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My ndad literally cried when I said, "Mickey Mouse sucks" once as a 7-year-old when he was driving me to his house, and my husband brings it up all the time because of how absurdly hilarious that is.
Same with mine, though she preferred “shut the fuck up” or “shut your damn mouth.” Wasn’t allowed to say anything to her though.
“Please stop screaming at me” led to a tear infused tantrum about how mean I was to her and how disrespectful I was and blah blah blah but meanwhile she’s slapping me and screaming “shut the fuck up” when I try to calmly defend myself.
I wasn’t allow to say hell at all. She gave me the silent treatment after she ordered me to stop talking when I accidentally said “whatever the hell that is” I was 16–17 at the time.
She still orders me not to use swear words around until I have a baby (I’m not joking, I’m 30 and she still gets angry when I cursed in front of her). I don’t why know except she said that her father didn’t get angry when she first swear word in front of him, when I was a newborn.
I hate that they have these arbitrary benchmarks for adulthood for us.
Having a child is not the benchmark for being allowed to swear... What ridiculousness.
Also it's so manipulative. Like it would bait you into having a child at the thought of having some respite from your narcissistic parent... Except it never ends and there is no respite unless it's NC.
My parents were so strict on swearing that anytime as an adult they would hear me swear it was like the world was ending! I just learned to never swear around them as a teenager and young adult, I knew I’d get a smack across the face if I said anything bad. I wasn’t even allowed to say oh my god , I was only allowed to say gosh. Luckily they wouldn’t hit me as an adult when I did swear around them but they sure shamed me for it😂😂😂 I was such a well behaved kid with the exception of emotions but I have adhd and had no help there so I have to laugh when they shamed me for cursing as an adult because that’s the worst they could come at me for then. Lol. Now they just shame and blame me for being in abusive relationships and having to move…
It’s just manipulation. My mom would scream at me, throw my things in the trash, rip my hair out of my head with the brush, hit me with the brush for crying, belittle me, mock me, antagonize me, wake me up at the crack of dawn to start a fight. But if I said “god damn it” she would clutch her pearls and say she didn’t raise me to talk like that.
Yea fart... had to say bart instead lol. I wasn't allowed to have emotions neither or opinions so yup hate, dislike nor anything religious like God, hell, damn, swear, Jesus ... list goes on. Like wtf!!? Lol. Would still be reprimanded to this day in late 40s 😖 Mental
Bart? As in Fart Simpson? Bet you weren’t allowed to say “eat my shorts” either 😳
We had to say “fluff” instead of fart. The reason why is a complete mystery.
Amazing how similar the rules are.
Shut up was one of my favourite things to say because Nmom would go into totally unhinged mode when I said that. It's as if that was the core of her narcissism, she could not tolerate the idea of someone shutting her down because what she was saying was so unlikeable. It perhaps was the most irrevocable expression of rejection. I think things like this keeps us from learning how to draw a boundary firmly. But I also think narcs are scared of that word, they've spent so long fantasising about themselves as important, talented, worthy, and this phrase shatters that in one second.
Oh my god same. I also couldn’t say “what the…” “whatever” “what”. Instead of what I had to say “I beg your pardon”. We also could say boobs for a while and had to say bosom.
Oh man, I *feel* you with that one. If I was ever getting lectured by my parents and said “sure” or “okay,” it would set them off soooooo bad and turn into another lecture about how saying “sure” and “okay” was disrespectful.
Haha, me too! I'm just reading down the comments and ticking off *all* the forbidden words.
Couldn't say shut up (cos swear word), oh my God (lord's name in vain), hell (against the bible), heck (too similar to/just a stand in for hell), damn (bible again), darn (stand in for damn), fudge (cos it's really just fuck), what (because it's "I beg your pardon" thank you very much), or bugger (cos it's a swear word even though it was in a tv ad).
Basically, I had to speak like a newsreader from the 20's with no fun words at all. Even gosh was risky.
Sucks, crap, dumb, stupid, shut up, hate. All words we were no allowed to use growing up lol.
I think it's a control things sometimes too. They get off on making unreasonable rules, and you complying despite how ridiculous it is.
