18 Weird Family Rituals That People Thought Were Normal

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21-07-2025

When I was a kid, I'd never realized just how weird my family was until I started spending more time at my friends' houses (though some of them had pretty weird families too... Maybe families are just inherently weird???) Recently, people on Reddit shared the "normal" thing their family did that they later realized was pretty weird, and the responses had me laughing and nodding my head. Here are some of the top comments:
"I thought every family had a puke bowl. Which is not solely designated just for puke."
—sunshine_tequila"You're telling me not every family had one? My family certainly did. It was a yellowish-orangey bowl. I'll never forget it."—sketchybritt
"I grew up with an autistic brother who makes a lot of humming noises to express emotion, and the whole family eventually ended up doing it too (to a lesser extent). Didn't realize it was weird until someone pointed out we never shut up even though we're not actually saying anything."
"I thought every kid only saw their mom half the week. My mom works three 12-hour shifts Sunday-Tuesday, so I hardly saw her those days. It wasn't until I started having a later bedtime that I got to see her when she got off on those days. I remember talking to a friend, and she was talking about doing something with her mom that night, and I went, 'Wow, you get to see your mom on a Monday?'"
"When we went on road trips and crossed a border, say from Nebraska to Kansas, someone in the front seat would put their hand in the front of the dashboard and say, 'First one in Kansas,' and someone in the backseat would put their hand in the back window and say, 'Last one in Nebraska.'"
—emwcee
"I realized fairly early on that I was the odd one out for washing my hands like a medical professional (my mom is a nurse) and that washing my hands and forearms is usually not necessary. I felt really called out five years ago when a friend with benefits who is a doctor gave me a really weird look and then asked me, 'Why the fuck are you washing your hands like you're getting ready for surgery?' after we got done having sexy times. Made me realize I could probably tone it down."
"My mother, for some reason, refused to put little trash bins in the two bathrooms that we had. You'd have to carry your used Q-tips or cotton balls to the garbage can in the kitchen."
"My family has a version of 'Jingle Bell Rock' that we sing during Christmas. I didn't know it wasn't the original lyrics until grade 5 in music class, where we had to split into groups and sing a Christmas carol in front of the class. Someone in my group suggested this song and asked if we all knew the lyrics, and we all said yes. When it was our turn, we all started out singing the same thing..."
"Then suddenly I was singing something different than the others. I was so confused.Went home and told my dad, and he's like 'Oh, yeah, your sister came up with those lyrics when she was younger, 'cuz she didn't know the correct ones.'"—Wickked1
"My father was a driver's ed instructor. Imagine my surprise when I realized that not every car has two sets of pedals on each side."
"We always cut frozen pizzas with scissors. We still do."
"In my family, we don't ever say 'I love you,' we'll say 'hey barf-breath' or something. If we don't insult you, that means we don't love you."
—1DietCokedUpChick
"Calling a bowel movement a 'job.' 'I have to go do a job.' Never heard anyone else ever say that. I often wondered if I should punch a time clock and unionize. Does that come with benefits?"
"Tie the hairbrush to the bathroom faucet. My mom had five daughters and was tired of not being able to fix her hair in the morning because the brush had wandered off under the couch or a bush or something."
"My mom washed the groceries before putting them in the cupboard. Not just the produce, but boxes of cereal and canned goods and everything else. I'm not sure I thought it was something everyone did, but I didn't realize how odd it was until I was older. I didn't see anything like it until COVID hit and people thought it was living on surfaces."
—Cleopatra435
"When we were kids, my mom made us vacuum the dog every Saturday. She was a black lab who didn't shed that much. I thought everyone vacuumed their dogs."
"Every person in my family ate a different meal at dinner time. My mom is a vegetarian, my dad is not, and I don't eat beef or pork. So when I was a kid, I'd usually end up eating some combo of what my parents had. Or my mom would make me something totally different. I'd eat while my mom and dad were in the kitchen making their own, different dinners. Then they'd eat dinner together, but not the same food. Even now, as an adult, if I'm with them, they each are eating something different for dinner, and usually I'm eating some combo. I thought this was so normal."
"We used to put ketchup on popcorn. I genuinely thought that was a normal thing people did at movie nights. First sleepover at a friend's place, I asked for ketchup and everyone looked at me like I was a criminal."
—Familiar-Print7098
"Having a sock basket. I don't know why, but we put all of the clean socks into a basket for everyone to choose from. I didn't think anything of it until I stayed at other people's homes, and they just kept their socks in the sock drawer. I need to ask my mom why the hell we did that."
And finally, "I was in college before I realized there were Nazis in The Sound of Music. My mom turned off the TV when Maria married Captain VonTrapp. We went to bed. I was in college, and someone brought up the Nazis. I laughed because of the ultimate disconnect. But then I had to rent the VHS. Imagine my shock, after I load the second VHS, after the wedding?! Wtf. I lost my mind."
Can you relate? Share your weird family habit in the comments or the anonymous form below: