Parents lie for all sorts of reasons: to make a bad situation seem better, because the truth isn't something their kid would understand at this time, or just to make things easier on themselves. Sometimes, those lies have long reaching consequences that no one, especially the kid, could foresee.
His Father Made Him Feel Like He Could Never Escape The Abuse
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“I had an abusive father who would regularly beat me from third grade to eighth grade. He told me that if I were to tell anyone (like police or teachers at school), Child Protective Services will put me into foster care and my foster parents would beat me even more than he does.
I believed him and never said a word to anyone. Even when people at school asked me why I had trouble sitting flat on my chair. I had black and purple whelps on my butt and legs that hurt like heck. No surprise that this destroyed my self-esteem and I did many self-destructive things for years afterward. Even to this day, approximately 10 years later, if I get too wasted, I’ll start crying and talk about my father.”
Her Mom Really Messed Up Her Perspective On The Birds And The Bees
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“When I was growing up, my mother told me if I was intimate with a guy, I would get pregnant. In her eyes, the more she scared me about intimacy, the less chance I would do it. Thinking back, this caused me to shoplift pregnancy tests because I kissed my boyfriend and our lower parts touched through underwear and pants. There was one instance where I had kissed someone while sitting on their lap (ninth grade) and I started bawling, saying I was going to get pregnant. It messed me up because I would ask her about what I learned in health class and she told me that I was fertile. She told me actions that would not normally get a girl pregnant would get me pregnant. Messed me up for a long time.”
They Made Her Think She Was “Sick”
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“That being gay is a mental disorder.
I was in early high school when my parents first suspected that I had a girlfriend. Instead of asking me straight out, they just asked me if that particular ‘friend’ was a lesbian and proceeded to lecture me on how homosexuality is a mental disorder. My mom looked me in the eyes and told me that gay people are ‘sick’ in the way you would explain mental disorders to a child. Even though I know for a fact that they’re wrong and heavily brainwashed by the Catholic church, I just can’t help but feel like there is something wrong with me sometimes.”
Her Dad’s Anxieties Kept Her On A Short List
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“Not really a lie, per se, but an exaggeration of all the bad things out there.
My dad was/is the overprotective type, to the point where he would read about every sort of crime/kidnapping case imaginable and would warn his kids (even when we were very young) about all the terrible things out there.
Most people tell their 7-year-old daughter not to take candy from strangers, or follow a strange man who says he’s your parent’s friend. On top of all of those, I was also told not to trust old ladies (because kidnapping rings used them to lure unsuspecting kids), not to go off the path/trail walking to school if I heard a baby crying or the sound of an animal in pain (because some sicko out there had used a recording of that to lure kind-hearted women into the forest), and to NEVER go home with anyone who came to pick me up at school who wasn’t my mom or dad. Also, avoid wooded areas because kidnappers hide in trees and bushes and lure you in, but also don’t walk too close to the street in case a car stops and pulls you in.
As a result, I became the most anxious and paranoid child (and adult) ever, mistrusting everyone and everything (and have also developed a fear of walking near trees at night). I can’t think of how many old ladies I must have stared down with an, ‘I know what you’re trying to do, lady’ look when I was a kid.
Sometimes, just to mess with us, he would come up behind me and my siblings, and cover our eyes and put on a fake voice. Instinctively, we learned to get out of headlocks and elbow/kick/punch our way out of a hold. I grew up TERRIFIED OF EVERYTHING.”
She Let Him Think That He Was “Stupid, Clumsy, Forgetful, And Inept”
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“My mom told me that everything that happened in my life was my fault.
Well, let’s start off this post by saying my mother is Asian, and my dad works a ton. She was the one who raised me primarily. I had good parents. I was reasonably well-off growing up, they took my brother and I on vacations, they never beat me or anything.
However, my mom had this thing where she would shove blame in my face for every little thing I did wrong. It was to the point where it was soul-grinding. The earliest memory of it was when I was in elementary school and I wanted to bring my Darth Vader action figure on a school trip. I lost it because I was young and stupid. Like any kid would, I come home crying. My mom rubbed it on my face.
