What's the most awful thing your parent has said or done?

[Clueless2024]

Lots of posts about family estrangement on MN. What is the worst thing your parent has said or done, what was the straw that broke the camels back?

I'll start. My mum called me a "murderer" for having a miscarriage. Like I had a choice in the matter. She also once asked me why I couldn't just "turn a blind eye" when I discovered my DH was cheating.

My mother tried to drive me off a cliff after my dad died.

When she got a boyfriend a few years later we all went out for a meal. Then they decided whilst we were out that actually they were going for a meal and I had to sit on a bench outside and wait for them.

On the rare occasions she said she would come and visit my daughter she used to phone on the morning and say she had changed her mind.

The day before my daughter got her autism assessment (and diagnosis) she told me that she would disown us if I ever dared to get her labelled.

So many horrific stories here, just love to all of you. You are better than what you came from, every single one of you.

Oh this post and the replies are just awful 😢

My parents split up when I was 5 or 6 y/o and 2 weeks later, my dad started a relationship with a girl 20 years younger than him (he was in his 40s at the time). He got her pregnant a couple years later and instead of telling me, he would leave baby things round our old family home where he had moved her into, in the hopes I’d take the hint and ask about the pregnancy. I just kept it to myself as I didn’t want it to be true so he waited until a few weeks before the baby was born to tell me. My mum was away on a trip with her work and was due to return on Mother’s Day and my dad told me that his gf was pregnant, was agitated with me for not asking him about the baby stuff and told me that I was to tell my mum when she returned on Mother’s Day. I felt ill, I couldn’t tell her and kept it to myself for weeks until one day I fainted in school, I think I was just stressed and anxious. When I got sent home I told my mum about the baby and she beat me up. Told me she was moving us abroad, we’d never see my dad again. It was awful to be honest, she just completely directed her heartache towards me. I also remember I had written about this in my diary and my younger sister found it and read it and my dad fell out with me because I had written about the pregnancy. Told me it was my fault my sister knew about it now. I mean, not sure what he was planning to say when his baby was born but somehow it was my fault. I’ll never forget how that made me feel, I can still feel the physical crushing feeling when I think about it.

Also one time my Dad told me he was taking me on a trip to London and I was so excited. He told me he’d pick me up from a house party I was going to that night and we’d go straight to the airport. He literally had me sitting at the window of this house party with everybody knowing he was supposed to pick me up and he didn’t turn up. I waited 3 hours after he was supposed to arrive and was the last to leave. I then sat up alllllll night at my own house waiting at the front window incase he turned up. Turned out he’d been arrested and was in custody. Lovely.

I think about some of these experiences now that I’m a parent and I honestly just can’t understand how anybody could do such things to their children 😢 I hope for healing for everybody who replied to this post and the OP! 🤍

These are all awful.
When I was about 13 my dad said he was going to kill himself. He got a rope and set off towards a nearby tree. I has to run after him begging him not to. He's threatened it so many times since that I've learnt he never intended to do it that day.

Threatened to drop me off at the children's home repeatedly

Threatened to make me "a ward of court" so that a judge would control my life until I was 21

Told me that a very specific achievement of mine (the result of months of hard work and passing physical, mental and leadership tests) that my DSis would have been better than me! (Despite not showing any inclination to do what I did...)

So sorry OP.
Parents are shit sometimes.
My mum used to say she only loved one person in the house...my brother.
My dad often says he wishes he'd never had kids and we awful and ruined his life.
I had a termination as a teenager and for a few days/weeks afterwards my father started describing things that happened to them as 'abortions' his idea of a sick joke to get at me.
I still see them (over 20 years later) but I've never gotten over the last one.

Told me she wished I was never born.

Some of the unsaid things hurt too, like when they saw my self harm cuts by accident one day, it was very obvious that’s what they were, and said nothing.

I was 16 and had a boyfriend, sexually active. Had a pregnancy scare and my mum screamed at me one day that I was just a little girl with nothing else in my head but sex.

Considering she’d had an affair that came out 2/3 years prior, that one hurt!

Never addressed it or the affair but it’s definitely affected my adult relationships.

Dad, who I never lived with as he didn't marry my mother, groomed me at age 17 when I first lived alone, used to come round with booze and cocaine, and one night when I was suitably off my face coerced me to give him a hand job. 'You're my favourite, never really thought of you as a daughter' etc. Still vividly remember it over 40 years later, the revulsion when he came.

When I broke up with my husband and I told my mum he had been physically abusive her words....."wheres the bruises??? I never saw any bruises on you". Kept in contact with him for years after too because he had a son and I was never going to give her grandchildren

Told me I was dead to him after I'd just had pancreatic cancer removed.

