I wasn't allowed to use coloring books as a kid; my Mom forbade them. I used to DIE for coloring books, obviously. At home, I'd take the covers of Disney videos and TRACE THEM IN PEN, and then staple them together to make my own coloring books. It was piteous, you guys. When I would have playdates at other people's houses, my friends would be all, "let's watch You Can't Do That on Television! Let's make up a dance! Let's go sneak some candy while my au pair is having Quiet Time with my dad!" (HAND TO GOD, that last one happened, for real.) And I would quietly yet urgently inquire as to the existence of coloring books in their household, and to the extent present, their whereabouts.
And then eat the candy.
(I mean, come on.)
My friends would inevitably graciously supply coloring books, and we'd each intently focus on staying in the lines on our respective pages. Blissfully, I'd sit there, sugar dots in one hand, Burnt Orange crayon in the other, as I colored Ariel's hair just so, and plotted the careful shading I would employ on her fish scale...bottom...thing. (Zoological term.)
It's now 20-ish years later, and here I sit with my own kids, passing them the coloring books that their grandmother -- MY MOTHER -- got for them.
Parenting is so weird.
My mom is an artist, and her goal was to have us be creative. She felt the coloring books stifled creativity (oh, Mom!), and that attempting to control that one little thing would help us along that path. As a parent now, even though I totally joke about the whole thing with her -- I kind of get it. I get having a specific aim for your kids, and wanting (even the illusion of) control; of some of it, any of it. And in certain ways, I actually think I'm stricter than my own parents were, overall, but sitting here, I'm hard-pressed to identify any one Parent Thing of mine that's, you know, No Coloring Books-level in its specificity of focus and goal. I have rules, obviously, and (admittedly generic) hopes for the quality of my kids' lives and how they conduct themselves, but...well, they're just that. I...hmm. Maybe I need a Comically Stringent Parent Rule of my own. Since I'm Crazy Rambling Reminiscing Lady at this point, did your parents have any comically stringent rules? Do you have any of your own? Let's talk about YOU now. I'll be over here, getting the playful shadows on Dora's face just right.
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my mother had what was termed "outside toys." i would literally be opening gifts at my birthday, like squand, and play-doh, and sand art, and tie-dye kits and mother would yelp, "OUTSIDE TOY!!!!!" things that were messy or could permanently destroy the carpet in ANY WAY were not allowed to even be OPENED inside our home. i would literally BEG my friends to let me play with their play-doh, even at like, 11 and they'd be all... "ummmmmmm, okay?" to this day, play-doh in the box LOOKS messy to me.
I was not allowed (ever, under any circumstances) to ride on carnival rides. Carnivals were not kept to proper safety standards and my parents were convinced one of us would be crushed to death or tossed off of the spin-o-wheel-of-vomit, and so we were forbidden. This of course meant that going to a carnival was the only thing in the entire world I ever wanted to do.
I wasn't allowed the big Barbie head, or the Snoopy snow cone maker, or the easy bake oven, OR ANY TOYS THAT MAKE A MESS.
I complained so much about the easy bake oven that my roommates in college got it for me.
No artificial foods... which I actually appreciate now... but at age 12? Oreos? OHMYGOD! I picked friends based on the amount of processed flour and high fructose corn syrup products in their pantries.
I remember finding out in 4th grade that NO, most parents did not make grilled cheese by popping slices of extra sharp Vermont cheddar between two pieces of whole-wheatberry toast and shoving the whole shebang in the toaster oven. Kraft singles? Butter? WHITE BREAD?
Revolutionary.
My Aunt had this no card games rule. She wouldn't even allow a deck of cards in her house. So my cousin would come over to my house begging to play spit and gin all the time. Apparently cards were "low class."
We could only have sugary cereal only when we were sick - and then only Sugar Pops or Sugar Smacks were allowed. (A regular day treat cereal was raisin bran. Or Special K. I kid you not.)
And I was only allowed to watch PBS kids shows after school until I was 8.
Really.
No sandals or flip flops on bicycles, only tennis shoes.
My college room mate was never allowed to watch 3's Company. She could watch other crap TV, but her Dad had a thing against 3s Company specifically. Of course, that was practically all she watched in college.