She never understood when it was appropriate or necessary to teach me a lesson. She never got that the pain of my failures was usually enough to make me want to change my behavior and that sometimes I just needed some support.
I went through all of life until college thinking that there was something horribly wrong with me. That I was stupid, or inept. Clumsy. Forgetful.
She even does it now. I recently applied for a transfer to the University of Michigan. The deadline was February 2nd, and she told me to get it in early. I turned it in on January 10th. She told me to call them every week until I received confirmation all my materials were received. Now, I am on my university’s mock trial team, and we traveled to Illinois and Iowa the next two weeks, so I was a little busy. I forgot to call until thing settled down a bit. That’s when I figured out they lost my application. I was devastated because I wanted to get in. I fixed the problem on my own, had all the materials resent, and it was fine. I called my mom expecting her to be okay with it since I fixed it, but all I got was, ‘If you had done what I said in the first place, you wouldn’t have had that problem.’ I just hung up on her, I couldn’t even listen to that.”
His Mother Thought The Real Story Would Be Too Much For Him
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“My best friend, Kyle, died when I was nine years old. When I asked my mom how he died, she came up with a bogus story of ‘He fell down the steps outside his house.’ Naturally, I accepted this as it came from my mom.
Years later, I was still thinking about him every day. I thought about it and one day remembered that he lived in a mobile home at that time. I brought that up to my mom and asked how many steps were outside his trailer. She told me it was three steps, and I had noticed she was apprehensive when I asked her.
Come to find out, he was murdered by his stepdad. Hit him in his 9-year-old head with an aluminum baseball bat. Even better, the stepfather was set free due to lack of circumstantial evidence, even though ‘everyone knew he had done it.’ I guess the dent in the child’s head wasn’t solid enough for the jurors.
Anyways, I have always had issues trusting people and trusting my mother after this. This honestly was when I officially lost my innocence as a child.
Now I have a son, and In honor of my long past best friend, I named him Kyle. And he is my life.”
What He Saw On That VHS Scarred Him Less Than His Dad’s Excuse
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“When I was 11 or 12 years old, I found a blank VHS of some disgusting, up-close amateur-style video in my dad’s TV/VCR combo in his apartment after my parents separated. He told me it was my mom and step-dad in the video. I don’t remember the purpose of telling me something like that, but I know he was lying and have been scarred ever since. He also kept an army duffle bag in my closet (a couple years prior to the last incident, when my parents were still living together) and told me it was just old clothes. When he went missing for a couple of weeks, I decided to go through it and it was full of blow-up dolls and a bunch of weird stuff like that. He was probably hiding it from my mom.”
They Didn’t Understand What Was Wrong With Him, So They Just Dismissed Him
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“My parents made me believe that my anxiety disorder was my own fault and that I wasn’t trying hard enough to be normal. I should add that I’m on good terms with my parents and I love them dearly. For the most part, they ignored (or at least, didn’t talk about) my anxiety disorder, but when it did come up, they treated me more like I was extremely stubborn/rebellious instead of like I had a social anxiety disorder. As if I could suddenly go to school one day and act like a normal 7-year-old. This was a small rut in our relationship, though. They sort of thought a lot of psychiatric stuff wasn’t real and so they took the ‘just get over it’ approach. Luckily the anxiety disorder started to dissipate once I hit puberty, and I was able to become a normal adult, and it’s been years since the topic of my disorder has come up. I tend to get overly-defensive/shut down when it does come up, so I’m fine with us just acting like it never happened.”
The Only Thing She Had Left Was That Puppy
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“My girlfriend at the time had just left me, my roommate bailed out five days before rent was due, and I just lost my job. My folks said that I was welcome to stay with them.
I had this adorable pit bull puppy that I owned for a few months and I was attached to the little guy. Without question, the greatest happiness in my life at the time. Two days before I was to move in with my family, my dad came out and said that there was no way that we could keep the dog (my family had gone through a bankruptcy, which is why we had to rent a house) and that the landlord would not allow it. I was devastated, to say the least. I had to give up the last shred of happiness in order to move on with my life.
Turns out, the landlord never cared. My parents had brought their two dogs and cat to the house and didn’t want me bringing my dog because ‘Your dog would crowd the house.’ I never wanted to cry so hard. I found out when I talked to our landlord. I may have forgiven my dad over it, but I will never forget what he did.”
