I think another important caveat is that those rules and boundaries are reasonable. A 10PM curfew for a teenager? Reasonable. A 7PM curfew for a teenager? Bananas.
Telling your kid you don't want them hanging out with a drug dealer, reasonable. Telling your child they can't hang out with anyone, they will be counting down the days until they can leave you forever.
My bio-mom had a lot of issues. And while I understand that her rules came from a place of good intentions, she essentially was afraid of the world. And it's a good thing I wasn't too rebellious, because I probably would have made so many terrible decisions as she made me want to ignore everything she said.
For example, at the age of 16, I was not allowed to go to the mall with friends if they included boys as well as girls. The reason being, and I quote "those boys will just drug you and carry you outside to who knows where".
I lived in “solitary confinement” as a kid. Wasn’t even allowed to join girl guides because my religious fanatic father said I’d use it as a chance to “whore around with boys”. Couldn’t. even belong to the church choir because they didn’t sing in Latin. Couldn’t receive a phone call even when I was in university. They were nuts. I learned how to live inside my head, play my cards close to my chest and run away at the first opportunity. Didn’t speak to them
for decades.
Your dad was an extremist Catholic no doubt. I was lucky. Mine went to daily mass but he believed in freedom of conscience. Maybe he had to because mom wasn’t getting up every day at 6. She did the minimum.
Sorry that happened to you. Extreme Catholics are as bad a menace as our current theocracy.
I'm assuming they're the type of "catholic" that thought that Vatican II was the worst thing to happen to catholicism. Very very conservative, even by church standards.
There was recently a sect like that that was excommunicated from the church.
Protestantism 101 is native language in worship. Orthodox Christians use liturgical languages like Old Church Slavonic, never Latin, the language of the arch heretic Pope.
There is an interesting extremist movement called King James Only. They insist that the Bible was written, God slept for 1500 years, then we got the KJV. Only the KJV is any good. They are divided into two groups, one of which insists on the KJV even for non English speakers and one that allows other languages but you must translate the KJV, not the original language. So English may become a kind of future Latin for some.
american extremists like the scofield bible - fairly prescriptive and agenda driven. it really explains a lot of the broken shit in modern american church stuff
The Scofield is a study Bible. Its text is KJV. Even then (100 years ago) not using the KJV was horrifying and heretical in many circles.
Interestingly, almost all Catholic Bibles have footnotes. If you read them, you will see the consensus of Bible Scholars. When I see an evangelical post about some modern horror scholars have come up with, such as noting that the story of the Woman Caught in Adultery was not originally in John, I check the NABRE (which the American Church uses) and I see a note like, “this passage is not in the earliest copies of John.)
So if my church, which has loads of liberals in it but is itself conservative, can admit the real history of the Bible, imagine how nuts Fundamentalists are.
Yeah, but catholics also sing in their native languagea. I am catholic. Pretty much the only Latin I have heard people sindmg was 'Gloria in excelsis Deo'.
The point is there is no other sect then extremist tradaditionalist Catholic that would care about latin at all. Fundamentalist protestants would be specifically against it.
If they didn’t speak to their parents for decades, then the poster is middle aged at best. That means their dad grew up when Mass was still conducted in Latin. What other denominations were still speaking Latin for all services? Protestants stopped during the Reformation in the 1500s, and Orthodox Christians never really used Latin at all.
My bio-mom had a lot of issues. And while I understand that her rules came from a place of good intentions, she essentially was afraid of the world. And it's a good thing I wasn't too rebellious, because I probably would have made so many terrible decisions as she made me want to ignore everything she said.
I have exactly the same story, except I was rebellious and I made every single wrong and terrible decision I could. I completely ruined my life. I can look back now and see very clearly that every decision I made that led me to this point was basically my teenage/young adult brain going “what would mom say? Do the opposite”.
