Every parent has their own way of parenting. Not wanting to judge, but some parents can get pretty extreme with their tactics. One being: overbearing parents. These people share the most insane case of 'control freak' mothers they’ve ever seen. Content has been edited for clarity purposes.
“How Did She Even Get In Here?”
“In junior year of high school, I was in the school musical. One of my castmates was a boy who was fairly new to our school.
His mother was obnoxious. Our first few weeks of rehearsals went until about five-thirty pm (school got out at three pm). All of us were given copies of the rehearsal calendar to take home and I could only assume that this boy’s mother had never seen it. Every single rehearsal for those first few weeks, around five pm, she would appear backstage seemingly out of nowhere (hint: no one outside of the cast and crew was allowed backstage), with her toddler daughter on her hip, and approached the first person she saw to ask where her son was.
She would either be looking around in every nook and cranny like she was looking for a lost dog, or she would be looking around angrily like her son was intentionally hiding from her. She was so off-putting and intimidating that we didn’t really know how to tell her that she wasn’t allowed backstage; also we were slightly scaring ourselves internally with the recurring thought of ‘How did she even get in here?’
The school’s doors were always closed by five so none of us had any idea how she was getting in.
Only once did I have the dishonor of being that first person that she approached. Her son was onstage at the time so I told her exactly where he was and she sighed in a frustrated way before briskly walking off. It made me extremely uncomfortable even though the sigh was not directed at me.
This woman and her husband, the boy’s stepdad, are also the kind of married couple that share a lot on Facebook. For some reason, those couples always rub me the wrong way.”
The Mother Wanted Her To Stay At Home Until Age 36
“My mother wanted my sister to stay at home until I graduated from university. When my sister ended up marrying she wanted to move out but caved in to family pressure and stayed an extra year before sneaking out in the middle of the night. Keep in mind, she’s 14 years older than me and I was 12 at the time. That would mean my sister was expected to stay for another 10 years, at minimum, until age 36.
My mom moved to Canada over twenty years ago but she never picked up the language. My sister became fluent so she could speak, read, and write in both English and Chinese. Because of this, my sister ended up assuming all of my mom’s adult duties, including dealing with the bank, taxes, basically anything or anyone that wasn’t Chinese.
It didn’t help that my mother was extremely condescending. She’d do the cleaning and chores but made sure to let us know she was doing ‘all of the work’ and that she was having a rough time at every opportunity. Whenever my sister and I were having trouble she’d be extremely dismissive and deflect everything back to her problems. Basically, every argument would boil down to my mother saying that if we were good children we would be dealing with all of the chores, paperwork, repairs, cleaning, and cooking for her. And that she shouldn’t be having to even do any of these things at all. My sister has been fed up with her on more than one occasion, but there was one time when things got serious.
A few months after my sister’s marriage and before she sneaked out, she got pregnant. My sister and mother got into another argument at that time.
On one side, my sister was being fed some really awful food by my mom as revenge for my sister rushing through the ceremony, essentially getting married without her approval/permission. It only worked because my brother-in-law’s (BIL) family was visiting at the time from Taiwan so the timing was perfect.
Anyways, any time my sister would show any disapproval or reluctance to eat her cooking, my mom would rage out and bust out into a tirade about how she spent so much time and money to cook for her, and that she didn’t even have the respect to at least eat it (it was always ginger pig feet). Because my mom would go into an argument about this every time my sister fought back and you can’t exactly beat up old people, so my sister ended up sneaking meals in the middle of the night for two reasons.
One, she couldn’t physically eat the food (she became oddly nauseated to new and specific foods that she wasn’t before during her pregnancy) and she would end up vomiting. And two, my mom would never let her live it down if she was caught sneaking food. She’d probably feel deeply insulted as if she was abusing her and she’d get even angrier. This led to my sister eating essentially only a meal or maybe even two meals a day, which really ate away at her patience. Either way, between the abuse and hunger, she snapped.
One day, my sister threw our home telephone against the wall and started shouting at my mom, but she was quick to shout back. It was explosive. And it just, happened. My sister would go into cold moments of silence, and after prodded enough, she would go into an argument, but this was different. I took some distance.
