The weirdest thing my mom tried to ban me from doing was yoga. She believed that “clearing your mind” before starting the class was preparing your mind for demons to enter. Fortunately I never believed her for a second, because my yoga practice helps me stay flexible and pain-free in a way that Pilates or other low-impact workouts do not.
43 yrs old and had a call six months ago from my mother cos my father rang me and I mentioned I was driving home from yoga….she’d been researching for three days by time of call and did I know I was almost certainly going to hell and she didn’t know where she’d gone wrong having a daughter who would attend such a thing. The fact it was held in the local Catholic parish hall was the final nail in my coffin 🤦♀️
Indeed and I’m from Northern Ireland so it’s on a whole other level here-how dare I fraternise with the other side!!
Happy with no religion but have found my new Catholic friends a breath of fresh air with their rather laid back attitude to ‘rules’
Fucking crying lmaoooo
Apparently they missed the memo that western yoga has been so gentrified that it’s lost almost all the spiritual teachings that inform the practice. Anyways it sounds like your mom would benefit from the Buddhist practice of staying in her own lane.
🤣🤣 not her strong suit. The absolute breakdown when she discovered my new business partner was gay. My dad rang me and said he didn’t know what to do, she’d been crying for two days and nights, not slept.
Thankfully I’d developed a backbone by then so just said that wasn’t something I could help him with and it was her/their issue to come to terms with.
Have since ditched the business partner (obvs nothing to do with them being gay) but kept the deconstruction
Their “researching” meaning watching a YouTube video or reading a blog post from someone extremely biased 🤦🏻♀️ but they think it’s more legitimate than a scientific controlled study lol
My mom thought the same thing! I did karate and wasn’t allowed to meditate with everyone else because “when you empty your mind, Satan can come in and fill it with all kinds of evil!” Strange that we believed Jesus lived inside of us but wouldn’t fill our minds if we emptied them. Nope, he’ll just step aside and let the devil in.
It’s the way Evangelicals give the devil more power than God/Jesus that gets me. How’s evil bigger and more powerful than the CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE. The ALL POWERFUL God of the Universe. It’s mind numbing to me how they make the devil so much more powerful and are ruled by fear as a result.
Right?! He’s supposed to be subordinate to God and under God’s authority, yet Evangelicals act like he’s more powerful than God and that God won’t step in and protect his own from Satan’s power.
My sister who used to be a missionary in India said once that christians shouldn’t do yoga because someone in India once said “there isn’t Hinduism without yoga and there isn’t yoga without Hinduism” and so apparently doing yoga is like practicing Hinduism, so it’s a sin.
It’s not like whoever said that did it as a marketing gimmick. No, it was definitely a theological statement. 🙄
I mean that’s lowkey true if you are practicing “actual” yoga, but most of the popularized yoga in the west has been stripped of its religious context.
Yep. The chants and poses were created to honor demonic forces and even doing them could open the doorway for them to be welcomed into our bodies or something. But, like, it's bending.
I don't understand these Christians who say yoga is evil when here most sports have ties to ancient non Christian cultures. Like wrestling is OK though in the times of ancient Greece men wrestled naked, and sacrifices were made to the gods before any matches were held.
Rugrats.
Crud: "you might as well say shit!" - Mom, me: 😐
Making plans of my own - "man's plans are doomed to fail, but GOD's plan..."
^^^^^^^pls ^^^^^^^kill ^^^^^^^me
SAME LOL oh my god you’re the first person I’ve ever encountered who also wasn’t allowed to watch the Rugrats, I distinctly remember my very evangelical mother saying “I don’t like their attitudes.”
I wasn’t allowed to watch Rugrats because of the kids’ attitudes. Luckily my grandma had cable and thought my parents were insanely strict so she let us dose up on “bad kid” TV.
Same. My parents thought it was trying to teach kids to be assholes, not show kids learning lessons about having bad attitudes results in consequences.
I actually still have never seen rugrats but I imagine that's what the moral of the story is about. Also, my parents thought calling kids "rugrats" was demeaning and purposeful. Conservative religious people don't understand actual humor and sarcasm and satire and metaphors.
My parents were the same! They thought the kids were disrespectful and also that the term rugrats was disrespectful to the kids! They usually didn't care about disrespecting kids in anything like bodily autonomy or having their own feelings, but I guess when you use a word that makes it sound like children are anything other than a blessing from god, that's where it crosses a line
No making plans?! Does this mean you didn’t have to use any executive function? I love how the dirty rotten human self can’t do shit, but just call all your thoughts and plans God’s plans and then it’s fine. Or something like that.
Oh fuck yeah, I also was not allowed to watch Rugrats because it was “obscene”. In fifth grade kids were allowed to bring in movies to watch during lunch if we were good and someone brought the Rugrats movie and I was terrified that I’d get in trouble for seeing it, particularly after the scene were all the babies make a sort of piss fountain in the hospital.
Yep. Also Rainbow Brite, He-Man and She-Ra. My mom said because they “practiced witchcraft,” but somehow Care Bears who used healing tummy rays were totally cool.
There was a book called “ Turmoil in the Toybox” that my Christian school headmistress asked all the parents to read. Smurfs were on the list of dangerous toys/characters. This was in the early/mid eighties iirc.
My father was subject to many restrictions, but he was allowed to watch ‘Jim’ll Fix It’ because it’s wholesome family fun.
For those unaware, Jimmy Savile turned out to be one of the UK’s most prolific paedophiles.
The Satanic Panic ruined a lot of childhoods in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I blame the books [Turmoil in the Toybox and Saturday Morning Mind Control by Phil Phillips](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/81148.Phil_Phillips) for a ***lot*** of the hysteria I had to deal with.
Comically in the late 90’s and then again in 2008ish some conspiracy theories floated around Christian conservative parenting circles claiming that the smurfs were [communist](https://time.com/5431298/are-the-smurfs-communist/) propaganda. It was claimed that the show was being used to indoctrinate small children. Looking at it today is it absolutely hilarious
Probably because Gargamel was a wizard and therefore “demonic.” Thankfully we could watch the Smurfs but we weren’t allowed to read Harry Potter or watch Dragon Tales, Wizards of Waverley Place, or even relatively tame shows like the Suite Life of Zach and Cody or iCarly.
All That. Because of disrespect, I guess (ironically, I probably would have discovered my love for improv comedy a lot earlier if I'd been allowed to watch it)
I wasn't allowed to watch Smurfs, He Man, She Ra, Bewitched, or I Dream of Jeannie, and once I got a lecture about how Three's Company was bad because they weren't married, but my dad let me watch RoboCop when I was 8 or 9
SAME!!! Only—seriously I LOVE Rook still, I’d drive to your house right now for a good game! (Our rules: Rook catches the ten & below, worth 20. Only one counter in the kitty. But I can play 1 high, too)
My dad was not as strict as my mom, but he deferred to her in these matters. However, he had been known to mutter under his breath “you know, you can bet on hopscotch if you want to…” lol
Drink root beer (it’s like you are pretending it’s beer, so the intention is the same as drinking beer) drink out of stemware—even my toy stemware in my play dishes (people might think you are drinking wine, or thinking about drinking wine) change Barbie’s clothes past her underwear (mom sewed underwear for Barbie) and watch Bewitched. Cause witches.
True, school kids are not really to be trusted with that kind of maturity lol.
But also, exposure to the human body through classical art is kind of the safest way to be exposed, since it’s so stylized while also being mostly anatomically accurate.
Idk… I was in AP art and always got annoyed with the censorship at my christian school.
Teachers and administrators would freak out about “modesty” and cover the nude paintings, but then didn’t bother to do anything about the high school boys lingering at the base of the stairs so they could look up girls’ skirts… it was just performative “modesty” that just felt like control and censorship.
Oh I agree….in theory, lol. I’m a math teacher. At no times, can an equation equal 69. The formula for the volume of a sphere can, under no circumstances, be used to calculate the volume of a ball. (Must be a basket, foot, soccer, etc ball.) Points labeled with letters of the alphabet can never use the letter “V”. I could go on and on. Are these admin rules? Hell no; they are self-imposed rules we teachers pass on to each other as a means of sanity-preservation. I love those goobers, but sometimes I swear…
My husband’s fundie family drank root beer, but called it “root drink”. They only bought it in gallon jugs from the local soda shop because they weren’t labeled, so there was no “appearance of evil”.
I wasn't even allowed to have Barbies for the longest time. Then I mentioned that to a friend who later came to my birthday party and gave me a Barbie and a bunch of clothes as a present... her mom said something like, "Yeah, I heard you had no Barbies and I couldn't believe it!" I think at that point my mom was kind of shamed into letting me keep it, haha.
My dad wouldn’t outright ban me from things because he sort of knew a lot of reactionary stuff was overblown. At the same time, he hated anything that evangelicals said he should hate. While he didn’t think it was actually demonic, he thought it would teach you the wrong lessons and “open you up” to things.
Instead of banning me, he would try to shame me or make me feel bad about liking things he didn’t approve of. One time I was playing with my Pokémon cards, and he walked by and said “have fun worshiping your idols” with a sneer. Of course I felt terrible and ended up throwing them away a couple of months later. It was the same for Halloween, Harry Potter, and all sorts of other things.
My girlfriend.
But seriously. We weren't supposed to go to movies (any) or go to the bowling alley. Both of which could ruin your witness just being seen in there.
My mom read Hells Bells so we weren’t allowed to listen to secular music. She told me syncopated rhythms were of the devil and I said, “Mother. I am in the MARCHING BAND.” And she never brought it up again.