He Always Thought His Dad Died In An Accident, Until The Day He Eavesdropped
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“When I was 6-years-old, my family consisted of only my older sister and my mom. My dad had died two years before.
Around that time, I had a dream that my dad had died because there was a car accident, and he had been run over. I told my mom this, to which she easily agreed that this was what actually happened.
Years later, I overheard my mom having a conversation with my sister. They were asking why my dad did what he did, how could he have ‘been so selfish and left us like that.’ I went in and asked what’s going on, still believing my father was run over. They said they were talking about my dad killing himself. And then it hit me.
I could never relate to either of them. Both of them went through an emotional pain I’ve yet to experience. This also explains the years of counseling for my sister, the ‘psychic readings’ my mom went to, and their sadness I could never talk with them about.
I’m now 17, and still can’t relate to them. We go through the regular conventions of ‘Ok, I’m going out, love you,’ but I could just as easily move out right now, and not feel the pain of never talking to them again.”
She Suspects Her Parents Are Hiding Who Her True Father Is
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“I’m adopted. My bio-mom was a single mother and died shortly before I turned two, so my aunt and uncle adopted me. My parents never hid this from me, but they always said they had no clue who my father was.
I started doubting them when I was a teenager. I met a girl at school who looked exactly like me, and when I told my mom about it, she started asking questions about this girl and her parents, which obviously got me thinking. Then, years later, I was pregnant and at my baby shower. One of my real mom’s friends shows up and says she has answers to questions I’m probably really curious about. She leaves it at that and I kind of assume that’s what she’s talking about.
Cut to a few months ago. An older man at the grocery store I go to notices me and immediately takes interest in me. He talks to me differently than he does the other customers. If I don’t come up to his department and talk to him, he’ll track me down to talk to me. And I just get the feeling that he’s holding something back.
I believe that my family knows who my dad is, and I think this guy from the store could be my dad. I would like to think that they had their reasons, and it’s not just a case of wanting to have me all to themselves, but I don’t know.”
She Believed What Her Mother Said About Her Father For Years
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“My mom always used to tell me that my dad was abusive, a cheater, he drank too much, blah blah blah. Well into my teenage years, I still believed this. Whenever I had to go to my dad’s for the weekend, I would often run away and get picked up by the cops and brought back to my mom’s. It wasn’t until I turned 19 that I realized my mom was manipulative and selfish, which is how she won custody of me in court. She had me lie to the lawyers and everything. It messed me up bad, but I think it messed up my dad even more. I moved in with my dad a few years ago while I went to university. He said every cent he paid in child support was worth it to have me here with him now. I don’t know how it all turned out like it did, but I’m finally happy with where I am.
My stepmom actually helped me figure out fact from my mother’s lies, how to separate the ‘created memories’ that my mom planted from the actual memories I had. In the fake ones, I could see myself, like I was watching it happen to me; in the real ones, I couldn’t see myself. It was my own point of view.”
For Years, He Avoided Peanuts Like The Plague
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“My mom, a physician, told me that I was deathly allergic to all nuts. When I was in sixth grade, I learned that peanuts were not nuts, but legumes and were not related. She told me that the test results indicated that I, and I quote, ‘shouldn’t eat peanuts or else you could die!’ And so, whenever I ate peanuts, I would ‘pull the trigger’ and make myself throw up everywhere.
When I turned 21, I wanted to get another allergy test to see if anything had changed. The results indicated that I was only allergic to cashews, Brazil nuts, sesame seeds, and pistachios. I told the allergist, ‘This is great, I must’ve grown out of my peanut allergy!’
‘Peanut allergy? Your results are nearly identical to the one ordered in 2000. Peanuts are fine.’
My mother insisted it was for my own best interest because she didn’t trust me to discern between peanuts and tree nuts. When I finally did eat a peanut, I began dry heaving and vomiting as soon as I tasted the thing. Over the past decade, I had conditioned myself to vomit whenever I tasted a peanut. I’ve been trying for a year now and while I can swallow a peanut, the smell nauseates me and I loathe the taste.”
