JFF: What Was the Worst Thing Your Parents Made You Do..?

My mom and aunt made my cousin and I take sewing lessons over the summer. I think they were at 8:00am once a week. I hated them and I never did learn how to sew. I don't even know how to thread a needle. :)

My parents made me get on a scale once a week and if i wasnt a weight that they wanted me to be at, they would make me feel horrible.

A few years after mother took off with a trucker and headed west to "find herself", was subsequently dumped, moved to Reno, etc., I visited her. For whatever strange reason, she tried to fix me up with a "former" druggie biker who was probably at least 10 years older than I was (I was about 23 at the time, and very naive and mild). He asked me if I wanted to go to the hot springs, I said no. He said, ok we'll go for a ride on the motorcycle. Seemed kinda cool at the time. Drove around Lake Tahoe - and ended up at the hot springs! He soaked (wore shorts). I soaked - MY FEET! LOL.

Yeah, I had a nice motor cycle ride and enjoyed myself, but looking back on this, I'm super lucky I didn't end up raped and dead in a ditch. Thanks, Mom!

I don't have much of a relationship with this woman anymore.

We grew up with a coal furnace in our house. My parents would have a ton of coal delivered at the end of our driveway - we had a long winding driveway that went up hill, and the coal truck could not make it up the driveway. My parents made us kids bring the entire TON of coal up to the house one bucket at a time. It took all day. It was hard, dirty and exhausting work. They did not help us. It took all day and afterward we would be so sore for days that it hurt to move. We got a few coal deliveries each winter. I hate coal.

The worst, and the best, thing my parents made me do was farm work - walking beans, picking rocks, stacking hay bales, and shoveling manure...

The worst because it was hot, hard, sweaty, stinking work. The best because it made me determined to go to college, finish, and find a different kind of life.

A few things that come to mind...

Learning how to mix alcoholic drinks before learning how to cook.

Trimming the backyard trees and making my sister and I work an entire Christmas break to chop up and bag the trimmings...120 30-gallon garbage bags worth!

Having me call my grandparents and "warn" them that my prom date was Asian-American "so they wouldn't slam the door in our face." Ha! Like my grandmas would even think of such a thing.

Having me call and ask my dad for the child support check.

Last but not least, I think the worst thing they ever said to me was that my new boyfriend was "too self-assured and too much of a man" for me to handle. I got the last laugh on that one, since I married that self-assured manly man and we celebrate 21 years of marriage on Thursday!

As a mom, I'm sure I've done some pretty stupid things, so it'll be interesting to hear what my kids say in 20 years!

LOL-my grandfather used to send me to the little store across the street from their house to get his Chesterfields!

My father made me "prove" O. evening at dinner that I really didn't like green peppers and onions. He spied my "picking" them out of the meat on my plate. "Close your eyes, you won't even be able to taste them with the meat...." I think the milk puke on my plate proved that, no, I REALLY didn't like them. Sheesh. I also sat for hours with brussel sprouts and liver and lima beans in front of me on my plate. Guess what things I still don't like?

I was determined to never make food a battle in my house.

This doesn't sound like much fun, no thanks.

Seriously people think they are too painful to mention? Projecting much?

Nah, just coming up with lame things that your parents made you do just doesn't sound like fun. OMG my dad made me clean out the gutters, mow the lawn, oh the horror they built character!

My dad quit his great job at an aircraft manufacturing company when I was 5 and started a business repairing and selling used appliances. By the time I was 6, I had to clean them with lye, ammonia, and easy off. Later, I had to spray paint also.
Wonder how I got lung cancer?
But like, Sue, it cemented my desire to go to college.

The worst thing? Eat stewed tomatoes and zuccini. The zuccini was mushy. I was force fed the stuff once. Until about 5 years ago, if my wife was cooking spaghetti sauce from scratch, I had to leave and get away from the smell because of the mental picture of stewed tomatoes and zuccini made me physically ill.

I make the spaghetti sauce and it always has many other smells and flavors to mask the plain smell of stewed tomatoes.

I know why you asked this questeen. Its halloween and you wanted to scare us with the memories. It worked!

Good luck to you and yours.