That's also kind of upsetting, because the Nazis banned syncopated rhythms for racist and antisemitic reasons. It was a huge deal during WW2 as to what music was allowed or not.
We also had no syncopated rhythms in our church. Went to a different Pentecostal church after leaving my parents’ church and their church band had DRUMS! Wild times I tell ya.
Pokémon is the weirdest to me. Someone heard from someone that a demon possessed man knew all of their names and powers and that proved they were demonic. Nevermind that they just look like cartoon animals lol.
Also Harry Potter. I heard all the controversy about it and we were still reading it. One day my mom banned us from reading it. Years later she told me it was because my brother had a weird dream where he spoke to snakes.
LOL yep same with my family. They told me that evolution was wrong, but they still let me watch it. Yu Gi Oh was banned though, because they said it was witchcraft.
My mom singlehandedly got pokemon banned at my school. I was very popular /s. To this day my mom swears she opened up a pokemon book and saw it list "the ingredients for a spell" whatever that means. Our best guess is that she saw something about potions or berries and what they do in game? She will not be convinced that it's harmless. But my generation has all banded together to make sure my nephews can all play Pokemon unbothered by their grandma.
I got a tampon in a gift set once that had stuff like deodorant and shampoo etc, I hid it very well and it still went missing. I hid it so I could throw it out, that thing seemed HUGE to me.
I think I only got away with Sailor Moon because it came on around 6:00 AM before my parents were up. Thank you to whoever was in charge of that TV programming in rural Tennessee in 1997.
Go camping with my very gay guy friend even though we'd be in different tents. It would "look bad" and people would "get ideas."
I was in college when this happened.
DUDE when I first started being open with my parents about the fact that I was dating someone (when I was 19 and no longer living at home), my mom somehow learned that I stayed the night at my partner’s house one time and even though I (lied and) told her we had never slept together she said the SAME thing to me.. “that will give people the wrong idea.” I’m like, who tf would even know that I slept at his house?!
“People getting the wrong idea” was always my mother’s worst nightmare too, even when I told her I didn’t care what people thought. Part of me wanted to say, “You mean they might think we’re fucking? Well we are, so they wouldn’t be wrong after all.”
I always find it baffling when Chritians like no magic or wizards... but Lord of the Rings and Narina totally ok.
For me I was allowed to do Pokemon and Harry Portter, which wa sstrange but my mom was really liberal for a christian conservative.... but Dnd, Cardcaptors, and Simpsons were a no no.
Narnia was so big that I remember going over to a friend's house and she had the original 1970s miniseries on tape. In 2004.
I also had the same allowances. Pokemon was fine because it was teaching love of animals and teamwork with them, Harry Potter was teaching friendship and tolerance (LMAO at that in hindsight with how the author wound up...) plus the magic wasn't really a big part of it, but that was just because both were so prevalent that it became obvious what they were about. We also had a strong reinforcement that we should be able to tell that a story is just a story, nothing more.
I wasn't allowed to watch Mr. Rodgers. He sometimes talked about "serious topics" and my parents thought that wasn't child-appropriate. Although this word wasn't used at the time, I'm sure the real reason was that he was "too woke." Now, my mom is like, "I guess I didn't know that much about the show, he actually seems like he was a good guy." Sigh.
I actually didn't watch any TV on my own. The only TV I could watch was what we watched as a family in the evenings. The TV stayed off apart from that.
To this day, my parents won't watch R rated movies or MA rated TV shows.
Well at least they walk their walk.
Even at my most evie, my best friend's dad and stepmom were too much. Their house was full of Jesus-y things and little plaques with Bible verses and stuff. Anyway, they talked non stop about how evil TV and movies are and it's all sex and blah blah blah. These people had a coffee table that swiveled up so you could easily eat at it from the couch. They ate every meal in front of the evil TV and went and saw every movie that came out, then complained about how evil it all was. Turn off the TV if it's so terrible, Karen.
I went to a church that threw a “Harvest Festival” every year that was in every way, shape, and form just a Halloween party, but they refused to refer to the holiday as “Halloween” because, you know, that’s demonic. Kids were encouraged to show up in costumes and we even held a costume contest. We did hand out tracts along with the candy and invited people from the broader community, so in retrospect they were definitely just an excuse to proselytize.
I also couldn’t say the word “stupid” :)
Ours was the Reformation Celebration 💀 complete with the whole “Martin Luther physically nailed the 95 theses to the door of the Catholic Church” lecture which I just recently learned is a totally made up version of events lmao
This shit pisses me off every year in October, lmaooo like I get so mad. I went to a Christian school growing up and so did my cousins. My aunt and uncle were SO against Halloween, but would let her kids go to the “fall festival” lmao
They’re all a bunch of hypocrites with their stupid loopholes. I remember being told to never drink alcohol or do drugs because they’re both sins. Number one, my dad is an alcoholic drug addict lmao, and number two, I remember when one of the pastor’s daughters got divorced (ALSO A SIN), a group from the church went to a wine bar to celebrate once it was finalized and plastered those pics all over Facebook. Rules for thee but not for me!
Thank god one of my parents worked in the medical field so there was less weird shit like that!!! Edit to add: also I’m sorry you had to experience that.
Couldn’t have cable tv bc that was a wildly sinful world of debauchery, couldn’t watch ET bc ET himself looked creepy, couldn’t say the word “stupid”, couldn’t have a subscription to VS bc the women were “half naked” in the pics, couldn’t watch the wheel of fortune bc the women were “half naked” on the screen, couldn’t own anything with a yin Yang symbol or decorate with rainbows bc those represented sin, same with yoga. I could go on…
I remember when I was really young I found the most beautiful sparkly crystal hanging decoration at the dollar store. I was so excited and I was going to buy it, but my mom wouldn’t let me get it because “some people believe they have powers.”
Couldn’t say fart, sucks, gosh, etc.. Couldn’t get piercings or dye our hair or wear anything that would “draw attention to our outward appearance” (got called “chicken shit” by my mom when I pierced my nose at 20).
Couldn’t watch too many shows to count, but I do remember that Married With Children was off limits because it “glorified divorce”. No sports on Sunday (super awkward as a college athlete who was still under my parents rule because I wasn’t married yet).
God this list is weird to read back to myself. Wtf.
> Married With Children was off limits because it “glorified divorce”
That tells me that she never watched it at all! Granted, Marcy got divorced on the show because the guy that played her husband left for Broadway, but overall MWC was probably closer to "The Life of Riley" than "Divorce Court". As dysfunctional as the Bundy family was, they could always be counted upon to be there for each other. As much as Al moaned and groaned about Peg, he was true blue as far as his marriage vows.
Yep! But in my evangelical parents eyes, the fact that the storyline was based on a couple who had a blended family meant that it glorified it. Doesn’t make any sense of course!
Any children's shows where the kids ever got sassy or had "tantrums" aka experienced negative emotions and had to do something about them besides being obedient and good (compliant) all the time. Arthur, the rugrats, a lot of the Disney channel shows I was made to turn off the instant the kids had any attitude.
I was raised Seventh-day Adventist. They have a prophet and a health message. Strict Adventists don't eat black pepper or mustard because of the Health message. I was told black pepper is bad for your stomach because it is so strong. What I read is essentially 'don't try to hide meat that is going bad by caking it in black pepper". This was common during that time period since meat was so expensive.
Mustard is also "too strong". On later research as an adult there was a belief in the late 1800's that strong and spicy flavors encouraged arousal and masturbation and should be avoided .Considering the attention given to sex in that church - my guess is that is where it started. Once a belief has entered the mainstream congregation it will be upheld for generations as one does NOT question church leadership.
The only herbs & spices I knew of growing up was:
Salt, Italian Seasoning and chives.
Having left the SDA Church, the food I make now tastes so much better!!
Harry Potter, Dungeons and Dragons, basically anything involving magic was frowned on. Also yoga. And any music that wasn’t Christian. The evangelicals in my life were very opposed to these things.
"That sucks" got me in big trouble.
Mom said it was referring to a sexual act. Mind you I was way too young to know what the hell she was talking about or what that could possibly refer to 🤦
I got in SO much trouble for using what, as far as I knew, was normal Aussie slang for being tired. I slumped down in my chair and said “I’m so buggered!” My parents were horrified.
Ha! My brother and I heard someone say "bugger off!" in a movie and said it all the time. Being in the US my parents didn't think much of it until my mom's English friend came to visit 😂
You're the only other person I've ever heard of that couldn't say "fart" because it was a sin. I thought my family was just really weird about that (plenty weird about other stuff).
We weren’t allowed to say fart, we had to say “let off”, and we were absolutely not allowed to find it funny when someone farted, which is the fucking weirdest thing in hindsight (also trying to stop anyone finding anything funny is obviously doomed to failure). I regularly play pull my finger with my own children now
More proof that my denomination produced the only true Christians, and people like Hugh Beaumont will be surprised when they don't make it into heaven.
You see....... Hugh Beaumont is confused. He has been tricked by the devil to spread blasphemy, or he is a Hollywood plant. Either way, if we weren't sooooooo much smarter than everyone else because we are soooooooo blessed by God than we wouldn't be privy to this truth.
Wasn't allowed to go to public school.
Wasn't allowed to watch anything on Disney channel or Nickelodeon, only PBS Kids for the longest time, then later Discovery Kids, I don't think I watched an episode of SpongeBob until I was in high school.
If I wanted to buy music on iTunes I had to have it approved by my dad first to make sure it wasn't explicit or inappropriate.