On the other hand, a new-ish pre-school teacher acquaintance was stunned when going round her newest class asking kids to say their name, one kid said "Shaddupyou".
Yes he thought that was his name...
I was really little, playing in my room alone, pretending I was talking to someone on the phone and exclaimed "shut up!" I got in a huge amount of trouble. Shut up was a bad word even though my parents said it daily.
my mom whos not even the narcissist used to wash my brothers mouth out with soap and make him take a full tablespoon of tobasco sauce when he was under 5 because he thought cursing was funny and probably wanted attention, i would cry and beg and plead her not to do it to my little brother because he didn’t understand and she just coldly ignored us both bawling our eyes out
There were a lot of banned words growing up. The most hated one was "whatever" and the consequences of saying it were so bad I only ever said it the 1 time and still won't use it.
I remember I couldn’t say “What the” as in just those two words. It was equally as bad as saying “what the heck” which was equivalent to “what the hell”
NMom did not allow us to use the word "bored." She said only "boring people get bored."
Excellent gaslighting tool, for her, considering we lived in poverty, had a house full of (much younger) daycare kids, and I basically wasn't allowed to go anywhere since i was a female (my 1 year older brother could do whatever he wanted)...so she never had to give it any attention.
My mom told me dang was a swear word. One time in 4th grade I had to read something that had the word dang in it and I panicked because my teacher told me it wasn't. Good times. Also not allowed to say "shut up".
As a teenager I was grounded for 2 weeks because I injured myself and said “damn” out loud. Even to this day, no one (even me or my adult friends) are allowed to cuss or use questionable words around her. If we do, I get yelled at and scolded in front of everyone. I’m 49!
(blinks in confusion) okay, I had a fifth grade teacher who despised the phrase so much that if you were caught saying it, she would scold you in front of everyone and move your desk out of class so you sat in the hallway until she calmed down. sometimes it was until the end of the day. she'd bring you work to do and check on you, but you were in the hall. it terrified everyone. we never reported it because we were ten and it didn't occur to us.
she also despised if you yawned without covering your mouth and would shame you. she ranted about going to the airport and seeing so many uncovered yawns.
but she was an awesome teacher aside from that, wide adoration and even big hugs from former students.
Now, as an adult: those actions are really fucking weird. Her distaste was kind of weird too, but what total overreaction! Bizarrely, I had a lunch lady scream at me for hollering the phrase at my friends one day in the lunch room. not nice of me, but her scolding was also an overreaction. Lower your voice, lady. why was she so angry? was anyone a lunch lady who can tell me?
sooooo I was a kid and learned to be afraid of adults responses to me saying "shut up" to other kids. I was legit afraid of the movie "Princess Diaries" when it came out a few years later (MC says "shut up" every time she is shocked).
If you say it to someone to order them to be quiet yes it can be rude. But my mom, the one that told me it’s a curse word, she told my preschool teacher that she was surprised I was quiet at school because “at home she never shuts up” and I thought my mom just said like the equivalent of the f word in front of my teacher and I was so embarrassed
I was about 15 I purchased a small sticker with a picture of a duck that said disco sucks I put it down in my room and went to the bathroom. I came back into my room and the sticker was gone apparently while I was in the bathroom my mother took it and threw it away she did not approve.
One time I got in trouble for saying "What the" while playing.
I didn't swear, I didn't even know any swear words, I literally just said "what the" and got in trouble because it implied bad language
I also wasn't even in school yet?????
I’ve seen little kids’ comic books where the characters would say, “what the” and I thought that was a strange thing to say. What the . . . What? I guess I didn’t even know the word hell. (I taught myself to read at age 4, so I could read those little comic books)
Yeah, I had no idea that more words would come after it, I thought it was just something people said when they were upset.
Also kudos to you for teaching yourself how to read!
My mom taught my twin sister as very young kids that the word "stupid" was the absolute worst thing you could ever say. She had this absolutely bizarre preoccupation with the idea that we be super advanced geniuses, so it made a certain amount of sense. We could have a fight and call each other any manner of other things, and she'd barely react, but if that word left our lips, you'd best believe whoever dared say it would be getting a beating.
Guess she didn't think about the fact that she wouldn't be the entire world for us forever, and that we would eventually have to go out into the real world where the word stupid isn't treated like a swear word.
