Did your parents try to stop your special interests?

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My father never really had a problem with my special interests and always showed interest in them. If my dad didn't get drunk and hit me when I was younger, maybe we would have been close. Anyhow, my mother was the always the one who had a problem with my special interests. Always telling me I needed to "widen my horizons" or telling me she needed a break from hearing about meerkats for so many minutes. I always felt hurt and when I tried to tell her, she said she wasn't sorry. My other special interest was becoming a veterinarian. I will never understand why, but my mom was violently opposed to this. Maybe because she knew it would imply me growing up and leaving her someday. Anyhow, she NEVER encouraged me and was always trying to discourage me. For a while it had worked until one day I realized that how could she say those things like "vet school will be too hard for you" when she herself hadn't even so much as finished college? Or "If you could be a vet, you'd be in school and almost finished by now." There is no age limit for starting or finishing vet school. I even contacted the American Veterinary Association and asked them. They said no and that to be honest, they prefer people in their 30's and 40's because they are usually more mature than the average 20 something. Any my personal "favorite", "Vet school will be too hard for YOU!" How could she be so sure about that when she wasn't me?

Anyhow, I did eventually run away and am in my second apartment now in the city with access to things. I volunteer at a vet's office now and am also waiting to hear back from the local zoo to see if I got the volunteer position. NOW my mother claims to be proud of me. She never said she was proud of me for getting the volunteer position at the vet's, but she also never said anything negative about it. Anyhow, she's yet to apologize for making my childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood pure hell for always telling me to shut up about my obsessions. I kinda doubt she ever will...or at least be genuine about it. But I'm okay with that. There's nothing she can do about my obsessions/special interests now because I am a legal adult (and I no longer live in the same county as her) and I always fought people who tried to "take" my obsessions/special interests away from me...and always won. If my mother told me I couldn't talk about meerkats, I'd just talk about them anyway. My mom would threaten to take away my meerkat pictures and stuffed meerkats once or twice but my mom was notorious for empty threats. Had she actually went through with it, I probably would have attempted suicide.

Anyhow, did your parents try to take your special interests/obsessions away from you? And if they did, what did they do?

My mom would just yell at me because she didn't want to hear the same topics over and over whenever I would get fixated. She has taken away movies I was obsessed with but it didn't stop my interests. Instead I thought of them in my head and would watch them in my head and make up my own stories about it in my head. In 6th grade she started to take away 101 Dalmatians. One time I was writing a story about it and she took it from me so I started a new one in my other notebook and that time she didn't take it. She could never stop it but thought she could. She couldn't control my daydreams or my thoughts or what I wrote or what I looked up online. I would just get sneaky and try and hide it and click out of the page online whenever she or dad entered the office. Then mom threatened to kick me off the computer if I clicked out of a page they come in next time so I learned to click out of it if I hear foot steps come near the door.

They'll interrupt them to get me to eat, take a shower, go to bed etc.

My mum tried to take Hogan's Heroes and my identity away from me a few times earlier this year. That made me want to wear my German helmets even more. She told me it's time that I grew up and she wasn't expecting too much of me, the last Saturday of April. I left a message for her on my parents answering machine, telling my mum that I've preferred Germany over England for 30 years and I don't wish to grow up to meet my mum's feminine standards and if I couldn't be the first-rate Munro that she was expecting me to be, that I should only come over on birthdays and holidays.

After spending the night on Father's Day, I went on a 10 week hiatus from going to visit my parents. However, I did continue to phone each day. I kept myself super busy with my crafts in order to keep my emotions aside. I think I needed the break more than my mum did.

I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for an apology, because I know that I'm not going to get one.

I didn't learn to read until I was eight and then read just about anything I could and I went from "Janet and John" to Isaac Asimov in two years so I guess you could call that a special interest. While my parents didn't try to stop me they did say I read too much. Of all the things a parent can complain about, reading should not be one of them!

From what I recall, they didn't do anything to really stop me from taking into my special interests, but my mother wasn't very much into them. Occasionally, she'd get upset if I brought them up.

Just low grade disrespect. Like- they were basically asking me all the time, how could you like that? My mom tried to get me to get rid of my Star Trek books. And she would make rude comments about how silly the show is. And when I expressed an interest in science as a child, i was actively discouraged. I was told that I couldn't write a book report on Saturn, for example, because that subject "would be boring for me." What an odd thing to say to a child. Lots of kids think Saturn is fascinating. I still don't understand those interactions.

I guess, I've chalked it up to my parent's being artists. You know how some parents don't want their kids to be artists? They want them to settle down and do something responsible? Well, it was the opposite in my house hold. My parents wished I would stop being into science, didn't fight for me to be assigned to advanced math, although I clearly belonged there. But they did support my artistic endeavors fully. They wanted me to be artists like them. And I'm not.

And I forgot about the microscope issue! I wanted it so badly, but they wouldn't get me one for Christmas or whatever, so I saved up my money to buy one myself. I think it was like $20. The most money I ever had to spend on any one item. I was so proud of that! Also, no chemistry sets. No science books. No visits to science museums when we went touring. As a child, I felt like I was completely irrelevant and my desires were strange and weird beyond belief. No. It was my parents who were strange. I was just interested in science. I'm hardly alone in that.

No, they were mostly encouraged

my special interests as a kid were fairly typical

I really liked dinosaurs, nature & animals in general, I liked other stuff like Harry Potter and pro-wrestling too.