45 Parents Who Enforced Household Rules That Were Strict, Bizarre, & Sometimes Scary

Some things are just polite to do because they’re more hygienic. For example, covering your mouth and nose when you cough or sneeze. That’s something that this mom seemed to have a little confusion about.

We understand that you don’t want to get the kids’ hands dirty but surely washing them afterward or sneezing or coughing into a tissue has to be better than this? Needless to say, it led to a lot of sharing of illnesses when the family came to visit.

There are some words that you might not be allowed to say growing up. We aren’t just talking about the more adult curse words that might get you in trouble.

Some families don’t like it when their kids use “gross” words. So, for manner’s sake, they don’t let their kids say things like “fart.” What do you say instead? When this person was growing up, “fluff” was apparently a common exchange.

We’ve already talked about how some people think that “fart” is just one of those words that are too gross for a kid to say. That’s where supplementary words come in.

We can see where this rule comes from — don’t stink up the dinner table. Of course, this only really works if this is a household where you can easily excuse yourself from the dinner table for a moment mid-meal. Otherwise, dinner could be a bit uncomfortable.

There are a few treats that parents might forbid in their house for various reasons. For some reason, this kid wasn’t allowed to chew gum.

However, it seems that he found an alternative to give him a sweet, chewy effect — although we’re not sure how appetizing it sounds. As for the Halloween part, we understand not participating but yelling at trick-or-treaters who don’t know your views is a bit much.

There are some rules that most kids have growing up. A lot of parents enforce a bedtime to make sure their kids get enough sleep each night.

However, at a certain age, you usually have the freedom to control your own bedtime… unless you have these parents. It seems that they took bedtime seriously, even when their son was a legal adult staying with other people! This seems like a bit much.

There are certain dishes that you might have a specific dish for. For instance, some people break out their nice dishware for big family dinners. What about bagels? For this family, only one paper towel would do.

The rules were simple — don’t eat or reheat your bagel on anything other than the paper towel. We’re a little concerned that there was only one paper towel for this rather than grabbing a new one each time. What if you get cream cheese on it?

Sitting down for dinner and realizing you forgot something can lead to a moment of frustration. If you still have a family member in the kitchen, you might call out and ask them to bring you something.

That’s not exactly what was happening in this family. No matter if his wife and adult children were in the middle of their own meals, he wasn’t going to be interrupted by the inconvenience of getting up. If he forgot something, it was their problem.

Oftentimes, parents have to really remind their children to drink enough water. Especially when they’re playing outside, it’s important to stay hydrated! That’s not exactly what this mom thought.

If you wanted water, you were allowed one glass and then it was all 7-Up. Why? Well, she thought that the water would dilute the nutrients in their bodies. Needless to say, water is good for you, despite what this house rule suggests.

A lot of kids have limited options as to what to watch on TV. Parents may even enforce these rules with parental controls to make sure kids can’t watch the content.

For this family, that was none other than Spongebob Squarepants. Most parents make these rules based on how appropriate the content of the show is, usually referring to jokes in the show. However, this family had a unique reason they avoided the classic cartoon.

Cereal is a favorite for breakfast and even snacking in households nearly everywhere. Yet, if you use milk, you probably have a bowl of milk left at the end.

Of course, you could pour it out but it’s a delicacy all in its own right. So, why wouldn’t you just bring the bowl to your lips and slurp away that cereal milk? Well, maybe your grandfather has a rule that slows down that process a bit.

Parents provide a lot to their kids. It’s not cheap to have kids but that’s something that you take on when you become a parent, even if it isn’t always easy.

It’s hard and sometimes you can need a little help. Holding your kids’ expenses over their heads like this by running a “tab” throughout their lives is a bit horrific. It seems like it caused the kids a lot of stress, too!

Some parents go the extra mile to make sure that their kids don’t touch adult substances. Sometimes, measures can be a bit extreme, though.

Not only not allowed to touch or drink this adult drink, but this kid also wasn’t even supposed to think about it. So, when they went to someone else’s house and saw one, they just couldn’t handle it. It freaked them out too much to even stay!

This stepmom had a rule that seems to be related to a pretty intense fear. According to this kid, she had a real fear of plantar warts.

In fact, it was so bad, she was pretty convinced that anyone who wasn’t in the household was dealing with the condition. It was to the point that she wasn’t going to let anyone go barefoot, even if that meant keeping their socks on if they wanted to go for a swim.

Different families and households handle hygiene differently. However, some really stand out for their bizarre and strict rules and this household definitely counts.

To start, a five-minute timed shower would be difficult, especially if you weren’t used to rushing that fast. Then, when it came to sanitary products, throwing them away wasn’t enough. This dad thought incinerating them was the only way to go. That seems a little awkward…

When you sneeze or need to blow your nose, you probably reach for a tissue. If one isn’t immediately available, though, a paper towel will work. Well, not in this household.

