Tidy
At 10 years old, the last thing you care about, is a tidy bedroom. Sheffield Wednesday, Formula One, the lasses off Byker Grove and Wham Bars, yeah, but tidying your bedroom? Barely a murmur of interest on the Scentless scale.

Now, that incensed my mum. Being a stickler for tidyness (imagine Monica off Friends, but tidier) this was anathema to her, and since I was 'supposed to be the sensible older brother' I had to book my ideas up...

But I wouldn't listen, and it got to the point where there were more clothes and books and tapes on the floor than on the shelves and cupboards.

Things came to a head one day, when before a visit to the corner shop, my mum said the following...

"If you don't tidy your room up by the time I get back from the shops, I'll throw everything in your room out onto the street, because you're not good enough to look after it all, so we might as well chuck it..."

Now, parents do this kind of threat knowing it'll be enough to get what they want, but, I was a clever little bastard, so I didn't bother.

So there I was, in my room playing on Thunderforce IV, when she burst in, to see the shitheap that was my bedroom.

Without a word, she opened the sash window, lifted the not-inconsiderable chest of drawers up onto the window ledge, and out onto the street. Within half an hour, everything in my bedroom apart from my bed, my Megadrive and TV, were distributed across the street, in full view of the neighbours and all whilst I stood, in sheer amazement, of what my mum had just done. I didn't even cry, I was that in shock.

"I'll give you an hour, and this room better be in the fucking (mums swearing!) state I expect by that time. Sort it."

I did. Picked up all the stuff off the street, brought it back in the house, rebuilt my wardrobe, chest of drawers and shelves, folded all the clothes away, packed all my tapes and games in their correct drawers, and then went without my tea as a reward.

Now, my mum might come across as a bit of a nutter, but if it wasn't for events like that, I'd not be where I am today. Neurotic, lacking in self-esteem and fearful of the opposite sex.

But still, she had a point.

Length? Even sword-swallowers have trouble.
(scentless_apprentice takes two bottles into the shower!, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 21:20, Reply)

traumatised
my parents would force me to wear frilly itchy party dresses when i was a child, many of which my mother made herself
and these rather fetching homemade floral trousers with elasticated waists, nice. was eventually allowed to wear normal clothing by the time i was 11 thank god. that was more confusing me with a barbie doll than strictness tho to be fair, and any actual strictness they have displayed is just their paranoia over what the wicked world could do to an innocent young girl -but it did mean that they needed to know where i was 24/7 which would have rather cramped my social life if i'd been honest
i was particularly amused by the occassion my mum told me i absolutely was not allowed to go out dressed like that, as my stocking tops were slightly visable below the hem of my skirt (er, i went through a slightly lacivious punk/rock chick phase, i probably thought i looked like lorri peti in tank girl, i digress) so she made me take the stockings off. i was a littel bemused as to how wearing less was going to improve the situation, parental logic eh!
in the same vein of paranoia, she tells me to watch out for terrorists every time i go to london...... errr, what, cross the street if you see someone who may be carrying a bomb?
(skankgirl, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 21:08, Reply)

Parents.
Mine aren't that strict, although my mum did get a bit paranoid about MSN messenger (because one person was hassling me).
(GLC, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 20:55, Reply)

Yerse..
Reckless disobedience has taught my parents that there's no point in trying.
Sure, there's the bit where they say to me "stay out of trouble", but nearly every time my dearest mother drops me off somewhere she says: "Right, Don't get TOO pissed, Don't do TOO many drugs, Don't do TOO many STRANGE drugs and wear a condom".

Cheers mum.

I don't even do drugs.

Not the strictest of parents come to think of it...
(Snailfighter Mk VIII MASTER of the bits underneath the ledges on fences, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 20:41, Reply)

never could figure it out
My mother and father both used to slap me around at least a couple or three times every week, but I can't remember any particular thing that they ever punished me for. Whenever they felt like it was time to work off a little anger, they'd pull some insignificant thing I'd recently done out of thin air and make like it was an unspeakably awful crime that anyone with any sense at all should have known not to commit. Whap whap whappity whap. Then later on I'd be doing that same thing, one of them would walk in and I'd panic, thinking "oh boy here we go again" but this time they wouldn't care about it.

