Your Parents and Cubing

My parents are quite neutral when it comes to my hobbies: as long as I don't do anything illegal that's fine by them. They give me car rides to competitions and offer to pay the registration fee for me. They've also paid for my cubes etc. so I think they're happy that I finally found a hobby that I enjoy. However, I do have a story to tell.

So, a bit of background information: I've been cubing since I was 13, and I'm now 18 and living on my own. My parents are divorced and live in different cities. I lived with my mom who has a new boyfriend, let's call him B. B has some mental issues: he has narcissistic characteristics and he cannot stand if my mom pays more attention to me than to him, even just for ten minutes. If I'm meeting my mom or she gives me a ride somewhere, she always lies to B about where she is going and with whom. If she tells B she is meeting me, they'll have huge fight over why B cannot come with her. (Simply, because I want to spend time with my own mother, not with someone else.) He also wants to be the best in everything, in every way, and he wants to control their whole relationship. (Let's just say that it isn't a healthy relationship: they fight a lot and often it gets physical.) Also, he's one of the type of people that want to seem smart. (Emphasis on the word 'seem'. He doesn't actually try to improve his intellectual capacity for example by learning a new language or whatever. Instead he's trying to memorize the first 100 digits of pi or learns some interesting facts by heart, You know, he seems smart to others but actually he hasn't done anything but just memorized some facts.) B and I do not get along at all. I cannot stand the way he treats me and my mom, so I try to live like he does not exist.

Anyway, when I first solved the Rubik's cube when I was 13, I was ecstatic. I showed my mom the solved cube and said: "Look, I just solved the Rubik's cube". She didn't care that much about it, which made me a bit upset. However, I got hooked on cubing and in a few months I got faster and decided to buy a real speedcube. It was no secret in our household that I could solve a Rubik's cube in 30 seconds, which is rather impressive for non-cubers. So, no wonder I soon start to see our house filled with Rubik's cubes that are not mine--they're B's. B is learning how to solve the Rubik's cube.

I'm upset but still okay. It's fine. Anyone can learn to solve the Rubik's cube, and I cannot stop him doing that. Besides, speedcubing is still my hobby, and no one can take that away from me. However, B gets faster and soon he can solve the cube in just a few minutes, and eventually in under a minute. My mom is impressed. She's thrilled when B solves the cube. (Flashback to the time when I showed the solved cube to my mom and she couldn't care less... Ouch!) I feel attacked, defeated. I feel like there is nothing in this household that could only be mine, my personal space. My own dimension where I can be who I am, and not having to worry about B getting his hands on: when I got into physics and started reading "The Brief History of Time" and Feynman's lectures, a few months later B borrowed the exact same books from a local library. At some point I also wrote a diary where I could write what is going through in my mind and a few months later B is reading my personal diary.

And so, I quit cubing. It didn't feel like a hobby anymore. It felt like a competition for attention from my mom between me and B. And most importantly it didn't feel like my private space anymore.

Now that I'm living on my own I've gotten into cubing again. However, I've forgotten most of my algs for LL and my lookahead is terrible. My times are over 10 seconds worse that what they were two years ago when I stopped cubing. Still, I'm happy I got back. And as far as I know, B doesn't know there are these things called "speedcubing competitions" so there's still something in cubing that is only mine and not his.
 
My parents relatively dislike me cubing. They always say "do ya homework. after ya finish that, pls study for tests. stop playing!!" But they sometimes do seem proud when i do well in cubing.
 
Hey guys, thanks for everyone who supported me in the past :)
Cubing was a wonderful experience that I have been addicted to for the past few years, unfortunately, my parents did their best to stop me and I guessed it finally worked for them, I have no cubes anymore and I can't find any way to get my hands on any cube currently...
I gave up on youtube since my last video only made 100 views compared to other videos that usually make 500+
I also gave up on my discord server 300+ members...
I guess I am slowly gonna lose my progress, but on the other hand, my dad seems to support me to do competitive fortnite, he got me the gear, the keyboard, the mouse and all I need to start grinding esports profesionally!
I honestly don't know what to do, since my parents don't allow me to cube anymore. Thank u so much for reading this and bye bye to all cubers :(
I might be back one day when I don't need my parents to buy me cubes.
 
How do your parents deal with you speedcubing?

At first, my parents completely DESPISED speedcubing in general, they constantly said it was a waste of time. This slowly changed after they saw how much it meant to me and my insistince on improving , I also made sure to clear misconceptions and inform them about the community , history...etc .plus, this is the first hobby that I enjoyed. At first, I had a -not even Rubiks brand - and my parents didn't budge nevertheless of the way I try to convince them. They recognizing me reassembling my knock off 3×3 after every solve bought me a rubicks brand "speed cube " and now a 2×2 and left me cube as much as I want .win-win .They are very supportive but new cubes are out of the picture
 
When I first won something at a competition (setting NR single+avg as well, but it was low-hanging fruit then) they were happy for like a couple of hours, and then everything went downhill from there and they were upset I wasn't spending more time "studying". Never mind that I was top 5% of the cohort for that term and a couple more after that.

(I don't need to ask them to buy cubes for me because I have money of my own. Not that I buy cubes frequently anyway; like twice or thrice a year?)
 
I buy all my own cubes, so it will bother them that I spend my money on cubes but not too much. In general their view on cubing fluctuates, and they really like the community but don’t like how much time I spend cubing. They wish I was more involved in a “real” sport. This intensified when I started doing big cubes blindfolded, they saw that as a huge waste of time and got annoyed I wasn’t getting a job instead.
 
My parents were very skeptical at first, and they had good reasons to be. Before cubing, I rarely stuck with a hobby for more than six months (back then my hobbies included lego animations, making stuff on Scratch, as well as random other stuff). My parents thought that I wouldn't really stick with it, so when I asked if we could go to a competition in late 2018, they said no. After that though, I continued to cube and I think they realized that this was something I really liked doing. So last year in August we went to my first competition which helped show my parents how amazing the community is. Nowadays they are pretty okay with me cubing as long as I don't use the computer for too long. I use my own money to buy cubes and usually just let them know first.





My older sister, on the other hand, hates the sound of cubes for some reason.
 
Nmile7300 said:
My parents were very skeptical at first, and they had good reasons to be. Before cubing, I rarely stuck with a hobby for more than six months (back then my hobbies included lego animations, making stuff on Scratch, as well as random other stuff). My parents thought that I wouldn't really stick with it, so when I asked if we could go to a competition in late 2018, they said no. After that though, I continued to cube and I think they realized that this was something I really liked doing. So last year in August we went to my first competition which helped show my parents how amazing the community is. Nowadays they are pretty okay with me cubing as long as I don't use the computer for too long. I use my own money to buy cubes and usually just let them know first.





My older sister, on the other hand, hates the sound of cubes for some reason.
Click to expand...
Literally me
Clicking on this thread I was saying "OK if it's a "rant about how much your parents suck" thread I'm going to regret ever looking at this" but thankfully we have shown that we are mature people of society that don't think our parents were hired by Satan to make our lives miserable so kudos to Speedsolving.com
 
Honestly, my parents were all for it the whole way. My mom definitely didn't understand why I wanted so many cubes ("dont you have a 3x3 already??") but she definitely was happy about it as long as I used my own money for cubes, and had fun at competitions with friends.

My dad actually loves it. Always coming to competitions with me, always amazed by blindfolded, one-handed, and 2x2 solving, and overall just being the happiest spectator in the room. If he didn't work so much, he said he would love to learn to solve cubes like I can.
 
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