When this person blew their nose into a towel and threw it away, their friend was really unsettled about how their mom would feel about it. However, we have to wonder how she would feel about the plumbing problems this could cause compared to a towel in the trashcan.

If you hear someone talk about processed food, they’re probably talking about food with a lot of processed ingredients that they don’t approve of. What they aren’t talking about is food that’s been in a food processor.

This tool isn’t for creating “processed” food — it’s for essentially chopping the food you put into it into teeny, tiny pieces. Watch out for the microwave, while you’re at it, it seems. In case it’s needed, “nuking” your food is a saying.

There are some things that are really cool to go to your friend’s house for the first time and see. After all, how many people have a pool table to play in their homes?

At this house, though, the rules might have made things a little less fun. It seems like the entire game had been reengineered to avoid this mom acting like a sore loser. Why play hard if the cards are already stacked against you like this from the start?

Not everyone has an extra set of dishes they pull out when company comes over. Even if you live alone, one duplicate of each piece of dishware is a bit tight. It’s especially ridiculous if you have a family of five!

And this guy wasn’t about to let the women and children eat first either. In fact, the youngest had to wait until last, working down from him, of course. All in all, these rules don’t bring to mind the best living conditions.

What is a sitting room? Well, as the name suggests, it’s a room that just has places to sit. Here, you can talk, read, or whatever you might want a quiet, comfortable room for.

At least, that’s what a sitting room is used for in most houses that have them. As for this household, the mom kept the sitting room for show. If a guest actually sat there, she wasn’t afraid to get a little nasty herself.

Vacuuming your carpet is satisfying, especially if you’re someone who really likes to see the tidy vacuumed lines in the carpet when you’re done. However, having paths like this is a lot stricter than most.

Plus, it’s not really a great plan for saving your carpet. Sure, those parts will always look nice and vacuumed but you’ll have an uneven wear on the paths you have everyone use every day — and that’ll only become more noticeable over time.

You may have heard someone say that if you want to go swimming, you shouldn’t do it within 30 minutes of eating. That’s not true but that’s not the point here.

It seems like this mom heard this old wives’ tale and took it to the extreme. This is the sort of thing that might happen if you put the original concept through a game of Telephone. It took until adulthood for this person to realize the rule was odd, though.

When kids are really young and just starting to eat solid foods, it’s really common for parents to chop the food for them. You might even do this until they can use a knife themselves.

By 11 years old, though, most kids are trusted to cut up their own food. Not in this household, however. The rule was all the food was chopped up before serving, no matter the age. The cameras really pushed things over the edge for this dad and we can see why.

In most households, you might really see the phrase “whistle while you work” at play. Maybe someone is idly whistling a tune while they sweep or wash the dishes. There’s a difference in this household.

If you were whistling, it was a sign that you were calling someone into the room. There’s nothing wrong with this rule but it definitely stands out as one of the more unique ones. We hope everyone knew how to whistle.

Everyone has their own personal décor style that they bring into their own home. A lot of people do things like paint the walls and choose furniture they love.

In some houses, you might even find candles or artwork on the walls. Not here. This family didn’t want to keep any artwork, posters, or even family pictures on the wall. On top of that, no candles either. This is minimalism to the extreme.

We can see why lightning is scary. While your odds of getting struck by it are low, it can have really devastating and even fatal effects on a person.

We can see where this mom was going with the idea of the wired phone, even if the odds of it happening are probably ridiculously low. On the other hand, after the phone was completely cordless, how exactly did she expect the lightning to reach them? We’re absolutely sure this is impossible.

While cooking can be fun and eating is undeniably great, the dishes that you have to do are a pain. However, it’s only hygienic to wash your dishes.

Naturally, you’d probably also think that your friend was trying to skip a step in a very obvious way if they did this. Yet, we can’t imagine how the dishes must have looked if this was a long-standing rule. We’d probably eat before heading over, too.

There are some sayings that you might hear a lot as you grow up. We’re sure that this was a long-standing exchange between them, not just a new thing.

These grandparents didn’t enforce a curfew but they did make sure that their grandson had a reminder every time he left the house. As a matter of fact, if this person was visiting, they had to participate in the household ritual as well before heading out the door.

If you worked for a Pepsi factory, would you eventually get sick of the product? Apparently not, if you’re this father, at least. The ground rule here was that the loyalty to Pepsi wasn’t just something during work hours.

They were dead serious that no Coca-Cola products were going to enter their house. Even a drink that wasn’t specifically Coke but one of their brands was completely forbidden before this person was allowed to even come in.

Some people have certain rules about who can visit their house. For instance, maybe you like to meet new friends outside the house before you invite them over for dinner.

As for this mom, the rule of thumb was to not let anybody in if they didn’t have insurance. This rule leaves us with so many questions. Did any type of insurance count? Is this a case of classism or is can something horribly violent occur when you visit?

We’ve already seen a few examples of shows that kids couldn’t watch growing up. Parents ban these shows for literally all sorts of reasons.

