Were You Sheltered As a Child?

I'm the youngest of five, in my Mother's eyes i'll always be her little baby. With that being said I was indeed sheltered as a child, but in a reasonable fashion. Enough to get help when needed and peace when wanted.


All in all I think my parents did an excellent job raising me despite any opposition I may or may not have put up.

 

My parents are basically the opposite of authoritarian or helicopter parents, which aren't the same thing to me. They never watched me closely, were never that critical of how I did, and never shielded me from anything. From about age 13 onward, I was never punished for anything because I never did anything worth punishing.

It is rather complicated- but my teenage years were extremely atypical. Most people would be shocked.


I'm still a perfectionist and stuff though, but it wasn't really my parents that brought it on.

 

Could've written this verbatim. Unfortunately i still struggle with feelings of insecurity, incompetence (in certain areas), and confidence. Difficult to feel fully capable. Always worrying that any mistake i make will somehow be irreversible or haunt me for the rest of my life.

 

My parents are extremely authoritarian, always expecting maximum obedience and always after me.

Whenever I did something ''wrong'', I would be punished. The punishment would depend on the situation such as hitting with the belt, slapping etc. It got to the point of death threats by the time I was hitting puberty. They were very distrusting of me, and would forbid me from really going anywhere without them. They hated my feminine ''persona'' and were afraid the world would see this, so they would keep me from a lot of the social events.

Effects? this might have had an effect on the fact that I don't know how to handle social situations at all. I am extremely shy and distrusting. This has lead to lack of confidence issues, and to others seeing this lack of confidence and constantly abuse me. Since then, I spend most of my middle school and early high school years alone, just loaning and avoiding contact. This has lead me to also have lack of trust in my parents, they had to find out I was gay, which lead to more pain.

 

Yes. In fact, I still am. I apologize in advance for the length of this post.

It's really complicated, so I'll just give you the nutshell version. My mother started homeschooling me in the 3rd grade, but eventually I was just left to my own devices. Surprisingly, I still managed to learn a lot through the Internet. We spent a lot of time hiding this from my father, and I never went out much because we didn't want the neighbors or truant officers to ask questions.

Eventually, around the time I was 14, my father found out, sued for custody, got it (against my will), and made me go to live with him. I really didn't like him at all. He's an ESTP.

Anyway, after three years, when I was about 17 and about to go to 11th grade, he let me go back home to finish my last two years of high school. I related better to the people there, and made a lot of acquaintances, but only one or two friends.

Anyway, after I graduated, I began spinning my wheels. The only thing I'd been pushing towards all those years was getting away from my father, and getting my High School diploma. After all those years... I had no idea what I wanted, or how to get it.

I tried going to community college, but I didn't have the energy to keep it up, especially since I kept failing the most basic math classes they offered.

Then I tried to find a job, but I found that they wouldn't even consider hiring a person my age without references or experience, especially not without a degree.

So, I wasted about 2-3 years of my life, going to community college on and off, looking for a loophole in what I didn't want to do, but I couldn't find one that didn't scare the heck out of me.

I eventually realized that I had no choice but to go back and beg my father for a job at his company. I had once started working there for a few months to get some extra money, but quit thinking I could find another job.

I work there, and live with him now. I still don't like living with him, but working with him is easier... surprisingly.

An important factor here is that I'm in his will for a substantial sum of money. So the way I see it, my best course of action is probably to keep working for him until he dies (saving the money I earn), take the money I get from inheritance, and start living my life.

The challenge for me is trying to swallow my pride and tolerate being party to all the semi-unethical business and personal practices he engages in.

 

I had a semi sheltered life that was less set by boundaries and more set by complete autonomy with them insisting on why go out there when you have things here. The best I can describe it is as Indego has described my pseudo walls that are walls of nothing is how I perceived my world and thus stuck to myself. Nothing was really sheltered from me in the way of the world but it was placed in a way that I would need to show initiative... which I didn't really have.

 

My parents were not sheltering in the sense that they wanted to do things for me, but in the sense that they wanted to protect me. They worried too much that someday something will happen to me and they won't be able to help me. Whenever the situation was safe and would contribute to my learning on how to interact they'd let me do as I please.

That's when I was a kid. However, with time, as I grew up, "safe situations" weren't enough for me, and that caused trouble. I kinda had to fight for my independence with them, because there was so much I wanted to do and so much I wanted to experience and learn that required some amount of risk-taking.

I wasn't a difficult teenager at all. I knew what was good for me and what wasn't at an early age, so it wasn't a matter of them not trusting my judgement, it was only a matter of them letting go of their fears for their little girl.

 

Note: Parents divorced right before I turned 4 years old.

In some ways I was very sheltered (mostly by my father), in other ways I had free reign. My father tried to shelter me from information, not things. I was denied information about things going on in the family that were negitive. He hid his motives, and hid anything he deemed as "unhealthy for a child to know". However I have always been extremely resourceful, and he managed to hide very little. He was the kind of parent that would the "1 2 3 magic" parenting method if I didn't do what he said. At the same time though, he was loose with other things. Physical "doing" things mostly. He got me a SCUBA lisences when I was 12 years old. He would take me to six flags great adventure when I was 8 years old, drop me off (if I asked to go by myself) and let me run around all by myself (he went home till he picked me up) for up to 8 hours. Leave me home alone when I said it was ok. My dad in some ways was really perceptive of me, and saw that I was really intelligent and knew not to do anything stupid. He was afraid of me thinking stupid (in his eyes).

