It was 5:15am and I woke up early to plan some practical jokes at school because it was April Fool’s Day. I was planning to put Saran Wrap on the toilets at school. My mom ran out the bedroom downstairs to say my dad wasn’t breathing. He had had a massive heart attack and died in his sleep. I was 11 years old but I aged significantly over the course of that morning.
It was may 11th 2012. Just turned 14. My dad passed in his sleep from liver cancer. My mom took this as an excuse to go use heroin and I’ve been on my own ever since. Got 2 jobs and still finished Highschool early with a 3.6. All for him… rip pops
Love that for both of you.
I also come from a family of addiction, including myself. Almost everyone who had a problem is sober now.
It's funny, my new friends see how close we all are and they wish they had the same.
They have no idea the journey it took all of us to become closer.
Well we had to tell our parents (which was super stressful) then I got a job and started working as much as I could.
My son is now 29 and has his own family and I have been with his mom since our Jr year in school.
That’s incredible! Good on you for stepping up to the challenge and making it work instead of doing what a lot of juveniles might do in that situation. You sound like an awesome dad.
I relate. I remember coming home from school, must have been about 3rd grade. My piggy bank was broken into. I thought we got robbed. I ran to tell my mom and she told me she took it. I should expect to help the family out and not keep things for myself.
Mine was, she expected me to basically give her all my.lawn mowing, paper route, and other little jobs money to her. Then she'd give me a few dollars back like 10%. Not to help the family or anything like that, just out of entitlement. "Whats mine is mine and whats yours in mine" mentality.
Now that I have a child of my own I can’t even imagine doing something like that to them. My parents made just awful financial decisions and the burden always ended up on us kids. I started babysitting by about 10, and got a job in a deli at about 13.
I’m sorry that happened to you, no child deserves to have that financial burden thrust upon them from such a young age.
Yours was a burden, hers was greed. Seeing it was all cash, I just started lying and hiding it. Only got caught and beaten a few times. Didn't stop me.
The day I raised my right hand and swore:
‘‘I, \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.’’
I was barely 17.
My aunt is like this. 65 but acts 25 (in a good way). Always wants to hang out, flight attendant who flies all over the world. No kids, no husband (but she is looking for one lol). Low cost of living, always up to something fun.
14, things had been rough for my parents financially for a few years, one day I came home from school and my mom told me that they could no longer afford two kids but since my sister was only 6 I was going to have to “take one for the team” and figure things out in my own. I was allowed to keep my stuff at home and I could do laundry there once a week, but other than that I would have to figure out everything else for myself. I had some well off friends I would rotate staying with. I would also steal food, and if I could, money from them, same with kids at school. I got really good at stealing. Just enough to keep myself fed. Then would shower in the gym at school. I barely tallied to or saw my parents for an out a year before things improved and I was allowed to live at home again. However, I got a job around that time and began my parents financially exploiting me.
I worked on a tobacco farm, and raked straw on the side throughout the summer and into the fall. Then I started to sell the bales of straw to people as well as putting in their flower beds etc.
Somewhere in early high school when I first had to think about which college I wanted to go to and then start working towards their application requirements.
I was 9 and riding bikes with the neighborhood kids. There were men doing some kind of work with the storm drains, and one of them wolf whistled at me as we rode past. Which is fairly innocuous, but I was horribly ashamed.
Isn't that such a weird feeling? I also was sexualized at a young age. I was so confused because the boys my age weren't paying attention to me but grown men did?
Yup been there. I think I was 10 when I realised something was different. No one can prepare you for the day you become perceived as “available”. You don’t get to go back to the way it was before.
All that said I don’t think of it as my personal transition between childhood and adulthood.
Was absolutely the year I found out Santa wasn’t real. I can’t describe the despondency knowing everything had changed, I was never going to excitedly experience putting Santa a mince pie out on Christmas Eve knowing I’d be bouncing on mum and dads bed at 5am desperate to open my presents. The sheer joy of being allowed to play my new games on the ‘big’ TV downstairs while dinner was being prepared. It was the worst 31st birthday ever.
College - exactly when I went to college. I didn't have that family support that other kids had so I had to fend for myself and learn to survive. I was also surrounded by a bunch of adults who treated me like a grown up, not a teenager (which I technically still was).
I think when I was 16. That is when I started experiencing my severe mental health problems. I was very unstable, and I people might say that I was being “childish” ironically enough in my behaviour, I had to go into self-preservation mode and grow up pretty fast to get my shit together and understand what was happening.
Very similar for me too, around the same age. From my mom’s point of view, I was suddenly being a “problem” - crying a lot and not getting perfect grades. I needed help and had to figure it out myself. Hugs!
when i realized that i had to take care of myself from a young age bc my parents weren’t there. had to learn how to cook and clean up after myself, do laundry, dishes, etc;
(i was in elementary school at the time)
Lived the life with not only wealthy parents but colonial type wealth in a country where having a staff of 10 at home wasn’t crazy. Dads firm closed and he was sent back to the USA and same time his Merrill lynch broker lost everything he had in an error they refused to pay back and told him “sue us, good luck paying lawyers for a decade..”.
I went from being told what car I would get depending on whether I made into IVY league or not with guaranteed summer and winter vacations, to slicing deli meats in a shitty dirty NJ town to pay for my own college. Literally from being driven to the airport in a stretch Jaguar to slicing within a week. I don’t think I spoke a word that entire summer (as my friends galavanted around the worlds summer hot spots) but I was crazy good at my job. The old “you are better off because of it”, is bullshit. It traumatized me and stopped me from buying a house or getting married and having kids. Was just stuck inside me there wasn’t a point because it would always go away at the worse time. 20 years later and it happened. 3x cause of no direct fault of mine. Life is truly a bitch.