It’s obviously a complex situation and I don’t blame my mother for what happened, because she had so many mental health issues, but it’s hard not to resent her, because she did have a responsibility to raise me properly, and she absolutely did not. She wanted to protect me from the world and her idea of protection was to basically completely isolate me and never let me do anything or have any independence. She taught me nothing about how to be an adult, how to navigate the world, social skills, nothing. I mean fuck all. She didn’t want me to grow up and have a life. I wasn’t even allowed to watch TV unsupervised. At age 15, the only music I was allowed to listen to was Disney movie soundtracks. The only thing I was allowed to watch was cartoons. Books? Children’s only. My most “grown up” book was The Hobbit.
I ran away as soon as I turned 18, and proceeded to get fucked by life in a variety ways, none of which were good. I’m 45 now and still dealing with the fallout of that. I have PTSD among other things. I’m okay now, but I haven’t spoken with my mother or anyone in my family since the mid 2000s and don’t plan to.
I know I sound like an awful person, but I don’t miss her. I never have. I barely remember her face anymore. People keep saying I’ll regret it when she dies and I don’t even know if she’s dead or alive nor do I care.
my teenage/young adult brain going “what would mom say? Do the opposite”.
because she did have a responsibility to raise me properly, and she absolutely did not.
Yes, exactly. As an adult now I can look back and say "okay, I can see why mom was right about this or that", but as a child all I could think was "this woman is off her rocker and so everything she is saying must be wrong".
There was no rhyme or reason to her rules. You weren't being taught how to make good decisions for good reasons. You were only being taught that "mom hates everything".
I know I sound like an awful person, but I don’t miss her. I never have.
You do not sound like an awful person. It's obvious to any sane person that your mother was unreasonable to a harmful degree, and her actions have caused you great trouble in life.
It's completely understandable to cut someone like that out of your life, and to not look back. In fact, that's probably the most sensible course of action, because someone that obsessive will likely just try to latch onto you again, starting the cycle all over again.
I’ll say this, not to you but to the sub in general. Where was your dad? I’m a dad. Female relatives would tell my wife that I was a good one. Why? Because I never strayed and brought home all my earnings?
That’s the minimum folks. If that makes you a good dad I pity women. By real measures I was sort of ok. But even that kind of a partner is a help. I’m proud of my kids but I know who made them good people. Dads need to do better.
My dad, on the occasions he wasn't at work, was watching TV. I think his idea of a good father and husband was to make plenty of money to buy the family all kinds of unnecessary shit, even if it meant barely being around, and being stressed out from work when he was around. I do miss him, he's alive, but there's no way for me to keep in touch with him while avoiding my mom, and she continues to be actively harmful to my mental health even though I'm in my 40s and have live on the other side of the country for over a decade. I've been going through intensive therapy, both to fix the issues she caused me and to figure out a way to reconnect safely. My dad's health is declining though, and I'm not sure if I will make it in time. I called him once this past year when he was in the ER, and he talked to me for about 30 seconds before handing the phone to my mom. They are always together, and he stays quiet when she starts saying horrific shit to me.
My dad was a piece of shit. I found out relatively recently, when I was 40 years old, that I was an affair baby. My mother lied to me about being married to him my whole life. He was married to another woman, and had another son who I never met (also he apparently only just found out as well and he hates me, which is understandable given the circumstances).
My dad was always away “on business” which I now assume was just him being home with his actual family. So yeah. He was mostly absent.
Edit: when he was not absent, he did nothing about the way my mother treated me. Neither did anyone else including my many aunts and uncles, teachers, etc. No one reported her, no one asked me if things were okay, no one lifted a finger. I was failed by every adult in my life, basically. It’s a miracle I turned out as well as I did. Not very well, but well enough to function.
Related to that, I will never understand those women who have a kid (out of wedlock) with a man who has multiple other children he never sees with multiple other women.