She Shocked The Teacher With Her Interesting Choice In Gifts
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“I found dad’s pipe when I was like five years old. The one that looks like a tube with a bubble at the end. He told me it was a vase for very tiny flowers.
In first grade, I was an obnoxious little hippy of a child, and I decided to pick flowers with my friends to give to the teacher. Well, we picked a bunch of those little yellow weed flowers that turn into dandelions. We were going to give them to the teacher, and then I realized it would be so much better if we had a vase. So the next day, we present the teacher with a pipe full of freshly picked weeds. Of course, she knows what it is. Long story short, the whole lot of us were interrogated for the rest of the day and I got my dad arrested and mom, and I went to live with grandma for a while.”
He’d Told So Many People That Bit Of His “Family History” That It Felt Like His Whole Life Was A Lie
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“My family has some distant Manchu ancestry going way back. When I was six years old, I was asking about Manchuria, and my mom told me that we were related to the X clan, which was like the equivalent of a nobility type back when the Man ruled China. Anyway, I guess she thought this would amuse me or make me feel special or whatever, but that I’d quickly forget about it, but I didn’t. I went on to tell almost everyone this cool piece of trivia about my family, only to finally be informed at the age of 17 by a Chinese exchange student that this was impossible because everyone in that family line was famously assassinated, like, many centuries ago.
The sad thing is that people still bring this up and I have to confess that it was never true and my whole life was a lie.”
Her Dad Made Them Think Their Mother Was Truly Crazy
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“That my mother was schizophrenic. I was 15 and knew she had been battling depression for years. Schizophrenia runs in our family and as an angsty teenager, it was easy for me to believe that she was crazy. She was convinced that my father had a secret second family. She was diagnosed and medicated for years. He actually did have a second family.
Don’t get me wrong, my mom is insane, but only slightly more so than one’s normal view of nutty. I certainly can’t blame her either, though I do still have to keep my distance from her at times. It’s been over eight years since we found out the truth and it took her close to five of those to even begin to resemble a functioning member of society.
I’m 30 now and am still in therapy. I can’t even begin to describe how many lies there were and to this day I know very little of what’s true. They are both so full of it that I gave up trying.
My dad was also a drinker. From what I was told, one morning my sister found him passed out in a puddle of vomit in the middle of the living room, and that’s when he confessed everything to her. She’s messed up, too. She still lived there during all of it and I think he was hard on her.”
She Thought That Something So Natural Meant She Was “Dirty”
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“My mom told me as a little girl that periods were something you got because you were dirty and didn’t shower enough. Made me think for years that I was just a bad person who was full of some sort of dirt I could never get rid of because I was so tainted. Turns out, I’m an okay person, and it’s just uterine lining coming out because I didn’t make a baby that month. Load off my mind!”
He Knew He Was A “Donor Baby,” But He Never Knew About His “Real” Dad
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“My parents told me I was a donor baby when I was 12 years old. It made sense, as I look nothing like my father or my sisters. My genetic history was a mystery to my parents and they never explained their process of selecting a donor. Fast forward to this last February when I was 19 years old. I asked my mother about how the donor was chosen. She was reluctant to tell me, but it turns out my parents tried, again and again, to conceive another child after they had my older sister, got frustrated, and separated. At that point, my mother met another man who knocked her up almost immediately. She left him, now having the baby she had been waiting for, and returned to my (non-biological) father. The strangest thing to me about the whole situation was how the man who did father me had no interest in my existence afterward.”
The “Poop Thing” Wasn’t The Only Thing His Mom Did That Was Grossly Inappropriate
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“When I was little, I was afraid to go to the bathroom by myself and I’d hold it until someone would go with me or wait outside the door for me. One day, my mom told me if I held in my poop that it’d come out of my mouth. A few days later, I was grocery shopping with my dad and I’d been holding it in so I could use the bathroom when I got home. I think I remember not feeling like I had to poop as badly after a little while, so I thought it must be traveling up me to come out of my mouth. I started crying hysterically. My dad wanted to know why and I told him what my mom had told me. He was furious at her for that lie. The thing is, that story comes in second place. First place is probably my mom telling me it was OK for her to fondle my private parts because ‘she’s my mom.'”