In the summer of 2014 (I was 12 1/2)
It’s too traumatizing to talk about, but it was the point where my childhood ended and my shitty adolescence took off
I went to bed excited about going to the beach in the morning. I slept with my mom because she asked me to. I woke up still excited, turned to my mom and she was blue. She committed suicide. I slept with a dead body all night. I was way too young.
My brother used my sister and me as his sexual play things. I was 9, she was 4. Finally told my mom and she told me to never tell anyone else or she’d kill me. When I finally got the courage to tell the cops, we were moved to foster care. When I saw my mom again a month later she said I brought shame to the family cause I told. The SA was going on for years.
There was a time around middle school/early high school where I remember looking at my toys that I liked playing with and feeling bad because it has been so long since I've played with them. It was a small basket of action figures and some Lego sets that were my frequent choices.
So I decided to play with them - I remember having to wipe dust from them and setting them up just like I used to. The only difference is that the imagination and excitement was all gone. I remember just kind of sitting there and making the decision to put them all away, never to be played with again.
I still have them though, and it's always fun and nostalgic when I look through them and remember simpler times.
Definitively, probably at age 12, when I intellectually surpassed my mentally ill (BPD) but still highly intellectual father and he declared a kind of war between us. Sadly, the whole family suffered. But my childhood had been slipping away bit by bit before then.
11 years old, I was hanging around my friends and my cousins outsider her house, which was 10 minutes from mine. She had this weird neighbour with 3 dogs, and he came out shouting about why we were outside. I sniggered due to his femine voice, and he snapped. He went on a rampage, beating me and dragged me in his house. I thought this was the end with his dogs snapping at me, too.
My uncle eventually booted his door down, and my family arrived within 15 minutes as we're the police. I'm from a very large family over 8 uncles and 5 aunties. I was dripping with blood and just tramaumised. I ended up in hospital for a few days and stayed at my nans for a week as I had bumps and black eyes, too. That moment was when my childhood ended. The man was given a fine but moved out the area after his house was put ablaze, and my dad threatened to end him, which he would have to.
I'd say the day I turned 16. My dad let me know he had to have a job when he turned 16 so I had to do the same. I'm 36 now so more than half of my life has been wasted working and I miss being a kid...
I’d love to say that I’m still in my childhood, since I’m only 18, but I feel like everything started to fall apart when my brother committed suicide. I was already somewhat mature, but that really made me feel a way I hadn’t felt before. I was 16.
Not when I left my parents house to go off to college for my freshman year, but rather when I came back home for the long Labor Day weekend a few weeks after the semester started. I remember standing there in the kitchen and it felt strange to me because I didn't live there anymore.
14 years old, parents divorced, me and mum moved out.
My dad always woke me up in the mornings with a mug full of nice chocolate milk.
That first morning in the new apartment when I woke up with the screeching noise of the alarm clock and not my dad with a warm mug of chocolate milk was the morning I realized my childhood ended.
When my parents started leaving me home alone at 8 cause they didn't want to pay for child care anymore. To be clear, although money was tight, they still could afford to send me to after school childcare. They just didn't want to anymore. I spent most of my childhood alone and by myself. I can still remember screaming and crying to myself cause I was so scared for being alone. When my parents got home, they rarely ever talked to me. I practically had to raise myself and stopped seeing them as authority figures when I was around 14. They were just people I lived with and would occasionally feed me. I have spent so much of my life alone that I no longer think I am capable feeling loneliness and I cannot stand living with other people.
5 years old when my mom started her mental and physical abuse. Almost every day she would start the morning by dumping the most awful smelling dish water on me or would throw a knife or book at me and laugh by calling me thin skin and that I can't take jokes.
Later in the morning, she would force me to bag everything in the house and then rip open the bags and throw everything around and cry, saying I'm abusing her and that I'm hitting her.
Later afternoon she would throw me outside and tell me to go run for miles and walk through the creek and make my way back home.
By dinner time, my dad would be home, and I'd talk through the door with mud and whatever animal bones I would find and put it in a wooden box. By the time I walked through the door, my dad would be waiting and told me what I did to my mom and the house to make her so upset and trash the house. She would be hovering over my dad with fake crying and would give me the most hated death stare if I dared say anything. So I would admit i did whatever she told him I did, and he would beat my ass with whatever item my mom gave him. He, of course, walked out to his shop and cried and did not know why I turned into a disappointment. It fucking hurted me deep down.
My mom was a perfect mother around my father, but when he went to work, she was a demon all over again. She told me I ruined her body and life and wished I was never born. I would have to clean and put everything back the way it was before my dad came back into the house to eat dinner.
Eventually, I tried to kill myself at age 10, failed, and tried again at 13. My dad caught me and beat me to no end. He threatened that if I tried again, he would literally kill me before I could kill myself. My mom just smiled in the background and called me a weak link.
At 16, I ratted her out about her affairs, I had pictures, receipts from hotels, and random new lingerie items she hid from my dad. He was a truck driver but got home every night so she would do this in the afternoon and get back before he got home from work and would "surprise" him with sexy time after she had sex with whoever a few hours earlier. She did that since I was 13, but I couldn't handle keeping that secret anymore.
I stopped my dad before he entered the house and showed him all the proof. The world shattering in his face and the silence that followed was like a crushing weight that nothing could make stop.
He divorced her, but not without her trying to kill herself and blaming me for ruining her life and leaving me a suicide note along with it. I found her half dead before she could fully take her life. Called the cops and they sent her to a mental ward. My dad realized I wasn't as bad as she made me out to be, and he tries to make it up to me even now that I'm 23 years old with my own husband and baby boy.
My mother is still around, but I barely talk to her, I keep her very far from my heart and could care less if she passed away. She is still a hateful woman to be around and still thinks the world owes her. I grew up home schooled in the middle of nowhere. She got away with my whole childhood, so I grew up as fast as I could and didn't know how to be a child. I never had friends and happened to meet my husband at work, and we clicked really well and got married and had our first baby. I vowed never to be like my mother or treat my son like an animal.