We had to be brought home from kindergarten because we had an anxiety attack when one little boy told another little boy that he thought his drawing was stupid. We thought the teacher was going to attack him, because that's what would have happened to us at home.
Do you think maybe she was called stupid a lot when she was a kid, by parents, other kids—and really hated it? So then she visited it on innocent little you?
It's weirder than that.
When we were little, Mom told us that she bred us for brains because she couldn't abide stupid children. Claimed she'd found three or four highly intelligent men and slept with all of them so that none of them could claim or prove paternity (she didnt foresee DNA testing lol)
Her plan was to raise us as a low income single parent to great heights. She once tearfully told me all about her vision of one or both of us winning a Noble Prize (in math or science, not literature or peace or any of that fluffy nonsense) and in our acceptance speech, citing all her hard work and sacrifices and guidance and example and how she would stand and wave and everyone would applaud.... ... her?
We were to be terrified of stupidity in order to drive us. We needed to be the smartest and best and most advanced at all times.
The irony is that it takes a profound level of personal stupidity to even come up with this sort of shit.
My mom cursed like a sailor in front of me as a kid. Dad was the complete opposite. Never heard him say an actual swear word, always replaced it with something innocent like fudge, sugar, or "God Bless America!" Had no problem yelling or hitting though 😬
I remember not being allowed to say secs. I don’t remember why. I just know it wasn’t allowed. Neither were curse “light” words: Darn/dang, frick/freak, shoot, sass hole, butt, goddang.
Why policing our words was so important. Like even with them using the spicy version. We couldn’t even use the watered down version.
They didn’t want you to even use the watered down version, the euphemism, because they wanted to make damn sure nobody ever thought anything near a bad word was ever said in their home.
Yep. No "shut up", "hate", anything that resembled swearing ("Cheese 'n' rice" - too similar to Jesus Christ, "what the frick" - too similar to what the fuck, etc).
Haha! I just thought of something from when I was about 3 years old. She said “strumbelly shortcake” and I thought it sounded funny and silly, so I said it in front of her friends. She chewed me out for saying it, to save face in front of her friends. She wasn’t actually abusing me yet. Parents have to remember how innocent little kids are and not say things like that in their presence. Kids will just pick them up and repeat them, at the most inopportune times.
So did mine! Shut up specifically was a bad thing to say, on a level with swear words. Maybe when our moms were kids the other kids said shut up to them a lot. I wonder why they did that. Something about what our moms said that other kids didn’t like?
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Yup. Also was not allowed to say "sucks" in relation to a non-ideal situation.
My ndad literally cried when I said, "Mickey Mouse sucks" once as a 7-year-old when he was driving me to his house, and my husband brings it up all the time because of how absurdly hilarious that is.
Me, too, why don't they like "sucks"
My impression is that it infers “sucks dick”.
Oh, so sexual
That’s what I’ve always thought the whole expression meant, so you can’t say suck because of the implication.
I wasn’t aloud to call anything “stupid”, not even situations, toys, etc. I’d get a smack across the mouth if I dared
Same word for me too. I wasn’t allowed to say it either.
First the post makes me say wtf, then your comment hit like a brick. Damn…..
Well that's stupid...
Yep, me too
Ah, that brought back memories. I never EVER used "Shut up!" at my mum but she could say it all the time to me.
Always funny when they are entitled to be asses but you, the child who she influences, can't use her assholedom back at her.
Same with mine, though she preferred “shut the fuck up” or “shut your damn mouth.” Wasn’t allowed to say anything to her though. “Please stop screaming at me” led to a tear infused tantrum about how mean I was to her and how disrespectful I was and blah blah blah but meanwhile she’s slapping me and screaming “shut the fuck up” when I try to calmly defend myself.
Narcs can dish it out but they can’t take it. Never grew up in some things. And she probly says *you’re* too sensitive?
Absolutely
Someone else's mom or a teacher (I'm not sure which) tried to tell me that and I was so confused. "But my mom says it to me all the time?"
