Offhand
I can't think of anything too strict my parents inflicted on me. They occasionally forbade me from doing things like going out with friends if I'd been cheeky or anything like that but more often than not I used to get the "we're not angry, just disappointed" thing like so many others on here.

I wasn't allowed to read magazines like Bliss or Sugar till I was 14 (although I did anyway, there's only so much of magazines like Girl Talk anyone can take). I still count one of the most mortifying days of my life as the day I came home from school and found that my dad had Been Through My Stuff (something I still hate people doing) to "tidy up", and tidy up he had. However, in "tidying up" he'd thrown away scrappy little notes from friends and stacked all my diaries neatly and thrown away all the More magazines I used to keep in my wardrobe (when it used to have centrefolds in).

For a long time I was only allowed to hang around with that nice Andrew, and anything with "nasty colours" (E numbers, because they'd made me go hyper once, when I was three, which couldn't possibly have had anything to do with anything else) in was off-limits till I was about 15.

On the other hand from the age of about 13 my mum encouraged me to wear make-up and so on. Boyfriends weren't really mentioned, and still haven't been. If my parents got wind of me liking someone they would tease me mercilessly, which was embarrassing and totally unnecessary. I started keeping a diary in French to put a stop to all of that.

I'm 21 now and I still refuse to tell my parents anything about anyone I may or may not be interested in. I like to call it a "don't ask, don't tell" policy but it doesn't stop them asking occasionally.
( Maladicta, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 15:59, Reply)