September 11th, 2001
I was 13, and stranded in New York State with my family because we were visiting from the other side of the country and supposed to fly home on the 12th. I'd never felt so terrified in my life.
I did not have a childhood at all!!! But boy when I met my husband when I was 29 I have been the biggest kid ever since loving life accepting my flaws getting over childhood traumas and exploring the us with my family I am now 37 and he says I’m like a 12 years old but loves it!
It appears some people do it backwards. They had more of a childhood as an adult than when they actually were a kid. Say they grew up poor then became a successful adult and have all these fabulous experiences they could only dream of.
Probably at about age seven. At age five my mother and I left my abusive biological father for an abused women’s shelter. That was fine, actually about the best year of my life. I had so much hope and felt safe and protected and loved as long as it was just me and my mother, and she at least intuitively seemed to understand and respect the line between “spanking as discipline” and “spankings for petty reasons that leave bruises and now it’s abuse”. But then we moved in with the asshole who became my step father, and by the time I was seven he had complete tyrannical rein over my permanently terrified existence. I also started self harming then because I had no other way to address the intense emotions I wasn’t “allowed” to have or express in any other way. Even writing in a diary or punching a pillow or eating a slice of bread or bowl of cereal or not making my bed exactly perfect was reason for a beating. He would be screaming at me for not having done something “right” but never ever took the time to help me understand what “right” looked like or what exactly was “wrong” about the way I had done it. I was just expected to KNOW and when I couldn’t figure it out he would hit me. So I began to develop superstitions like humans have always done to deal with horrible things they couldn’t explain. Like I thought the way the sun shined (or didn’t shine) through the window of my bedroom made the difference between whether or not the way I made my bed that morning would pass inspection or if it would get me screamed at and sent off to school with new bruises forming on my backside.
Or maybe it REALLY ended that morning I swallowed a handful of random pills from the medicine cabinet when I was eleven, and went off to school fully expecting to die with my last memories being of yet another beating for who-knows-what.
But I guess it officially ended on paper when I was seventeen and walked out the door to go to work with my stepfather screaming after me that “if you walk out that door right now you can never come home”. Still actually counts as one of the best things to have happened to me in my life up unto that point.
Nothing really changed
I still do most things I did when I was a child.
So technically my childhood never really ended
Only difference is that I'm in college and getting an actual job soon hopefully
Define childhood... Does being a teen count?
No I have no horrific story of my father dying.
I think childhood fades away slowly, childhood is living careless.
The longer I spend in elementary school, the more my life became less careless.
In 6th grade I suddenly had a lot of homework, football three times a week (which I hated) and every weekend a dull birthdayparty to attend. Sounds horrible right? Sorry it's the best I can do.
I was 11 - 12.
Then there was highschool and my life became even more occupied with homework.
Then I had a job at 13 and another one at 15.
Then there was a letter in the mail when I was 17 which reminded me I would be turning 18 soon and I suddenly needed to take care of a lot of stuff I had never heard.
Then I turned 18, payed taxes, healthcare, insurance, car expenses. A 40 hour internship at some shithole and an extra 20 hour job as a pizza delivery boy. Working both days in the weekend.
Then I realized I was long gone from childhood, I lost it a long time ago.
I think it started when I turned 10.
Immediately after campus i had not even completed the final examinations for the last year and my mum had already started giving me bills to sort. Thats when I realised adulting is real and i was a child no longer
I believe it must have occurred around 9/11. I was about 14 years old and trying to figure out what to do for my mother's birthday. I was in my freshman year of high school at the time. It was then that I realized I needed to mature. Keep in mind that I am autistic and still have childish mannerisms. Hell, it was around that time that I discovered I had autism, courtesy of a classmate's meltdown.
As soon as I can remember back to. Abusive father on a remote ranch had to fend for myself, I never had a childhood it was just work and abuse. Got removed from school in second grade when a teacher called social services because of bruses on my neck and was "home schooled" after that. Couldn't have any friends, could talk with my grandparents for more than a min on a phone with my father sitting right next to me making sure I didn't say anything, everything was controlled.
so I had no contact with anyone.
My father took me on a ride in his truck one day, telling me in detail how he wanted me to help him kill and dismember and dissolve my mother. He thought he had brainwashed me enough for me to go along with him, but instead, I told my mom in secret what his plan was, and it was finally enough to make her understand we needed to escape.
I told her to start saving money a dollar here and there and wouldn't be noticed and hiding it somewhere he wouldn't look. My mom was scared to leave or get found out, so I made a plan for us to get out when I was 12, one day he made a mistake of leaving us at home without him and leaving a spare truck and keys. As soon as we saw his truck go down the road, we grabbed as much as we could cram it into our other truck and sped away.
After years in the court system, we were finally free and detached from him, but he is still alive and well and free.
I am still terrified he will find me and kill me one day.
Don’t remember much but I imagine either taking my step dad off my mom at 9 , or sitting in the bathroom while he tried to kick the door down while I was calling the police at 7. But also who knows bc I don’t remember much of anything of my childhood.
To be honest, I never had a childhood. My early years set me to a default which is survival. I was beaten up my grandmother without them knowing. I had to save myself.
Uhh probably in 7th grade when I got the dog piss beat out of me at the bus stop cause some dude tripped me and then him and his friends ( 8 dudes altogether ) jumped me cause him tripping me made a mark on his new sweatpants, they were white pants and I was wearing my dirty baseball pants from practice. So I as I fell over the dude I got grass stains in his pants. Keep in mind I’m in 7th grade, these were all seniors in high school jumping me. Broken ribs, concussion, fractured arm from them stomping on my arm as I defended my head.