My father did that over and over, until one day it occurred to me, as he was slapping me across the face, that I was now a couple inches taller than him, so I hit him back. After that he never raised a hand against me, although later a couple times when he was real drunk he did point a .38 at me. He didn't have the nerve to pull the trigger though. However, since I couldn't hit my mother, she kept that crap up until I moved out.
(wkiernan, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 20:39, Reply)

Hammer time
A friend with whom I am now estranged had insanely christian parents who were not only very christian but here HIDEOUSLY strict. They wouldn't let my friend watch The Simpsons until she was in year 9, when she still recieved £1 pocket money a week (and this was in, like, 2002). You get the picture.

Imagine their blind horror when they came home one day to find my friend and in in their driveway. Trying to smash 5p coins. With an ACTUAL sledgehammer. It was the first time the phrase 'and then the shit hit the fan' made sense to me.
(Pixel, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 20:34, Reply)

Coincidentally enough...
...a girl I was at school with was forbidden from sitting in the aisle seat in the cinema too.

Not because of the chance of some free pharmaceuticals, but because, according to her madder-than-a-box-of-frogs mother, someone could pull her into the aisle to have their wicked way with her.

More crackers than an explosion at a Jacob's factory.
(Chuffdog, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 20:31, Reply)

I was banned
from watching power rangers after some merkin killed her mate by kicking him in the head. I always thought my parents thought me more intelligent than the average merkin. I just used to sneak down early on saturday mornings to watch it anyway
(cs192 is sucking on a Koala at, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 20:22, Reply)

Actual Banned
On top of my below post - we were banned from calling our schoolfriends in the holidays.

So all our friends are scattered to the 4 corners of the UK. Right. And I can't call them. Great.

And did I know any of the local kids?

No. Because we're on a different forces base now.

Oh, we've moved to a village in Lincolnshire - great - do I want to know any of the local pikey kids. No.
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 20:18, Reply)

Odd collection
Sesame Street: "too american - whats wrong with 'zed'?"
The Muppets: "Too american"
The A-Team: - get the idea?
Chocolate Sauce on Ice-cream: "too sweet" (by themselves- OK)
Skateboard: "a fad"
A dog: "they bite"

I now live in California, skateboard down to the beach to check the surf, and have a pitbull/boxer mix.

(I don't like chocolate sauce on icecream though, I guess they got something right)
( gp_guineapig, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 20:16, Reply)

Home
I was banned from being at home.

Bear with me.

At the age of seven, my parents sent me (and my sister who was 8) to boarding school.

Over 300 miles away.

By train.

With Nuns to supervise us (and about a dozen other children) from Liverpool St station (I think it was).

We came back at the end of terms and sent away at the end of holiday.

I finished boarding school at 16 - I'd changed to one that was drivable to by then - only 2 hours drive.

Now that's hard.

b3ta IS my therapy from all that....
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 20:16, Reply)

well
my parents didn't ban me from much, but they get really pissed when i post on this one website, talking about how insane they were back in the day.

oh shit they're ba
(deilbfe6ogcshnbcryjh, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 20:13, Reply)

Hmm
I upset my Mum once - I can't remember what it was, but I'm sure it was pretty bad.

The punishment?

NOTHING!

Just this malevolent thing hovering about with me knowing I was in trouble, but not actually knowing what the punishment would be.

I think that's the worst punishment.....
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 20:12, Reply)

When I was seven, my folks split up and my Dad moved in with this half-Swiss bint
proper 1980s yuppie syndrome. Swanky Audi, wicker furniture that is NOT for kids to sit on, house by the sea in the posh part of town, stupid impractical german Pointer dog...

...which, for fucks sake, my brother and I had to take out for walks at 7:30 EVERY SUNDAY MORNING so that the parents could stay in bed fucking and eating Full Englishes. The front door was locked and wasn't opened again til noon, no matter what weather, so we had to walk this fucking german pointer cunt up and down the beach for nearly five fucking hours every fucking weekend, rain or shine, until that fucking dog died.

Spending your Sundays huddled in a windswept beach shelter fucks you up.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 20:11, Reply)

My parents were/are a pain
My parents are quite strict, mainly due to paranoia...

Once they wouldn't let me go out with some mates because a kid got stabbed in Belgium for fucks sake!

