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.

We're not leaving you anything in our wills. It's all going to your younger half siblings.

I got mixed up at the hospital where I was born. My mum said this. That she came home with the wrong baby.

As someone who was abused by my parents growing up, reading threads like this can be a comfort. Knowing I’m not alone. You can feel very ‘other’ in a world where most parents love and cherish their children.
Abuse often runs through the generations. I made it my mission, that this stops with me and my family. It’s taken a lot of work on myself to be in a position to feel ok and make good life choices, to be stable enough to get married and a have a child, to be a good mum and partner….and not replicate. I’m never going to be the person I was if the abuse hadn’t happened, I’m still working on my self esteem for example. However, I take strength from what I have achieved despite my past.
Im no contact with both my parents, which was essential for my healing. As a mum myself, I struggle with how little my parents loved and cared for me. However, I understand they were broken and didn’t have it within themselves to be a decent parent. I’m grateful that I had enough inside of me, to change my life and give the love I never had.
I know it’s hard to deal with the past and nothing can replace the love of parents, but I hope everyone on here takes some comfort in not being alone, appreciates that they are worth more than how they were treated and commends themselves for not replicating how they were treated. I send love and strength to you all x

That's a terrible thing to say, but to be honest your dad was probably beside himself with stress, worry and desperation and not thinking straight. Caring for a child with anorexia kills a bit of you inside.
I hope you overcame your eating disorder x

*That I'd never had a decent job in my life - I earned 3x as much as my Dad.

*That I needed to give up on 'this psychology thing' I was interested in before I waste any more of my life on something I'd never achieve - I had a degree and post grad in psychology and taught at a university for 10 years.

*That I was only hanging around to get my hands on their money when they die - yes, every only child with no other family is crossing the days off the calendar for that.

*That I was doing 'dodgy property deals' - I'd bought a flat.

*That my flat was repossessed because I couldn't pay the mortgage - Nope, that's not true either.

*That my horribly abusive partner really just needed to find someone who understood his situation better - I have no words for that one.

At a big dinner party around a table, with lots of his old friends and family he hadn't seen for years . He was introducing me to them all for the first time.

He told everybody loudly and proudly that he had paid a backstreet abortionist to get rid of me, but I was so strong and so wanted to live that these two attempts did not work. He was proud that I was such a survivor such a strong foetus that I would not be killed.

This was the first I'd ever heard of it and I had to process that awful shock in front of all these strangers who had also just heard it. I was about 18 at the time.

5 minutes later he was telling the entire table that I once wet the bed when I was 10 years old.

I wanted to die.

He was visiting one time when I was helping my then 9 year old son to do his homework. He told me not to bother as done on of my children will amount to much like me,

no none of us earn a fortune, but we’re a family first and last

Came here to say the same. I heard it throughout my childhood and throughout my adulthood. I'm in my 40s. Always said with glee and laughter. Never about any of my siblings.

In addition:

Told me that all her births were straight forward and I was making a fuss whilst I was lying in a high dependency bed following a traumatic birth of DC1.

Used to have shouting temper tantrums most days when I was a child. Made me and my siblings witness all her histrionic fits and threatening suicide all the time. These fits could be about anything and everything.

She still has these temper tantrum fits most days according to my DF. I am close to my DF now after years of believing her venom and I feel finally I have a parent. He isn't perfect and has enabled her for decades but he is kind and caring in the way I never had from either of them growing up. He worked extremely long hours and overnight when we were children. He complains about her but my sympathy is quite low and I want to tell him that's what I and my siblings had to put up with most days when he was out working.

She's an evil, despicable person and I hate to say it but I will be relieved when death puts her out of misery.

I feel sorry for everyone on this thread. The thing that has saved me is reading up about generational trauma and breaking the pattern.

I wrote a much longer message initially, but I didn't leave to post it all, so I'll just post the beginning.

Both my parents whipped me and my brother with a plastic balloon cane whenever we were naughty. Sometimes it was controlled, and sometimes it was with uncontrollable anger. I saw my dad hit my brother so hard with a plastic comb he broke it and reached for something else. I remember the fear and pain from the huge welts on my hands, arms and legs in so much detail.

When I had a child myself I found seeing balloon canes very triggering. It made me realise how a few singular experiences can completely taint your whole memory of childhood, however good the rest of it was.

The straw that broke came much later. But I just want to leave this up there for parents that think a few smacks (or caning which is still popular and defended by parents today where we are from) isn't going to harm their kids. You may think it's fine, but you don't know the damage you can do.

Anyway thanks for this thread. I don't like reliving this stuff but it's sort of cathartic and reminds me when I'm feeling at my worst why I shouldn't hit my children.

I have no words to describe how awful some people (can't really call them 'parents') have been to their children.
This thread is shocking to read so I can't imagine what some of you have lived through.
My parents were arseholes and we are now NC but I am not contributing as what they did pales into insignificance compared to the experiences others on here have had.

No what you have said is terrible. This is a thread for people who have experienced great pain from the words of their parents. Not a thread for you to stick your two oars in defending the perspective of the causer of the pain. Because there’s a cost to the receiver of the pain in you doing that.
If that poster’s Father had ever healed that pain he caused with those words, I am sure she would not have posted. It appears he didn’t and that’s telling.