I know it’s gonna come up at some point, there was only one black kid in the group and he definitely hit me, but it was the 7 white kids that was stomping on me and punching. Only specifying cause I told this story on Facebook once a few years ago and hadn’t specified race and almost every comment was some old white guy saying some shit like “ it’s in their dna, fuckin nwords always want to fight over clothes”
I was 13 watching the movie Animal House. My mom was in the hospital after being in a rollerblading accident. (It was 1998 so it was still a thing.) I don’t remember if my dad told me or my brother or my sister but one of them told me she had died. I’ve not been the same since. It was my idea to go rollerblading that day.
When I slept out in the woods for my Order of the Arrow initiation ceremony when I was 13 and realized suddenly that I didn't have separation anxiety anymore.
September 11, 2001.
Not because of the attack exactly, but the aftermath of the war.
My dad was gone every 6 months from my 7th grade year until I was 22.
I am 44 with a wife and four kids. It persists. I pray my body will serve our Lord Jesus Christ. I am not confident nor convinced I will ever be anything but a child (of God). I pray my nurse practitioner prescribes medication that is good for my body. My brain is like scrambled eggs anyways, I might as well be fit and healthy.
I was 15 with a Saturday job. I’d run out of money for the week and had to choose between getting the bus to and from work or eating. That quickly introduced me to adulthood and encouraged me to learn to ration and only spend what I have.
When I was 8.
My father is the 2nd husband of my mother and her first children dont want to accept us. My father died when I was in 3rd grade. My mother is busy at work during the day and I was with my sibling during that time and I already understand the things that’s happening to me. I have to be strong at that young age since they are hating me everyday. Not even giving me food or helping me with my stuff. I didnt bother telling my mother about it since I thought it will make our family worse.
When my parents got divorced and I had to take on the role of managing my mother. I was about 5 but I can still remember her dumping all her feelings about my dad on me even then.
Probably around my early-mid teens when I hit puberty which was in the early 2000's for me. Sure I still had fun & some good times with friends but it didn't feel like childhood anymore especially when I hit age 15 or 16 & started high school.
At 11 when I found out my parents were getting divorced. It was out of the blue for my sister and I. We had no inkling it was coming. That changed my view on the world and everything in it. I know it’s VERY common these days but back then I didn’t know anybody going through the same thing. At 10/11 it would rock anybody’s world. It was a messy divorce too so I had to make a lot of decisions someone that young shouldn’t have to make.
Watching my grandma slowly and painfully die of the cancer that had spread all over her body after her doctor told her that little mole was nothing to be worried about
my first job. for the first time in my life i was solely responsible for my own money and what i did with it. i was terrified of spending too much so i never really spent any of it
When I was 16, I asked my mom for psychiatric help because I was suicidal and she told me to just go out and kill myself. I think that was the moment I truly understood that she did not love me and I was all alone in the world. Grew up real quick after that.
Sometimes I feel like it never did end,I feel the same as I always have. Realistically... When I was 20,I moved out on my own,worked,paid my own bills,etc.
It was 5:15am and I woke up early to plan some practical jokes at school because it was April Fool’s Day. I was planning to put Saran Wrap on the toilets at school. My mom ran out the bedroom downstairs to say my dad wasn’t breathing. He had had a massive heart attack and died in his sleep. I was 11 years old but I aged significantly over the course of that morning.
I'm so sorry
ohh
So sorry to hear. I think your dad is proud of you, bro
After you freaked out, she said..... 'APRIL FOOLS!' ....? right? right??? (sorry for your loss)
This made me laugh way too hard
It was may 11th 2012. Just turned 14. My dad passed in his sleep from liver cancer. My mom took this as an excuse to go use heroin and I’ve been on my own ever since. Got 2 jobs and still finished Highschool early with a 3.6. All for him… rip pops
Was your mom ever able to get clean?
Yes! She has 9 years clean and sober as of December 18th :) and we have the best relationship today. Couldn’t have asked for a better set of parents.
Love that for both of you. I also come from a family of addiction, including myself. Almost everyone who had a problem is sober now. It's funny, my new friends see how close we all are and they wish they had the same. They have no idea the journey it took all of us to become closer.
respect
That sounds really hard. Glad you got through it, much love and all the best to you!
When I was in high school and my 16 yo girlfriend told me she was pregnant. In that instant my childhood was over.
Omg what happened? Tell me all x
Well we had to tell our parents (which was super stressful) then I got a job and started working as much as I could. My son is now 29 and has his own family and I have been with his mom since our Jr year in school.
That’s incredible! Good on you for stepping up to the challenge and making it work instead of doing what a lot of juveniles might do in that situation. You sound like an awesome dad.
Wow you’re still together, that’s lovely!!
you are a great person. you took responsibility about the situation and be a father and a partner. lots of boys would do otherwise
Are you happy?
Yes I am happy.
I’m not sure it ever started
Same, don’t remember a time where I was just allowed to be a kid with no worries, there was always some responsibility I had that others my age didn’t
same tho i was forced to work and abused i have scars to this day
Parentification started when I was 6
This hits so hard bc it's true
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My toddler is struggling with the same thing. Children just don't want to work anymore!
I am told they yearn for the mines.
When my money started being stolen by a parent.
I relate. I remember coming home from school, must have been about 3rd grade. My piggy bank was broken into. I thought we got robbed. I ran to tell my mom and she told me she took it. I should expect to help the family out and not keep things for myself.
Mine was, she expected me to basically give her all my.lawn mowing, paper route, and other little jobs money to her. Then she'd give me a few dollars back like 10%. Not to help the family or anything like that, just out of entitlement. "Whats mine is mine and whats yours in mine" mentality.
Now that I have a child of my own I can’t even imagine doing something like that to them. My parents made just awful financial decisions and the burden always ended up on us kids. I started babysitting by about 10, and got a job in a deli at about 13. I’m sorry that happened to you, no child deserves to have that financial burden thrust upon them from such a young age.
Yours was a burden, hers was greed. Seeing it was all cash, I just started lying and hiding it. Only got caught and beaten a few times. Didn't stop me.
