It’s easy to judge other parents before you have kids of your own. It’s harder to do that once you are a mother or a father and quickly realize that nothing is simple or cut and dried, or one-size fits all.
That said, sometimes you see the behavior of other parents and it’s so appalling, so over the top, that you can’t help but stop and stare (and feel a bit badly for their kids).
That’s what happened in these 14 cases, when people were stunned by some truly appalling overbearing parents.
14. Oh my laundry.
I’m in my mid 20’s and my mom asked a attractive girl, who I barely knew from high school if she was mad at me because she didn’t say hi to me at work.
13. Therapy, anyone?
I’ve had a friend since elementary school whose mom has always been super strict.
We’re in our 20s now and in college, and her mom still “won’t let her” get her license.
The worst part is my friend lets her mom continue to control her like this despite her being an adult. She’s at school with a full scholarship so it’s not like she depends on her for financial support.
12. I hope those kids are ok now.
Not terrible but back when kids used to play outside more there was this little kid who was not allowed to leave his driveway… One day he went off into the cul-de-sac 3 houses away to play with a group of kids throwing a football back and forth to each other. The father ended up literally dragging the kid back home.
The kid started a scream-o band in his garage and got a 13 year old girl pregnant at 12 years old.
11. That doesn’t sound like their business.
Growing up my next door neighbors told my parents that they needed to have my brother and I go to bed at seven o’clock because their kids could see our bedroom lights on after they had to go to bed and it made them jealous.
10. Truly next level.
I managed, scheduled, and hired for “a fast food place” in a good neighborhood. Kid comes in for an interview in a button up and tie, I am liking him, want to know if he has extra curriculars so I can make sure neither of us are wasting our time. I hire him on the spot.
Comes in on his first day, looks like Mom dropped him off. Ok fair enough first job whatever. She sits down without ordering and watches him walk to the back to do computer BS. I go back to the front to work and she is still there. I go check the lobby about 30 minutes later. Still there. I get off, a couple hours later I get a call from my co worker asking about the new kid. I figure it was about his timecard or something. No. Woman is still there, manager wanted to know if the kid is special or something (he was not, wouldn’t have mattered anyway besides accommodating him.)
Get to work the next day, answer the phone. Woman wants his schedule. I say I can’t give it out he needs to ask for it or come to the store. She argues with me for a couple of minutes I absolutely refuse to give out his schedule.
He comes in about an hour later to get his hours, I had to pencil him in so I have the entire schedule book for the week out. She tried to take it from me. I snatched it and tossed it on the (employee) counter and tell her in the most “I’m being polite but F*ck you” voice that she is not allowed to look at our schedules because she’s not an employee and that it is protected communications. She huffs, I give the kid his schedule. Don’t see her for a while, great.
About two months later she calls the store to tell me to cut his hours (?) because he’s “too busy” now. I called him into the office while I wrote schedules for the next week and asked HIM if he wanted his hours cut. He had no idea why I would ask to cut his hours. I explained his mom called, he looked at me with a 1000 yard stare and said “I just turned 18. Schedule me 40 hours a week PLEASE. I get out of school at 11:00, I can be here at 11:30.”
I scheduled him 38 hours, Mom calls and tries to yell at me. I explain that a) I am not her child, or a child at all, and will not be yelled at. b) her adult child asked for full time work. c) I do not under and circumstance owe her any explanation for how I do MY job. She calls two rungs up the ladder and speaks to the franchise supervisor. He told her if she’s so concerned about his work life to fill out an application.
Three and a half years later, I am not there, kid is a manager, Mom is still ridiculous.
9. To what end, I wonder?
My parents called Common App, broke into my account, and locked me out because I started to send my college applications out without telling them.
I had my college adviser’s and principal’s approval and went to boarding school across the country from my parents.
8. Who knew?
My best friend in first grade was not allowed to come to school on halloween. We all dressed up and had a little parade. Her mother claimed it was the devils birthday.
