" It was a very painful realisation . I never even considered my parent could ’ve been wrong . "
Reddit useru/timdood3recently posed thequestion: “What did your parents teach you as a kid that you didn’t realize was actually f**ked up until you were older?” The thread quickly filled with many emotional and reflective responses from people who have had to unlearn some toxic lessons and heal as adults. Here’s what they bravely shared:
1.“I asked my dad why he doesn’t have friends over like I do. He told me, ‘Adults don’t have friends; we have acquaintances.’ It stuck with me for so long in my formative years that, as an adult, it’s very hard for me to make friends. I’m personable, and I enjoy hanging out with people, but I don’t really make friends.”
— u / TeachinginJapan1986
2.“You should NEVER interrupt a conversation. If I needed something and my mom was speaking with someone, I needed to just stand there silently, like a foot away, until she decided she was done with the conversation and would ask me what I needed. Didn’t matter how urgent it was or how long she decided to talk. To this day, I have NO IDEA how to interrupt a conversation in a normal way. At work or even at gatherings, if I need something, I just stand there hoping they ask if I need anything because I don’t want to interrupt their conversation. Are you just supposed to walk up and speak over them? What if they’re your boss? It’s especially a problem when I have something important or time-sensitive that I need to speak with them about, like needing to tell my boss a client is on the phone or telling someone their car is blocking everyone.”
— u / girlathendoftheworld
3."‘Only TV families resolve their problems and apologize after a big fight. Real families just act like it never happened.'"
— u/3thantrapb3rry
4.“Anytime I felt hurt by a conflict with a friend, my parents would tell me to never talk to them again because they weren’t a real friend anyway. I ghosted all of mybest friendsthinking it was the right thing to do. Now, I know that real friends talk things out, and it makes the friendships even stronger. It was a very painful realization. I never even considered my parents could’ve been wrong.”
— u / PegasaurusTrex
5.“After arguing with a girlfriend and not speaking with her for a few days, BOTH my parents separately told me to hold on to my beef with her (like a grudge) and use it against her later. I’ve been married to that girlfriend for 25 years now and never once took my parents’ advice. I have NO IDEA how their marriage survived, LOL.”
— u / mcbrian67
6.“During a car ride, my dad once explained to me the concept of ‘micro-murder.’ It was the idea that the seconds spent in traffic behind someone driving below the speed limit (and other instances of people inconveniencing you) were seconds of your life that you couldn’t get back, and you should be upset about it. I realize as an adult that he’s got some issues and just needed an excuse to resent random people on the street.”
— atomic number 92 / timdood3
7."‘Let boys think they’re smarter than you. Nobody wants to go out with a smart girl.'"
— u / MessyLina
8.“My dad was ‘teaching’ me about credit cards and said you can just make the minimum payment every month. It blew my mind. Made it seem like free money. Thank god I didn’t take that advice. I pay my credit card off every month, and he’s drowning in credit card debt.”
— u / lilmrs - t
9."‘If you’re sad, that means the devil is inside you and you need to pray for forgiveness.’ I was 6, and my cat had just died."
— u / AngstyRacc00n
10."‘Do not ever be a bother to anyone. Solve all your problems by yourself.'"
— u / Soobobaloula
" My parents pair that one with ' always be accommodating to others . ' That made it so I had very few boundaries and always seek to help others , even when I did n’t want to , but could never ask for or take help when tender . Not a with child mixture for the opprobrious kinship I faced as I got old . "
— u / joyfall
" Only in my thirty am I realize just how much this regulate my total liveliness . I literally break down in tears if I need to ask for help , and I feel like a failure . If I ca n’t get something done on my own , I drop into a bass depression . Even when I do well , I feel like I could be better . Thanks , dad . "
— uracil / cant_Im_at_work
11."‘Put everyone else before yourself.’ Not only do I still have difficulty with boundaries, but I literally struggle to identify my own feelings. For years, I basically did what everyone else wanted to and tried to like what everyone else liked."
— atomic number 92 / anyaplaysfates
12."‘10% of every dollar you make has to go to God (the church) or you’ll be cursed.'"
— atomic number 92 / Delta7391
13.“They taught me that every interaction with other people is transactional in some way. Nobody ever wants to be around you just because they like you.”
— u / darklightdiana
14.“My parents told me that I had a limited number of words, and when I got to that limit, I would die. I guess it was an easy way to make me shut up.”
— u / aganalf
15.“My dad instilled debilitating perfectionism in me, which I realized was unrealistic when I got older and people told me to just ‘do my best.’ When I was in grade school, I would go to my dad, super excited, with all A’s. But, if it was anything less than a 100%, he would ask about the missing percentage. So, when I had a 98%, he’d say, ‘Well, where’s the 2%?’ Now, if I do anything less than perfect, I beat myself up.”