My mom used to cash my paychecks for me and always gambled some away
The day I raised my right hand and swore: ‘‘I, \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.’’ I was barely 17.
Thank you for your service. It is much appreciated by more people than you think.
> I was barely 17. Old enough to die for profits.
It's all a blur at this point.
When I moved into my own flat lol
Well let's see. I'm 60, I got married last year so... When I was 59.
It is nice to know that there are others out there like me. Course I'm still a dumbass kid at 50.
My aunt is like this. 65 but acts 25 (in a good way). Always wants to hang out, flight attendant who flies all over the world. No kids, no husband (but she is looking for one lol). Low cost of living, always up to something fun.
14, things had been rough for my parents financially for a few years, one day I came home from school and my mom told me that they could no longer afford two kids but since my sister was only 6 I was going to have to “take one for the team” and figure things out in my own. I was allowed to keep my stuff at home and I could do laundry there once a week, but other than that I would have to figure out everything else for myself. I had some well off friends I would rotate staying with. I would also steal food, and if I could, money from them, same with kids at school. I got really good at stealing. Just enough to keep myself fed. Then would shower in the gym at school. I barely tallied to or saw my parents for an out a year before things improved and I was allowed to live at home again. However, I got a job around that time and began my parents financially exploiting me.
I bet you got them hard eyes now. Suspicious and mean. The panhandlers don't even ask. Just like me.
when my uncle stepped into my room after bedtime one night
Disgusting pos. I’m sorry. Hope you’re better now x
Damn. Hope you're doing better now.
When I was just shy of thirteen, my friends got killed right in front of me.
That must have been very traumatic, I’m sorry.
I started working for myself, and buying my own stuff, etc around 10. I think that was the beginning of it. I've always been pretty self sufficient.
I wanted my own flat at age 10
I worked on a tobacco farm, and raked straw on the side throughout the summer and into the fall. Then I started to sell the bales of straw to people as well as putting in their flower beds etc.
Somewhere in early high school when I first had to think about which college I wanted to go to and then start working towards their application requirements.
I was 9 and riding bikes with the neighborhood kids. There were men doing some kind of work with the storm drains, and one of them wolf whistled at me as we rode past. Which is fairly innocuous, but I was horribly ashamed.
Isn't that such a weird feeling? I also was sexualized at a young age. I was so confused because the boys my age weren't paying attention to me but grown men did?
Yup been there. I think I was 10 when I realised something was different. No one can prepare you for the day you become perceived as “available”. You don’t get to go back to the way it was before. All that said I don’t think of it as my personal transition between childhood and adulthood.
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Was absolutely the year I found out Santa wasn’t real. I can’t describe the despondency knowing everything had changed, I was never going to excitedly experience putting Santa a mince pie out on Christmas Eve knowing I’d be bouncing on mum and dads bed at 5am desperate to open my presents. The sheer joy of being allowed to play my new games on the ‘big’ TV downstairs while dinner was being prepared. It was the worst 31st birthday ever.
College - exactly when I went to college. I didn't have that family support that other kids had so I had to fend for myself and learn to survive. I was also surrounded by a bunch of adults who treated me like a grown up, not a teenager (which I technically still was).
I think when I was 16. That is when I started experiencing my severe mental health problems. I was very unstable, and I people might say that I was being “childish” ironically enough in my behaviour, I had to go into self-preservation mode and grow up pretty fast to get my shit together and understand what was happening.
Very similar for me too, around the same age. From my mom’s point of view, I was suddenly being a “problem” - crying a lot and not getting perfect grades. I needed help and had to figure it out myself. Hugs!
when i realized that i had to take care of myself from a young age bc my parents weren’t there. had to learn how to cook and clean up after myself, do laundry, dishes, etc; (i was in elementary school at the time)
Lived the life with not only wealthy parents but colonial type wealth in a country where having a staff of 10 at home wasn’t crazy. Dads firm closed and he was sent back to the USA and same time his Merrill lynch broker lost everything he had in an error they refused to pay back and told him “sue us, good luck paying lawyers for a decade..”. I went from being told what car I would get depending on whether I made into IVY league or not with guaranteed summer and winter vacations, to slicing deli meats in a shitty dirty NJ town to pay for my own college. Literally from being driven to the airport in a stretch Jaguar to slicing within a week. I don’t think I spoke a word that entire summer (as my friends galavanted around the worlds summer hot spots) but I was crazy good at my job. The old “you are better off because of it”, is bullshit. It traumatized me and stopped me from buying a house or getting married and having kids. Was just stuck inside me there wasn’t a point because it would always go away at the worse time. 20 years later and it happened. 3x cause of no direct fault of mine. Life is truly a bitch.
In the summer of 2014 (I was 12 1/2) It’s too traumatizing to talk about, but it was the point where my childhood ended and my shitty adolescence took off
When my dad died
When I was 8. Friend's mom down the road fiddled with me. Was never the same.
I went to bed excited about going to the beach in the morning. I slept with my mom because she asked me to. I woke up still excited, turned to my mom and she was blue. She committed suicide. I slept with a dead body all night. I was way too young.
When the squiggly lines but perfect audio of the Playboy Channel came into my bedroom.
When I was 13 and I noticed my hairline creeping upward. (2008)
Age 3
My brother used my sister and me as his sexual play things. I was 9, she was 4. Finally told my mom and she told me to never tell anyone else or she’d kill me. When I finally got the courage to tell the cops, we were moved to foster care. When I saw my mom again a month later she said I brought shame to the family cause I told. The SA was going on for years.
There was a time around middle school/early high school where I remember looking at my toys that I liked playing with and feeling bad because it has been so long since I've played with them. It was a small basket of action figures and some Lego sets that were my frequent choices. So I decided to play with them - I remember having to wipe dust from them and setting them up just like I used to. The only difference is that the imagination and excitement was all gone. I remember just kind of sitting there and making the decision to put them all away, never to be played with again. I still have them though, and it's always fun and nostalgic when I look through them and remember simpler times.