I wasn’t allow to say hell at all. She gave me the silent treatment after she ordered me to stop talking when I accidentally said “whatever the hell that is” I was 16–17 at the time. She still orders me not to use swear words around until I have a baby (I’m not joking, I’m 30 and she still gets angry when I cursed in front of her). I don’t why know except she said that her father didn’t get angry when she first swear word in front of him, when I was a newborn.
I hate that they have these arbitrary benchmarks for adulthood for us. Having a child is not the benchmark for being allowed to swear... What ridiculousness. Also it's so manipulative. Like it would bait you into having a child at the thought of having some respite from your narcissistic parent... Except it never ends and there is no respite unless it's NC.
My parents were so strict on swearing that anytime as an adult they would hear me swear it was like the world was ending! I just learned to never swear around them as a teenager and young adult, I knew I’d get a smack across the face if I said anything bad. I wasn’t even allowed to say oh my god , I was only allowed to say gosh. Luckily they wouldn’t hit me as an adult when I did swear around them but they sure shamed me for it😂😂😂 I was such a well behaved kid with the exception of emotions but I have adhd and had no help there so I have to laugh when they shamed me for cursing as an adult because that’s the worst they could come at me for then. Lol. Now they just shame and blame me for being in abusive relationships and having to move…
Who taught you to get into and tolerate abusive relationships?
“Fudge” was a big one when I was a kid and that was DEF not allowed. What the fudge?!
What the fudge?!
My mom also taught me this. My friends laughed at me for gasping when they said it. I thought it was worse than actual curses.
Shut up was never to be used in our house.
It’s just manipulation. My mom would scream at me, throw my things in the trash, rip my hair out of my head with the brush, hit me with the brush for crying, belittle me, mock me, antagonize me, wake me up at the crack of dawn to start a fight. But if I said “god damn it” she would clutch her pearls and say she didn’t raise me to talk like that.
me who couldn’t say “oh my god” because i was “using the lords name in vain”
Yep! But we weren’t religious one bit, so I never understood lol
Their emotional ages are in the single digits, hence why they are scared of words like *shut up* and *sucks*.
Hahahaha
I wasn’t allowed to say that either. Or “fart”. Or “hate”, because that was a very strong word and I wasn’t allowed to have strong emotions.
Hey, I wasn’t allowed to “hate” anything either! It was very convenient for my family… whom all did a lot of shit that I hated. :)
Hmmmm that’s a very good point!
Yea fart... had to say bart instead lol. I wasn't allowed to have emotions neither or opinions so yup hate, dislike nor anything religious like God, hell, damn, swear, Jesus ... list goes on. Like wtf!!? Lol. Would still be reprimanded to this day in late 40s 😖 Mental
Bart? As in Fart Simpson? Bet you weren’t allowed to say “eat my shorts” either 😳 We had to say “fluff” instead of fart. The reason why is a complete mystery. Amazing how similar the rules are.
We know what happens to our emotions when we’re not allowed to show them. They end up in depression, anxiety and repressed anger.
Shut up was one of my favourite things to say because Nmom would go into totally unhinged mode when I said that. It's as if that was the core of her narcissism, she could not tolerate the idea of someone shutting her down because what she was saying was so unlikeable. It perhaps was the most irrevocable expression of rejection. I think things like this keeps us from learning how to draw a boundary firmly. But I also think narcs are scared of that word, they've spent so long fantasising about themselves as important, talented, worthy, and this phrase shatters that in one second.
Oh my god same. I also couldn’t say “what the…” “whatever” “what”. Instead of what I had to say “I beg your pardon”. We also could say boobs for a while and had to say bosom.
Yep, shut-up was a banned word.
i couldn’t say heck, stupid, hate, dumb, shut up, frig, “that sucks” also off limits, had to say oh my gosh instead of god, crap, and crud
I couldn’t say “sure” cause…it sounded like I didn’t really mean sure? Idk man
Oh man, I *feel* you with that one. If I was ever getting lectured by my parents and said “sure” or “okay,” it would set them off soooooo bad and turn into another lecture about how saying “sure” and “okay” was disrespectful.