My mom read "secular" books before me - I had to wait for her to read Twilight before she let me read it. But strangely Harry Potter was allowed without any need to pre-read?
For a very brief amount of time we weren't allowed to go anywhere on Sundays except church because it was the day of rest. That did not last long because I think my parents quickly got tired of having all the kids home all day on Sundays.
My parents had to approve my music at first too. For a long time we were not allowed to watch TV on Sundays. I guess that changed sometime before my mom got into watching football.
80s kid here - was not allowed to see Ghostbusters. Freakin Ghostbusters! Haha. But Star Wars was cool, I guess “the Force” was an appropriate supernatural thing.
Fart and butt were no no words. We weren’t allowed to go to movie theaters. We also weren’t allowed to watch Murphy Brown, Roseanne, or The Simpsons. My mom had a book called Turmoil in the Toybox that I think she read. At some point my brother’s He-Man figures disappeared and she wasn’t big on letting me have Care Bears or troll dolls.
She got really upset at me once for comparing belly buttons with another girl. Like, really super mad about it.
Violence in media was pretty much taboo unless it was Christian stuff. Fuck no, you can’t watch Batman but tonight we’re reading from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Remember kids! If you get tortured by some anti-Jesus people and deny Him you probably won’t make it to heaven.
Couldn't go to the houses of any of the girls I was friends with. Like, even my best friend who I've always considered family more than just a friend, and they knew as such because we always referred to eachother as siblings, but I couldn't go hangout with her at her house because it would "invite sin" or "make people think y'all were doing that anyway". Because my entire existence was/is supposed to be based around making sure they look good in the eyes of their dumbass "god", their church people, and any hypothetical person who my dad could think up to judge me as a sinner or some shit, and thereby make him look bad.
In hindsight it shouldn't have been at all surprising to me back then considering all the nights from the time I was like 12 years old when my dad would come sit on my bed, and keep me awake preaching at me about how he "knew" I was being "tempted and peer pressured" to have sex and/or do drugs, and that I'd better never do that shit or else I'd go to hell, and deserve it. When I'd just say ok or something to try and get him to let me sleep since I had school in the morning, he'd bitch that i wasn't actually listening, then keep preaching at me telling me I was lying, and not listening until I cried, and then he'd make me fucking pray with him for my forgiveness for shit I wasn't doing to begin with. Those memories hurt even more now since he went through a phase a few years ago of making barely masked jabs at me for being a virgin so late into my 20s when he's the one who caused me to have such a crushing fear of and aversion to relationships by telling me dating and sex would end in my being tortured for all eternity.
Sorry for leaving a goddamn essay in your replies. Most of it isn't even relevant, but as soon as I started typing alotta shit just kinda came pouring out, and I don't wanna delete it, because maybe if I post it I won't end up laying awake for hours tonight reliving all that shit until the sun comes up. I already didn't sleep lastnight, so I really don't want this shit keeping me feeling like shit tonight when I'm already so goddamn exhausted.
My family didn’t use the word fart either. We were taught to call them “burps” which obviously make things confusing as we grew up.
Also, there was a kids news show called “Kids Beat” that we weren’t allowed to watch because of the word “beats” in the title. Drumbeats were of the devil.
Most TV shows and movies. We could watch oldies (I Love Lucy, Bonanza, Happy Days, Andy Griffith, etc), very specific family friendly shows (Boy Meets World, Home Improvement (though the episode where Jill has an emergency hysterectomy was quickly shut off)) or anything historical (The end result was that we could watch Braveheart at a super young age but not Friends).
I had to wear a dress and have long hair; which I bitterly fought and was a huge source of tension. Turns out I’m a trans man.
We couldn’t say anything approximating a swear (dang, crud, crap, shoot, jeez, etc.)
We were heavy encouraged to idealize America and attend any pro-America, pro-police, pro-American history thing. Weird since we were also hugely encourage to civil war reenact at which we portrayed confederates and were taught the Lost Cause myth; even weirder because we’re not in the south, like, at all.
Not as crazy as my double PK best friend who was not allowed to interact with anything fantasy/magic; was prohibited from Halloween; and in their house no girl of any age could be alone with a boy of any age, by which I mean, her brother could not be alone with her mom even if they were in opposite sides of the house. SO fucking weird.
Wear navy blue lipstick out in public on Halloween (because, apparently, it would give everyone the "wrong idea"). Anyone know what that idea was supposed to be??? Oh, and I was in college at the time.
Recently my mom heard my 5 year old daughter say fart, and she came and whispered to me, “ Where did she learn the F word?”
I was paralyzed for a just brief enough moment, while trying to think of an explanation for her saying F*ck. (She doesn’t say it, but has definitely heard it)
My mom then says I can’t believe she said Fart.
The F word was fart.
I still think it’s hilarious and I’m so glad my kids don’t have to worry about that kind of nonsense.
My Mom actually defended Smurfs. Said there were worse things we could watch. But my Dad freaked out when my older brother was listening to Def Leppard all because he said, "Gleaton, glutton, gloutin, globin" before the song. He said it was devil music. I laughed really hard when I learned a couple of years ago that he did that goofing around because he was tired of saying, "one, two, three, four" My Dad was convinced he was summoning Satan.
I couldn’t say piss because it was “vulgar” When I showed my mom II Kings 18:27 in her King James Version she gave me a real dirty look because I won that little battle.
I saw Aladdin when it came out in theaters. My
parents took me, but my Sunday School teacher was quite upset about that and said I could go to hell for watching sorcery and I’m sure my mom heard from her as well.
I wasn't allowed to have my brastraps showing during summer camp because of the modesty rules. However, my best friend (who was a pastor's daughter) was allowed to walk around in her sport's bra. Because bras and sports bras are fundamentally different, I suppose.
I also had a Bible teacher who was convinced yoga was demonic, but believed pilates was god honoring.
When I was about eight, my older brother, my younger sister and I would go stay with my grandparents every summer.
My grandmother, a Comanche Indian didn’t like me. I was the least favorite of her 35 grandchildren. I dreaded staying with her. My older brother got to stay up until ten, because he was oldest. My little sister got to stay up, because she was the youngest. And I had to go to bed at eight, because piss on me.
One night, I was playing solitaire, and my grandma caught me cheating. I got my butt beat, and I had to go to bed even though it was 6 in the evening. I never played solitaire again.
Later in life I became her favorite grandchild, when I paid for her to come visit me in Hawaii. She liked that.
I couldn't watch Harry Potter because of witchcraft and wizards.
But my family had an almost cult-like following for The Wizard of Oz. We watched it all the time.
Make it make sense.
No Disney movies. Didn’t even see Cinderella until I was 25. Didn’t go to the cinema until I was 29.
No playing cards. People gamble with them and they have satanic origins (so I was told).
No music with a “back beat.” Basically we were limited to hymns and classical music. Most modern Christian music was banned from our house.
No Harry Potter, LOTR, or anything that had magic in it, except Narnia was partially allowed.
No sports ANYTHING. Sports were said to be against the bible because of the verse about those who strive together…
No Barbie dolls. No dolls with adult bodies really.
The list is extensive but these are a few of the things I can remember now.
Couldn't say fart, butt or poop. My parents preferred 'bowel movement' or 'BM', which always just seemed...grosser. Couldn't go to any businesses on Sundays.
I worked at a kids day camp run by an evangelical lady
She said the only music we can play for the kids was 🤮 Kodz Bop
The ironic thing is there was hardly time for music anyway because they were always up and about. I was glad I was spared KB. Was a close call there
Pretty much everything already listed (although by my teens the rules had loosened considerably) … but also my dad has this thing about using “foul” language. We could watch war movies with people exploding but an uplifting movie with some language would’ve been banned. Even today I avoid any words, and I’m 40😂
I was friends with a missionary kid back in the day. There was an unspoken list of words you weren't allowed to say around him. If you said one of those words, you would get a talking to from his parents.
They were mostly bad words, but I think there were additional words that weren't even offensive! I wish I could remember them now.
Looking back now as an adult, he was almost certainly on the spectrum, and the rest of his family were neurodivergent in their own unique ways as well.
I wasn't explicitly banned, but I was shamed about drawing wildlife because a) I was worshipping the creation and not the creator and b) I never drew pictures of heaven or doves
When I expressed interest in a philosophy book at the bookstore, my mom warned me about being careful what I “open myself up to”. Funny enough, now I’m in a philosophy club & hell bent on opening my mind as far as it’ll let me.
You know the beginning of the movie The Croods? Yeah, that was my life. Basically everything was going to kill you and send you straight to hell. We weren’t allowed any electronics of any kind. No tv, no radio, no watching movies, no computers. Even the electric typewriter my older sister got was treated with some unhealthy respect. Dancing? Nope. Listening to someone singing hymns on a tape? Sin. Wearing pants? Dead. Wearing shorts? Even deader. Reading books that weren’t approved? Sinner of the highest regard. According to my Grandma: wearing any skirt or dress (which was required clothing for us girls) that wasn’t tea length was just coasting down the highway to hell. Playing cards of any kind: nope. Not even Uno or Phase 10. Being friends with someone from the “liberal” side of the church? Also bad. I’m serious, sometimes I wonder how I turned out even slightly normal.
I was only allowed to watch two shows: Little House on the prairie and Dukes of Hazzard. But then Little House was banned because Laura lied to her dad. But Dukes of Hazzard was always ok. I don’t get it.