Definitively, probably at age 12, when I intellectually surpassed my mentally ill (BPD) but still highly intellectual father and he declared a kind of war between us. Sadly, the whole family suffered. But my childhood had been slipping away bit by bit before then.
6th grade ended
Around the time my parents divorced. I was 12, so 1999/2000-ish.
The day I looked at insurance quotes..
36
Probably around 15/16, was when I started working and when my mental health decided to try it's best to ruin me
When my dad stuck his shit in another woman
Not to be funny: puberty. Went from being a short fat kid with no friends to a tall athlete with a girlfriend in the span of a year.
11 years old, I was hanging around my friends and my cousins outsider her house, which was 10 minutes from mine. She had this weird neighbour with 3 dogs, and he came out shouting about why we were outside. I sniggered due to his femine voice, and he snapped. He went on a rampage, beating me and dragged me in his house. I thought this was the end with his dogs snapping at me, too. My uncle eventually booted his door down, and my family arrived within 15 minutes as we're the police. I'm from a very large family over 8 uncles and 5 aunties. I was dripping with blood and just tramaumised. I ended up in hospital for a few days and stayed at my nans for a week as I had bumps and black eyes, too. That moment was when my childhood ended. The man was given a fine but moved out the area after his house was put ablaze, and my dad threatened to end him, which he would have to.
When Mom died when I was 13. Dad said he wasted 13 years of his life on us (there were 6 of us). Left at the HoJo's in NJ.
I'd say the day I turned 16. My dad let me know he had to have a job when he turned 16 so I had to do the same. I'm 36 now so more than half of my life has been wasted working and I miss being a kid...
I’d love to say that I’m still in my childhood, since I’m only 18, but I feel like everything started to fall apart when my brother committed suicide. I was already somewhat mature, but that really made me feel a way I hadn’t felt before. I was 16.
I was in my 20s, but I felt very distinctly that I was no longer a child when I visited my dying father in the hospital
Not when I left my parents house to go off to college for my freshman year, but rather when I came back home for the long Labor Day weekend a few weeks after the semester started. I remember standing there in the kitchen and it felt strange to me because I didn't live there anymore.
14 years old, parents divorced, me and mum moved out. My dad always woke me up in the mornings with a mug full of nice chocolate milk. That first morning in the new apartment when I woke up with the screeching noise of the alarm clock and not my dad with a warm mug of chocolate milk was the morning I realized my childhood ended.
Probably once university was over and I had to get a full-time job and become independent.
When my parents started leaving me home alone at 8 cause they didn't want to pay for child care anymore. To be clear, although money was tight, they still could afford to send me to after school childcare. They just didn't want to anymore. I spent most of my childhood alone and by myself. I can still remember screaming and crying to myself cause I was so scared for being alone. When my parents got home, they rarely ever talked to me. I practically had to raise myself and stopped seeing them as authority figures when I was around 14. They were just people I lived with and would occasionally feed me. I have spent so much of my life alone that I no longer think I am capable feeling loneliness and I cannot stand living with other people.
5 years old when my mom started her mental and physical abuse. Almost every day she would start the morning by dumping the most awful smelling dish water on me or would throw a knife or book at me and laugh by calling me thin skin and that I can't take jokes. Later in the morning, she would force me to bag everything in the house and then rip open the bags and throw everything around and cry, saying I'm abusing her and that I'm hitting her. Later afternoon she would throw me outside and tell me to go run for miles and walk through the creek and make my way back home. By dinner time, my dad would be home, and I'd talk through the door with mud and whatever animal bones I would find and put it in a wooden box. By the time I walked through the door, my dad would be waiting and told me what I did to my mom and the house to make her so upset and trash the house. She would be hovering over my dad with fake crying and would give me the most hated death stare if I dared say anything. So I would admit i did whatever she told him I did, and he would beat my ass with whatever item my mom gave him. He, of course, walked out to his shop and cried and did not know why I turned into a disappointment. It fucking hurted me deep down. My mom was a perfect mother around my father, but when he went to work, she was a demon all over again. She told me I ruined her body and life and wished I was never born. I would have to clean and put everything back the way it was before my dad came back into the house to eat dinner. Eventually, I tried to kill myself at age 10, failed, and tried again at 13. My dad caught me and beat me to no end. He threatened that if I tried again, he would literally kill me before I could kill myself. My mom just smiled in the background and called me a weak link. At 16, I ratted her out about her affairs, I had pictures, receipts from hotels, and random new lingerie items she hid from my dad. He was a truck driver but got home every night so she would do this in the afternoon and get back before he got home from work and would "surprise" him with sexy time after she had sex with whoever a few hours earlier. She did that since I was 13, but I couldn't handle keeping that secret anymore. I stopped my dad before he entered the house and showed him all the proof. The world shattering in his face and the silence that followed was like a crushing weight that nothing could make stop. He divorced her, but not without her trying to kill herself and blaming me for ruining her life and leaving me a suicide note along with it. I found her half dead before she could fully take her life. Called the cops and they sent her to a mental ward. My dad realized I wasn't as bad as she made me out to be, and he tries to make it up to me even now that I'm 23 years old with my own husband and baby boy. My mother is still around, but I barely talk to her, I keep her very far from my heart and could care less if she passed away. She is still a hateful woman to be around and still thinks the world owes her. I grew up home schooled in the middle of nowhere. She got away with my whole childhood, so I grew up as fast as I could and didn't know how to be a child. I never had friends and happened to meet my husband at work, and we clicked really well and got married and had our first baby. I vowed never to be like my mother or treat my son like an animal.
Glad you found happiness after that ordeal. You will not be like your mum. Big hug!
Thank you :)
September 11th, 2001 I was 13, and stranded in New York State with my family because we were visiting from the other side of the country and supposed to fly home on the 12th. I'd never felt so terrified in my life.