I was 28.

Also told me I wasn't being brave enough whilst having chemo.

Twat.

She sounds like a horror!

Wow these are truly awful.

Mine is nothing of significance compared to any of these 😭

The most awful thing was when he had to say goodbye to me on his deathbed. I can’t believe I’ll never see my DF again.

This thread is heartbreaking and I am so sorry to hear these examples of abuse and neglect.
There were some good things but the worst are;
an obsession with my weight, to the point where I was put on a diet at 8 and became anorexic
Being blamed for my siblings serious mental health condition ‘because I demanded too much attention as a child’
Complete Dismissal of my child’s disabilities to the point of slamming the phone down on me when I was trying to explain. A/B with any other problems I try and explain. Clearly I don’t bother anymore.
I am astounded at what some of you have gone through though xxx

I have read several pages here and I am really sad to read such stories which I am sure that are the tip of the iceberg. My parents especially subjected me to abuse even as a baby with the abuse continuing for the rest of the time, too much to go into here . In the end about 25 years ago I cut off all contact with my family and was much happier but unfortunately my husbands family did the same to him and therefore to me as well. Well now we have nothing to do with them (not many left) and we have never abused our children in anyway. Always tended to their needs in the best way we could.

It's unbelievable reading these posts. Absolutely upsetting. Hugs to you all... As for my parents, my father dragged me to the sofa and beat the living daylights out of me, because I'd asked why we couldn't go abroad on holiday like my friends. I was at secondary school at that point and knew nothing about household finances. I didn't get an answer from them so just kept asking why, and got beaten for it.
Previously I'd been hit with his slipper, bathroom shower brush, his belt. Needless to say, I wasn't bothered when he died. I was 20yrs old at his time of death. Still living at home. My mother, still alive now, was constantly verbally abusive.

My younger brother was always golden boy as he has 'special needs'.

I'm 48 yrs old now and I'm still angry at myself for never reporting my 'father'. But smacking was the punishment choice in the 70s, 80s, maybe early 90s but there's a hell of a difference between a quick slap and being beaten til you're screaming in pain 😞

As a young girl I asked my mum if I was beautiful and she replied with “ you’re nothing special “

She used to be really annoyed I brought sand home in my shoes from the school sand pit each day. She saved this up and put this under the Christmas tree as my present as Santa thought I didn’t deserve a present

never enquires after me or my children. Never a text asking how I am. The few times I have mentioned how hard it is raising children with SEN and how much I struggle sometimes she Will say well you wanted children. Told me I need to put my autistic son in “an institution “

'You could do with a spot of bulemia' - mother, repeatedly throughout my teens
'We just all assumed you deserved it' - mother, regarding ongoing and hideous abuse from my elder sibling
'I wish I'd had the chance to go out with someone really fit' - husband shortly after our first child was born.
'when are we getting a granddaughter' MIL after we told her of our second sons birth. We had a stillborn daughter a few months beforehand.

Thats from the top of my head. There are more but you get the jist.

as for the straw that broke the camels back. For my mother it was her spending six months talking about a holiday we were to take down in Kent with her. She spoke about the time we would spend together and if I had any issues in those months she would say 'don't worry, we will all be on holiday together in Kent'

Until the week before when it transpired she had asked my brother to spend the same week with them and her excuse was 'Oh I hadn't expected to spend much time with you, I just wanted to take the grandchildren away and leave you in a tent'

The insanity of the gaslighting was too much and I've not spoken to her really since. This is on form for her and I just can't take the endless abuse anymore. Its not worth it to me.

When I told her I was pregnant with baby 3, she said “God that’s all you’re good for”.
After my daughter was raped and had gained weight on antidepressants, she said nobody would ever love my daughter due to her size 😢

I'm so sorry to everyone who has posted about the abuse that they suffered. There is a pathway to peace & healing, and you are stronger than you realise, please believe this.

My mother was something of a piece of work, she passed away recently. I'd not seen her for over 20 years. I have felt some release & relief since.

My dad paid me £10 for every pound in weight I lost at age 9. I remember the look on the 2 eating disorder therapist faces when I told them that. Sadly this was minor in comparison of his other actions/words but sticks with me.

he was overweight and I was an overweight child. Then an overweight adult, then an underweight adult who struggled with ED for 15+ years and now an overweight adult still struggling with it.

As a child, the typical, obsessed with my weight.

As an adult, that my abusive “ex wasn’t the monster I made him out to be” because he bought DD a birthday present, 3 weeks after he snapped my jaw so bad I ended up with it wired shut