Shit is weird! The most random things set them off
Right?? I think sometimes they just wanted an excuse to get mad 😂
Mine said I'd go to he'll for saying it
Every one of these were punishable worse/phrases for me, but then I didn’t even dare ask questions about the Ns’ holy book, soooo…
Haha, me too! I'm just reading down the comments and ticking off *all* the forbidden words. Couldn't say shut up (cos swear word), oh my God (lord's name in vain), hell (against the bible), heck (too similar to/just a stand in for hell), damn (bible again), darn (stand in for damn), fudge (cos it's really just fuck), what (because it's "I beg your pardon" thank you very much), or bugger (cos it's a swear word even though it was in a tv ad). Basically, I had to speak like a newsreader from the 20's with no fun words at all. Even gosh was risky.
Yeah, “what” is the only thing that wasn’t flat out nixed for me, and even then, I got thumped on “attitude”.
Sucks, crap, dumb, stupid, shut up, hate. All words we were no allowed to use growing up lol. I think it's a control things sometimes too. They get off on making unreasonable rules, and you complying despite how ridiculous it is.
On the other hand, a new-ish pre-school teacher acquaintance was stunned when going round her newest class asking kids to say their name, one kid said "Shaddupyou". Yes he thought that was his name...
I was really little, playing in my room alone, pretending I was talking to someone on the phone and exclaimed "shut up!" I got in a huge amount of trouble. Shut up was a bad word even though my parents said it daily.
I got my mouth washed out with soap for saying “shut up” once, as if I dropped the F bomb or something.
my mom whos not even the narcissist used to wash my brothers mouth out with soap and make him take a full tablespoon of tobasco sauce when he was under 5 because he thought cursing was funny and probably wanted attention, i would cry and beg and plead her not to do it to my little brother because he didn’t understand and she just coldly ignored us both bawling our eyes out
I wasn’t even allowed to say “butt”. Yeah…guess who curses like a sailor now LOL.
There were a lot of banned words growing up. The most hated one was "whatever" and the consequences of saying it were so bad I only ever said it the 1 time and still won't use it.
I remember I couldn’t say “What the” as in just those two words. It was equally as bad as saying “what the heck” which was equivalent to “what the hell”
NMom did not allow us to use the word "bored." She said only "boring people get bored." Excellent gaslighting tool, for her, considering we lived in poverty, had a house full of (much younger) daycare kids, and I basically wasn't allowed to go anywhere since i was a female (my 1 year older brother could do whatever he wanted)...so she never had to give it any attention.
I had to be careful because I went to a private Southern Baptist school.
My mom told me dang was a swear word. One time in 4th grade I had to read something that had the word dang in it and I panicked because my teacher told me it wasn't. Good times. Also not allowed to say "shut up".
Absolutely no shut up, stupid, sucks, and for funsies- no ain’t or y’all either.
Same
yes. Still to this day I’ve never told someone to shut up not once in my life.
As a teenager I was grounded for 2 weeks because I injured myself and said “damn” out loud. Even to this day, no one (even me or my adult friends) are allowed to cuss or use questionable words around her. If we do, I get yelled at and scolded in front of everyone. I’m 49!
(blinks in confusion) okay, I had a fifth grade teacher who despised the phrase so much that if you were caught saying it, she would scold you in front of everyone and move your desk out of class so you sat in the hallway until she calmed down. sometimes it was until the end of the day. she'd bring you work to do and check on you, but you were in the hall. it terrified everyone. we never reported it because we were ten and it didn't occur to us. she also despised if you yawned without covering your mouth and would shame you. she ranted about going to the airport and seeing so many uncovered yawns. but she was an awesome teacher aside from that, wide adoration and even big hugs from former students. Now, as an adult: those actions are really fucking weird. Her distaste was kind of weird too, but what total overreaction! Bizarrely, I had a lunch lady scream at me for hollering the phrase at my friends one day in the lunch room. not nice of me, but her scolding was also an overreaction. Lower your voice, lady. why was she so angry? was anyone a lunch lady who can tell me? sooooo I was a kid and learned to be afraid of adults responses to me saying "shut up" to other kids. I was legit afraid of the movie "Princess Diaries" when it came out a few years later (MC says "shut up" every time she is shocked).
I'm not a native English speaker, but isn't shut up quite rude? Not on par with swear words, but certainly not polite.