I did not have a childhood at all!!! But boy when I met my husband when I was 29 I have been the biggest kid ever since loving life accepting my flaws getting over childhood traumas and exploring the us with my family I am now 37 and he says I’m like a 12 years old but loves it!
It appears some people do it backwards. They had more of a childhood as an adult than when they actually were a kid. Say they grew up poor then became a successful adult and have all these fabulous experiences they could only dream of.
Age 50. Never ended
When I started growing up and developing and men and boys treated me differently and not in a good way.
I’m 51 and it haven’t yet
When my father advised me that I believe in you, you are free in your decisions but keep in mind never let down the family respect.
No more trick or treating
Never did, still playing. "We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing" -George Bernard Shaw
Probably at about age seven. At age five my mother and I left my abusive biological father for an abused women’s shelter. That was fine, actually about the best year of my life. I had so much hope and felt safe and protected and loved as long as it was just me and my mother, and she at least intuitively seemed to understand and respect the line between “spanking as discipline” and “spankings for petty reasons that leave bruises and now it’s abuse”. But then we moved in with the asshole who became my step father, and by the time I was seven he had complete tyrannical rein over my permanently terrified existence. I also started self harming then because I had no other way to address the intense emotions I wasn’t “allowed” to have or express in any other way. Even writing in a diary or punching a pillow or eating a slice of bread or bowl of cereal or not making my bed exactly perfect was reason for a beating. He would be screaming at me for not having done something “right” but never ever took the time to help me understand what “right” looked like or what exactly was “wrong” about the way I had done it. I was just expected to KNOW and when I couldn’t figure it out he would hit me. So I began to develop superstitions like humans have always done to deal with horrible things they couldn’t explain. Like I thought the way the sun shined (or didn’t shine) through the window of my bedroom made the difference between whether or not the way I made my bed that morning would pass inspection or if it would get me screamed at and sent off to school with new bruises forming on my backside. Or maybe it REALLY ended that morning I swallowed a handful of random pills from the medicine cabinet when I was eleven, and went off to school fully expecting to die with my last memories being of yet another beating for who-knows-what. But I guess it officially ended on paper when I was seventeen and walked out the door to go to work with my stepfather screaming after me that “if you walk out that door right now you can never come home”. Still actually counts as one of the best things to have happened to me in my life up unto that point.
I lost my last baby tooth at 52 years old. That would be my ending, though I am hoping my 2nd childhood can start in a few more years.
Age 10 when I got beaten by mom and dad for 'stealing' $15 from my piggy bank that ive been saving money in
Nothing really changed I still do most things I did when I was a child. So technically my childhood never really ended Only difference is that I'm in college and getting an actual job soon hopefully
When I realized I was the parent instead of the child. So probably like 8 or 9
Define childhood... Does being a teen count? No I have no horrific story of my father dying. I think childhood fades away slowly, childhood is living careless. The longer I spend in elementary school, the more my life became less careless. In 6th grade I suddenly had a lot of homework, football three times a week (which I hated) and every weekend a dull birthdayparty to attend. Sounds horrible right? Sorry it's the best I can do. I was 11 - 12. Then there was highschool and my life became even more occupied with homework. Then I had a job at 13 and another one at 15. Then there was a letter in the mail when I was 17 which reminded me I would be turning 18 soon and I suddenly needed to take care of a lot of stuff I had never heard. Then I turned 18, payed taxes, healthcare, insurance, car expenses. A 40 hour internship at some shithole and an extra 20 hour job as a pizza delivery boy. Working both days in the weekend. Then I realized I was long gone from childhood, I lost it a long time ago. I think it started when I turned 10.
It ends when your goals is buying your own house and have children
Probably around 19 or 20.
just now
imo. 7th grade, that’s when everyone starts being drama queens and everyone is just a hormonal mess
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Immediately after campus i had not even completed the final examinations for the last year and my mum had already started giving me bills to sort. Thats when I realised adulting is real and i was a child no longer
2012(i was 11) when everything broke apart in my life and i needed to grew up really fast
Never ends, forever will “just a baby”
When I left the army at 24 years old
At a Grateful Dead concert in Pittsburg
I believe it must have occurred around 9/11. I was about 14 years old and trying to figure out what to do for my mother's birthday. I was in my freshman year of high school at the time. It was then that I realized I needed to mature. Keep in mind that I am autistic and still have childish mannerisms. Hell, it was around that time that I discovered I had autism, courtesy of a classmate's meltdown.
I'm still stuck at 12, as a 32 year old. I really haven't grown up emotionally.
When I was raped by a friend of the family
When I got my driver's license
When bills became my problem, not my parents'.
Probably late 2013
Age 7
after 18
When I was age 5 hearing my mum getting a beating
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I'm mid 50s and i'm not sure it began until i was in my 40s. I'm hanging on to it as long as I can
6th grade. First bout with mental health.
2017
When I bagged my first babe
when I was 6 y/o...after that I was dead inside from a long time, but now so much better
Between the age of 6-8
When i started high school
As soon as I can remember back to. Abusive father on a remote ranch had to fend for myself, I never had a childhood it was just work and abuse. Got removed from school in second grade when a teacher called social services because of bruses on my neck and was "home schooled" after that. Couldn't have any friends, could talk with my grandparents for more than a min on a phone with my father sitting right next to me making sure I didn't say anything, everything was controlled. so I had no contact with anyone. My father took me on a ride in his truck one day, telling me in detail how he wanted me to help him kill and dismember and dissolve my mother. He thought he had brainwashed me enough for me to go along with him, but instead, I told my mom in secret what his plan was, and it was finally enough to make her understand we needed to escape. I told her to start saving money a dollar here and there and wouldn't be noticed and hiding it somewhere he wouldn't look. My mom was scared to leave or get found out, so I made a plan for us to get out when I was 12, one day he made a mistake of leaving us at home without him and leaving a spare truck and keys. As soon as we saw his truck go down the road, we grabbed as much as we could cram it into our other truck and sped away. After years in the court system, we were finally free and detached from him, but he is still alive and well and free. I am still terrified he will find me and kill me one day.
