Growing up in a house with strict parents is never easy. You rarely get your way and when you do, it was never without a huge debate. Here are six things that you mind find relatable if your parents are the type to keep you locked up in their house forever, if they could.

1. Your friend's parents are not your parents.

I cannot tell you the amount of times I tried to justify something to my parents by saying, “ Well, So and So’s mom let them do it. The reply never failed to be something under the lines of, “ She’s not my child,” “Thats her family,” or the most dramatic, “her parents must not love her.” You eventually came to a realization that this tactic would never work when convincing your parents of letting you do anything.

2. You learn to be a homebody

Since the majority of the time your parents would say no to going anywhere, you learned that staying home was your only option. You looked forward to this weeks episode of whatever show, and planned what food you were going to ask your parents to bring home on a Friday night. Friends would ask you to go places and instead of bothering your parents, just to already know their reply, you would simply answer, “My mom said no.” Which was not necessarily lying because they were probably going to say no in the first place.To this day, I would rather stay home then go out because, well I’m used to it.

3. You had to fabricate a story when you really wanted to go somewhere.

Now I say fabricate because I don't really consider it “lying.” If I really, really wanted to go somewhere and I knew my parents would be skeptical about it I would come up with an elaborate story as to why it was imperative that I go. Everything was because my friend NEEDED me. “Their dog just died, so they NEED me to go to their house and play with their new Wii.” “They lost their homework so they NEED me to go find it in their pool.” A friend was always in need or a situation was always so detrimental that I absolutely had to hang out with them. The best part about it was actually convincing them to let me go and thinking I was so clever.

4. Sleepovers were not a thing.

Don’t get me wrong, I have been to my fair share of sleepovers. This, however, was always never without a debate. Everything was a huge interrogation. “Why do you have to go over there?” “What are you guys going to be doing?” “Why can’t they come over here?” If I were to be granted the privilege of going to the sleepover I would be called non-stop to see what I was doing. And because sleepovers were such a rare occasion, they never failed to be a little awkward. I never knew what to bring or what to say. I always ended up actually wanting to go home.

5. You have packed your bags to "run away"

I cannot count the amount of times I have told my parents I had, had enough, and I was running away. I wrote a note to them telling them all of the reasons that I was leaving and "not to look for me." The only time I ever got the guts to actually walk to the door with my bags I heard my parents say "If you leave, don't come back." At the time, I watched a lot of Law and Order and when I realized that they might not actually come looking for me and I was going to be stranded out there all alone, I immediately went back to my room and unpacked my bags. Of course, later on, they assured me that they did love me and never wanted me to run away.

6. Your family becomes your best friends

Since you are always home, your family members are your best friends. I have a small family, just my sister and my parents, so that made us even closer. They would plan things out for us to do weekends in advance so we would always have something to do together. I would actually look forward to going places as a family on the weekends because I knew that we would always have a good time. When I wanted to do something else without them I would feel so guilty because I knew that they wanted us all to hang out together. I guess thats one benefit of having a strict parents, you have permanent bffs.