Of course, parents probably don’t want their kids to watch something that offensive to specific demographics. After all, you don’t want your kids repeating jokes like that! In this case, the demographic that this mom was worried about was notably feline. Cats are great but they probably don’t get offended by cartoon mice.

“No complaining” is already an intense rule. How are you supposed to communicate that you aren’t feeling well or share information about a bad day? This rule doesn’t stop being a bit much there.

It seems that there wasn’t much that these kids could say that their mother wouldn’t classify as a forbidden “complaint.” Some of these really don’t make sense — like just asking questions or even complimenting each other. Plus, it seems like the punishment never totally fit the “crime.”

There are some drinks that people think of as morning drinks. This might bring to mind the coffee or orange juice that you have with breakfast.

For this kid growing up, orange juice was strictly for breakfast too. That meant if you wanted some juice in the afternoon, you were out of luck until the next morning. In addition, you have to grab the right glass for your orange juice too.

There are a few things that most parents don’t have. For instance, in a job, you have a time that you get off and no one can reach out. The same isn’t true for parenthood.

That is, it usually isn’t. It seems like this dad was determined to get a good bit of “me time” each day. If these kids needed help with anything, they better catch him before 3pm. That seems a bit hard on school days!

There are a lot of parents who don’t want their kids on the phone all night long. This has become even more prevalent with the popularity of cell phones.

As for this family, they were off the phone by 10 o’clock at night, no matter what. It’s really these “no matter what” conditions that stand out. When this kid asked a rather fair question about handling emergencies, they were met with a pretty harsh answer.

Some rules are easy to see where they came from and why parents have them in place. As we’ve seen, others really step beyond that line.

If you wanted to dine with this family, you were welcome to pull up a chair like normal. On the other hand, the family that lived there on a day-to-day basis flipped the cushions out of the way. Maybe it’s to keep them from wearing out but it seems a bit uncomfortable!

There was a time that you couldn’t turn in any direction without running into one of those famous “Got Milk?” posters advocating for you to get more calcium and, more importantly, buy more milk.

That was something that these parents, like many, bought into. So, it was two cups of milk a day for their kids. It seemed that adults magically didn’t need that calcium anymore, though. We’re sure that had nothing to do with their hatred for the drink.

There are quite a few things that parents have rules about when it comes to what they deem appropriate for their children to watch or wear.

As for this woman, she had some strict rules about her hair when she was young. We’re not so sure what’s so inappropriate about loose hair but apparently, these parents weren’t about to let their daughter leave the house without some hairclips in.

If you’ve ever played a video game, you’ve probably also died in a video game. No one magically starts out being good at a game, especially when you’re still young.

For this mom, hearing the kids yelling about dying over and over again was, understandably, distressing. That’s something this person admitted but they were also really frustrated at the time when they had to come up with workarounds to avoid saying that they “died” in the game.

A lot of people own plants and take their job of caring for them very seriously. This dad took his care of the plants especially seriously.

This person said they destroyed a lot of plants growing up and it must have been quite a few to warrant this level of suspicion. The rule wasn’t only that you should never touch the plants but that even looking at them too long would raise red flags for him.

If you play a board game at someone’s house, you might learn that they play things differently. Some families might come up with their own “house rules.”

Monopoly is a long-played game among families so, once in a while, people might find ways to spice it up. As silly as it might seem to some, this family decided that the taxes in the game should actually go somewhere. That would make landing on “free parking” all the more exciting.

There aren’t many reasons that you would ban a fruit from your home. Really, the only reason to do this is if you have a serious food allergy. This mom had quite an idea about what bananas were.

While there might be some suggestive jokes about them, this is a bit far, isn’t it? What bananas actually are is a great source of potassium, which this person said they really could have used at the time.

We wouldn’t think that bananas were so controversial but it seems like there was more than one household who found them offensive. This mom at least allowed them to have bananas in the house.

As far as enjoying them, they weren’t quite as enjoyable by the time she’d actually let anybody eat them. We’re pretty sure we can tell why no one wanted to eat the bananas at that point.

There are some rumors about food that it’s hard to tell where they got started. We have no idea what this person thought they knew about egg yolks.

What exactly would make the yolk of the eggs poisonous? Is this a worry for salmonella and, if it is, wouldn’t the white of the egg be a problem too? This is one rule we’d love to hear a real explanation for.

We all have something that we can’t stand. Maybe a TV show grates on your nerves or a crooked piece of art is the sort of thing that you can’t stop noticing.

This dad knew exactly what he hated more than anything: feet. He hated feet so much, in fact, that he didn’t even want to look at them. As such, wearing socks became a house rule, especially anytime he was around.

The other story about bedtimes already shows a pretty strict rule. Yet, this rendition is strict and falls over right into downright creepy territory. For one, it would be hard to fall asleep with someone brooding over you like this.

Plus, interrogating someone like this is intimidating and unnecessary. Driving by someone else’s house like this would raise red flags to any other parents! We’re not surprised this mom was so freaked out about his behavior.