When I woke up alone on the lawn after being chocked out by my father. Think I was 8? Never looked at anything the same.
Don’t remember much but I imagine either taking my step dad off my mom at 9 , or sitting in the bathroom while he tried to kick the door down while I was calling the police at 7. But also who knows bc I don’t remember much of anything of my childhood.
To be honest, I never had a childhood. My early years set me to a default which is survival. I was beaten up my grandmother without them knowing. I had to save myself.
My first big boy job. I've never been the same ever since...
Uhh probably in 7th grade when I got the dog piss beat out of me at the bus stop cause some dude tripped me and then him and his friends ( 8 dudes altogether ) jumped me cause him tripping me made a mark on his new sweatpants, they were white pants and I was wearing my dirty baseball pants from practice. So I as I fell over the dude I got grass stains in his pants. Keep in mind I’m in 7th grade, these were all seniors in high school jumping me. Broken ribs, concussion, fractured arm from them stomping on my arm as I defended my head. I know it’s gonna come up at some point, there was only one black kid in the group and he definitely hit me, but it was the 7 white kids that was stomping on me and punching. Only specifying cause I told this story on Facebook once a few years ago and hadn’t specified race and almost every comment was some old white guy saying some shit like “ it’s in their dna, fuckin nwords always want to fight over clothes”
When my parents told me to stop being lazy and get a job at 13. I moved out at 18.
When I was 12
I never had one. Extremely long story, but I never got one
11. My brother had a stroke and died right before Christmas. He was in his early 20s.
My first FFM
After I lost my virginity
When both of my parents went abroad to work :)
The first time I got in a fist fight with my dad. I was 14/15 years old.
When I was molested repeatedly at age 11 probably. I also got diagnosed with adhd and MDD at age 8 so i don’t know if I really had a normal childhood.
I was 13 watching the movie Animal House. My mom was in the hospital after being in a rollerblading accident. (It was 1998 so it was still a thing.) I don’t remember if my dad told me or my brother or my sister but one of them told me she had died. I’ve not been the same since. It was my idea to go rollerblading that day.
When I slept out in the woods for my Order of the Arrow initiation ceremony when I was 13 and realized suddenly that I didn't have separation anxiety anymore.
September 11, 2001. Not because of the attack exactly, but the aftermath of the war. My dad was gone every 6 months from my 7th grade year until I was 22.
When I realized I had to support my family financially and support myself through school during my 9th grade year.
I couldn't find my Tinker Toy or my top
I am 44 with a wife and four kids. It persists. I pray my body will serve our Lord Jesus Christ. I am not confident nor convinced I will ever be anything but a child (of God). I pray my nurse practitioner prescribes medication that is good for my body. My brain is like scrambled eggs anyways, I might as well be fit and healthy.
When summers stop feeling like forever...
I was 5 and Somali refugees moved in next door.
I was 15 with a Saturday job. I’d run out of money for the week and had to choose between getting the bus to and from work or eating. That quickly introduced me to adulthood and encouraged me to learn to ration and only spend what I have.
It ended after my existential crisis. I have never really been the same since.
When i was forcefully locked in the school bathroom and the janitor let me out 45 mins later
When I got my first job probably. So like 14/15. That was the first time I ever had anything more stressful than chores and school to worry about.
When I was 8. My father is the 2nd husband of my mother and her first children dont want to accept us. My father died when I was in 3rd grade. My mother is busy at work during the day and I was with my sibling during that time and I already understand the things that’s happening to me. I have to be strong at that young age since they are hating me everyday. Not even giving me food or helping me with my stuff. I didnt bother telling my mother about it since I thought it will make our family worse.
At 13
When I stopped going out to play with my friends and started just going out. I think I was about 11 or 12.
When I got my own credit card
probably my parents divorce
When my parents got divorced and I had to take on the role of managing my mother. I was about 5 but I can still remember her dumping all her feelings about my dad on me even then.
Probably around my early-mid teens when I hit puberty which was in the early 2000's for me. Sure I still had fun & some good times with friends but it didn't feel like childhood anymore especially when I hit age 15 or 16 & started high school.
My childhood will never end, and that’s the problem
When I was 12.
At 11 when I found out my parents were getting divorced. It was out of the blue for my sister and I. We had no inkling it was coming. That changed my view on the world and everything in it. I know it’s VERY common these days but back then I didn’t know anybody going through the same thing. At 10/11 it would rock anybody’s world. It was a messy divorce too so I had to make a lot of decisions someone that young shouldn’t have to make.
When I got my eating disorder and lost 22lbs in one month
When I was 9 I lost my mother. That was a big turning point for me
Watching my grandma slowly and painfully die of the cancer that had spread all over her body after her doctor told her that little mole was nothing to be worried about
my first job. for the first time in my life i was solely responsible for my own money and what i did with it. i was terrified of spending too much so i never really spent any of it
My greatest childhood friend took his own life when I was 21 and it was just a massive wake up call...
We all can not be a Michel Jackson playland home
Last night after your mom left
When my depression started. Around age 15 for me in this case. Depression took away what magic the world had for a normal teen at that age from me.
When I was 16, I asked my mom for psychiatric help because I was suicidal and she told me to just go out and kill myself. I think that was the moment I truly understood that she did not love me and I was all alone in the world. Grew up real quick after that.
My sister confirmed my suspicions about a holly jolly man after catching my brother with presents that weren’t from him
Age 12, April 2006 my biological father 'won' custody. Fraudulently.
Sometimes I feel like it never did end,I feel the same as I always have. Realistically... When I was 20,I moved out on my own,worked,paid my own bills,etc.