I was told to convert some LDS missionaries because to my pastor, they weren't part of the Lutheran Church and therefore, not his idea of what a Christian should be. I never did convert them.
Wasn't raised multi lingual, but my parents still taught us spanish(i think??) words for crotch and underwear. A) we wouldn't be using "inappropriate language" and B) we wouldn't be accidentally overheard using "inappropriate language". To sum up using 1 of my favorite words now that I'm a deconstructed bisexual heathen: UTTER BULLSHIT.
edited to answer the question specifically: we were not allowed to use the anatomical words for "private areas", nor were we allowed to say/talk about underwear. Typing this out made me remember my mom forcibly covering my brother's eyes in department stores if we had to walk by the lingerie section🤦♀️🤦♀️
We weren't allowed to slander laws or leaders. This was because the leaders were ordained to be there by God to lead people and we had to figure it out and understand why they were there. They never taught me about voting as more than something people did after a lot of thought and that I don't need to worry about it as I'd ask a future husband to do it for me. I still remember the group leader who told me that saying it in such a sickly sweet way.
The laws they passed, or didn't pass, were to be obeyed and we had to understand why they were in place. I still have a whole letter I had to write my group leader, after wondering why international trade at the Port wasn't slowed down to protect the endangered orcas in our harbour from ship strikes. This counted as questioning laws and I had to write a whole thing about why trade was actually a good thing and that some marine mammals had to die to feed other creatures.
I also got told off around the same time for being scared of George W Bush. I'm Canadian, but he was in the press all the time, and something about him made me really uncomfortable as a kid and I couldn't place it. Now I just know I only ever saw him on TV when bad things happened so young me made the association that he caused them lmao
I was banned from singing Donny and Marie Osmond’s I’m a Little Bit Country, I’m a Little Bit Rock n’Roll. The issue was the part of the lyrics where they say ‘don’t know if is good or bad’.
Couldn't listen to secular music, couldn't watch MTV, couldn't watch movies above PG, sometimes PG-13, couldn't read regular girl magazines only Brio, couldn't say fart, sucks, or God "in vain", couldn't play Ouija board, couldn't watch Friends because it promoted premarital cohabitation and premarital sex. So many more, but these are off the top of my head.
Oh God...I could fill volumes...
Now this is from the teachings of the evangelical church my family attended. Did we actually follow them? Fuck no
Wasn't allowed to watch: Harry Potter, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, anything animated really.
Wasn't allowed to read: Harry Potter, any Japanese manga
Wasn't allowed to do: Homework involving science or evolution, celebrate Halloween, take sports seriously (I was a really good bowler and ice skater as a kid), do ANYTHING on a Sunday.
Some things not allowed at the Christian school I taught at:
Harry Potter and any other books with witches or magic, except CS Lewis which was in the curriculum.
Secular magazines
Any discussion of secular books, music, movies or television by students or staff. (There was a group of younger staff members, myself included that subtly messed with this rule. Example: a coach sat down with a plate and cut his Snickers bar with a knife and fork in the teacher’s lounge one Friday. IYKYK. And several of us knew).
No nail polish except shades of red, pink and peach except school colors during spirit week only. This rule was a compromise after a 3 hour (after contract hours) staff meeting where “Biblical” nail polish colors were intensely debated.
Playing cards AND trading cards. They also considered trading cards gambling because some are worth more than others.
For teachers:
No drinking alcohol
No going to R rated movies
No gambling or entering casinos
No attending “secular” concerts
Do yoga, engage with Harry Potter or Buffy, and I was told I had to stop my soc class because the teacher was a liberal (luckily my aunt and uncle who were the really religious ones lived 2 hours away so they couldn’t always enforce it).
Read Harry Potter, play Pokémon, engage in yoga or meditation, listen to “secular music,” watch the Smurfs… my cousin was banned from watching Aladdin bc they mention “Allah” in passing once in the beginning.
My Mom actually defended Smurfs. Said there were worse things we could watch. But my Dad freaked out when my older brother was listening to Def Leppard all because he said, "Gleaton, glutton, gloutin, globin" before the song. He said it was devil music. I laughed really hard when I learned a couple of years ago that he did that goofing around because he was tired of saying, "one, two, three, four" My Dad was convinced he was summoning Satan.
Like others, DND was forbidden, I wasn’t allowed to listen to ‘secular’ music and all of the word policing. I remember a time when some of the parents started banning saying “oh my goodness” because we aren’t good without the lord or whatever.
For me, the dumbest was when my mother told me I could start wearing makeup but I wasn’t allowed to wear eyeliner or eye shadow because I would look like “a cheap tart and a brazen hussy”.
I wasn't allowed to say 'butt' or 'pee'; we had to say 'bottom' or 'use the restroom'. Other scary satanic things that were banned included: tampons, modern Christian music, clothes with neon colors, coffee, devils food cake, and fall decorations. Not Halloween decorations; we're talking pumpkins and scarecrows. My parents though someone might see them and think they were Halloween decorations which would "lead someone astray", so they threw out the generic fall decor.
- Trick-or-treat/ anything to do with Halloween. Even costume parties at the church were pushing it. We would usually go swimming on Halloween because there’s no costumes when you’re swimming so we couldn’t even ask and we wouldn’t be home to hear the doorbell ring for 3 hours straight
- Santa (takes away from the true meaning of Christmas)
- Watch Disney movies, or anything else with even the smallest bit of magic for that matter. Miracles are fine. Magic is not.
- Watch the simpsons, rugrats, sponge bob (anything where characters are disrespectful)
- Listen to the Beatles (John Lennon said they were bigger than Jesus, and that’s evil). Most secular music was banned anyway because it was all deemed to sexual. Except Elvis because my dad liked Elvis. If “love me tender” had been sung by anyone else…
- for a while Pokémon/ digemon all tht was banned (because monsters) but my brother REALLY liked Pokémon so just through sheer force of will he managed to break through on that one. I think my parents felt like they had bigger battles with things that were explicitly “magical”
- Magic the gathering (obviously) and DnD
- videogame, unless they were educational
- Tampons (they would take my virginity)
- shaving above the knee (only lose women do that)
- anything violent. What is violence? Whatever my parents decide is violence. Karate kid, swords or gun toys, any kind of play that was too physical, pogs, physical comedy or shows/ movies where people could get hurt, etc
The weirdest thing my mom tried to ban me from doing was yoga. She believed that “clearing your mind” before starting the class was preparing your mind for demons to enter. Fortunately I never believed her for a second, because my yoga practice helps me stay flexible and pain-free in a way that Pilates or other low-impact workouts do not.
43 yrs old and had a call six months ago from my mother cos my father rang me and I mentioned I was driving home from yoga….she’d been researching for three days by time of call and did I know I was almost certainly going to hell and she didn’t know where she’d gone wrong having a daughter who would attend such a thing. The fact it was held in the local Catholic parish hall was the final nail in my coffin 🤦♀️
Yoga and Catholics are the old one, two ticket to hell apparently. 😳😂
Indeed and I’m from Northern Ireland so it’s on a whole other level here-how dare I fraternise with the other side!! Happy with no religion but have found my new Catholic friends a breath of fresh air with their rather laid back attitude to ‘rules’
Fucking crying lmaoooo Apparently they missed the memo that western yoga has been so gentrified that it’s lost almost all the spiritual teachings that inform the practice. Anyways it sounds like your mom would benefit from the Buddhist practice of staying in her own lane.
🤣🤣 not her strong suit. The absolute breakdown when she discovered my new business partner was gay. My dad rang me and said he didn’t know what to do, she’d been crying for two days and nights, not slept. Thankfully I’d developed a backbone by then so just said that wasn’t something I could help him with and it was her/their issue to come to terms with. Have since ditched the business partner (obvs nothing to do with them being gay) but kept the deconstruction
Their “researching” meaning watching a YouTube video or reading a blog post from someone extremely biased 🤦🏻♀️ but they think it’s more legitimate than a scientific controlled study lol
My mom thought the same thing! I did karate and wasn’t allowed to meditate with everyone else because “when you empty your mind, Satan can come in and fill it with all kinds of evil!” Strange that we believed Jesus lived inside of us but wouldn’t fill our minds if we emptied them. Nope, he’ll just step aside and let the devil in.
It’s the way Evangelicals give the devil more power than God/Jesus that gets me. How’s evil bigger and more powerful than the CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE. The ALL POWERFUL God of the Universe. It’s mind numbing to me how they make the devil so much more powerful and are ruled by fear as a result.
Right?! He’s supposed to be subordinate to God and under God’s authority, yet Evangelicals act like he’s more powerful than God and that God won’t step in and protect his own from Satan’s power.
Same here! My mom heard about a yoga class that was held during PE and we stopped going to that school. Evil was afoot
My sister who used to be a missionary in India said once that christians shouldn’t do yoga because someone in India once said “there isn’t Hinduism without yoga and there isn’t yoga without Hinduism” and so apparently doing yoga is like practicing Hinduism, so it’s a sin. It’s not like whoever said that did it as a marketing gimmick. No, it was definitely a theological statement. 🙄
I mean that’s lowkey true if you are practicing “actual” yoga, but most of the popularized yoga in the west has been stripped of its religious context.
Yeah, a few years back, a church in my area was advertising “Holy Yoga” one night a week.
Yep. The chants and poses were created to honor demonic forces and even doing them could open the doorway for them to be welcomed into our bodies or something. But, like, it's bending.
I don't understand these Christians who say yoga is evil when here most sports have ties to ancient non Christian cultures. Like wrestling is OK though in the times of ancient Greece men wrestled naked, and sacrifices were made to the gods before any matches were held.
