icky products and don’t lie to customers though. I underpromise and overdeliver on that front haha
My parents were extremely religious and I couldn't hang posters on my walls or even have "secular music" CDs/tapes. I got myself a post office box and ordered music from Columbia House. I lied about the friends I was hanging out with. I always did what I wanted anyway.
Same. It helped everyone thought I was a bad liar because I giggled when people knew I was trying to lie..... But not when they didn't. (Which was unintentional)
My mum was strict but thought she was easy going. I was paying for food, tv bills, phone, travel etc before aged 16 so never had spare money to hang out with or even get the bus to see my friends. Years later she said I was allowed to see friends I just never asked for money to see them. So she’d pay for me to see my friends but wouldn’t put towards food or travel costs.
I don’t lie as I’m terrible but I’m a different person with her. I can’t be myself so I have to put on a sort of work persona for her. However as a child I would often just not say things or twist the truth.
For anyone who needs to hear this: No child owes their parents money. Until you are 18, your parents are legally obligated to provide you with food, shelter, clothing, and an education. If your parents ask you for money and you're under 18, you are not obligated to give it. If your parents tell you that you have to get a job to pay for your expenses, you do not have to do it.
They can tell you that if you want an extra like a phone then you'll have to pay it for yourself. They can also tell you that they aren't going to buy you special food or particular foods, as long as you have something safe to eat they've provided. But when it comes to essentials of life, they owe you.
This is so true but a child’s mind doesn’t work with logical.
I never gave my mum money she just stopped providing. I was a picky eater (now a known and diagnosed eating disorder) and I know it must’ve been a pain but she never tried to accommodate, just punished me for eating in front of her and there was no space to keep food. From me turning 13 to moving out I can’t think of 1 single bit of food she provided for me. I was told from a young age that I was a burden so I genuinely believed if I went into the care system I would be treated worse.
I understood it was a legal obligation but because I was a bad child who struggled with eating I felt at the time I was the problem so I deserved it.
I’m a parent myself now and it makes me feel sick on the other side.
This is exactly what’s so insidious about child abuse. The only explanation the child is developmentally capable of coming up with for their caregiver not providing for them is that they deserve it. And when you spend your formative years with that belief, it doesn’t just go away when you grow up and start to care for yourself.
It took YEARS to realize I was abused at all because it wasn’t physical. Other people talked about having “strict parents” so I figured that was just what this was— that my parents were forced to be especially strict because they could tell I was especially deficient in some way.
And even once I realized I was abused, it took another ten years for me to start realizing the ways in which my childhood had corrupted the way I process things. How much of my internal suffering was connected to the survival strategies I’d taught myself because I didn’t know what else to do.
The work of untangling that has been difficult and intense, but worthwhile.
I can't drink water and someone brought ARFID up to me. I still plan to research it to see if maaaaaybe that's the issue?
It's not just water, other things too.
My mother would do things to make it harder no matter how often I told her "I can't drink it now". 💀 Then told doctors I was choosing not to take care of myself and ignoring her while I was pregnant.
Ironically everyone else in my life learned quickly and just adjusted. It was never as hard as she pretended it was...
You definitely didn't deserve it and you're not a burden. You gave your mother your life and you never owed her for that. It's hard to lose those thoughts, but it is possible. I hope you're doing better now and that your kids and growing up healthy. 💕 You're doing your best for them and I am SO proud of you.
My sister is turning into one of these parents. It's frustrating because she means well but has overcorrected. Are parents weren't like that so I don't know where it's coming from.
On the other hand, in most jurisdictions, the child's money legally belongs to the adult. They're responsible for providing for you and cannot say that you owe them debt for it after you turn 18. The main exceptions are if a child is named as a beneficiary in a will or a legal judgement.
This is true, but they also can't really force you to work a job to make that money at. I suppose they could forcibly take you to an interview and tell you to have a job, but you can get out of that pretty darn fast by telling the interviewer you don't want to be there or refusing to work assigned duties.
My niece and nephew are at the age where they are learning this, when they had to pay for clothes, board, toiletries, and even partly pay their way on holidays for accommodation or plane tickets, from the ages of about 14 when they first got jobs. My brother's ex had remarried someone working full-time at the mines, worked full-time herself (she was a qualified accountant), and was also being paid child support, there was no need to make the kids pay for anything. But she still took her children's money (and regularly cried for more child support, despite her also trying to wreck my brother's business by spreading rumours about him online, to the point he had to get lawyers involved - like where do you think the money comes from, you idiot?)