I just found out that what I thought was a safety rule because of grabby babies was actually an entirely bogus rule to, I dunno, keep us from rebelling? Anyhow, the rule was "no dangly earrings". My mother made it up so that we would have something harmless to rebel against - my sister now, as an adult, wears exclusively long dangly earrings. I never got into the habit, and now as a new mom, probably never will.
OH HO HO. The RULES my parents had, you would think they were running a juvenile facility.
1. NO TV, EVER, except sports, news and "educational." (We were allowed to watch movies, but we had, like, 6, including Old Yeller.) I wasn't allowed to watch TV until I was a SENIOR in high school, admitted into college, and BEGGED AND PLEADED to be able to watch Friends. (Dude, my DAD was watching it in the other room!)
2. In bed by 8pm. Seriously. Still applied in High School, except I didn't have to be "in the bed," I could just be in my room. It was like that scene from Superman when Lex Luthor was in jail where they go around, "lights out Luthor." (Superman was one of the 5 movies.)
3. Up at 5 am. Yes, you read that right. 5 am. To study. There were a few ways around this (dad left for work at 5, mom went on a morning walk), but seriously, we took our comforters to the kitchen table, put our heads down and drooled all over our books.
So, yeah... there were rules.
No easy bake oven. Which I wanted SOOO bad. It was even a gift from a friend @ my b-day party...And since it didnt come with a gift receipt...it just sat in the basement where I was not allowed to open it. My brother was allowed to have that Creepy Crawlers set. He could cook bugs and I couldnt cook yummy treats :-(
My family was the type that I didn't figure out until after I left home that they had lots of rules. One that was funny to me was I could eat as much candy as I wanted, I just had to have five fruits or vegetables every day beforehand. By the time I got through all that, I was usually too full for any kind of dessert.
The other time I remember my mom taking a stand was when I was five and I wanted to be a cat for the 3rd Halloween in a row. She made me be Minnie Mouse instead, but then she and my dad dressed up as cats that year! I am still convinced they did it to rub it in my face.
Hmmm ... we definitely had the no sugary cereal rule, which I actually think was a great thing now that I'm grown. I got to have Fruity Pebbles once and totally thought they were dessert. I don't remember anything else that was much different than my friends, though -- my folks were pretty lenient, so long as I stayed out of trouble (which oh my god I totally did -- getting yelled at is THE WORST).
My parents had a lot of weird rules, but the one that always stuck in my mind was no grapes--we didn't buy grapes, we weren't allowed to eat grapes. We boycotted them because of the plight of the migrant grape workers. Yeah, my parents were weird liberals, and didn't exactly fit in down in Texas. Once I got to college and bought my own food, I would buy at least a bag of grapes a week. They still seem like a huge treat to me.
Yeah I don't think we had any rules I'd say were weird. I do remember when I was like 12 or 13 my mother, for whatever reason, up and decided I was no longer allowed to watch Scooby Doo. Something I had been watching all along. That lasted for like 20mins. Which was how long it took me to point out that I had been watching it for years, and now really wasn't going to make any difference. A few years later, when I was 16 or so, she tried it again with The Simpsons. This time she actually had a reason, "The make the dad look so stupid." Again I argued that I knew that, and since I didn't treat her that way before, I wasn't stupid enough to be influenced by a CARTOON at age 16. Needless to say I stopped watching it on my own anyway because it just started to annoy me.
I wasn't allowed to have two friends over at a time. I could have one friend over or I could have three or more. My mom didn't think it was possible for three girls to play together without one feeling left out. I think about that every time I'm hanging out with two friends now.
There were (a lot of) other rules that my mom imposed for religious reasons, like I also wasn't allowed to wear black or have a Ken doll, but I don't really count those. I do wear a LOT of black now though.
We had a lot of crazy rules but the big ones that never made any sense to me were 1)no Dr Seuss books and 2)no Jim Carrey movies. We weren't supposed to watch The Simpsons or Married with Children but always watched them with our dad in their room. I think that was just because there was something on tv that mom wanted to watch at that time.
We had no rules. I think a lot of it was because my mom was a single mom to three kids and struggling to keep a roof over our head and food on the table. So really, those were her big concerns.