They would move around, shouting back and forth, shifting from the living room to the kitchen.
The stalemate ended when my mom pulled out a knife from the drawer. Her arm was raised, knife peering down at my sister. She walked up to her, shouting louder and louder as my sister shrunk back. Luckily, my BIL forced his way between them. He got out with a few cuts but my sister was fine. I ran off.
I was sitting on the stairs, looking down from above. I was 12 back then so the thought of intervening never crossed my mind. Arguments between family were the norm for me. I got into a few myself but they would always pass. I just took my distance. Either way, that was the final straw.
My mom ended up treating my sister even more coldly since then, and a month later they sneaked out in the middle of the night and booked it on the next flight to Taiwan.”
Her Mom Freaked Out On Him
“A few years back, when I was 19, I was at a party with a few of my friends. Everybody went out to a club but one girl who was 17, didn’t have any ID and would have been too wasted anyway. I’d known her and her family for a few years, her mom knew my family, and I took it upon myself to make sure she got home safe.
So I paid for both of us to get a taxi back to hers which wasn’t that far away. My plan was to head back to the club afterward. When we got back to her place, she couldn’t find her key so I knocked on the door and her mom came down.
I smiled and said, ‘I think she’s had a little bit too much, just thought I’d make sure she got home safe.’
Her mom’s reaction completely blew me away.
She said, ‘Get inside now’ to her daughter and then ‘You too’ to me. She sat us both down in the living room and started screaming at us and accusing me of trying to take advantage of her daughter. I pointed out that if I had been, I wouldn’t have brought her back to the house that I knew her mom would be in and then knocked on the door, this only made her angrier. She was calling her daughter a disgrace and calling me a pervert. So I got up and left.
The next day, my mom got a phone call from her mom telling her version of events and how I tried to lure her daughter home, and how she thought I was a pervert. Completely psychotic. Thankfully my mom was 100 percent on my side and knew I’d never do something like that, but yeah, that was pretty crazy.”
The Mother Demanded His Boss To Cut His Hours
“I managed, scheduled, and hired for ‘a fast food place’ in a good neighborhood. This kid came in for an interview in a button-up and tie. I was liking him and wanted to know if he had any extracurriculars so I could make sure neither of us was wasting our time. I hired him on the spot.
He came in on his first day, looked like his mom dropped him off. Ok fair enough, first job whatever. She sat down without ordering and watched him walk to the back to do computer stuff. I went back to the front to work and she was still there. I went to check the lobby about 30 minutes later. And she was still there. Eventually, I got off, and a couple of hours later, I get a call from my co-worker asking about the new kid. I figure it was about his timecard or something. No. The woman was still there, the manager wanted to know if the kid was special or something. He was not, wouldn’t have mattered anyway besides accommodating him.
I got to work the next day and answered the phone. The woman wanted his schedule. I said I couldn’t give it out and he needed to ask for it or come to the store. She argued with me for a couple of minutes, but I absolutely refused to give out his schedule.
He came in about an hour later to get his hours. I had to pencil him in because I had the entire schedule already booked out for the week. She tried to take it from me. I snatched it and tossed it on the (employee) counter and told her in the most ‘I’m being polite but back off’ voice that she was not allowed to look at our schedules because she was not an employee and that it was protected communications. She huffed, but I still gave the kid his schedule. I didn’t see her for a while, great.
About two months later, she called the store to tell me to cut his hours because he was ‘too busy’ now. I called him into the office while I wrote schedules for the next week and asked him if he wanted his hours cut. He had no idea why I would ask to cut his hours. I explained his mom called and he looked at me with a 1,000-yard stare.
He said, ‘I just turned 18. Schedule me 40 hours a week, please. I get out of school at 11:00, so I can be here at 11:30.’
I scheduled him for 38 hours, and of course, the mom called and tried to yell at me. I explained I was not her child, or a child at all, and would not be yelled at. Also, that her adult child asked for full-time work. And lastly, I did not under any circumstance owe her any explanation for how I do my job. She called two rungs up the ladder and spoke to the franchise supervisor. He told her if she was so concerned about his work life to fill out an application.
