When People Realized Their Family Wasn't Normal

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5 days ago

When Reddit user m1ntb3rrycrunchh asked, "What made you realize that there was something 'off' about your family?" I knew the responses would be heartbreaking. Here are the gut-wrenching stories.
"I went to a friend's house after school one day, and her mum called us down for dinner. I was astonished that the whole family sat at the table, ate together, chatted, joked, and laughed. They actually seemed to be ENJOYING each other's company. There was no tension, no one was yelling or being sullen, no hint of threat in the air. Just a simple, fun dinner. Apparently, they did that every night! Shocking behavior. I privately thought her family was really weird for that, but once I started making more friends, I began to realize it was MY family that was 'weird.'"
"When I told a funny story about the time my dad was getting ready to give me a belting, but he was so furious he didn't keep a good grip on me, and I dodged the blow, and he whacked himself across the shins...that was at a party in university. I'll never forget how I finished the story with a chuckle, only to be met by a wall of horrified silence. Later, a friend took me aside and kindly informed me that it wasn't funny or normal for a dad to routinely beat their child with a leather belt."
"I entered public school at thirteen and was bullied by the kids, who immediately picked up on my lack of social skills. I was as polite and pleasant to them as I would be to anyone. A month later, once I had established my first-ever friend group, they told me how unusual my inability to be bothered by bullies was, citing my extraordinary ability to be unbothered by verbal abuse. Being taunted for my physical appearance wasn't unusual to me because that's how my parents spoke to me. That's when I knew my parents were different. It had never occurred to me that my parents were different because I had just always known they didn't like me and that being laughed at and called names by them was just how they treated me."
"The first afternoon I spent with my best friend's (and now partner's) family, I was six years old. I fell and scraped my knee, as six-year-olds do. His dad rushed over and helped me up, telling me it'd be okay and that I was okay and that we'd go clean it up inside. I had never had an adult clean my cuts before. No one had ever taken care of me before, not since I was old enough to feed, dress, and bathe myself. I realized then that my parents were supposed to take care of me."
"I spent an afternoon at my friend's house when I was about eight. Her dad randomly asked us if we wanted to do anything fun, and he ended up teaching me how to play Monopoly and how to ride a bicycle. It was then that I realized that spending quality time with their kids is something that normal parents do. In our house, my parents would never do anything with us during their free time outside of going to the mall and eating out."
"When I heard a classmate's mom tell my parents about how much she adored me and how much I lit the room up with my personality, and she said that she was glad I was friends with her daughter. I never heard anyone in my family speak with that level of positivity and depth about anyone, including family. I was confused as to why I could leave an impact on essentially a woman I interacted with in passing, but my parents couldn't even remember what grade I was in."
"I remember being jealous because all my friends had curfews. My parents would never notice if I didn't come home. It felt like such a caring and lovely thought to think a parent expected a kid to be home at a certain time each night and would even sit up and wait for them to return."
"The day my mother insisted I go to the bank with her, I didn't feel like going, but she wouldn't take no for an answer. I was 18. I accidentally slammed my thumb with the car door; it was bleeding, and the nail was coming off, so I got out to take care of it. She was so angry that I wasn't going after all that she burned rubber leaving — no concern about me whatsoever, then or later on. I didn't have my keys, so I was locked out. I had to walk a mile to the neighbor's for help with my thumb. When I told them what happened, the look of horror on their faces told me none of that was normal."
"I went to work as an Au Pair after university. I was shocked that people have family dinners and talk about how their day went and that children's answers were taken seriously and not mocked or dismissed. I was shocked when the kids' dad went out of his study to ask his children, 'How are you?'"
"The big, grown-up Uh-oh realization happened when my mother asked me and my siblings to lie about our identities and claim to be visiting cousins when CPS showed up. Oh, and then when we fled the state. I was nine, definitely old enough to know that was bonkers."
