17 year old girl needs help dealing with extremly strict parents - Parenting Issues Message Board

Browny · 10-20-2003, 12:24 AM

I am a 17 year old girl that is being brought up in a fijian household. I am the only child. I guess for that reason my parents are being too strict.and when i mean strict you don't even understand what i mean by strict. you see in my house I hadn't been allowed to go out with my friends til I was 15! I was pretty popular in my school even though I had the most boring life of all my friends. Even when I was 15 my parents had to drop me off to where i was going talk to the person in charge and then stick around for like 1hour to make sure that i wasn't with any boys. and even when they left, they would still call my cell and leave messages every 5 minutes. They had to a background check on all my friends before i could actually like talk to them outside of school and go to the mall or movies. so finally when i turned 17 things started to get a little better i had a little bit more freedom because I had a friend who was very trusting and sweet and she had won the hearts of my parents and whole family. so we would go out and still my parents would call my cell and her cell every 10mins. so one day me and my friend went to the mall and i meet this guy that i used to know, our friendship was lost because he asked me out and i having no other answer said no even though i really wanted to go out with him. but thanks to my parents i had lost yet another friend. so we see him there and we begin to talk, we kept talking until the mall was going to close. so he offerd us a ride home. so we kindly accepted and he started to drive home. on the way there we were listening to a CD he just bought so it was really crankted up and i couldn't hear my phone ring my friend couldn't hear it either.so I got home at like 11:30 and he went to drop off my friend. as soon as i stepped in to the house all i heard was ohh this girl has disgraced our family ,going out late at night and not even calling to say where they are and why didn't you answer your phone? I tried to tell her the story but i couldn't tell her the part where we got a ride home with a guy!! so i said that the skytrain got stuck. My parents being all "oh no your lying you were off with a boy drinking and doing it." so i just gave up and started to head towards my room, when all of a sudden my mom grab's my arm and swings me around and starts to hit me for me it wasn't a big deal cause they always hit me with spoons, hangers, shoes, sticks, belts, hair brushes,etc you get the picture. but today she grabed the metal Knife sharpener and wacks me across the back i scream and she throws me to the ground and slaps my face and this continued for a while and then finally my dad came back in the room and grabed my mom and slapped her across the face and told her if she continued any longer the people in our building would call the cops and then she would disgrace our familiy name. after that day, i wasn't allowed to hang out with my friends out side of school and my dad would now pick me up from school as soon as the bell rang and if I was 5 minutes late they would assume that i was skipping or talking to boys or something bad in their eyes. my parents went as far as telling all my teachers that i wasn't allowed to work in groups that had more than one boy. and that i wasn't allowed to miss any classes for if i did that they should call my house. slowly i began to loose all my friends and now i am left with only 2 true friends you know that new best friend i had found she even left me. so i began to accept that i wasn't good enough for anyone and later got depression and almost committed suicide a few times but i couldn't because i love my family too much my whole family thinks that my parents are being too hard on me but do my parents listen? NO! i understand that i am an only child and i am from a Indian family but i haven't meet another kids parents that are this strict! oh did i forget to tell you that my parents listen to all my conversations on the phone? i am a prisoner in my own home tell me what is girl to do? i am a senior this is the year where i get to go out with friends and party and hangout so we have something to talk about when we leave and when we think of memories of highschool. but thanks to them i don't have any good memories to remember just of how horrible they were to me. i can never treat my kids like that. what am i to do??

Want 2 B Well · 10-20-2003, 05:41 AM

Since you are stuck there I recommend that you move into more of adult thinking. Focus totally on your plans for after graduation, college & job. Sounds like you are going to need it. How are your grades now? Have you started applying to colleges?

Get a job now, if possible and start saving up money to move out.

I would like to say something witty and helpful about how to get out of your parents grasp but I am old enough to know that people like that usually do not change and your best bet is to make a plan on how to move out. Focus on that goal.

TerryB · 10-20-2003, 04:16 PM

The slapping seems way over-board. I have to agree with the last poster. You need to make a plan for self-sufficiency. If would be great if you could get away from them and still meet your personal goals. If you want to go to college, find a way to do that. So, look at the big picture and put up with the strict rules for the short term. I'm assuming though that the physical abuse only occurs when you break the family rules. Naturally, you can't just sit back and take physical abuse that comes unpredictably or for sport etc...

I would think family counceling would be great for your family. I'm not sure if your parents would go for it though. Sometimes a religious leader can act as a councilor if there is someone you think that you can trust. Strict parenting can sometimes protect a person from things that you only realize after you have kids of your own but the physical abuse that you describe is uncivilized. You've got to convince yourself that you are not deserving of such treatment. I wouldn't even treat a pet or farm animal like that.

Your parents probably do really love you and mean well but seem to be misguided. I consider myself a strict parent but I have never hit my kids. My parents were leanient and I had several real close calls where I could have been raped or kid-napped. Now I don't want my kids to have those experiences. Will they end up so sheltered that they end up being too lenient with their kids? Who knows. Your parents know that most young guys are after only one thing because that is nature. They also know that most teen-age girls end up being taken advantage of. That might not be you but it's the norm.

Hope you can hang in there. Graduation is not far off!

gillian30 · 10-21-2003, 05:07 PM

I hope you don't take offense at this, but your parents sound like they may have some serious mental-health issues going on. This is way beyond strict parenting, this is into the realm of paranoia. Calling you every few minutes, hitting you, over-questioning your every move? Really strange. Save as much money as possible, put yourself through school if you have to, and at 18, move away. Until then stay focused on your education and keep thinking of your 18th birthday!

TerryB · 10-22-2003, 04:11 PM

I hope that you are OK Browny. Let us know how you are doing.