— u / Gremlin - o - Chaos
16."‘Keep secrets to protect family, no matter what they are.'"
— u / DistressedSunbeam
17.“Emotional self-sufficiency. In other words, don’t show youremotions, don’t feel your emotions, don’t be swayed by others’ emotions, and empathy is bad and for the weak. They’d also re-enforce these teachings by making me do demoralizing tasks, lots of physical punishment, verbal abuse, and isolation from others. My stepmother insisted I should remain pure so when the rapture took place, I would be a warrior saint. Yeah, when I moved out and found out people don’t have to live like that, it took me a week just to decompress from what I had escaped.”
— u/[deleted ]
18.“I am not worth anything intrinsically. I’m only of value if I am productive.”
— uranium / Sharp_Government4493
19.“They made me distrust my own intelligence. They talked down to me and treated me like an airhead. They’d give me a smirk every time I tried to be serious about anything. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I learned that I am intelligent, and I gained self-confidence despite the negative self-esteem they had instilled in me.”
— uranium / Kelbel2525
" This was a bounteous one for me . Whenever I would say something that I have a go at it for certain , like even just , ' I saw my onetime brother transgress that cup , ' or , ' Santa Claus is n’t real , ' they would give this trivial smirk and say , ' Whatever you say . ' To this day , ' Whatever you say ' is a huge trigger for me . I ca n’t help it . It ’s so disrespectful . I already pass years unlearn the motivation to examine that I was good because I was never believed as a child . So , nowadays , it does n’t trouble me so much when I ’m not believed . I am over that part of my ego . But , if those particular parole are spoken , I just can not hold in my chemical reaction . It makes me absolutely tempestuous . "
— uracil / xenchik
20."‘If you’re not bleeding, vomiting, or broken, you don’t get to cry about it.'"
— uranium / TheDeathOfAKing
21."‘Just ignore bullies and they’ll go away.’ They do not. You’re left thinking your feelings and opinions don’t matter, and you never learn how to stand up for yourself."
— u / writeorelse
22."‘If a boy is mean to you, that means he likes you!’ Took me a while to learn what a healthy relationship was when I hit adulthood."
— atomic number 92 / SuitableNegotiation5
23.“I remember my dad outright saying he used weaponized incompetence. ‘If you do a job badly enough, she’ll do it from then on.'”
— u / ThomasEdmund84
" I become the opposite , sort of , from my mom . She was a solid worshipper that people did jobs poorly to get out of doing them again in the future . So , all I ever heard was : ' You ’re just doing it like this because you do n’t want to do it ! Because you need me to do it ! I have to do everything around here ! ' Except , I in reality was trying my dear . And a bunch of time , I did it correctly , too ! Did n’t count . My mom found a mode to weaponize the concept of ' weaponized incompetence . ' One metre , she enquire me to vacuum-clean , and I did . And it was perfect ! Spotless ! But , she did n’t wish that , so she tear the total room aside until she find some dust . She had to pull out a 200 - pound bureau to do it , but that was n’t going to stop her . "
— u / jooes
24.“My father once told me that men can be bosses to women and women can be bosses to women, but women can’t be bosses to men. It doesn’t work out because of the ‘social hierarchy.'”
— u / LilEngineThatCant
25.“My dad told me I should always have multiple girls lined up in case one broke my heart. That way, it would be easier to get over it. I was 13.”
— u / revanevan7
26.“When I told my mom I was sad my friends had boyfriends and I didn’t in high school, she got annoyed and said, ‘You shouldn’t need anyone to be happy.’ I was 16. I now think she meant it as ‘you can’t put all your happiness on one person as their responsibility,’ which is very true, but I interpreted it as ‘you’re wrong for feeling lonely, and you should be able to be fine with being alone.’ My parents also heavily discouraged me from dating in my teens and made their disapproval very clear to me (and made it clear that intimacy was for marriage).”
" Now , I ’m 26 and have never had a mate . My momma is absolutely flipping out that she ’s worried I ’m going to ' never get married or have kid . ' I ’m busy in therapy take out all this stuff , and it weirdly feels like live up to retribution watch over her anxiety spiral over this , as if she was n’t heavily influential . "
— u / Least - Influence3089
27."‘Never try anything because it might go wrong.’ Sure, they never outright said it, but every time I tried anything, I heard: ‘Oh no, going to that birthday party is dangerous,’ or, ‘Walking home in the safest neighborhood of the safest city of the safest state is not safe,’ or, ‘You can’t go to [college activity in other city] because you’d be alone from the airport to the hotel!'"
— u / Isphus
28.And: “‘Always do what an adult tells you to do.’ In my mind, that meant ANYTHING they said to do, wrong or not.”
— u / FirmPrune87
What’s something your parents or older relatives taught you as a kid that you later realized was actually messed up?
observe : compliance have been edited for distance and/or clearness .