One Halloween, my little brother ate his entire bucket of trick-or-treating candy in one day and made himself sick. He was running across the living room, trying to go out the sliding glass door to barf on the patio. He didn't quite make it; he threw up all over the carpet, the patio, and in the track of the sliding glass door. My dad was busy watching a tv show, so he directed me to take care of the mess. I got a lot of that because I was the oldest child. Still resenting that one, Dad! I got even, though. I had this weird pediatrician who would always say, "I am going to have your Mom/Dad step out now and you can tell me any concerns you have in private" so I totally grabbed that opportunity to "tell on my parents" and how horrid they were to make me babysit the younger kids all the time and how it was too much responsibility. I really hammed it up, crying, the works. My parents then got pulled into a meeting with him because he was so concerned. Har har!

well, so sad, you wanted a JFF.....& it backfired for some of the moms. Hugs to all...

mine falls into the JFF category: my sis & I were fighting/bickering, & Mom made us kiss. We were teenagers & it was gross. From that point on, Mom had the upper edge just by threatening, "I'll make you kiss & make-up"!

I can remember that my parents made me eat liver. I did not like the texture and still don't.

I'm saddened that the other responder's answers are too painful to mention. I had a pretty good childhood.

To answer your question: clean my plate.

haha...my mom made my brother and me (ages 12 and 10) pass out Republican literature in our neighborhood -- LBJ country. Got a lot of doors slammed in our faces. It cracks me up to remember this....

This one's not funny or fun for me...sorry. It's a miracle I survived my childhood at all.

I also hated having to bail hay or do anything related to the farm. I was the oldest so I had to lead - we always had a wood stove and I also hated cutting and stacking firewood.

As an adult I look back on those experiences as "growing" opportunities - but then they just sucked! :-)

I was also made to eat Grandma Brown Baked Beans (an upstate NY food) and they were SO DAMN GROSS. I distinctly remember throwing them up all over the kitchen table one day - and the smell of them makes me gag to this day.

Removed my bedroom door as punishment.

They made me wear a mustard and brown turtle neck that an old aunt had made for me. (honestly it was hideous and not in a cool 70's/80's way) It mysteriously disappeared..... :-) I still have a bit of a phobia of turtle necks, even the thought of them makes me cringe, I can't stand anything tight round my neck. lol

My answer is pretty tame compared to some. :-( Guess I had a good childhood. :-)

Making us help pick up hay bails... hot and sweaty but have to wear jeans and gloves or you get pricked by the hay non stop... not fun!

When I was in HS. my dad suggested to " Get out and meet other people" that I should go to the local Foursquare Dance lessons!!!! I almost died of laughter when he said that. No offense to foursquare lovers--just something that is NOT for me.

M

My dad made me EAT a cigarette when he caught me smoking.

OUt of all the crappy stuff that happened in childhood I think that was the worst because it could have killed me.

When I was around 12 or 13, my dad got into his head that I should go running with him on a daily basis. He already jogged himself and he thought I needed to be in better shape. But I was already skinny as a rail and active enough doing other things, and for whatever reason he thought it would be in my best interest to make me jog with him so I would have more endurance. More endurance for what? I wasn't on the track team and didn't want to be! This went on off-and-on for almost 2 years and then I think he finally gave up when he realized I really was not enjoying it. It was torture for me, and I hated it, and I hated him for making me do it. I still don't like jogging.

I don't know if it was the worst thing that ever happened to him, but when my husband was 14, he had to drive his stepfather home because he was too drunk to drive himself. It was his first time driving any kind of car. And it was a manual transmission. And it was in a really bad rain storm. Apparently there were all these other times though that him and his other siblings were forced to ride in the car with him driving drunk - I am amazed that none of them ever got into an accident or got seriously injured. Their mom would also make them eat liver all the time, and if they did not eat it warm, they had no choice but to eat it cold when they decided later that they were too hungry to refuse.

my mom made me wear an eye patch in second grade...due to a stye in my eye,guess what the kids called me all day???

One nice windy fall day, my mom decided she was tired of my brother and I always sitting inside, so she made us go rake leaves! In the wind! In October!! In Missouri!! She thought we might actually loosen up and have fun playing in the leaves. Instead, we were afraid we were going to get in trouble because the piles just WOULDN'T stay in place, and by the time we worked up enough guts to go back inside, we both had blue fingers, even with the gloves on. Mom felt bad about that one, though.

My mom would be on the phone. In the old days there was a cord only about 3 ft long. She would whistle for me to come get a cigarette from her and light it on the gas stove for her. I'm pretty sure that's how I started smoking. She would write me a note to buy a pack of cigs for her, I'd walk across the street and get them at the liquor store. This started at about age 12, by age 14 I was turning her 1 pack of cigs into 2 packs on the note and was getting one for myself.

Dance lessons up till I absolutely refused to go anymore,really who continues ballet,tap,jaz & baton out of elementary age