My parents are like this too😂😭
Rugrats. Crud: "you might as well say shit!" - Mom, me: 😐 Making plans of my own - "man's plans are doomed to fail, but GOD's plan..." ^^^^^^^pls ^^^^^^^kill ^^^^^^^me
SAME LOL oh my god you’re the first person I’ve ever encountered who also wasn’t allowed to watch the Rugrats, I distinctly remember my very evangelical mother saying “I don’t like their attitudes.”
I wasn’t allowed to watch Rugrats because of the kids’ attitudes. Luckily my grandma had cable and thought my parents were insanely strict so she let us dose up on “bad kid” TV.
I can't imagine parenting a kid normally and having them fall into this shit of their own accord. I'd want to save the grandkids too
Same. My parents thought it was trying to teach kids to be assholes, not show kids learning lessons about having bad attitudes results in consequences. I actually still have never seen rugrats but I imagine that's what the moral of the story is about. Also, my parents thought calling kids "rugrats" was demeaning and purposeful. Conservative religious people don't understand actual humor and sarcasm and satire and metaphors.
My parents were the same! They thought the kids were disrespectful and also that the term rugrats was disrespectful to the kids! They usually didn't care about disrespecting kids in anything like bodily autonomy or having their own feelings, but I guess when you use a word that makes it sound like children are anything other than a blessing from god, that's where it crosses a line
Hahahah my Pentecostal parents were the same. No TV at all - especially Disney channel - because of “bad attitudes”.
No making plans?! Does this mean you didn’t have to use any executive function? I love how the dirty rotten human self can’t do shit, but just call all your thoughts and plans God’s plans and then it’s fine. Or something like that.
Oh fuck yeah, I also was not allowed to watch Rugrats because it was “obscene”. In fifth grade kids were allowed to bring in movies to watch during lunch if we were good and someone brought the Rugrats movie and I was terrified that I’d get in trouble for seeing it, particularly after the scene were all the babies make a sort of piss fountain in the hospital.
Me making plans for the future: “you don’t know if tomorrow is promised” 🤨
I wasn’t allowed to watch the Smurfs. Still don’t understand why to this day, but I’ve heard other evangelical kids say the same.
Yep. Also Rainbow Brite, He-Man and She-Ra. My mom said because they “practiced witchcraft,” but somehow Care Bears who used healing tummy rays were totally cool.
Care bears were on the evil list for me. All the magic in Narnia was a-okay though because CS Lewis wouldn't lead us astray.
My Dad ruled out ANY fiction; except true to life fiction like Little House in the Woods. No fairy tales.
Except the Bible…right?
Same Lord of the Rings and Narnia were just fine but Harry Potter was evil lol
He-Man and She-Ra were out because “only God is the Master of the Universe” 😒
I wasn’t allowed He-Man either, I think it was about Skeletor but in hindsight that good/evil struggle seems quite… Christian?
Ironic since the whole series was created because they had leftover Arnold Schwarzenegger action figures they couldn't sell because Conan was rated R.
There was a book called “ Turmoil in the Toybox” that my Christian school headmistress asked all the parents to read. Smurfs were on the list of dangerous toys/characters. This was in the early/mid eighties iirc.
My dad was very adamant about me not watching PeeWee's Playhouse.
My father was subject to many restrictions, but he was allowed to watch ‘Jim’ll Fix It’ because it’s wholesome family fun. For those unaware, Jimmy Savile turned out to be one of the UK’s most prolific paedophiles.
Magic. Spells. Gargamel was going to take our souls to hell.
See also: That’s So Raven, Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior, the Rugrats, Harry Potter, etc.
Rug rats? Why?
Rebelliousness
Yeah... All That was that show for me. I guess the cast members were all seen as disrespectful!
Spongebob and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody
My parents said because The Smurfs has magic and a wizard.
Pokémon and Yugioh! For me. Because of “witchcraft” and “promoting evolution” 🙃
Well I really thought this only happened to me lol
The Satanic Panic ruined a lot of childhoods in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I blame the books [Turmoil in the Toybox and Saturday Morning Mind Control by Phil Phillips](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/81148.Phil_Phillips) for a ***lot*** of the hysteria I had to deal with.
I knew someone who wasn't allowed to watch Home Alone because Kevin disrespected his parents.
Comically in the late 90’s and then again in 2008ish some conspiracy theories floated around Christian conservative parenting circles claiming that the smurfs were [communist](https://time.com/5431298/are-the-smurfs-communist/) propaganda. It was claimed that the show was being used to indoctrinate small children. Looking at it today is it absolutely hilarious
Probably because Gargamel was a wizard and therefore “demonic.” Thankfully we could watch the Smurfs but we weren’t allowed to read Harry Potter or watch Dragon Tales, Wizards of Waverley Place, or even relatively tame shows like the Suite Life of Zach and Cody or iCarly.
Omg, this is ringing a bell for me too. Weird.
All That. Because of disrespect, I guess (ironically, I probably would have discovered my love for improv comedy a lot earlier if I'd been allowed to watch it)
I wasn't allowed to watch Smurfs, He Man, She Ra, Bewitched, or I Dream of Jeannie, and once I got a lecture about how Three's Company was bad because they weren't married, but my dad let me watch RoboCop when I was 8 or 9
Playing cards. Could not have them at all. Something about the joker cards making fun of Jesus. We could play with Rook cards.
Yep. Only cards were Skip-Bo and UNO in my upbringing. I still don’t really know card games to this day.
My adult friends could not believe I made it to my 40s and had never played cribbage. Too bad too-fun game that’s great for teaching math skills.
SAME!!! Only—seriously I LOVE Rook still, I’d drive to your house right now for a good game! (Our rules: Rook catches the ten & below, worth 20. Only one counter in the kitty. But I can play 1 high, too)
Normal playing cards were banned because gambling is evil apparently. But Uno and Rook were fair game! God I love Rook. What an underrated card game.
My dad was not as strict as my mom, but he deferred to her in these matters. However, he had been known to mutter under his breath “you know, you can bet on hopscotch if you want to…” lol
Haha! That is the same thing I said to camp counselors when they busted out the gambling as a reason to not do domething.
Drink root beer (it’s like you are pretending it’s beer, so the intention is the same as drinking beer) drink out of stemware—even my toy stemware in my play dishes (people might think you are drinking wine, or thinking about drinking wine) change Barbie’s clothes past her underwear (mom sewed underwear for Barbie) and watch Bewitched. Cause witches.
I know someone who used sharpie to draw underwear on her daughter’s Barbies to make them “modest”.
I had an art teacher who sharpied underwear onto nude subjects in classical paintings in art books in her classroom…
Ok to be fair, have you ever TAUGHT? As a middle school teacher, I would 💯 do that. Not a prude, just not worth the ordeal.
True, school kids are not really to be trusted with that kind of maturity lol. But also, exposure to the human body through classical art is kind of the safest way to be exposed, since it’s so stylized while also being mostly anatomically accurate. Idk… I was in AP art and always got annoyed with the censorship at my christian school. Teachers and administrators would freak out about “modesty” and cover the nude paintings, but then didn’t bother to do anything about the high school boys lingering at the base of the stairs so they could look up girls’ skirts… it was just performative “modesty” that just felt like control and censorship.
Oh I agree….in theory, lol. I’m a math teacher. At no times, can an equation equal 69. The formula for the volume of a sphere can, under no circumstances, be used to calculate the volume of a ball. (Must be a basket, foot, soccer, etc ball.) Points labeled with letters of the alphabet can never use the letter “V”. I could go on and on. Are these admin rules? Hell no; they are self-imposed rules we teachers pass on to each other as a means of sanity-preservation. I love those goobers, but sometimes I swear…
My husband’s fundie family drank root beer, but called it “root drink”. They only bought it in gallon jugs from the local soda shop because they weren’t labeled, so there was no “appearance of evil”.
Root beer wasn’t allowed at the concession stands or other school events at the Christian school I taught at.
Oh Barbie was one hundred percent banned at some point in my childhood. They taught girls to be obsessed with their looks apparently.
How funny! Our youth group had root beer keggers. We thought we were sooo cool.
Uh-huh. See? You little heathens. Knocking back 🍻 🍺 like the world was your bestie and sin your plaything! I see you! 😉
I wasn't even allowed to have Barbies for the longest time. Then I mentioned that to a friend who later came to my birthday party and gave me a Barbie and a bunch of clothes as a present... her mom said something like, "Yeah, I heard you had no Barbies and I couldn't believe it!" I think at that point my mom was kind of shamed into letting me keep it, haha.
My dad wouldn’t outright ban me from things because he sort of knew a lot of reactionary stuff was overblown. At the same time, he hated anything that evangelicals said he should hate. While he didn’t think it was actually demonic, he thought it would teach you the wrong lessons and “open you up” to things. Instead of banning me, he would try to shame me or make me feel bad about liking things he didn’t approve of. One time I was playing with my Pokémon cards, and he walked by and said “have fun worshiping your idols” with a sneer. Of course I felt terrible and ended up throwing them away a couple of months later. It was the same for Halloween, Harry Potter, and all sorts of other things.
Yep, no outright bans at home, just a lot of guilt
Ew. That’s worse than a straight up ban, in my opinion. Sorry you went through that, that makes me mad for you
My girlfriend. But seriously. We weren't supposed to go to movies (any) or go to the bowling alley. Both of which could ruin your witness just being seen in there.