My mom never sheltered me, she has been extremely open and allowed me to do what I need to do, while still telling me what she thinks. She's an INFJ. An ideal parent really. She did punish me though when I was bad (like doing something inappropriate in public, or failing a test). She was the reverse of my dad in a sense. Although, she did not approve of my father taking me to bars till midnight when I was 6 years old (seeing barfights and all, although he would take me outside when they happened), letting me run around 6 flags all day alone unsupervized. She got really upset and bent out of shape over those things, despite me saying I thought it was ok and that I could do it (but who would listen to an 8 year old with that and believe it? lol).

I actually had wonderful parents in hindsight. My father could have done better in the mental sense (as he was abusive). But really he is just very different from me, and as an ESTJ has a very hard time shifting that.

 

I grew up with an extremely smothering, paranoid mother whose protectiveness went to ridiculous extents when I was a child, and it still does to my great misfortune.

She was very strict and unforgiving, somewhat domineering and practically wrestled my upbringing from my father. The worst part during childhood, is that there was just not pleasing her, everything she wanted was contradictory, she often berated me for not being social enough, yet when I would be invited to a party or wanted to go out with friends she'd guilt-trip me out of going with her ridiculous safety concerns and hysterics. It effectively prevented me from honing my social skills and keeping any friends. The worst long term damage is that unfortunately a lot of her paranoid ideas rubbed off on me which caused me to develop an almost instinctive sense of needing to be cautious at all times and a lack of trust towards most everything.

She still harbors these extremely irrational fears for my safety. When I was a child she was afraid I'd get run over by a car or kidnapped and was abnormally restrictive. (I wasn't allowed to go to supermarket a few minutes away without supervision, and I had to always be within the sight from our balcony window when I played outside, she'd go look for me if I didn't meet the curfew) Now that I'm an adult she thinks there's a rapist waiting for me behind every corner.

It was very hard to deal with. I felt robbed of my individuality. I was always praised as a smart child, yet I wasn't allowed to make any choices or decisions for myself - she had to double check everything. As I grew rebellious during puberty, our relationship greatly deteriorated.

 

I had the same issues with parents doing things for me that I had ought to learn on my own. So fought this by usually preventing anyone from even being in the position to help me with my schoolwork, including things like shop class. I am glad I did, as I can now use tools and sew some as well as just doing well in school without outside motivation or authority.

Unfortunately, they don't teach you certain things in school, a lot of which I need to know now in adulthood. I already mentioned thing like this in the "clueless" thread. Stuff like opening special accounts with banks, credit ratings, etc. I never had exposer to that and now I'm fucked. I'm really scared of dealing with these sorts of things too because I fear I could fuck over my entire life if I screw up something like a credit card or a work visa, or some type of licence.

At least I have "home life" covered. I can cook really well, including things I am unexperienced with, I can clean absolutely anything, I can fix things, I can do some DIY house projects, deal with outdoor property care, do shopping on a budget, tend loved ones, deal with injuries and illness, all the good "wifely things" ;D. I just wish I could deal with things outside of domestic borders better.

Heh, I was born to be married, I think.

 

my parents generally encouraged us to do things and be independent from an early age... my father especially focused on the importance of education, which I'm forever grateful for. their non pressuring parenting style has benefited me and my siblings in so many ways. they're not perfect, of course.. i remember the many fights they had while we were growing up, the financial problems, job problems, school problems, house problems, moving around all the time and the stresses involved in that... but overall, i think they did a really good job with us.

 

Yes, I was sheltered up until I turned 10 years old.
My mother was very religious and strict, after my younger sister passed away she began to loosen the reins. Fortunately I was lucky, my older brothers and sisters didn't get off that easy.
I always considered myself to be an observer, watching and learning from other people's mistakes, otherwise besides that I thought my parents did a pretty good job raising me.

 

I wasn't at all sheltered. I mean, I wasn't allowed to watch R rated movies or anything when I was little, but I was not sheltered from the world. My parents were not very strict in terms of having tons of rules or anything. We weren't assigned chores. We didn't really have a curfew. We didn't have the reigns pulled in on us. But from what my parents tell me, my sister and I were exceptionally well behaved in public. We were punished for fighting or doing things that were bad, but that's to be expected.

I grew up in a small town where everyone knew everyone. I lived around almost ALL elderly people. There wasn't a lot to be sheltered from or influenced by, so I don't think my parents had too much cause to be worrying about us.

I think I was pretty lucky!

 

No. I was a wild thing that my parents couldn't contain.

So of course they responded with abuse.

I had a rotten childhood.

They could be very controlling, but never in a caring way.

It always seemed more like anger, anger at my imperfections.

 

All I can say is moving out was certainly an eye opener.

My mum still did my washing for a long while though, and the only time I got a decent meal was when I'd pop 'round.

 

Check, check, and check.

 

Wasn't so bad for Evan O'Dorney:
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I'm afraid the dreams about kids who become geniuses "on their own", and nothing external affects them are mostly fabricated. Mozart's father was also one of the best music teachers of this era. It's another story that maybe we don't have to be that "smart". With this I'd agree. meaning that the direction of development is a bit distorted and maybe not even efficient enough this way.

 

While there were elements of extreme authoritatian parenting style at times I would say no, overall I was not sheltered as a child, not at all.


cheers,
Ian