People have been sharing the weirdest rules their parents used to make them follow – 17 most bizarre boundaries

Every parent has their own sneaky ways of getting their kids to behave, but some of them enforce more unusual rules than others.

And while something like Santa is a bit of harmless fun, certain boundaries tip over into the weird. To give people a chance to laugh – or vent – about the strange boundaries they had to resepct, Main_Masterpiece_793 put this question to the good people of r/AskReddit:

‘What’s one weird rule your parents had growing up that you thought was totally normal until you got older?’

Here are the top replies that people have hopefully grown out of…

1.
‘No one was allowed in or out of the house on New Years day until my red headed uncle came to visit. It’s good luck if the first person in the door on New Years is a redhead. There were 10 kids in my mom’s family. Poor Uncle Bill was run ragged by 2 pm!’
-Mitzy_G

2.
‘Our kitchen used to “close” at 9pm’
-Dueline310

3.
‘Not being able to use the couch cushions/pillows and blankets because those were only to decorate when we had guests over. Ends up my mom has untreated OCD and only told us years later LOL explains a lot of her behavior.’
-HighKey-Anonymous

4.
‘Always talk to the cat in a normal voice and not in the “baby talk” voice people do with pets, because he will think you’re stupid.

‘He probably does, anyway.’
-Heroic-Forger

5.
‘No closed doors to bedrooms and bathrooms, even if you were sleeping or taking a shower or taking a dump. I can’t poop in a public restroom because though I know this will never happen I somehow am afraid of someone getting mad at me for closing the stall door.’
-HawaiianSteak

6.
‘We were not allowed to invite a friend over for a sleepover two times in a row; they had to host first before we could invite them again. Looking back, I think this was my Mom’s way of avoiding sleepovers.’
-KeyBlacksmith8065

7.
‘The Interrupt Rule. If we wanted to talk to our parents but they were talking to someone else, we would place our hand on their arm, they would acknowledge it by placing their hand on ours, and then we would keep our hands there until they turned to ask us what we needed. I did it to a teacher and I’ll never forget how confused (and frankly a little freaked out) she looked seeing a child just touching her arm and staring at her while she was talking to another teacher.’
-PenguinBluebird

8.
‘We were never ever allowed in their bedroom, not even if we were sick or scared. We would stand at the open door and yell for them’
-Glittering-Water3929

9.
‘My dad never allowed me to watch the Simpsons growing up. When I turned 18 I watched it and loved it hahaha’
-ExperienceHelpful316