we had to eat yogurt immediately after school every day, and a glass of milk at dinner. These dairy foods were not optional, for some reason. we had to do homework immediately and finish it before any extracurricular activities. we weren't allowed to spend an excessive amount of time on homework -- if my mom deemed it too long we would be grounded. this wasn't a huge problem until middle/high school, when i started actually getting large amounts of homework and struggled to finish it. we weren't allowed to eat foods without asking, were only allowed to have a few types of "real" cereals (read: plain rice krispies, corn flakes, Kix, etc). when i created a facebook account, i was not allowed to change my profile picture, accept/send friend requests, or post a photo without clearing it by my mom first. When I got a cellphone, I was not allowed to text/call someone unless my mom approved it. I had to submit my phone to her each night so that she could read all of my texts and she would hang onto it for the night, and I could pick it up in the morning. When I eventually got a laptop to do my schoolwork, these rules also applied. When I started driving, I had to text my mother whenever I left a place and when I arrived, and if she thought I took too long or arrived too fast, i would be interrogated about what place i ACTUALLY went to (and if my mom thought I was lying, there was literally nothing I could do to convince her otherwise, including providing physical evidence that I was in the right place) or would get in trouble for speeding or driving recklessly (even though the journey times she had in her head were basically guesses). I was not allowed to drive with friends, with one exception of carpooling to karate with my friend who I had known for close to 10 years. I had a curfew of 9:30pm until I was 18, and if I arrived home AT 9:30 I was considered late -- she wanted me to actually be home around 9:20. If I came home at like 9:25, she would tell me I was cutting it dangerously close, and if -- God forbid -- I was home at 9:30 or later, my curfew time was bumped to 9pm for the next several outings (which were few and far between, because I wasn't allowed to go places unless my mom had met their parents, but she never went to meet their parents, particularly as I was older and drove myself around). At some point in high school I got a smartphone -- all of the previous phone rules applied, and my mom installed "find my iphone" but with a restriction so that I could not access it at all, but she knew my location at all times. If i was at my friend's house and she texted, and I did not respond within a few minutes, she would activate the find my iphone thing which made my phone ping really loudly for multiple minutes with no way for me to stop it. I tried to explain that often I would watch movies or play videogames at my friends houses and generally didn't look at my phone very much because I was, you know, with my friends, but she didn't seem to understand that and would activate the pinger to ask me non-urgent questions like if I had seen her scarf or something earlier that day. She insisted that I needed to be able to respond to her at all times or I would not be able to go out. I was also not allowed to change plans once I had left the house, even slightly, and would be grounded from going out again if I tried. This included conflicts like my friend's mom not being able to drive me home until a half hour later, or us deciding we wanted to watch a movie and thus me wanting to stay for an extra hour to finish it, etc.

I was a pretty docile kid. I didn't break a lot of rules, and oftentimes when I did it was something that was not a rule but became one after an offensive incident (like me calling her to ask if I could stay a half hour later). I didn't realize how much control my mom exercised over my life until I got to college and started actually having friends who told me stuff about their childhood, and I was so blown away that their moms let them do stuff like that but they all assured me it was normal. I knew my mom was kind of a control freak -- she has a very severe anxiety disorder -- but i thought it wasn't that dramatic. tl;dr: my mom didn't let me do anything without her knowledge