Reddit user u/timdood3 recently posed the question: "What did your parents teach you as a kid that you didn't realize was actually f**ked up until you were older?" The thread quickly filled with many emotional and reflective responses from people who have had to unlearn some toxic lessons and heal as adults. Here's what they bravely shared:
1. "I asked my dad why he doesn't have friends over like I do. He told me, 'Adults don't have friends; we have acquaintances.' It stuck with me for so long in my formative years that, as an adult, it's very hard for me to make friends. I'm personable, and I enjoy hanging out with people, but I don't really make friends."
2. "You should NEVER interrupt a conversation. If I needed something and my mom was speaking with someone, I needed to just stand there silently, like a foot away, until she decided she was done with the conversation and would ask me what I needed. Didn’t matter how urgent it was or how long she decided to talk. To this day, I have NO IDEA how to interrupt a conversation in a normal way. At work or even at gatherings, if I need something, I just stand there hoping they ask if I need anything because I don’t want to interrupt their conversation. Are you just supposed to walk up and speak over them? What if they’re your boss? It’s especially a problem when I have something important or time-sensitive that I need to speak with them about, like needing to tell my boss a client is on the phone or telling someone their car is blocking everyone."
3. "'Only TV families resolve their problems and apologize after a big fight. Real families just act like it never happened.'"
4. "Anytime I felt hurt by a conflict with a friend, my parents would tell me to never talk to them again because they weren't a real friend anyway. I ghosted all of my best friends thinking it was the right thing to do. Now, I know that real friends talk things out, and it makes the friendships even stronger. It was a very painful realization. I never even considered my parents could've been wrong."
5. "After arguing with a girlfriend and not speaking with her for a few days, BOTH my parents separately told me to hold on to my beef with her (like a grudge) and use it against her later. I've been married to that girlfriend for 25 years now and never once took my parents' advice. I have NO IDEA how their marriage survived, LOL."
6. "During a car ride, my dad once explained to me the concept of 'micro-murder.' It was the idea that the seconds spent in traffic behind someone driving below the speed limit (and other instances of people inconveniencing you) were seconds of your life that you couldn't get back, and you should be upset about it. I realize as an adult that he's got some issues and just needed an excuse to resent random people on the street."
7. "'Let boys think they're smarter than you. Nobody wants to go out with a smart girl.'"
8. "My dad was 'teaching' me about credit cards and said you can just make the minimum payment every month. It blew my mind. Made it seem like free money. Thank god I didn’t take that advice. I pay my credit card off every month, and he’s drowning in credit card debt."
9. "'If you’re sad, that means the devil is inside you and you need to pray for forgiveness.' I was 6, and my cat had just died."
10. "'Do not ever be a bother to anyone. Solve all your problems by yourself.'"
"My parents paired that one with 'always be accommodating to others.' That made it so I had very few boundaries and always tried to help others, even when I didn't want to, but could never ask for or accept help when offered. Not a great mix for the abusive relationships I faced as I got older."
"Only in my 30s am I realizing just how much this shaped my entire life. I literally break down in tears if I need to ask for help, and I feel like a failure. If I can't get something done on my own, I sink into a deep depression. Even when I do well, I feel like I could be better. Thanks, dad."
11. "'Put everyone else before yourself.' Not only do I still have difficulty with boundaries, but I literally struggle to identify my own feelings. For years, I basically did what everyone else wanted to and tried to like what everyone else liked."
12. "'10% of every dollar you make has to go to God (the church) or you’ll be cursed.'"
13. "They taught me that every interaction with other people is transactional in some way. Nobody ever wants to be around you just because they like you."
14. "My parents told me that I had a limited number of words, and when I got to that limit, I would die. I guess it was an easy way to make me shut up."
15. "My dad instilled debilitating perfectionism in me, which I realized was unrealistic when I got older and people told me to just 'do my best.' When I was in grade school, I would go to my dad, super excited, with all A’s. But, if it was anything less than a 100%, he would ask about the missing percentage. So, when I had a 98%, he’d say, 'Well, where’s the 2%?' Now, if I do anything less than perfect, I beat myself up."