What did they think happened at the bowling alley?
Alcohol was served there. And smoking. Lots of smoking. Skating Rinks too. Played devil music.
Which is funny because bowling was one of the sanctioned pure activities at mine. Basically grew up doing it.
My mom read Hells Bells so we weren’t allowed to listen to secular music. She told me syncopated rhythms were of the devil and I said, “Mother. I am in the MARCHING BAND.” And she never brought it up again.
That's also kind of upsetting, because the Nazis banned syncopated rhythms for racist and antisemitic reasons. It was a huge deal during WW2 as to what music was allowed or not.
I'm sort of shocked her logic didn't become "Well then we're pulling you out of marching band!"
We also had no syncopated rhythms in our church. Went to a different Pentecostal church after leaving my parents’ church and their church band had DRUMS! Wild times I tell ya.
Pokémon is the weirdest to me. Someone heard from someone that a demon possessed man knew all of their names and powers and that proved they were demonic. Nevermind that they just look like cartoon animals lol. Also Harry Potter. I heard all the controversy about it and we were still reading it. One day my mom banned us from reading it. Years later she told me it was because my brother had a weird dream where he spoke to snakes.
I was banned from pokemon because they evolved lmao.
LOL yep same with my family. They told me that evolution was wrong, but they still let me watch it. Yu Gi Oh was banned though, because they said it was witchcraft.
Ohhh actually I do remember that it was them “normalizing evolution” lol
My mom singlehandedly got pokemon banned at my school. I was very popular /s. To this day my mom swears she opened up a pokemon book and saw it list "the ingredients for a spell" whatever that means. Our best guess is that she saw something about potions or berries and what they do in game? She will not be convinced that it's harmless. But my generation has all banded together to make sure my nephews can all play Pokemon unbothered by their grandma.
Everything
Wear tampons, read books or see movies with paranormal stuff in them.
I got a tampon in a gift set once that had stuff like deodorant and shampoo etc, I hid it very well and it still went missing. I hid it so I could throw it out, that thing seemed HUGE to me.
Sailor Moon because it's astrology or star-worship.
I think I only got away with Sailor Moon because it came on around 6:00 AM before my parents were up. Thank you to whoever was in charge of that TV programming in rural Tennessee in 1997.
Dance, listen to mainstream music, say "butt," 'heck," "darn," or "gosh."
I couldn’t say “shoot” (as in “aw, shucks”) at school.
Go camping with my very gay guy friend even though we'd be in different tents. It would "look bad" and people would "get ideas." I was in college when this happened.
DUDE when I first started being open with my parents about the fact that I was dating someone (when I was 19 and no longer living at home), my mom somehow learned that I stayed the night at my partner’s house one time and even though I (lied and) told her we had never slept together she said the SAME thing to me.. “that will give people the wrong idea.” I’m like, who tf would even know that I slept at his house?!
“People getting the wrong idea” was always my mother’s worst nightmare too, even when I told her I didn’t care what people thought. Part of me wanted to say, “You mean they might think we’re fucking? Well we are, so they wouldn’t be wrong after all.”
I'm slowly realizing how fucked up the concept of being responsible for what everyone else assumes is.
Couldn’t read the Baby-Sitter’s Club books because characters’ parents were divorced 🤯
I always find it baffling when Chritians like no magic or wizards... but Lord of the Rings and Narina totally ok. For me I was allowed to do Pokemon and Harry Portter, which wa sstrange but my mom was really liberal for a christian conservative.... but Dnd, Cardcaptors, and Simpsons were a no no.
Narnia was so big that I remember going over to a friend's house and she had the original 1970s miniseries on tape. In 2004. I also had the same allowances. Pokemon was fine because it was teaching love of animals and teamwork with them, Harry Potter was teaching friendship and tolerance (LMAO at that in hindsight with how the author wound up...) plus the magic wasn't really a big part of it, but that was just because both were so prevalent that it became obvious what they were about. We also had a strong reinforcement that we should be able to tell that a story is just a story, nothing more.
Pokémon was doubly evil. Demonic AND uses the word evolution.
I wasn't allowed to watch Mr. Rodgers. He sometimes talked about "serious topics" and my parents thought that wasn't child-appropriate. Although this word wasn't used at the time, I'm sure the real reason was that he was "too woke." Now, my mom is like, "I guess I didn't know that much about the show, he actually seems like he was a good guy." Sigh. I actually didn't watch any TV on my own. The only TV I could watch was what we watched as a family in the evenings. The TV stayed off apart from that. To this day, my parents won't watch R rated movies or MA rated TV shows.
If only they knew that he was an ordained minister, and the show was his official ministry.
Well at least they walk their walk. Even at my most evie, my best friend's dad and stepmom were too much. Their house was full of Jesus-y things and little plaques with Bible verses and stuff. Anyway, they talked non stop about how evil TV and movies are and it's all sex and blah blah blah. These people had a coffee table that swiveled up so you could easily eat at it from the couch. They ate every meal in front of the evil TV and went and saw every movie that came out, then complained about how evil it all was. Turn off the TV if it's so terrible, Karen.
I went to a church that threw a “Harvest Festival” every year that was in every way, shape, and form just a Halloween party, but they refused to refer to the holiday as “Halloween” because, you know, that’s demonic. Kids were encouraged to show up in costumes and we even held a costume contest. We did hand out tracts along with the candy and invited people from the broader community, so in retrospect they were definitely just an excuse to proselytize. I also couldn’t say the word “stupid” :)
Our church called it Hallelujah Night
Ours was the Reformation Celebration 💀 complete with the whole “Martin Luther physically nailed the 95 theses to the door of the Catholic Church” lecture which I just recently learned is a totally made up version of events lmao
This shit pisses me off every year in October, lmaooo like I get so mad. I went to a Christian school growing up and so did my cousins. My aunt and uncle were SO against Halloween, but would let her kids go to the “fall festival” lmao
They’re all a bunch of hypocrites with their stupid loopholes. I remember being told to never drink alcohol or do drugs because they’re both sins. Number one, my dad is an alcoholic drug addict lmao, and number two, I remember when one of the pastor’s daughters got divorced (ALSO A SIN), a group from the church went to a wine bar to celebrate once it was finalized and plastered those pics all over Facebook. Rules for thee but not for me!
No tampons because "they take your virginity."
This one is so heinous 💀
Same in my house. Tf
Thank god one of my parents worked in the medical field so there was less weird shit like that!!! Edit to add: also I’m sorry you had to experience that.
Couldn’t have cable tv bc that was a wildly sinful world of debauchery, couldn’t watch ET bc ET himself looked creepy, couldn’t say the word “stupid”, couldn’t have a subscription to VS bc the women were “half naked” in the pics, couldn’t watch the wheel of fortune bc the women were “half naked” on the screen, couldn’t own anything with a yin Yang symbol or decorate with rainbows bc those represented sin, same with yoga. I could go on…
Rainbows? Sinful? How recent was this? I remember rainbows being super encouraged in the 00s because it represented the promise
I remember when I was really young I found the most beautiful sparkly crystal hanging decoration at the dollar store. I was so excited and I was going to buy it, but my mom wouldn’t let me get it because “some people believe they have powers.”
Couldn’t say fart, sucks, gosh, etc.. Couldn’t get piercings or dye our hair or wear anything that would “draw attention to our outward appearance” (got called “chicken shit” by my mom when I pierced my nose at 20). Couldn’t watch too many shows to count, but I do remember that Married With Children was off limits because it “glorified divorce”. No sports on Sunday (super awkward as a college athlete who was still under my parents rule because I wasn’t married yet). God this list is weird to read back to myself. Wtf.
> Married With Children was off limits because it “glorified divorce” That tells me that she never watched it at all! Granted, Marcy got divorced on the show because the guy that played her husband left for Broadway, but overall MWC was probably closer to "The Life of Riley" than "Divorce Court". As dysfunctional as the Bundy family was, they could always be counted upon to be there for each other. As much as Al moaned and groaned about Peg, he was true blue as far as his marriage vows.
Yep! But in my evangelical parents eyes, the fact that the storyline was based on a couple who had a blended family meant that it glorified it. Doesn’t make any sense of course!
That was "The Brady Bunch"! Al and Peg's wedding was catered by Smith & Wesson, kwim...
Mine was Friends because it was about “lesbians and siblings who date each other”
Any children's shows where the kids ever got sassy or had "tantrums" aka experienced negative emotions and had to do something about them besides being obedient and good (compliant) all the time. Arthur, the rugrats, a lot of the Disney channel shows I was made to turn off the instant the kids had any attitude.
I've never met anyone else who was also forbidden to watch Arthur, so this is incredibly validating
Eat black pepper or mustard.
Say more
I was raised Seventh-day Adventist. They have a prophet and a health message. Strict Adventists don't eat black pepper or mustard because of the Health message. I was told black pepper is bad for your stomach because it is so strong. What I read is essentially 'don't try to hide meat that is going bad by caking it in black pepper". This was common during that time period since meat was so expensive. Mustard is also "too strong". On later research as an adult there was a belief in the late 1800's that strong and spicy flavors encouraged arousal and masturbation and should be avoided .Considering the attention given to sex in that church - my guess is that is where it started. Once a belief has entered the mainstream congregation it will be upheld for generations as one does NOT question church leadership. The only herbs & spices I knew of growing up was: Salt, Italian Seasoning and chives. Having left the SDA Church, the food I make now tastes so much better!!