Wouldn't let me eat chocolate due to that salmonella thing a while back (Note: They could fuck right off, I needed my fruit and nut)

Wouldn't let me have a ferret because they thought that they have rabies (Again, they could fuck off. Had Quitsy about a year now, and love her so much)

And finally, they seem to not want me to be a gay, with my dad saying "But gays get AIDS"
(Need I say it?)

Length? About 80 words...
( B.T., Thu 8 Mar 2007, 20:07, Reply)

I used to be bad and muck about.
Then my parents came up with the naughty grave.
I didn't mess about much after that.

I didn't want to join my sister in the ground.
(waxdart hello., Thu 8 Mar 2007, 19:45, Reply)

Conversation with a guy at work...
...now this guy, at work, was well known to have a son and daughter who were pretty out of control. Always in trouble with police, petty crime, the usual.

So, I was chatting with him and he mentioned he was really pissed off with his son.

'Why?' I ask, thinking he's killed someone or somthing.

'I forgot to lock the kitchen, and the bastard drank all the milk.'

Thinking I mis-heard, I ask him what he means by locking the kitchen.

'Well, my kids eat too much. So I lock the kitchen to keep them out. Or they eat all my food. They eat, all the time. Always eating.'

17 year olds NEED FOOD COS THEY'RE STILL GROWING I mentally shout. I think this is really weird, but he carries on..

'I lock the living room too.'

'er...why that?'

'The bastards go in there and watch my DVDs and mix them up on the shelf. And then they play with my remote controlled Ferrari. And they lounge about the place.'

'Your remote controlled what?'

At this point he goes into a total fanboy rant about ferraris, and this scale-model F1 car he's got that goes really really fast and it's great, and his son played with it when he was out and broke a wheel, and he doesn't realise that 'it's not a toy..'

Jesus - he's a kid himself who hates kids.
So basically, his children live in a bedsit. They are only allowed in their bedrooms and the bathroom. Well, I assume they are allowed at least in there anyway...

No wonder they're so fucked up.
(inflateable, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 19:33, Reply)

3 words
christmas
is
cancelled
(suboftheday, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 19:15, Reply)

I really respect my parents
I think they did a really good job of raising me and my sister, they were always fair, always reasonable and a lot of the time gave us the benefit of the doubt.

My sister was banned from having house parties after they found a sofa (not one of ours funilly enough) in one of the ponds, a tent pitched on the conservatory roof and several buckets of vomit on the garage roof (i think people planned to throw them at passers-by).

My dad drove all the way to Alton Towers to pick my sister up early from a school trip and then telephoned all the parents of the kids at the party to tell them what had been going on.

I got a sexual health talk from my mum because my sister told her i'd had a one night stand in their room. That was about it.

I'm holdng a reunion barbecue for my year-group at the house this summer, i'm hiding all the buckets, sofa's and tents.
( Mister B is eating an icanhazcheezburger with lmaonaise, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 19:12, Reply)

On the common theme of video games...
My parents didn't like the idea of video games (or at least thought I was too young, not sure). When I was about 7 or 8, I think, my grandparents bought me a Gameboy - I'm not sure how much whining it took to get it, probably not much as they always believed in spoiling their grandkids rotten. Well, me anyway. My parents were not impressed... until they got their hands on it and tried Tetris, at which point they needed some reminding that the Gameboy was, in fact, mine.

Apart from that, they were always very liberal. Probably helped that I was the swot/geek type, never went out as a teenager, didn't drink until I was 18... only other thing I can think of (also videogame-related, duh) is a few years after the above event, when I had a Nintendo 64 - they didn't mind me playing Mario (or whatever), but my dad did flip a bit when he saw me playing the classic N64 Goldeneye game.

Oh, and various attempts to limit my TV/computer/internet usage. Doomed to failure from the start; besides, I think they spend just as much time on the web these days.