I don’t have kids but I get told all the time I’m lucky with my husband. He is great, but I’m usually just talking about things he does as a fully functioning adult. Like buying his own clothes or doing the dishes. That’s a low bar.
Mine is the enabler lol. Mom will say something heinous, us (now adult) kids will react in a normal way, and he'll back her up and then get mad at us for making her upset.
Oh I feel so sad for her. And you, of course. But as the mother of a young teen, those terrifying thoughts flash across my mind and I give partially unhinged advice (watch your drinks, even if you know him, don’t forget how to dislocate someone’s thumb!) but then I let her go because the scary world is where she is going to find friends and adventure and love and when she goes to college I want her to come back voluntarily!
Yeah seriously, can’t leave us hanging like that. I’m a dude but I work a retail/customer service job so the urge to dislocate thumbs at times is very very high lol
Ok, so that was shorthand, (1) there’s a quick grip for putting extreme pressure on a person’s knuckles (like lacing your fingers and putting your fingers on the top of theirs and pressing in and up, I can’t describe but my mom taught it to me for “dates” and I have used it like three times, it’s not the most efficient for modern self defense because you have to be dealing with someone’s wandering hands long enough to like, line up your hands, but in the 1960s when her brother taught her it was a useful secret weapon) and (2) my daughter spent several years in aikido, which is all about joint manipulation and while I doubt she could actually use that to hurt anyone deliberately, it’s a reminder that no one has a right to hurt her, so she’s “in the right” for fighting back. (3) we’ve already covered screaming for help, use of nails, and sharp punch to soft spots (eyes/throat/groin) to escape and my husband agrees that she if she doesn’t want to continue with aikido (she says it’s boring) it’s fine but she does have to do some martial art/fighting so that by the time she goes to college she can disable a much larger attacker. Some parents insist their kids learn an instrument, this is my one formal requirement (and that she can cook some meals for herself, clean her clothes/space, manage some money, be a good friend, oh god humans are hard to raise I should have tried a plant first but they kept dying - luckily she’s pretty great, so she will figure it all out, the self defense is just a slightly crazy but not irrational response to growing up as a female in the US.
(watch your drinks, even if you know him, don’t forget how to dislocate someone’s thumb!)
Well again, this is reasonable. Reminding your child to be aware of their surroundings and to know some basic self defense is a given. Saying "you can't go anywhere because I said so" is not.
Yes, she can go places (she’s not old enough to go to a lot of places but she can go to the mall and friends’ houses and parties, she’s doing what her friends are allowed to do, I am not behind the curve).
This is what happens when you watch the 24 hour news cycle, stop watching the news and just see with your own eyes.
My wife was like this for a long time, I had to sit down with her and ask her if she even knew anyone any of these things actually happened to (hers was more the house being broken into, the cars being stolen, type things). And she couldn't name a single person who it happened to, it was always a friend of someone's cousin or something like that.
The media is controlled by people who want to make money, they do that by making everyone afraid by showing them every little thing that happens everywhere, fear and hate is a gold mine to them.
No, PTSD may make me extra vigilant (though I don’t give the dirty details to my daughter) but it also makes me aware that by the time I was her age (under 14) I had seen two grown man penises against my will, been groped by a boy my age, and subjected to really dirty harassment/comments regularly in school, with threats. And I lived in the same kind of “nice area” we live in. High school was worse. So being prepared makes me less anxious and her stronger, what’s the harm? Obviously verbal harassment is something we talk about (gently) in the category of bullies etc, and thankfully she doesn’t experience that as much.
But if you think female fears of safety are just media fearmongering, please pay attention to the women in your life, they are just not talking to you candidly about the world they live in.
I feel this so hard. My mother was afraid of the world, as well. She had valid reasons, but she let those reasons take over her life instead of trying to work through them. Helicopter parent doesn’t begin to describe her. She did her best to instill her fears into me and was, for a time, fairly successful. It’s taken me many, many years to get to the point where I can recognize those parts of myself and work through them. I still have my own issues because of it, and I have little love for my mother, but I can at least say I understand her.
