For me, it was when I was studying one time back in middle school and I took a peek at my phone, and right at that moment my mom came in and said, “Why are you always on your phone?, your supposed to be studying!” Knowing well she already checked twice and saw me studying 
My mother barging into my room on Saturday morning to vacuum the carpet.
Making the older kids do chores starting when they were 8 or so, but not making the younger two do anything.
Smoking. Smoking in the car and thinking cracking the window was going to help us breathe.
Then not letting us play in the snow because they thought we’d get sick 
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Making me wear curlers in my hair all day on Saturday whenever my mom got the notion it should be a curly hair week. The curls lasted about an hour.
But I wish they were still alive. I miss them.
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I feel like this is true for most people.
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Everything my parents did annoyed me as a teen and preteen.
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They most likely did out of love
My dad would go to great lengths to embarrass me and my sister, even as adults, with the things he would say to us and what he’d say to others about us. My mom wouldn’t initiate this, but she would go along with it. I’m not being sensitive, it was pretty awful, but that’s my dad. Miss him anyways, though if I meet up with him somewhere in eternity, I still won’t give him a chance to humiliate me.
What is sad is that I made no particular effort to encourage my parents to show up for my undergraduate pilot training graduation in the Air Force, which was a big deal. Only woman in a sea of men, only person with nobody there for them. Moral of the story….try really hard not to humiliate your children in public, it just might cost you. And them.
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Are you channeling my Mother?
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My father taught drivers ed and was allowed to keep the car for personal use. He would drive me nuts reminding me every time I was in the passenger’s front seat not to press the emergency break at my feet.
In fairness there was an “incident” that likely prompted his recurrent reminders but he never let me forget it.
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We had to go to church every.single.week. Even when we were on vacation. Didn’t matter where we were, my parents would find a church for us. We could be enjoying an amazing day at the beach, and we’d have to wrap it up so we could get our dress clothes on & go to Saturday afternoon mass. I know that it was not intended to be annoying, but it was.
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I didn’t mind going to church (though on vacations sometimes we’d skip of we didn’t find an easy way to visit a new church). And I didn’t really mind having to wear a dress to church, except in he cold weather. What I hated was the requirement to wear dresses to school every day though 6th grade. Of course they were not heartless. If it was reallllly cold, I could wear pants UNDER my dress to the bus stop. Then I had to take them off and stash with my coat and boots.
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This is off topic (nothing to do with parents) but be glad you’re younger than me. We girls had to wear dresses/skirts through elementary school, junior high, high school, AND college. Not only to classes but to the dining center (called the cafeteria at the time). This was at Bucknell in the late 60’s. I once went to dinner wearing pants (had forgotten to change); I was sent back to my room to change.
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My mother chose both my glasses and my hair styles…until I was about 14. And I have pictures to prove that they were not good choices. I babysat myself to death one year just so I could buy my own glasses! And then contacts. I went to college and didn’t cut my hair much…all I wanted was something beside a pixie!
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Oh goodness . . . I need to sleep on this topic so I can write something succinct. There are so many things to choose from. Here’s one:
In HS, I had a boyfriend. My sister got married during my HS years. My mother swore – absolutely SWORE – that my boyfriend and I were planning to elope. I told her emphatically that we had never, ever discussed it. Years later, she said to me, “Don’t lie to me, VeryHappy. I was there.”
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I remember when my brother used to wear glasses, and my mom would choose(usually the cheapest one), not him. She also chose both our hairstyles.
This is so relatable, I actually used to cry about it 
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Did we have the same mother? ; )
I had zero autonomy over my clothes, hair, glasses until I hit high school. I used to sneak clothes (and make up) into my back pack and change in the school bathroom before classes started.
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How many of you had white glasses and a pixie haircut. I will add, I think I have great and pretty thick hair. I never have trouble with it looking decent. But a pixie…some part was always sticking out.
The white glasses…ack! Horrible. Like I said….I saved babysitting money for a long time so I could get wire rims and contacts before I went to college.
Let’s not even talk about my clothes…
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Pixie until 7th grade, then shag. Neither was particularly flattering, but at least I wasn’t mistaken for a boy as often with the shag!
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Omg.
Childhood flashbacks while reading some of these posts.
Pixie until 4th grade.
Maybe my mom got sick of hearing strangers refer to me as a boy as much as I was?!
And I was the last of my friends to get pierced ears. (It was the culture in south Florida to get them done pretty young, many as babies.) Everyone thought my family must be a military family since surely that must be the reason why my parents wouldn’t let me have pierced ears like 90% of the rest of the other girls had! Nope….they were just conservative and from Pennsylvania but moved to Florida after they honeymooned in Florida.
I got to ditch my pixie is 4th grade, but I was told I’d get no help with my hair. My mom had one most of her adult life, as a child she was made to wear rollers and was traumatized.
When I was in school I liked to type my papers (manual typewriter). My dad always insisted of hitting them up with a red pen and make me re-type them. I wasn’t good at math, my dad had a chemical engineering degree and was great at math, but was not a good teacher. One night he surprised me with a tutor - our school district’s superintendent. I still can’t figure out if it was a punishment. ETA he could never let a grammar mistake go, and table manners were very important, or else you were told to excuse yourself from the table. I did learn early on not to butter a whole piece of bread, but to put butter on my plate and break off bits.
Another annoying thing were holidays at our house, lots of family. After dinner, the women/girls cleared the table and did the dishes. My male cousins just sat there waiting for their dessert to be served.
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Things that come to mind:
Summer mornings my mom would get up at like 5am to do her summer canning. I was so mad to be woke up by the smell of beets/tomatoes being canned. She did it so the non-AC house wouldn’t get so hot - but it was hot anyway!
Dad took me and my sibs to church on Sunday while Mom stayed home. TBH, I think he disliked the ritual but this is what they decided for us (to be raised Catholic) and he was the one who was Catholic. He drove SOOOOO slow it would drive me nuts. And even then, we would be 15 mins early.
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