If one of your parents is lovely and one of your parents is a nasty abusive arsehole who 'plays' at being nice, how old were you when you realised?

[bluetrampolines]

My children think the sun shines out of their father's backside.

Because I cannot prove he is an abusive bastard they get to see him. I cant change this.

If you experienced something similar how old were you when you realised your crap parent was crap?

And if it's not too upsetting what was it that made you realise?

I'd just like to follow this because I'm wondering how long it will take my little girl to realise.

Her dads the same. I don't want to say anything to her while she's growing up incase she turns on me for 'slagging' off her dad so I've just gotta wait.

Yes. I never say anything either. I figure by saying anything theyll lean towards him. It's infuriating though.

Even though he is unpleasant to you it doesn't necessarily mean he is to the children.
Do you think he is?
If not you have to keep your thoughts to yourself and allow your kids to have a guilt free relationship with him. It's hard, but that's best for the kids.
If he shows his gittish tendancies towards tham they'll soon form their own opionions - that's best.
Try not to hope they won't like him. It will be easier for you to deal with kids who have a good time with their other parent.

My DP is in his 30's and still thinks the sun shines out his DF's backside. From an outsiders point of view he does nothing to help his son and every year forgets birthdays, anniversaries and grandkids.

He never ever gets in contact with him first. It's a very very one sided relationship. In my husbands eyes though, his dad can do no wrong. It's so sad to see how much he loves and respects his dad, but it's in no way reciprocal.

Oddly, it may be a subconscious thing, but they somehow sense that they have to strive on some level to keep his approval, where as you love them unconditionally, and they can safely be a bit (very?) off-handed with the person who is their rock, (plus doing all the unglamorous "grunt work" of parenting.)
Children are cannier than we think, and if you refuse to be drawn into the "mutual slagging-off" game, they will admit it to themselves, and eventually, you. Well-worn phrase, I know, but when he goes lower, you go higher.

I was 11, my mother told me I was a defective freak and the abortion she ought to have had.

If you ever met us at an event, you would likely assume we had a 'very proper' relationship. Anyone who knows either of us well would know that the only thing behind the icy manners and perfect etiquette was a desire to be nowhere near each other. My dc have nothing to do with her, I have never trusted her near them.

I'm assuming he's not abusive to the children? Is he a good father?

Dd was about 8 or 9 when she saw that her father wasn’t always as nice as he could be....,and worked out for herself that the criticism wasn’t usually justified.

I'm assuming you aren't together?

I realised probably around age 9 but my parents were together so I saw a lot. He was also an arsehole to me at times.

As I became a young teen my mum told me what I didn't witness. This got worse the older I got and although we have a great relationship it has made me have a lot of disgust and resentment towards her for staying with him (some of it was very serious).

If your DC aren't witnessing this behaviour then it is unlikely they'll know.

They might be really quite old, maybe even parents themselves, if he doesn't turn on them directly as they get older.

Does it have to matter?

Are they playing you off against each other? "Dad lets me stay up to midnight, play Xbox 10hrs a day, eat nothing but chocolate so if you don't then you are a big meanie"

It wasn't until I had my own children that I realised I could never treat them in the same way .

13 or 14. My dad wasn't ever actually abusive, he just wasn't a very nice bloke. We had a complicated relationship for all of my adult life, very LC (mostly funerals by the time I got into my late 20s) after a 4 year period of NC.

By the time I'd processed how toxic he was when I was 30-ish, he'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and that was that as far as a relationship went. Still hit me like a tonne of bricks when he died earlier this year, which I wasn't expecting.

I was 6 when I realised I should always go to DF not DM with any problem. Walked passed her quietly hiding a badly cut thumb to quietly wake DF (he worked shifts). He equally quietly bandaged me up and told me not to let DM see. WTAF was he thinking?!

I was 12. My DM was emotionally abusive. She didn't want children, which she told me outright a year or so later. She also called me a millstone round her neck. She was very f**ked up & bitter about being adopted. I didnt miss maternal affection because I'd never had it: & my Dad was so affectionate, great company & loved hugs. What he saw in her mystified me tho.

I divorced my husband due to DV. He saw the kids now and again but wasn't really part of their lives. When my daughter got married she was given away by her teenage brother. As they say up here, he saw his arse over this and wouldn't stay for the meal, stropped and went home. Later that night my son said my dad's an arsehole isn't he, I replied that I'd always thought so but it was up to the kids to make up their own mind. I never slagged him off to the kids but they realised in their own time.

My Dad isn't abusive physically or emotionally but I realised he was useless/selfish at the age of around 12.