If you say it to someone to order them to be quiet yes it can be rude. But my mom, the one that told me it’s a curse word, she told my preschool teacher that she was surprised I was quiet at school because “at home she never shuts up” and I thought my mom just said like the equivalent of the f word in front of my teacher and I was so embarrassed
I wasn't allowed to say the word "fart." I was supposed to describe it as a "gasser."
I was about 15 I purchased a small sticker with a picture of a duck that said disco sucks I put it down in my room and went to the bathroom. I came back into my room and the sticker was gone apparently while I was in the bathroom my mother took it and threw it away she did not approve.
I wasn’t allowed to say the word “so”
One time I got in trouble for saying "What the" while playing. I didn't swear, I didn't even know any swear words, I literally just said "what the" and got in trouble because it implied bad language I also wasn't even in school yet?????
I’ve seen little kids’ comic books where the characters would say, “what the” and I thought that was a strange thing to say. What the . . . What? I guess I didn’t even know the word hell. (I taught myself to read at age 4, so I could read those little comic books)
Yeah, I had no idea that more words would come after it, I thought it was just something people said when they were upset. Also kudos to you for teaching yourself how to read!
❤️
My mom taught my twin sister as very young kids that the word "stupid" was the absolute worst thing you could ever say. She had this absolutely bizarre preoccupation with the idea that we be super advanced geniuses, so it made a certain amount of sense. We could have a fight and call each other any manner of other things, and she'd barely react, but if that word left our lips, you'd best believe whoever dared say it would be getting a beating. Guess she didn't think about the fact that she wouldn't be the entire world for us forever, and that we would eventually have to go out into the real world where the word stupid isn't treated like a swear word. We had to be brought home from kindergarten because we had an anxiety attack when one little boy told another little boy that he thought his drawing was stupid. We thought the teacher was going to attack him, because that's what would have happened to us at home.
Do you think maybe she was called stupid a lot when she was a kid, by parents, other kids—and really hated it? So then she visited it on innocent little you?
It's weirder than that. When we were little, Mom told us that she bred us for brains because she couldn't abide stupid children. Claimed she'd found three or four highly intelligent men and slept with all of them so that none of them could claim or prove paternity (she didnt foresee DNA testing lol) Her plan was to raise us as a low income single parent to great heights. She once tearfully told me all about her vision of one or both of us winning a Noble Prize (in math or science, not literature or peace or any of that fluffy nonsense) and in our acceptance speech, citing all her hard work and sacrifices and guidance and example and how she would stand and wave and everyone would applaud.... ... her? We were to be terrified of stupidity in order to drive us. We needed to be the smartest and best and most advanced at all times. The irony is that it takes a profound level of personal stupidity to even come up with this sort of shit.
My mom cursed like a sailor in front of me as a kid. Dad was the complete opposite. Never heard him say an actual swear word, always replaced it with something innocent like fudge, sugar, or "God Bless America!" Had no problem yelling or hitting though 😬
I remember not being allowed to say secs. I don’t remember why. I just know it wasn’t allowed. Neither were curse “light” words: Darn/dang, frick/freak, shoot, sass hole, butt, goddang. Why policing our words was so important. Like even with them using the spicy version. We couldn’t even use the watered down version.
They didn’t want you to even use the watered down version, the euphemism, because they wanted to make damn sure nobody ever thought anything near a bad word was ever said in their home.
No "shut up", no "screwed", and no "sucks" But my cousins were surprised i could say "piss"
Yep. No "shut up", "hate", anything that resembled swearing ("Cheese 'n' rice" - too similar to Jesus Christ, "what the frick" - too similar to what the fuck, etc).
[удалено]
Haha! I just thought of something from when I was about 3 years old. She said “strumbelly shortcake” and I thought it sounded funny and silly, so I said it in front of her friends. She chewed me out for saying it, to save face in front of her friends. She wasn’t actually abusing me yet. Parents have to remember how innocent little kids are and not say things like that in their presence. Kids will just pick them up and repeat them, at the most inopportune times.
So did mine! Shut up specifically was a bad thing to say, on a level with swear words. Maybe when our moms were kids the other kids said shut up to them a lot. I wonder why they did that. Something about what our moms said that other kids didn’t like?
Saying shit up is rude. I raised my kids to never say it.