Three and a half years later, the kid became the new manager.”
She Called Every Day
“My mother-in-law is always telling absolutely everyone she meets what to do and how to do it. She gets mad if they do it wrong.
When I first met my wife at university, she would get a phone call from her mother every day. Every day it would reduce her to tears because her mother would criticize everything she did. I have seen her ask my wife to cut some carrots, then scream at her because she was ‘cutting them wrong’. My wife developed anorexia during her teenage years due to the constant harassment from her mother. She made her feel like she was useless.
My wife is about as far from useless as you can get. She is the most caring, friendly, imaginative, determined, and all-around amazing person I have ever met. The first time she met my mother she cried because she was so nice to her.
The thing is, the mother-in-law, as I have learned through careful observation, is actually trying to be nice. She’s just awful at it. She tells people how to do things to improve their lives, but doesn’t understand that the way she does it is indistinguishable from abuse.”
She Was A Dog Person
“When my daughter was eight or nine years old, she had a friend, Kate, at school, who she wanted to bring home after school for a play date and tea. Sure, no problem.
My daughter came home with a note asking if Kate’s mum could have an email address so she could get in touch. I gave my old Yahoo spam address. Sure enough the next day I get this huge email giving us a list of things that Kate could and couldn’t do. No television, no playing in the garden if it was sunny, no chocolate, no cake, no access to the internet on our computers. She could only drink water with her food, no fizzy drinks, and on and on it went.
Now it didn’t mention pets for some odd reason. We had a Spaniel at the time who was the gentlest dog ever. When we walked in the door with Kate, she instantly fell in love with the dog. We went for a walk in the woods with the dog, Kate holding her lead. When we got back, all she wanted to do was play with the dog, so they were all out in the garden for ages, the girls throwing a ball between them with the dog going crazy trying to get it. When they came in for a drink, Kate sat on the floor with the dog laying her head in her lap.
Anyway, the mom came to pick her up, while the girls were back in the garden, sitting on a blanket, playing with dolls. The dog was also involved, getting her hair brushed or cuddled.
The mom freaked out – you’d think she’d walked into to find the lifeless corpse of her daughter being devoured by a Rottweiler. She actually saw her daughter trying to put a tiara on the dog whilst getting her face licked and laughing her head off. The mom grabbed Kate whilst shrieking at us about how irresponsible we were and what were we thinking. She left, still shrieking at us, despite Kate crying and saying she loved the dog and she was fine.
The next day the mom turned up at the door and demanded to see the dog’s vaccine records and wanted to know who our vet was so she could check what might be wrong with the dog. She stated that she couldn’t believe we’d expose our own child to a dog, let alone someone else’s. She was taking Kate to the doctor and ‘he would need this information.’
She got told to go away.
The same day, we got a letter, unstamped, from a ‘solicitor’ – demanding the dog’s medical records and any details of related illnesses we might have had. The ‘solicitor’ was of course the mom. I checked the details of the company and it didn’t exist.
She got a letter from a real solicitor – mine – ordering her not to contact us in any way, shape, or form or legal action would commence. A week later, she removed Kate from the school. Presumably, she found one that didn’t take kids whose parents owned dogs.”
She Didn’t Let Her Kids Do Anything
“My aunt didn’t let her children leave her sight, watch tv, or make friends. She also didn’t feed them anything but plain rice and chicken for years. There was a mandatory hour of ‘cuddle time’ with mom. They barely knew how to be human beings. The youngest was eight and couldn’t dress herself since her mother did it every day for all three kids. She home-schooled them too. The only time they left the house was to go to the doctor’s or dentist.
The oldest left the house and immediately lost her mind. She had no idea how to say ‘no’ and didn’t want to anyway, since she was now ‘free’. Almost immediately, she got addicted to coke in less than a month and was dead in two from an overdose. Auntie sobered up instantly and handed the other two children, I think they were eight and ten, over to the dad before hanging herself in her backyard. The two kids don’t even remember her, they barely remember anything before they went to live with their dad. As far as I know, they’re both mostly normal. They still don’t season their chicken though.”