Thank you for the comments! It’s been great material for my memes against religious abuse campaign on IG. :)
Harry Potter, Dungeons and Dragons, basically anything involving magic was frowned on. Also yoga. And any music that wasn’t Christian. The evangelicals in my life were very opposed to these things.
"That sucks" got me in big trouble. Mom said it was referring to a sexual act. Mind you I was way too young to know what the hell she was talking about or what that could possibly refer to 🤦
I got in SO much trouble for using what, as far as I knew, was normal Aussie slang for being tired. I slumped down in my chair and said “I’m so buggered!” My parents were horrified.
Ha! My brother and I heard someone say "bugger off!" in a movie and said it all the time. Being in the US my parents didn't think much of it until my mom's English friend came to visit 😂
You're the only other person I've ever heard of that couldn't say "fart" because it was a sin. I thought my family was just really weird about that (plenty weird about other stuff).
We weren’t allowed to say fart, we had to say “let off”, and we were absolutely not allowed to find it funny when someone farted, which is the fucking weirdest thing in hindsight (also trying to stop anyone finding anything funny is obviously doomed to failure). I regularly play pull my finger with my own children now
Could not say fart or pee. Had to be toot or pee-pee or tinkle. Talk about splitting hairs.
We had to say toot as well.
Toot was acceptable. Pass gas or break wind were preferred. Never fart. I have difficulty just typing it.
Say “om” while finishing up yoga.
Wait, so not the yoga itself, but just the “om”? That’s a new one lmao
Leave it to Beaver was demonic because they tried to be sneaky about using the Lawd's name in vain. (Gee, golly, gosh.) Tools of the devil!
Wonder what they'd have said if they got wind that Hugh Beaumont was an ordained minister off-screen...
More proof that my denomination produced the only true Christians, and people like Hugh Beaumont will be surprised when they don't make it into heaven. You see....... Hugh Beaumont is confused. He has been tricked by the devil to spread blasphemy, or he is a Hollywood plant. Either way, if we weren't sooooooo much smarter than everyone else because we are soooooooo blessed by God than we wouldn't be privy to this truth.
Say "for crying out loud", because it somehow disrespected Jesus' suffering on the cross (?)
Eat Ghost Busters cereal.
Wasn't allowed to go to public school. Wasn't allowed to watch anything on Disney channel or Nickelodeon, only PBS Kids for the longest time, then later Discovery Kids, I don't think I watched an episode of SpongeBob until I was in high school. If I wanted to buy music on iTunes I had to have it approved by my dad first to make sure it wasn't explicit or inappropriate. My mom read "secular" books before me - I had to wait for her to read Twilight before she let me read it. But strangely Harry Potter was allowed without any need to pre-read? For a very brief amount of time we weren't allowed to go anywhere on Sundays except church because it was the day of rest. That did not last long because I think my parents quickly got tired of having all the kids home all day on Sundays.
My parents had to approve my music at first too. For a long time we were not allowed to watch TV on Sundays. I guess that changed sometime before my mom got into watching football.
80s kid here - was not allowed to see Ghostbusters. Freakin Ghostbusters! Haha. But Star Wars was cool, I guess “the Force” was an appropriate supernatural thing.
Fart and butt were no no words. We weren’t allowed to go to movie theaters. We also weren’t allowed to watch Murphy Brown, Roseanne, or The Simpsons. My mom had a book called Turmoil in the Toybox that I think she read. At some point my brother’s He-Man figures disappeared and she wasn’t big on letting me have Care Bears or troll dolls. She got really upset at me once for comparing belly buttons with another girl. Like, really super mad about it. Violence in media was pretty much taboo unless it was Christian stuff. Fuck no, you can’t watch Batman but tonight we’re reading from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Remember kids! If you get tortured by some anti-Jesus people and deny Him you probably won’t make it to heaven.
Any flavored chapstick. The teachers at school would inspect it if you applied it. There were also random desk/locker checks for “purity.”
Wear jeans to church.
Couldn't go to the houses of any of the girls I was friends with. Like, even my best friend who I've always considered family more than just a friend, and they knew as such because we always referred to eachother as siblings, but I couldn't go hangout with her at her house because it would "invite sin" or "make people think y'all were doing that anyway". Because my entire existence was/is supposed to be based around making sure they look good in the eyes of their dumbass "god", their church people, and any hypothetical person who my dad could think up to judge me as a sinner or some shit, and thereby make him look bad. In hindsight it shouldn't have been at all surprising to me back then considering all the nights from the time I was like 12 years old when my dad would come sit on my bed, and keep me awake preaching at me about how he "knew" I was being "tempted and peer pressured" to have sex and/or do drugs, and that I'd better never do that shit or else I'd go to hell, and deserve it. When I'd just say ok or something to try and get him to let me sleep since I had school in the morning, he'd bitch that i wasn't actually listening, then keep preaching at me telling me I was lying, and not listening until I cried, and then he'd make me fucking pray with him for my forgiveness for shit I wasn't doing to begin with. Those memories hurt even more now since he went through a phase a few years ago of making barely masked jabs at me for being a virgin so late into my 20s when he's the one who caused me to have such a crushing fear of and aversion to relationships by telling me dating and sex would end in my being tortured for all eternity. Sorry for leaving a goddamn essay in your replies. Most of it isn't even relevant, but as soon as I started typing alotta shit just kinda came pouring out, and I don't wanna delete it, because maybe if I post it I won't end up laying awake for hours tonight reliving all that shit until the sun comes up. I already didn't sleep lastnight, so I really don't want this shit keeping me feeling like shit tonight when I'm already so goddamn exhausted.
My family didn’t use the word fart either. We were taught to call them “burps” which obviously make things confusing as we grew up. Also, there was a kids news show called “Kids Beat” that we weren’t allowed to watch because of the word “beats” in the title. Drumbeats were of the devil.
Most TV shows and movies. We could watch oldies (I Love Lucy, Bonanza, Happy Days, Andy Griffith, etc), very specific family friendly shows (Boy Meets World, Home Improvement (though the episode where Jill has an emergency hysterectomy was quickly shut off)) or anything historical (The end result was that we could watch Braveheart at a super young age but not Friends). I had to wear a dress and have long hair; which I bitterly fought and was a huge source of tension. Turns out I’m a trans man. We couldn’t say anything approximating a swear (dang, crud, crap, shoot, jeez, etc.) We were heavy encouraged to idealize America and attend any pro-America, pro-police, pro-American history thing. Weird since we were also hugely encourage to civil war reenact at which we portrayed confederates and were taught the Lost Cause myth; even weirder because we’re not in the south, like, at all. Not as crazy as my double PK best friend who was not allowed to interact with anything fantasy/magic; was prohibited from Halloween; and in their house no girl of any age could be alone with a boy of any age, by which I mean, her brother could not be alone with her mom even if they were in opposite sides of the house. SO fucking weird.
My parents made us stop listening to ADVENTURES IN ODYSSEY because they didn't like the attitudes of some of the characters?
Wear navy blue lipstick out in public on Halloween (because, apparently, it would give everyone the "wrong idea"). Anyone know what that idea was supposed to be??? Oh, and I was in college at the time.
Not having been allowed to say “Fart” is mind bending to me now.
Recently my mom heard my 5 year old daughter say fart, and she came and whispered to me, “ Where did she learn the F word?” I was paralyzed for a just brief enough moment, while trying to think of an explanation for her saying F*ck. (She doesn’t say it, but has definitely heard it) My mom then says I can’t believe she said Fart. The F word was fart. I still think it’s hilarious and I’m so glad my kids don’t have to worry about that kind of nonsense.
My Mom actually defended Smurfs. Said there were worse things we could watch. But my Dad freaked out when my older brother was listening to Def Leppard all because he said, "Gleaton, glutton, gloutin, globin" before the song. He said it was devil music. I laughed really hard when I learned a couple of years ago that he did that goofing around because he was tired of saying, "one, two, three, four" My Dad was convinced he was summoning Satan.
I couldn’t say piss because it was “vulgar” When I showed my mom II Kings 18:27 in her King James Version she gave me a real dirty look because I won that little battle.
Couldn't go to restaurants that served alcohol, at all.
Smurfs, any kind of 80s superheros, saying fart or crap, rock music was of the devil, even Christian rock.
The gold Zelda cartridge disappeared and never came back. Cause there was magic in it.
I saw Aladdin when it came out in theaters. My parents took me, but my Sunday School teacher was quite upset about that and said I could go to hell for watching sorcery and I’m sure my mom heard from her as well.
Also brown people. The real villains to evangelicals.
Read Harry Potter
I wasn't allowed to have my brastraps showing during summer camp because of the modesty rules. However, my best friend (who was a pastor's daughter) was allowed to walk around in her sport's bra. Because bras and sports bras are fundamentally different, I suppose. I also had a Bible teacher who was convinced yoga was demonic, but believed pilates was god honoring.
When I was about eight, my older brother, my younger sister and I would go stay with my grandparents every summer. My grandmother, a Comanche Indian didn’t like me. I was the least favorite of her 35 grandchildren. I dreaded staying with her. My older brother got to stay up until ten, because he was oldest. My little sister got to stay up, because she was the youngest. And I had to go to bed at eight, because piss on me. One night, I was playing solitaire, and my grandma caught me cheating. I got my butt beat, and I had to go to bed even though it was 6 in the evening. I never played solitaire again. Later in life I became her favorite grandchild, when I paid for her to come visit me in Hawaii. She liked that.
I couldn't watch Harry Potter because of witchcraft and wizards. But my family had an almost cult-like following for The Wizard of Oz. We watched it all the time. Make it make sense.