I wish we had more rules, like less Kool-Aid and pop, more vegetables, less TV time. I think it would have made me healthier as a kid. But I'm awesome and my mom did a great job raising us and I can't complain.
And I'm sure I'll have WAY more rules as a parent.
My husband just told me that his Dad made them boycott Nike when he was a kid because Nike supported Tanya Harding.
The only one I can really think of was the one year my parents wouldn't let us "do" Halloween. They got all religious on us, or their church friends guilted them about it, I don't know, really. But what I do know is that I'll never get that Halloween back. ;)
My dad wouldn't let me wear Chapstick until I was 12 years old because he thought it was too similar to wearing lipstick. I still remember my mom arguing with my dad, saying "It's not makeup! Her lips are chapped!"
We were only allowed two scoops of ice cream. Do you know how lonely two scoops of ice cream look in a big cereal bowl? And ususally they weren't even the full scoops, they were the half or 3/4 scoops. Now that I control the ice cream scoop, I must have at least three. Thanks, Mom!
Angela
My parents were a little nuts. No TV. No Halloween (the devil's holiday.) No saying "Oh my god" or "Good luck". There's a long, long list of religious ones. A non-religious one was that we had to have milk with dinner every night.
One thing I plan to limit is sugary cereals. They'll be for dessert only.
This wasn't MY parents' rule, but rather my boyfriend's. His mom wouldn't let him have chewing gum until he was 11. And to this day when we see children (like my fourth-grader cousin) chewing gum he is SHOCKED, and says they're going to choke and they're too young. This confounds me.
We weren't allowed to watch the Flintsones. My Mom didn't like "the way Fred yelled at Wilma."
My parents did not have any rules like this, but the one rule I did give myself was the following: Don't eat the green Twinkies.
We had so many rules. No Barbies (Sexist). No Baby Alive ("You want a doll that shits?" I remember my dad saying. Swearing was okay). No sugared cereals. No pierced ears. No telling our teachers that mom and dad smoked cigarettes that they passed around with their friends, etc. Thankfully they divorced and every single rule went out the window. Except sugared cereals. We never broke my mom or dad on that one. I actually bought Frosted Flakes with my own money in high school once I had a job.
By the way, we were BEGRUDGINGLY allowed coloring books. But the Anti-Coloring Book and their ilk were praised and pushed. Which, I have to say, I prefer now as a parent, too, but try not to push.
My mom would rather have died than allow me to have a barbie or anything super girly or 'stereotypically' girly.
And yet, now.. with my daughter -- she's all over that stuff ;-)
I used to do the SAME thing with coloring books and pages ;-)
<3 you
I was not allowed to go on sleepovers because my mom always feared that I would get molested. As an adult, I now understand why, but I always felt left out on Monday mornings at school when my friends would rehash the fun had over the weekend.
I must know, did your friend's mother ever find out about the au pair?!
Oh man. Tell me I'm not the crazy mom. I have a rule against Barbie, I think they set up unrealistic body ideals and I don't ever want my daughters thinking that shape is ideal. I realize I'd have to shelter them from a lot more than Barbie to prevent that, but Barbie is what I can control. No Bratz dolls either, ever since I picked up a box and read the doll's 'quote': It doesn't matter how you play the game, it how hot you look playing it. Um, no.
No TV in our house either. Years ago we couldn't afford one, much less cable. Now that we can, we choose not to have it because honestly, it's really nice. Especially during election times.
Oh man. Tell me I'm not the crazy mom. I have a rule against Barbie, I think they set up unrealistic body ideals and I don't ever want my daughters thinking that shape is ideal. I realize I'd have to shelter them from a lot more than Barbie to prevent that, but Barbie is what I can control. No Bratz dolls either, ever since I picked up a box and read the doll's 'quote': It doesn't matter how you play the game, it how hot you look playing it. Um, no.
No TV in our house either. Years ago we couldn't afford one, much less cable. Now that we can, we choose not to have it because honestly, it's really nice. Especially during election times.
My one crazy mom rule: No Christmas Carols sung outside the month of December, ever. Period. (This rule enacted while driving a car full of kids all singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" over and over in AUGUST at about 105 degrees, with no AC. It was for my sanity, y'all.) Years later, my kids still laugh about it.
Did your mom get you the "Anti-coloring book"? I had that one.