It was a private religious school.
7. I hope he can get some help.
know a kid whose mom never thought whatever school he was in was good enough. He could never make friends because he’d change schools two times a year and was never allowed to follow anything that he enjoyed, everything he did had to be something that would put him on track for an ivy league school.
Gets into an ivy league school and finally gets some freedom away from her, joins a band a discovers singing and apparently was really f*ckin good at it. When he graduated he wanted to stay with the band and perform on weekends but the mom kept berating him for it and called him childish. He now works am upscale job in corporate America that his mom chose for him(through connections) that he hates.
After graduation his dad snapped and left his mom, literally just woke up one morning, got into his car, and drove off.
6. That poor baby.
I work with kids. At the YMCA we have a place called KidZone where parents can drop their kids off and we watch them while they work out. We get this 5 year old pretty often and his dad is a little scary. One of the bodybuilder, bearded type guys.
The kid was here one day and he was sitting and coloring and the dad was walking in the hallway, saw him through our window, and stormed inside yelling at him to get up and play basketball (we have one of those electronic net games in the room).
The kid was f*cking coloring and he already was playing basketball for a long time before the dad came in. The room became eerily silent after that. Pretty embarrassing
5. This is a tragic tale.
my aunt didn’t let her children leave her sight, watch tv, make friends, and didn’t feed them anything but plain rice and chicken for years. there was a mandatory hour of ‘cuddle time’ with mom. they barely knew how to be human beings. the youngest was 8 and couldn’t dress herself since her mother did it every day for all three kids. She home schooled them too. only time they left the house was to go to the doctor or dentist.
oldest left the house and immediately lost her f*cking mind. she had no idea how to say ‘no’ and didn’t want to anyway since she was now ‘free’. got addicted to meth in less then a month and was dead in two from an overdose of meth and cocaine as well as alcohol poisoning. auntie sobered up instantly and handed the other two- i think they were 8 and 10- over to the dad before hanging herself in her backyard.
the two kids don’t even remember her, they barely remember anything before they went to live with their dad. as far as i know they’re both mostly normal.
boy still doesn’t season his chicken though.
4. Cults are never healthy.
Mine. They joined a cult before I was born, which prohibited watching TV or any sort of interaction with the outside world. My childhood was not too fun.
For those who care, the cult was a very, very obscure offshoot of Christianity. Probably mostly akin to Southern Baptist in practice but much more strict. There was the speaking in tongues and all of that. A man named Sam Fife started this organization, which goes my the name of “The Move” or “The Move of God.”
He believed that the end times were imminent and encouraged his followers to go off into the wilderness and build communes to wait for Jesus’ return in five years. 40+ years later, they’re still going.
The Move prohibits anything that has to do with “The World” as they call it. Modern haircuts, TV, pants for women, and even dating. Young adults are encouraged to “walk out a year in the Lord” with a potential partner in which time they get to know each other. A “six inch rule” is enforced meaning the couple must remain six inches from each other at all times until marriage, to prevent lustful demons from entering the couple.
Other charming practices of The Move include beating children and forced exorcisms.
I wish I was f*cking making this shit up but I am not. As far as I know you can google the basic facts of The Move including that Sam died I think in ’79? And Buddy Cobb took over. My childhood was really f*cked up but I am mostly over it.
3. I can’t believe she actually called.
A girl came to a sleepover I was invited to when i was around 14 or 15.
This girl had to call and ask her parents before we could watch ‘Mulan’.
They said no, because it “glorified the occult”.
2. At least she did it on her own.
My sister in law wasn’t allowed to watch Harry Potter until she was 18 because her parents said it was witchcraft.
1. Where can I get one of those?
I teach sewing lessons.
Had a parent end a lesson on how to make skirts for fear the student might make a short “slutty” skirt with this knowledge.
I hope I never end up on one of these lists. Woof.
Have you ever encountered a really overbearing parent? Tell us about it in the comments!