I'm still an unrepentant Nintendo fanboy, too.
(julius, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 19:11, Reply)

Frasier
For some odd reason that has never been fully explained to me i was forbade from watching Frasier as a chid. I'm not sure what it was about this Seatle shrink that was so likely to corrupt my young mind, but it was not untill my early teens that I got my first taste of the gentle US sitcom. Which is a shame because I think its really funny now.
( Fitznicely into a thimble, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 19:10, Reply)

BASTARDS
I had to do the washing up once and i was banned from taking drugs and stuff
(abignumber, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 19:05, Reply)

My rents wouldn't let me
watch The Spy Who Shagged Me. Because of the title. Niiice.

bblgoose, not much of a gentleman are you?
( Christian Bale of Hay in a field, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 19:03, Reply)

My girlfriends parents
She's 18, and has to ask permission to come over to my place. When she does, her parents turn up at 11 sharp to pick her up. When she's allowed to stay over, she has to bring a sleeping bag (parents clearly very naive then), and phone home first thing next morning. They went ape the first time I took her to a casino, and I had the 'very protective dad' speech before we were even dating.

Advantages: I found, and broke, the worlds last remaining 18 year old hymen.

My own parents were ace - left me entirely to fend for myself, with the proviso "you know the consequences of {teenage escapade} - if you still choose to do it and it all goes tits up, you're on your own." Worked for me.
(bblgoose, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 19:00, Reply)

Shit Head
Me and my brother were once overheard by our dad talking to a friend about another friend, who we described as a shit head. Not good, not having that sort of foul disgusting language etc etc. Really quite a big deal was made of it.

Fast forward many years and one day we teach my parents a card game. Called.....Shit Head. Pretty soon the "foul, disgusting" words are uttered by dad, although admittedly in a very different context from how we'd used them. Me and brother exchange secret smile - moral high ground never felt so good.
(Thomas_The_Spankengine, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 18:41, Reply)

Punishment
When I had broken the "rules" my dad used to hit me, just wait and listen,...
it wasnt the typical smack that you would imagine

my dad would just... tap me

i would feel crap after, for my dad would never dare hit me, he would just hit me where it hurt, my heart
(imlivinginabox yeah, it was me down on Main Street, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 18:40, Reply)

Grange Hill
Because the children on it were naughty and therefore a bad example.

My Mum also marched me back to the shop with a "NOW 20" compilation tape when I was 12 because it had songs with inappropriate lyrics. I bought it with my pocket money and put it in the car stereo on the way home. Unfortunately "Let's Talk About Sex" & "I Wanna Sex You Up" one after the other didn't amuse Mumsy and I was promptly driven back to WHSmiths to exchange it for an Eurythmics album that had nice non-sex parent friendly lyrics.

Also my Dad forbade chewing gum right into my teens because its "dirty".

Afterthought edit: Oh and fluorescent lycra cycling shorts circa 1988 were banned too, but in hindsight I thank my parents for that.
(Ariaxen, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 18:24, Reply)

"Medicine"
A friend of mine stole his dad's car when he was fourteen. He subsequently crashed it into a ditch.
As punishment, his dad beat him with a belt at seven o'clock every night for a year. Whenever the poor lad was out, he had to rush home for his beating.
The most amusing part of this was that both father and son called it "medicine", and so the lad rushing off would glumly say "I've got to go home now for my medicine."
The lad's still messed up now, some twenty odd years later. Amazingly, the dad never missed a single beating!
(the puddin, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 18:21, Reply)

My Ex...
She had a rough time with her parents and still is! Theyre Jehovas witnesses so see anything away from their own stupid religion as morally wrong, because of this she cant (or advised not to):
# Have friends outside of the religion
# Go out with anyone outside of the religion (inc. me)
# Go to university, somethin about actually being happy and not needin religion, though they dont say that
# Give blood, fair enough
# Think for herself, not a choice they just dont like people thinking about what they follow

As you can see Jehovas Witnesses are just friggin stupid, what worries me the more is that she believes it all after its shitted so many things up for her...

Oh yea, and they see child molesting as 'not that bad'
...Twunts...
(Golden_guns247, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 18:14, Reply)

Who wants to trade parents with me?
As a 5 year old kid I went through a period of emptying the biscuit tin almost everyday, so my parents thinking they were clever decided to put this tin on the highest shelf in the kitchen.
So my parents went into town leaving my big brother in charge of me, I went down the street collecting as many kids as i could so i could make a ladder, this idea was slightly rubbish as my older brother had locked the front door when i stepped out.

That showed my for trying to be a smartass
(imlivinginabox yeah, it was me down on Main Street, Thu 8 Mar 2007, 18:05, Reply)