Recently, u/BriefDarkWizard asked "what’s something your family raised you doing that you later learnt was really weird?" and we decided to round up the best answers:
1. "Catholic mother, Muslim dad; neither really practicing. We celebrated Christmas though, and on Christmas Eve night my dad would loudly pretend to violently chase Santa out of the house by yelling and cussing him out and throwing his shoe at him, which we would later find in places like the fireplace."
2. "I grew up in a hoarder house. I look back at my childhood now and can’t believe the cluttered nightmare I grew up in. Now I relish throwing things away when I’m done with them."
3. "Using a ships bell to call for dinner. My parents got tired of yelling for us so they mounted a ships bell to the hallway wall. They would ring it for dinner and any other occasion when they needed our attention."
4. "Before I was totally competent swimming by myself, my mum would put a life jacket on me, tie a long piece of nylon rope to it, and chuck me in the river. She'd basically swim me on a leash down the river for fun."
5. "We only ever ate chilli with mashed potatoes and apple sauce. I thought everyone did this until like grade 11 when I had dinner at a friends house. Her mom put out chilli and I asked if they had any applesauce. They all looked at me like I was nuts."
6. "It took me quite some time to figure out that other people's parents weren't naked for the majority of the time."
7. "We were not allowed to have a drink with our meals. It could be the driest food ever or you could be thirsty as hell, nope, no water, finish the meal first."
8. "Leaving a shot of bourbon whiskey for Santa. He gets tired of milk and it helps him feel warm."
9. "Clapping at shows we were watching on TV as if we were part of a live audience."
10. "Whenever it was one of our birthdays, my father made us keep a pen and pad next to the phone to list everyone who called and when."
11. "We had pet rocks and named them."
12. "We got told the 'kitchens closed'. Turns out other people are allowed to eat whenever they wanted??"
13. "As a kid, we were taught to eat all our non-potato vegetables first, then the potatoes, then meat. I thought that was how everyone ate, until years later, eating with other people, they'd be all concerned that I didn't like the meat that was served because I hadn't touched it yet."
14. "My mum didn’t know how to clean and so couldn’t really teach us either. We had this fungus growing out of the carpet at one house that looked like cooked noodles."
15. "Having your teen partners just move in. My brothers both had their girlfriends move in with us when they were 14 and 15, due to their home life being rough."
16. "Unlimited access to full sugar soda, specifically Pepsi. I never drink it now, but looking back at my eight year-old self having a full can of Pepsi for breakfast blows my mind."
17. "In the summer, my dad used to get us up (myself and three siblings) at 9am, give us breakfast and then boot us out of the house and lock the back/front doors from the inside. We weren’t allowed back inside until the streetlights came on."
18. "Whistling for each other. My mum didn't like yelling up the stairs. Apparently an easier solution for walking up them and addressing whomever she needed was to stand at the bottom and give a couple of sharp whistles. We would approach the top of the stairs, and from the bottom she'd tell us what she needed."
19. "I was like 20 when I learned no one else destroys chocolate rabbits with a big hammer for Easter. I don't even know how I believed that was a real tradition. Turns out my grandpa started it because he found the chocolate rabbits annoying, and smashed them with a hammer."
H/T to u/BriefDarkWizard and AskReddit for having this discussion!
Note: All submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.