"As an adult, some friends started sharing cute stories about getting mad and 'running away from home' as kids. Their moms would pack them sandwiches and play along until the kids just stopped being mad. I realized that I could never show anger or run away because I didn't think my mom would let me come back."
"When I was eight, my mom let me go to my friend Maria's for sleepovers. Her mom would cook, and Maria said she never had to cook dinner for her family. We got to be silly, talk at Blockbuster, and get candy for the movie we picked. At her house, we could stay up late, and there were no consequences for sleeping in. I always thought their house was messy because her mom didn't make her clean. I realized eventually that normal kids don't have to cook and clean and take care of siblings — that that was actually the parents' job."
"It was shocking to realize none of the other six-year-olds were left at home, alone, all day long with just enough food to survive. I didn't realize this when I was six. I realized it somewhere in middle school when I was explaining this to some classmates, and they were all shocked."
"When everyone else's home smelled like laundry and food, and my home smelled like alcohol and weed."
"When I was 13, I started having to get myself to and from the doctor, though my mom might make an appointment for me. I had a riding accident where I had to go see an OB-GYN after the initial emergency care, and I had to go by myself. It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized that's something most people's moms take them to for the first time, no matter how old their female child is."
"When I was at my friend's house, they just grabbed snacks from their pantry. The one at my house was always locked, and we were not allowed to get anything out of it. Things would rot."
"When I was around at my best friend's house and her dad happened to be there, he came in to say hello. My best friend said something mildly cheeky to him, and I held my breath and tensed up, waiting for him to kick off...he just laughed and teased her back. I'd have been about seven. It was revelatory and helped me keep my sanity until I could afford to leave home."
"When I was crying to my mom about my stepbrother choking me to the point of turning red and some bystander had to pull him off of me, and she just shrugged and asked if I had done something to him. I also told my dad, and he got angry at me."
"My college friends called their parents every week, some more often than that. I always dreaded talking to my mother. It wasn't until I started getting to know my ex-husband, and then after I met his mom, that I realized how absolutely off my mother and my household was because of her. I remember being amazed at times that my friends could call their parents at any time about any problems, and their parents would help them, whereas if I had a problem, I knew I'd dang well better solve it myself."
"When my family arrived at my aunt's house, her family went from laughing and jovial to quiet and anxious."
"My mom brought me to an evangelical church multi-media show/'play' that simulated a school shooting (you then watch all the 'heathen' children go to hell after they die) to ensure that I understood the gravity of hell and what not choosing Jesus as my savior meant for me. I was nine. I still have nightmares about it at age 31. Apparently, other parents don't do that. Huh!"
"Thanksgiving 1998. My first memory of my paternal grandmother is her telling me it's okay that my father abuses me because I chose to look like my mother to torment him (mom divorced Mr. Hog that summer). I was only 4, but even I knew it wasn't right. The following Easter, he kicked me out of the car because I refused to stop being sick and drove off. He was abusive daily, frankly. But those actions showed that he felt that he was RIGHT to do it. They genuinely believed that I 'started it.'"
"When I had to get a couple of mandatory vaccines the summer before college because I had never had a single vaccine (anti-vax parents). I spent that entire summer getting one shot in each arm every week because I wanted to get all of them."
"When my little brother was appearing on the scene, and I knew that I had to step up because there weren't enough adults in the house to care for three kids, so the middle child was going to have to put in work to fill the gaps."
"Seeing families hug each other. We're a family that does not touch."
"Whenever my aunt accused her own daughter of sleeping with her husband…who is also her daughter's dad…I'm not sure what compelled her to think my cousin was sleeping with her own father, especially since she was just 16 years old at the time, but man, am I happy I lost contact with that side of the family."
"I got to go over to a few other people's houses and realized that most people's houses really basically do look like the ones on TV. Sure, the furniture may be cheaper, or maybe there's a little clutter (so more in the territory of Married... With Children, or Roseanne). But yeah, all these other houses resembled the houses on TV more than my own. It turns out most parents aren't hoarders."