We had many of these, including the no sugar cereal one. The "unique" one, though is that we weren't allowed to use the word "pee". My mom is Southern, and the word pee is not nice. "Pee-pee" was okay if a child said it, but pee was not allowed. In contrast, when she got really mad she would call you a "shitass," so I'm not quite sure of the logic there.
My mother, who has been known to eat Fruit Loops for dinner, never allowed us to have any cereal with sugar in it. In fact, I often go to her house and find her fridge filled with pudding and chocolate milk. NOT FAIR, MOTHER.
No high heels! I don't mean real high heels. I mean those little plastic ones that came in the dress up kits from the toy store. "You'll twist your ankle!" I wanted those stupid plastic shoes sooooooo bad.
Oh and don't mix your Play Doh. I went through my entire childhood terrified of what would happen if I mixed colors in my Fun Factory. This is why I couldn't have that barbershop contraption because the colors in the hair might bleed into the other colors when you stuck it on the head. I would have a seizure today if my colors mixed but I didn't need to live in terror as a child!
No toys in the family room. They had to be back in our rooms. We didn't pick our blocks up when we were kids. Mom and dad threatened to burn them if we didn't. Guess what...blocks...UP IN FLAMES!
No toys in the yard (NEVER leave your bike out. EVER.) And no slip and slides. They messed up the grass.
The worst ever? Christmas morning...you had to wait for dad before opening presents. Guess who insisted on getting dressed and shaving? ARGHH!
No sugary cereal except on the weekend, no soda pop except on friday nights (and in restaurants), 30 min of tv/nintendo a day (that one i get now!), no dangly earrings and no black clothes allowed! To this day I do not understand the black clothes thing. I now have a 6 wk old daughter and I love putting her in some funky black clothes. It's my form of rebellion :)
I didn't grow up with a lot of weird rules, I guess. The only ones I can think of are you have to put back the toy you're playing with before you can take out another one and you have to put away your toys at dinner time or when you're leaving the house. As I got older dad had a no headphones rule. To this day, I have the best hearing of any of my 40 year old friends!
I am the mother. Everyone who reads this blog, my daughter is a creative adult. Don't you agree? She can also draw, so I was right. The only rule i regret giving was "Don't go to the bowling alley at night because there are heroin addicts and they will stab you with their needles as you reach for your bowling ball." Ok, I just didn't want her going out so I tried to make it as scary as I could.
My parents were sort of comically un-strict, so much so that my mother took me to get a tattoo when I was 17, because I wanted a tattoo or my belly-button pierced, and she was all, "HELL NO!" to the piercing, but "Sure, OK!" to the tattoo. To this day I tease her about how little sense that made (and still makes), all the while feeling grateful I never pierced anything below my head.
Also: I totally want to buy you a coloring book right now. Just to make up for lost coloring time.
Coming in way late here. (I am horribly behind on my feed reader, and yet completely unable to mark as read until i actually read. Yeah.) Anyway. My mom wouldn't let me play the violin in elementary school. She forced me to play the cello instead. I HAD TO. Which I of course hated with the fire of a thousand suns.
Turns out? Her mom, my grandma, had forced her to play the violin as a child, and she had hated it so much that she vowed no child of hers would ever play it -- whether they wanted to or not, apparently.
SECOND GENERATION CRAZY, Y'ALL.
All I know is, there will be no cello playing in mah house. I am sorta looking forward to forcing my child into learning some oboe.
Love that your mom chimed in! Now that I am a mom, myself, I can appreciate that "the rules" are a mix of legit concerns about safety and propriety, a not-so-legit combo of private freak outs and phobias, and the occasional perverse denial (along the lines of "because I said so!")
I was not allowed to open it. My brother was allowed to have that Creepy Crawlers set. He could cook bugs and I couldnt cook yummy treats :-(
My sister and I fought all the time and called each other bitches on a daily basis, along with occasionally more creative insults. All of which was totally fine, as long as we never told each other to "shut up." Dad thought it was disrespectful.
We were NOT allowed to have anklets. They were 'trashy'. LOL Or a necklace with our names engraved on the front (you know the ones, they were cool in the early 90s). That was to ward off child kidnappers that would get us by knowing our names and then we'd go off with them.
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