It was my younger siblings birthday and he forgot to pick me up. I know that's not a massive big deal but it was the fact that I just wasn't on his mind at all.

I was in my teens.

Actually is was sooner than that, maybe around 8, he told me how he would lose his house because my mum kept asking for child maintenance (he was well off and hid his earnings). I could see through it straight away. He really didn't give a shit my mum couldn't afford to feed us and my DGP had to help her out. His wife was a SAHP who walked around in designed bags and shoes and went shopping 4 days a week.

I was a adult , continually made a effort to have a relationship for many years but when someone is very Nasty , moody it's difficult. I now have no relationship with him nor do my DC's it's sad but his own fault. Funnily enough my df own dm was the same with him horrible woman but he wouldn't have a bad word to say about her always wanted to please her .

I realised very early.

I couldn’t stand my mum for as long as I could remember. My family said I seemed to dislike her from when I was a baby.

Thankfully the nasty cow dies when I was 13.

As to your specific question, several of my friends have accepted as young adults that their fathers have behaved badly towards their mothers and in some cases toward them. They all have reasonable relationships with their fathers, while recognising their weaknesses.

In most cases though, they have also had very difficult relationships with their mothers, who were critical of their (useless) ex husbands to their children. My friends didn't want to hear it then, and don't want to hear it now, and still don't want to acknowledge their fathers inadequacies to their mothers. It's not fair, but I think the old proverb applies about arrows directed at the ex flying through his shadow and only injuring the children.

Btw there was no abuse in these cases, just infidelity/abandonment/failure to support financially (which is enough).

My mother has borderline personality disorder and she is without question the more volatile and emotionally damaging parent. However, she made a point of never trying to turn us against our father. She fully acknowledged (which is surprising really given her thinking) that his role as her husband was different to his role as our father. She considered it important not to attempt to make us see him through her eyes and I'm grateful for that.

She's always been straight down the line nightmarish but it took until I was an adult for me to appreciate which of his behaviours affected her. He's completely disinterested in any sort of relationship really and thinks money is a substitute. I'm way more capable of understanding that as an adult. Children do not have the ability to process adult relationship dynamics and it is unfair to want them to bear that weight.

Your children will find out in their own time or they may not because maybe they'll be lucky and he might be a different dad and a better person outside a bad relationship.

As a child, both my parents were 'crap' in different ways. But dad was far worse and in more obvious ways, especially when his drinking got much worse and the aggression got worse and violence increased. This happened when I was around 12/13 but my siblings were younger and also noticed it at the same time.

I've been lc and nc with both my parents at various points. Currently lc - very complicated. My siblings do generally resent that mum stayed with him.

As a parent in a similar situation to yourself - the big bolt for dd was when doing sex ed at school with backup from home and working out her fathers 2nd child was born 7 months after we split! She'd have been 9/10? She had smaller bolts before that wrt his treating her as lesser than his 'new' children, slagging me off to her, quizzing her about me.

I had not spoken negatively about him to her thinking that was the right thing, she has since and now says that was the wrong decision as far as she's concerned. She feels I lied to her and it made it harder for her to speak honestly, but negatively about her relationship with him.

As a result of ex's lack of effort dd now hasn't seen her dad for several years and is very hurt that he's basically all but forgotten her. I could cheerfully kill him for that! I try to content myself that when he's an old man (and wife 2 has probably left him and those DC having little to do with him too - I hear things, apparently not a great dad to them too) he'll regret it and by then it'll be too late.

I have no idea how to help dd though, I try to support, commiserate, distract but at the end of the day I could be the best mum in the world (I'm so not!) it still wouldn't make up for the lack of a dad.

He made very little effort even in the immediate aftermath of our split, I basically dared him into court to get contact arrangements formalised and in an attempt to motivate him to see dd, bent over backwards to facilitate contact even when we ended up hundreds of miles from each other (he was army) basically spending the cm on travel so dd could see him. With hindsight I think I should have just let him fade out of dds life. I think if I hadn't pushed he'd have done so before she was 3 and she'd likely not even remember him - and you don't miss what you don't remember ever having.

I was about 12. My dad is a lovely person and my mother is...not. I lived with her and she told me all sorts of horrendous things about him. Then Social Services got involved (see: mother being not such a nice person) and I had to live with dad. I was an absolute horrible cow to him for about six months which I feel incredibly bad about now, but I suppose over time I realised that while my mother said a lot about how she loved me, she had treated me like crap and neglected my younger siblings, whom I had basically been parenting. My dad cared about me even though I was very open about how much I disliked being made to live with him.

I don't think there was anything anyone could have said to fix things sooner. I wouldn't have listened. But it eventually it just became obvious that what I had been told didn't match reality at all.