16. "'Keep secrets to protect family, no matter what they are.'"
17. "Emotional self-sufficiency. In other words, don't show your emotions, don't feel your emotions, don't be swayed by others' emotions, and empathy is bad and for the weak. They'd also re-enforce these teachings by making me do demoralizing tasks, lots of physical punishment, verbal abuse, and isolation from others. My stepmother insisted I should remain pure so when the rapture took place, I would be a warrior saint. Yeah, when I moved out and found out people don't have to live like that, it took me a week just to decompress from what I had escaped."
18. "I am not worth anything intrinsically. I’m only of value if I am productive."
19. "They made me distrust my own intelligence. They talked down to me and treated me like an airhead. They'd give me a smirk every time I tried to be serious about anything. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I learned that I am intelligent, and I gained self-confidence despite the negative self-esteem they had instilled in me."
"This was a big one for me. Whenever I would say something that I knew for certain, like even just, 'I saw my older brother break that cup,' or, 'Santa Claus isn't real,' they would give this little smirk and say, 'Whatever you say.' To this day, 'Whatever you say' is a huge trigger for me. I can't help it. It's so disrespectful. I already spent years unlearning the need to prove that I was right because I was never believed as a child. So, nowadays, it doesn't bother me so much when I'm not believed. I am over that part of my ego. But, if those particular words are spoken, I just cannot control my reaction. It makes me absolutely furious."
20. "'If you're not bleeding, vomiting, or broken, you don't get to cry about it.'"
21. "'Just ignore bullies and they'll go away.' They do not. You're left thinking your feelings and opinions don't matter, and you never learn how to stand up for yourself."
22. "'If a boy is mean to you, that means he likes you!' Took me a while to learn what a healthy relationship was when I hit adulthood."
23. "I remember my dad outright saying he used weaponized incompetence. 'If you do a job badly enough, she'll do it from then on.'"
"I got the opposite, sort of, from my mom. She was a strong believer that people did jobs poorly to get out of doing them again in the future. So, all I ever heard was: 'You're just doing it like this because you don't want to do it! Because you want me to do it! I have to do everything around here!' Except, I actually was trying my best. And a lot of times, I did it right, too! Didn't matter. My mom found a way to weaponize the concept of 'weaponized incompetence.' One time, she asked me to vacuum, and I did. And it was perfect! Spotless! But, she didn't like that, so she tore the entire room apart until she found some dust. She had to pull out a 200-pound dresser to do it, but that wasn't going to stop her."
24. "My father once told me that men can be bosses to women and women can be bosses to women, but women can't be bosses to men. It doesn't work out because of the 'social hierarchy.'"
25. "My dad told me I should always have multiple girls lined up in case one broke my heart. That way, it would be easier to get over it. I was 13."
26. "When I told my mom I was sad my friends had boyfriends and I didn’t in high school, she got annoyed and said, 'You shouldn’t need anyone to be happy.' I was 16. I now think she meant it as 'you can’t put all your happiness on one person as their responsibility,' which is very true, but I interpreted it as 'you’re wrong for feeling lonely, and you should be able to be fine with being alone.' My parents also heavily discouraged me from dating in my teens and made their disapproval very clear to me (and made it clear that intimacy was for marriage)."
"Now, I’m 26 and have never had a partner. My mom is absolutely flipping out that she’s worried I’m going to 'never get married or have kids.' I’m busy in therapy unpacking all this stuff, and it weirdly feels like satisfying vengeance watching her anxiety spiral over this, as if she wasn’t heavily influential."
27. "'Never try anything because it might go wrong.' Sure, they never outright said it, but every time I tried anything, I heard: 'Oh no, going to that birthday party is dangerous,' or, 'Walking home in the safest neighborhood of the safest city of the safest state is not safe,' or, 'You can't go to [college activity in other city] because you'd be alone from the airport to the hotel!'"
28. And: "'Always do what an adult tells you to do.' In my mind, that meant ANYTHING they said to do, wrong or not."
What's something your parents or older relatives taught you as a kid that you later realized was actually messed up?
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.