Her Stepmom Had No Boundaries
“In middle school, I had an online account on a website and also frequented AIM (instant messaging) very often. We had moved out of state and I’d made no friends yet; the neighborhood was in the early stages and school hadn’t started yet.
My stepmom read every single conversation from AIM when I went to visit friends back home. Then she decided to print out a bunch of my conversations and added handwritten notes about myself on the pages. On the drive home from my visit, she told me an officer pulled a guy over in a neighboring state and had found that info packet on me in his backseat and contacted her because he was coming to kidnap me. I obviously know better now as she didn’t even change her handwriting, but that was really messed up of what she did. I was a good kid and always stayed out of trouble. I’d call and check in when asked. I was just depressed about the move and needed an outlet.
As a parent myself now, I’m grossed out by that entire incident.”
Apparently, The Dad Was The Unfit Parent
“My aunt cut up her son’s dinner for him when he was 12. Also told everyone that her ex-husband was an unfit father and shouldn’t have custody, because he didn’t check his 12 and 15-year-old sons’ school bags every morning, he just left it up to them to pack the right books, which occasionally led to one of them forgetting something and getting detention. She thought this was unforgivably neglectful. We thought it was normal.”
He Only Could Play With Legos
“I knew a kid in my elementary/middle school whose mother was one of our lunch ladies. This school was one building and covered everything from preschool to eighth grade. Since it was a parochial school, most of the lunch ladies were just old ladies or mothers who went to church there, I thought nothing of it.
What I did think of, though, was the way this kid was. He wasn’t allowed to touch a video game because ‘they would make him stupid.’ He wasn’t allowed to watch most cartoons because ‘they would make him stupid.’ All this poor kid ever did was build legos in his basement until around sixth grade. He was also banned from a lot of things deemed ‘demonic.’ All I remember about this kid aside from that was he made a lot of jokes that simply involved replacing one word in a sentence with ‘poop,’ and he broke down one time when he couldn’t do one of those timed math assessments.
Eventually, his mother caved in and bought him a Playstation 2 (PS2). Let me begin by saying he got this PS2 long into the Xbox 360’s lifespan, so he had neither the social aspect of gaming nor the power to play the kinds of games everyone was talking about. It didn’t matter, though, because I don’t even think he was allowed to play games with weapons or crime in them, and all T or higher-rated games were banned. If you’ve owned a PS2, you should know how much this limits you. No Medal of Honor, no Metal Gear, no Ratchet and Clank, no Sly Cooper. In the end, the only game this kid could play was Lego Star Wars and the sequel (which ironically had blasters), because all later Lego games were on next-gen consoles.
Then came high school. I had left this parochial school in seventh grade when I realized the community there was terrible, so I had two years without hearing from this kid. I then started high school (the only one in town that was worth going to), had another year without this kid because I was a year ahead. Then came my sophomore year. The kid’s mom became a lunch lady there, which was the moment I realized how sheltered this kid was. His mom would follow him around, and the only time I ever saw him in those three years after was during a trip, where I learned he had became addicted to playing mobile games on the school-issued tablets.
I probably won’t ever see this kid again, since I’m in college and his mom either won’t let him go or will send him to some Christian one. Hopefully, he gets away from his mom and doesn’t indulge in anything.”
The Parents Kept Her Password From Her
“My college advisor and I sat in a conference room with my parents on speaker phone. My college advisor basically acted as a mediator between us. They handed over the password for the Common Application (an undergraduate college admission application) when I agreed to let them read my applications before I sent them in. I then changed the password and they tried to get it out of my advisor even though I complied with the arrangement. Total nonsense.
I also filled out 26 applications because it was easier to just do it rather than have them say ‘Well, obviously you don’t care about your future’ and then argue. I then filled out so many applications that the Common Application wouldn’t allow me to fill out anymore.
When I told my parents this, they said something like, ‘Do you think we can call the common app and ask them to make an exception?’
That was my breaking point. I was done and told them absolutely not. We didn’t talk for two months afterward. Totally worth it. They are good people but that was insane.”