"When I was probably about 7 or 8, I realized that other families spent time together on vacation…like, they would go do activities together, and their kids didn't just spend time hanging out with staff or locked up in the hotel room. When I was a kid, and we went on vacation, it was clear that it was my parents who were 'on vacation.' We just got the privilege of tagging along. Our job was to spend as much time away from them as possible and not need them for anything."
"When I realized I didn't wanna bring my friends or future partners around them because I was afraid my family would be mean to them."
"When I traveled across the country and spent a few weeks with my partner's family during Christmas. Honestly, it was the fact that when his brother forgot to bring the stuffing to Christmas dinner, everyone reacted appropriately and in proportion to the situation. Nobody died…we just ate more of the potatoes. Sure, there was some gentle teasing towards his brother for forgetting the ONE item he was in charge of, but everything turned out just fine. It was such an appropriate response to such a small problem. In comparison, the preceding year, at my family's Christmas, my uncle KICKED my mother because they had a disagreement (and I don't even remember what it was about)."
"My father had an extremely bad temper. One time, when I was 13 years old, he picked me and my friend up from school, and my dad was in a really bad mood. He started screaming at me for being too dumb to know something or other. I was used to it and totally silent. When I was with my friend later, he was in complete shock. I downplayed it, and I told him it was totally normal. He said, 'No, it's not.' And I never forgot that."
"I was maybe 11, and my friend was supposed to spend the night at my house. I was a bit embarrassed because we could hear my family fighting, but I didn't consider it a bad fight because the walls weren't shaking, and no one was throwing or breaking anything. She told me that if I ever needed somewhere safe to stay, her mom would come get me, and I could stay with them. I knew her mom wasn't the most stable person in the world, but that woman took care of me from 11 to 18 whenever I needed anything. I could probably call her now, even though it's been years since I've last spoken to either of them, and she would still treat me like family."
"I think it was the first time I talked about what my house in California was like when I moved back to Florida as a preteen. Yeah, it turns out living in a handmade shack of plywood and plastic tarps on a manufactured jetty as part of an unhoused colony in Northern California for a year is not a 'typical' thing families do. Oddly enough, chopping up and burning your Christmas tree because it was the only firewood available to you on said jetty four days after Christmas because your parents abandoned their seven-year-old and two toddlers under three to go 'help' your dad's brother with cooking meth is also not a universal experience. Your fifth-grade class and teacher will not think it's a silly, goofy story — they will have the most horrified looks on ALL of their faces. Yeah. My parents did a lot of questionable things while on meth. Like, cook meth."
"Probably around the time my stepmom put a lock on the outside of my door and would lock me in my room with a little bowl of snacks and a TV that only got like three channels. Also, how we went to Sea World, and they just left me in the car (at least the windows were down.)"
When my friends would tell me about the help they would get for things like homework, and when I saw that their parents always showed up to pick them up at school events, parent-teacher conferences, etc. I thought it was very normal for parents to just forget about you because of how busy they were, and as long as I wasn't causing trouble, they had no interest in us. They would repeatedly go on vacation/date nights, leaving me from as young as eight to take care of my sister, then refusing to pick up phone calls and telling me I was being overly dramatic. I remember one night when my sister had a bad tummy ache — I tried to make her a hot water bottle and, by accident, spilled the boiling water over my hand. Of course, nobody answered the phone, so I went to my neighbor, who was shellshocked to see me by myself trying to take care of my burn."
"My middle school friends confronted me about my parents being physically abusive toward me, citing it as why they did not want to come over to my house anymore. I argued that it was a totally normal thing and that they were blowing it out of proportion. They told me none of their parents hit them."
"I realized my family was off when my mom encouraged my brother to get into the street life, not for financial reasons, but genuinely just so that she could brag ... that her son was out there 'running shit.' I only realized it was fucked because of the TV shows and movies I'd seen of the family and friends trying to get the main character to LEAVE the street life, not join it."
When did you realize something about your family was "off"? Let us know in the comments or via this anonymous form.