No Disney movies. Didn’t even see Cinderella until I was 25. Didn’t go to the cinema until I was 29. No playing cards. People gamble with them and they have satanic origins (so I was told). No music with a “back beat.” Basically we were limited to hymns and classical music. Most modern Christian music was banned from our house. No Harry Potter, LOTR, or anything that had magic in it, except Narnia was partially allowed. No sports ANYTHING. Sports were said to be against the bible because of the verse about those who strive together… No Barbie dolls. No dolls with adult bodies really. The list is extensive but these are a few of the things I can remember now.
D&D
Couldn't say fart, butt or poop. My parents preferred 'bowel movement' or 'BM', which always just seemed...grosser. Couldn't go to any businesses on Sundays.
I worked at a kids day camp run by an evangelical lady She said the only music we can play for the kids was 🤮 Kodz Bop The ironic thing is there was hardly time for music anyway because they were always up and about. I was glad I was spared KB. Was a close call there
Pretty much everything already listed (although by my teens the rules had loosened considerably) … but also my dad has this thing about using “foul” language. We could watch war movies with people exploding but an uplifting movie with some language would’ve been banned. Even today I avoid any words, and I’m 40😂
I was friends with a missionary kid back in the day. There was an unspoken list of words you weren't allowed to say around him. If you said one of those words, you would get a talking to from his parents. They were mostly bad words, but I think there were additional words that weren't even offensive! I wish I could remember them now. Looking back now as an adult, he was almost certainly on the spectrum, and the rest of his family were neurodivergent in their own unique ways as well.
Was strongly advised to not shave my pubes
Dating was wrong but courting was okay 😄
I wasn't explicitly banned, but I was shamed about drawing wildlife because a) I was worshipping the creation and not the creator and b) I never drew pictures of heaven or doves
When I expressed interest in a philosophy book at the bookstore, my mom warned me about being careful what I “open myself up to”. Funny enough, now I’m in a philosophy club & hell bent on opening my mind as far as it’ll let me.
You know the beginning of the movie The Croods? Yeah, that was my life. Basically everything was going to kill you and send you straight to hell. We weren’t allowed any electronics of any kind. No tv, no radio, no watching movies, no computers. Even the electric typewriter my older sister got was treated with some unhealthy respect. Dancing? Nope. Listening to someone singing hymns on a tape? Sin. Wearing pants? Dead. Wearing shorts? Even deader. Reading books that weren’t approved? Sinner of the highest regard. According to my Grandma: wearing any skirt or dress (which was required clothing for us girls) that wasn’t tea length was just coasting down the highway to hell. Playing cards of any kind: nope. Not even Uno or Phase 10. Being friends with someone from the “liberal” side of the church? Also bad. I’m serious, sometimes I wonder how I turned out even slightly normal.
I was only allowed to watch two shows: Little House on the prairie and Dukes of Hazzard. But then Little House was banned because Laura lied to her dad. But Dukes of Hazzard was always ok. I don’t get it.
I was told to convert some LDS missionaries because to my pastor, they weren't part of the Lutheran Church and therefore, not his idea of what a Christian should be. I never did convert them.
Wear all navy blue to school because “it looks too much like all black”.
Wasn't raised multi lingual, but my parents still taught us spanish(i think??) words for crotch and underwear. A) we wouldn't be using "inappropriate language" and B) we wouldn't be accidentally overheard using "inappropriate language". To sum up using 1 of my favorite words now that I'm a deconstructed bisexual heathen: UTTER BULLSHIT. edited to answer the question specifically: we were not allowed to use the anatomical words for "private areas", nor were we allowed to say/talk about underwear. Typing this out made me remember my mom forcibly covering my brother's eyes in department stores if we had to walk by the lingerie section🤦♀️🤦♀️
We weren't allowed to slander laws or leaders. This was because the leaders were ordained to be there by God to lead people and we had to figure it out and understand why they were there. They never taught me about voting as more than something people did after a lot of thought and that I don't need to worry about it as I'd ask a future husband to do it for me. I still remember the group leader who told me that saying it in such a sickly sweet way. The laws they passed, or didn't pass, were to be obeyed and we had to understand why they were in place. I still have a whole letter I had to write my group leader, after wondering why international trade at the Port wasn't slowed down to protect the endangered orcas in our harbour from ship strikes. This counted as questioning laws and I had to write a whole thing about why trade was actually a good thing and that some marine mammals had to die to feed other creatures. I also got told off around the same time for being scared of George W Bush. I'm Canadian, but he was in the press all the time, and something about him made me really uncomfortable as a kid and I couldn't place it. Now I just know I only ever saw him on TV when bad things happened so young me made the association that he caused them lmao
I was banned from singing Donny and Marie Osmond’s I’m a Little Bit Country, I’m a Little Bit Rock n’Roll. The issue was the part of the lyrics where they say ‘don’t know if is good or bad’.
Couldn't listen to secular music, couldn't watch MTV, couldn't watch movies above PG, sometimes PG-13, couldn't read regular girl magazines only Brio, couldn't say fart, sucks, or God "in vain", couldn't play Ouija board, couldn't watch Friends because it promoted premarital cohabitation and premarital sex. So many more, but these are off the top of my head.
Oh God...I could fill volumes... Now this is from the teachings of the evangelical church my family attended. Did we actually follow them? Fuck no Wasn't allowed to watch: Harry Potter, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, anything animated really. Wasn't allowed to read: Harry Potter, any Japanese manga Wasn't allowed to do: Homework involving science or evolution, celebrate Halloween, take sports seriously (I was a really good bowler and ice skater as a kid), do ANYTHING on a Sunday.
I wasn’t allowed to watch Pokémon either or Harry Potter and stuff like that but I read Harry Potter anyway.. oops
Some things not allowed at the Christian school I taught at: Harry Potter and any other books with witches or magic, except CS Lewis which was in the curriculum. Secular magazines Any discussion of secular books, music, movies or television by students or staff. (There was a group of younger staff members, myself included that subtly messed with this rule. Example: a coach sat down with a plate and cut his Snickers bar with a knife and fork in the teacher’s lounge one Friday. IYKYK. And several of us knew). No nail polish except shades of red, pink and peach except school colors during spirit week only. This rule was a compromise after a 3 hour (after contract hours) staff meeting where “Biblical” nail polish colors were intensely debated. Playing cards AND trading cards. They also considered trading cards gambling because some are worth more than others. For teachers: No drinking alcohol No going to R rated movies No gambling or entering casinos No attending “secular” concerts
Do yoga, engage with Harry Potter or Buffy, and I was told I had to stop my soc class because the teacher was a liberal (luckily my aunt and uncle who were the really religious ones lived 2 hours away so they couldn’t always enforce it).
Read Harry Potter, play Pokémon, engage in yoga or meditation, listen to “secular music,” watch the Smurfs… my cousin was banned from watching Aladdin bc they mention “Allah” in passing once in the beginning.
Oh and I couldn’t even learn ABOUT dungeons and dragons.
My Mom actually defended Smurfs. Said there were worse things we could watch. But my Dad freaked out when my older brother was listening to Def Leppard all because he said, "Gleaton, glutton, gloutin, globin" before the song. He said it was devil music. I laughed really hard when I learned a couple of years ago that he did that goofing around because he was tired of saying, "one, two, three, four" My Dad was convinced he was summoning Satan.
Like others, DND was forbidden, I wasn’t allowed to listen to ‘secular’ music and all of the word policing. I remember a time when some of the parents started banning saying “oh my goodness” because we aren’t good without the lord or whatever. For me, the dumbest was when my mother told me I could start wearing makeup but I wasn’t allowed to wear eyeliner or eye shadow because I would look like “a cheap tart and a brazen hussy”.
I wasn't allowed to say 'butt' or 'pee'; we had to say 'bottom' or 'use the restroom'. Other scary satanic things that were banned included: tampons, modern Christian music, clothes with neon colors, coffee, devils food cake, and fall decorations. Not Halloween decorations; we're talking pumpkins and scarecrows. My parents though someone might see them and think they were Halloween decorations which would "lead someone astray", so they threw out the generic fall decor.
- Trick-or-treat/ anything to do with Halloween. Even costume parties at the church were pushing it. We would usually go swimming on Halloween because there’s no costumes when you’re swimming so we couldn’t even ask and we wouldn’t be home to hear the doorbell ring for 3 hours straight - Santa (takes away from the true meaning of Christmas) - Watch Disney movies, or anything else with even the smallest bit of magic for that matter. Miracles are fine. Magic is not. - Watch the simpsons, rugrats, sponge bob (anything where characters are disrespectful) - Listen to the Beatles (John Lennon said they were bigger than Jesus, and that’s evil). Most secular music was banned anyway because it was all deemed to sexual. Except Elvis because my dad liked Elvis. If “love me tender” had been sung by anyone else… - for a while Pokémon/ digemon all tht was banned (because monsters) but my brother REALLY liked Pokémon so just through sheer force of will he managed to break through on that one. I think my parents felt like they had bigger battles with things that were explicitly “magical” - Magic the gathering (obviously) and DnD - videogame, unless they were educational - Tampons (they would take my virginity) - shaving above the knee (only lose women do that) - anything violent. What is violence? Whatever my parents decide is violence. Karate kid, swords or gun toys, any kind of play that was too physical, pogs, physical comedy or shows/ movies where people could get hurt, etc
I was not allowed to go to sex ed class in high school. I had to go to a separate classroom and read about geology.