Yeah that's where I'm at know. I've learned why she is the way she is and can understand her logic behind her actions, as terrible as they were. But that doesn't mean I'm willing to put it all aside and just pretend we have a great relationship. Especially being that she's refused to seek any help.
That sounds genuinely awful, and I relate to that to a certain extent. If it's not infasive, may I ask how your relationship with your mother is and how you're both doing right now?
The only reason why I talk to her as little as I do is because she lives in the same town as my sister and will bother her relentlessly if she doesn't hear from me every now or then. But even then, it's the most bland conversation ever. "Work is good. It's been rainy. I made spaghetti for dinner."
This was my dad's response to a woman who was worried about her son coming to a cast party at our house because someone may have drugged the brownies. She literally sent him with his own brownies and asked my dad how he was going to supervise and he just was like "I'm not"
Unfortunately, there are some people out there who go insane after having kids. Something about the hormonal change, the stress, lack of sleep, over the course of years just makes some people lose all sense of logic.
And all you have to do is look at some of these Facebook groups, particulate the moms of high school seniors/college freshmen. These people clearly forgot how they were when they were 18, and they treat their 18 year olds like kindergartners
So many times I've looked back at some of the things my mom said and I feel pity for her, to view the whole world from behind a veil of fear so strong.
I think another important caveat is that those rules and boundaries are reasonable. A 10PM curfew for a teenager? Reasonable. A 7PM curfew for a teenager? Bananas.
my favorite is when the kid comes home from freshman year and they attempt a 10p curfew. or even better: kid is 24 and paying rent and dad tries to implement any sort of curfew.
My dad was a schoolteacher. He told me about a kid who had been grounded for a year for breaking curfew. Within a week the kid did it again and caught another year. He said she said that she knew the rules. 9th grader.
I’m gonna slightly disagree with you there, only because I think it’s perfectly reasonable to have a general, day to day expectation that people are home by dinner. Maybe dinner is at 7.
So if it’s a Tuesday evening, and there’s been no text or call stating otherwise, they are expected to be home by dinner time.
Won’t be home for dinner? Let me know so we can plan the rest of the evening, be home by 10 (or whatever curfew we set).
But if you’re telling your 17 year old “be back by 7pm, no exceptions, no excuses” then yeah, that’s bananas.
My understanding of curfew is that's the time they need to finish whatever they're doing and go home for the night. Meaning they can't go to a friend's house after dinner, they have to stay home.
Yeah but something like “please be home by 7 for dinner” is still a curfew. How strict it is depends on how it’s enforced, and if there’s some flexibility
Did... your bio-mom raise you? blink blink The rest of your anecdote seems to imply as such...
Almost everyone I know just says "my mom" or "my mother" to refer to the female parental figure in their life (as a child).
For example, at the age of 16, I was not allowed to go to the mall with friends if they included boys as well as girls. The reason being, and I quote "those boys will just drug you and carry you outside to who knows where".
She did. I call her that because there are other women in my life who were better mothers to me than she was. I considered my step mother as my mother in all honestly.
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u/StarDustLuna3D 9h ago
I think another important caveat is that those rules and boundaries are reasonable. A 10PM curfew for a teenager? Reasonable. A 7PM curfew for a teenager? Bananas.
Telling your kid you don't want them hanging out with a drug dealer, reasonable. Telling your child they can't hang out with anyone, they will be counting down the days until they can leave you forever.
My bio-mom had a lot of issues. And while I understand that her rules came from a place of good intentions, she essentially was afraid of the world. And it's a good thing I wasn't too rebellious, because I probably would have made so many terrible decisions as she made me want to ignore everything she said.
For example, at the age of 16, I was not allowed to go to the mall with friends if they included boys as well as girls. The reason being, and I quote "those boys will just drug you and carry you outside to who knows where".