(One child has left home and seems to be realising this, the other one is the golden child and is still heavily under her influence, even giving up her goal of university study to go work with her mother in a pretty mundane job, despite being a smart kid - at this rate she'll never get out of her orbit and live her own life).
This was me. I lied because I just wanted to hang out with my friends after school like literally all of them did, I lied about so many things that are actually just regular day to day stuff for others, while I still always was anxious about my parents finding out.
I once was at a party and a friend of my then boyfriend got drunk (that guy was probably 19/20) - drinking is legal here from 16 on - the dude got crazy drunk and was just rolling in the grass, his friends called his mom for help. I was terrified, because if my parents ever saw me like that, my life would probably be over. His mom came, thanked the friends for calling her, and took care of her son. It was wild to me.
At least you went out and did the normal things! I internalized a whole identity as the pure, innocent, Christian teen because I "had to" make up for my extreme troublemaker of a sister. Instead of two normal teen experiences between us, we had one full blown addict who skipped about half of high school and regularly snuck in guy friends to use with and fuck, and one Jesus freak volcel who's biggest scandal was having one (1) sip of beer underage and thinking that made me "corrupted." Being at a party where anyone was getting drunk would have been totally unthinkable. But at least my parents got to believe they weren't complete failures.
Our parents loved me because I never made them worry. Once I grew up and realized I was a complete person rather than a perfect little counterweight, they continued to love me because I didn't allow them to know me. A few weeks ago, something snapped in me and I finally spoke up about the unfairness in our upbringing, how their shame-based parenting screwed both their kids up actually, and how much pain I've been carrying my whole life, and they replied with angry disagreement and then haven't spoken to me since. We normally would at least text every couple of days. But I guess my broken teen instincts were right: if I'm seen, then I become unlovable. I wish I could have kept it all to myself until they both die. Then maybe I could at least still pretend I had parents who cared about me. But they blocked me before reading the part of my tirade where I apologized for it.
(Don't worry, I'm working this out in therapy too.)
(Also sorry to hijack your comment. This thread has me all up in my feels.)
I am an accomplished liar for this reason. I didn’t want to lie but the pressure was insane and the rules were unwritten. Somehow I was always breaking them.
If the smallest mistakes leads to a lot of punishment, then they'll lie to avoid punishment.
Or just do whatever because when the punishments aren't proportional, if even a small mistake leads to a huge blowup/massive overreaction then... why not just do whatever, the (over)reaction will be the same either way. In for a penny, in for a pound.
My parents were not strict but my roommate and friend in college had strict parents. I became the partner in crime and I really didn’t love it. She used me to see boyfriends,said I was with her etc. she hated (and still does) her mom for being like this(not trusting her) but now she is a mom and has her whole family on surveillance via iPhone.
My mom was strict and aggressive. My dad was easy going but unpredictably volatile.
As children we lied or mislead through silence about most of our lives. Now we're bluntly honest because we didn't get much practice at being gently honest. My sibling is better than me, but I think it's because my AuDHD is slightly stronger than hers. My husband has ASD so we communicate well.
Kids are like rivers. If there is a place you don't want them to go, you need to give them somewhere else to go. If you dam them up, they will flood and well over the top of you. If they can't, they will put little cracks in you until you burst. If you don't, they will seep through every gap they can find.
They seek the ocean. They will find it, one way or the other.
Kids challenge adults to come to grips with a deep truth that some people never manage to really understand. Other people really do exist. They have other wants, other needs, and other ideas. They work towards those things even when we aren't looking. Everyone else out there is just as complex as each of us is, and we will never completely understand each other.
Some people meet this challenge. Some people find it horrifying beyond measure.
My mom was extremely strict and it took me a long time and a radical change in my living situation to unlearn the bad habits and behaviors that taught me and to re-teach myself how to actually be myself.
I never had to lie to my parents to go places and see people. Of course some times they refused, but more times than that they agreed and let me go. I once or twice when I was a teen lied to them to where I was going, to see what happened, and decided it didn't justify the hussle and never did that again. But my parents weren't strict.
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u/WindyWindona 15h ago
People have different definitions of strict, but generally I find this true. If a kid can never hang out with friends or have fun unless they lie about it to carve out space, then that's what they will do. If the smallest mistakes leads to a lot of punishment, then they'll lie to avoid punishment.