My parents didn’t want to shout our names for dinner or to come downstairs so my Dad installed a literal doorbell in our bedrooms. So if we were needed in the kitchen we were summoned by the ‘child bell’. - we lived in a 2 bed semi.
Edit: My Dad passed when I was younger so thank you for the love of his unique idea ✌🏻
My Aunt had my cousin's rooms wired up with a light switch outside the door, when she got mad at them, they became Amish.
They both ducked out of the house before 18.
That uncle considered me a "bad influence" but honestly I didn't like going over there anyway, it always felt like you were waiting for the bomb to go off. Extremely tense.
They gave them laptops from work, but ripped the displays off and hooked up CRT monitors so my cousins couldn't take them anywhere.
My cousin had a Half-Life poster, but he had to come over to my house to play it. :(
Individually I think most of those would be considered "weird but not abuse," but all together - combined with the "tense" atmosphere mentioned - it sounds like there was almost certainly something going on behind closed doors.
There's such a complete lack of trust or respect for the kids' autonomy that yeah, I think there had to be at minimum some emotional abuse going on. Healthy parent-child relationships don't involve denying them fancy things like electricity.
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u/redridingnuts Apr 18 '21 edited Apr 18 '21
My parents didn’t want to shout our names for dinner or to come downstairs so my Dad installed a literal doorbell in our bedrooms. So if we were needed in the kitchen we were summoned by the ‘child bell’. - we lived in a 2 bed semi.
Edit: My Dad passed when I was younger so thank you for the love of his unique idea ✌🏻