Posters have come on here talking about how validating and cathartic they have found this thread. Somewhere to speak where the people reading believe, accept and understand. You might want to reflect on that in light of your post.

If you need somewhere to talk about your experiences with your child, start your own thread.

When I was in hospital following my first suicide attempt at 17, my mum told me to ‘make sure I did it properly next time’.

To this day she’s incapable of seeing her toxicity, unrelenting high standards and favouring of my siblings is what pushed me so far. Never have recovered tbh.

I was a forced adoption. My adoptive mother locked me in a bathroom, daily, I'm unsure as to what the period of time was, probably months, I was aged 3 - 4, one of the few memories I have of those early years. When asked she told social services that I liked it in the bathroom. She didn't want me after she became pregnant, an unexpected pregnancy, they'd thought they couldn't have children.

I was eventually taken away from my adoptive parents (via foster care) and placed with my adoptive mothers brother and his wife.

My foster father was a fantastic and caring man, my foster mother was not. Boiling hot baths, hair washed in such a way that my scalp would bleed from her nails, mouth washed out with soap - rammed down my throat tbh. Because i would wet the bed i was denied water, so i would drink it from the toilet cistern.

I was threatened with being "sent back", also threatened with being taken to the doctors and "put on a lie detecting machine". i was told to say fuck and if I did i was slapped for swearing, if I refused to swear I was slapped for being disobedient .There is more, but enough said.

All this was done without anyone knowing, my foster mother was an expert at isolating me. I never told anyone because I thought it was all my fault.

When I was 14 and bigger and stronger she tried to start on me one day and i got up off the sofa (she would always tower over me) and told her she would never touch me again. I said I would defend myself and hurt her back. She looked at the floor, walked out the room, she never touched me again but the mental cruelty continued, I escaped aged 17, when I found out i had the legal right to move out.

In my 40s' I had ten years of therapy, during that time I was asked if I wanted the police to be contacted for a possible prosecution I said no, I said she's an old lady now, which actually she wasn't, she would have been in her 60s then.

That is utterly heartbreaking and awful. I'm so sorry that horrible man did not treat you like you deserved. 😞💔💔💔😪

Said, in front of me to my younger brother, “I love you more, I’ve always loved you more”. It wasn’t exactly a shock because deep down I knew but to hear it out loud was pretty awful 😞

Oh my goodness, what have I just read? I'm so sorry 😞 You poor thing. Sending you the biggest hugs ❤️

Completely rejected my husband. Accused him of being abusive. My dh has never laid a hand on me yet my sisters ex (at the time) not only physically hit her, but created a major punch up during a family bbq and was immediately forgiven.

Dh over the years has opened my eyes to how they have treated me. I was emotionally abused pretty much my entire life and I didn’t know it.

My mum knowingly facilitated a relationship between a convicted paedophile and my children. Like she knew he sexually abused his own child, and she went to great lengths to make sure I never found out, so he could have contact with my dc.

Oddly, that doesn’t feel like the worst thing she did, if you can believe it. We cut contact with her. And I’ve since found out that she’s told everyone that the reason we have no contact is because Dh and I stole several £100k from her and cut her off when we couldn’t get more. I only found this out when a friend of hers got in touch to tell me what a terrible thing I’d done and that I needed to apologise to her. I’ve since seen the email she sent to this friend saying this. So while she literally betrayed me in the worst way possible by possibly exposing my dc to abuse, it was the knife in the back of spreading rumours to discredit us and distract that did it.

If you could believe it, before this happened 5 years ago, we were so close. I never in a million years would have thought our relationship would end. It’s like the person who raised me and was in my life for 40 years was all pretend and never existed.

I've been called every name under the sun since around age 13 (ugly, fat, slag etc) but I think what topped it was when he told me that I'd almost died when I was 2 (I almost drowned) and he wished I had died back then.

All because I was protecting my younger siblings from his drunken, smashing the house up kind of rage. Apparently I was turning them against him.

It's too much to think about, op. DM dislikes all women, me included. We're all somehow the competition. She shouldn't ever have been responsible for the happiness or wellbeing of another sentient being, no one ever had her in their life and didn't end up broke and broken.

This thread is so sad 😞 I'm so sorry. Some people really do not deserve to have children.

@MoveMoveMoveMove You don't have to contribute. However, please don't let that be on the grounds that people have gone through worse.

Your pain is relative to you. It's your personal pain. It is validated because you survived it, and it hurts you.

Just because someone has been through much worse as you perceive it doesn't make what you went through any less painful 🫂

So many decent humans who can’t have kids… So many kids who can’t have decent parents…. It’s so hard to get a rescue cat or dog and yet all these damaged and/or evil people can have kids so bloody easily it seems.

@tiger2691 im so sorry you went through this, this made me cry, I have a 3 year old and what you went through is beyond cruel xx

I haven't read the full thread yet, but I'm so very sorry that so many of you have had such traumatic experiences with the very people who should love you unconditionally.