While growing up with her two sisters, Abi Cooper had six strict rules set by her mother that she thought were “outrageous and unfair” at the time, but she has grown to have a different opinion
A woman has shared her mum’s six house rules she had to abide by while she was growing up. Abi Cooper, who posts under @lifewithabicooper on TikTok, shared a six-minute video on the platform explaining the rules, and how they have affected her going into adulthood.
When Abi was 18 she said that she thought her mum’s rules were “outrageous, unreasonable and unfair”, but now she’s older she realises exactly what her mother was trying to achieve and agrees.
The now 21-year-old said that the rules have shaped her and her two sisters into who they are today.
Abi said: “I honestly think my mum’s rules back then have really shaped me into the person I am now.
“For reference, I have two sisters, all of us are pretty academic. I finished high school will all A’s and A*’s, I studied law at university in a top 10 law school, graduated with a first and now I’m on my way to qualifying as a solicitor. I honestly credit my mum’s crazy rules growing up to a lot of that.
“For reference neither of my parents went to university, so the whole education thing was super important for my mum. But she’d never really done it before.”
Her mother’s first rule was that all three of the girls constantly had to be reading either physical book or one on a Kindle.
Abi explained: “In the evening we used to have to read before we went to bed, and we used to do this up until we were 16 or 17.
“All of us are huge readers now and we read a lot of different genres, but this really helped instill a love of reading in us from an early age and it’s something I’ve taken into adulthood now.”
The second rule for the girls was surrounding the iPad, which Abi described as being “so heavily regulated” that it was impossible to use.
Abi said: “I would be paying games with my friends on there like Minecraft and stuff and my iPad would close down because it had time limits.
“I would only be allowed a certain amount of time, all the Apple ID’s were locked off, my mum had control of everything.
“This was to stop us being on the iPad all the time. But then she would make us do certain apps on the iPad to get access to the games.
“We had to do spelling games and get them all right before we could start playing any games.
“We also had to do out times tables on this app and do that every week for your weekly timestables test at school.
“When all the other apps would get shut off, the only thing that you were allowed would be country flags, so me and my sisters are fairly good at country flags and capitals now.
“We used to have another game that was capitals, so she used to make us know all the capitals and country flags.”
The third rule was surrounding progress in school and parents evening. Even though Abi was hitting all of her milestones at school, her mum would always be looking for her to improve.
“That one installed a lot of work ethic in me and my sisters, to always be looking forward to the next thing and never getting too complacent.”
The fourth and fifth rules were that no phones were allowed at the dinner table, and you had to bring a political opinion.
Abi said: “If you come to the dinner table you better a political opinion and a fact check, and it better be backed up with some sort of evidence because you are going to get pulled up on your opinion.
“This helped me and my sisters develop a lot of critical thinking skills and helped us develop a really sharp knowledge of current affairs.
“There is never a topic of conversation that is off the table, you are free to talk about anything you want.”
The final rule for the Cooper family was to complete extra homework including SATS papers, before they were in the final year of primary school.
Abi said: “If you were doing bad in a subject she would send you to a tutor. To be fair I think my mum’s rules, looking back on them now, I do think they instilled a lot of discipline, work ethic, that sort of thing in me and my sisters.”
Many TikTok users had questions over Abi’s mum’s rules, with one asking, “Do you think you ever had a complex about not being ‘good enough’ with having such high expectations on you at such a young age?”
Abi replied: “Nope! Hard work was encouraged and my sisters and I always had huge goals and my parents just continuously encouraged that.”
Another user said: “This makes me feel like I was neglected. Basically no rules. Parents worked full time, often late nights. Turned out ok though.”
A third said: “Heavily agree with some of these, heavily disagree with others.”
Another added: “Nope! Hard work was encouraged and my sisters and I always had huge goals and my parents just continuously encouraged that.”
