To want to know what makes kids hate their parents?

[Pumpcushion]

This might get long but please stick with me as I have thought about this a lot. As an older child and teenager I really hated my parents and spent a lot of time thinking about running away and just disappearing. I got in with a bad crowd and saw and did things I have mostly erased, I got into bad relationships/ slept around and I feel now this was all desperate attempts to gain approval from others. I have suffered with low self esteem and depression/anxiety most of my adult life, my siblings seem to have similar issues but it came out in different ways (such as shut away alone gaming all the time).
However, all in all I had a wonderful childhood and a loving family. My parents weren’t perfect, for example my dad as I got older (or more difficult) seemed to lose interest in really talking to me or engaging and would sit watching tv or reading. My mum I remember being very emotional, inconsistent with changeable moods, short temper and you never quite knew what you were going to get. I have a few specific bad memories like my dad calling me a stupid bitch when I was about 10 and my mum having what I think now was a nervous breakdown and losing it, screaming at us uncontrollably. I don’t want to give a picture that it was bad though, it wasn’t. They supported me, were always around, took us on lively family trips and loved and cared for us, we wanted for nothing.

Anyway, I now have small children of my own and worry about them feeling like I did. I want to do the best possible job to make sure they are confident and have high self worth. And like me! I see many families with kids at the age I was feeling all this hatred really getting on with their parents and having positive relationships. Are any of you parents out there who have achieved this? How do you do it? Or is it not the parents doing and just difficult years which I will need to prepare myself for?

My mum was (and is) massively emotionally inconsistent - not angry, but you never knew whether you'd get an engaged response, overreaction or a dismissal. I don't hate her, but I don't confide in her as I don't trust her to be able to not over or under react - either way, it's always about her. I spent my 20s desperate for approval from others, and it's only now I have a more distant relationship with her I'm able to hold on to my own self esteem. If I spend too much time with her I'm dragged back to how I felt as a child - massively insecure and am oversensitive to everything.

I'm pregnant and reading Philippa Perry's book (The book you wish your parents had read) - so helpful, and I'm going to try my best to be aware of how my emotions will affect my responses to my kid, and be as honest and consistent as I can.

My dad is also pretty self absorbed, and mostly talks at you rather than with you, so I guess that played in to self esteem too. Nothing terrible, but this stuff does affect you, and you have to kind of re-parent yourself to get over it.

Recognising it is the first thing - I'm sure you'll be fine

Neglect, emotional abuse , physical disciplining, no affection.
I used to hate their guts. I don't anymore , but due to the lack of affection growing up I am very low contact and I tend to get very angry whenever I do speak to them for the most trivial reasons
I know both of them came from very violent families and for them it was the norm, but the little child inside cannot let go to everything they have done.
Maybe that's why I have always been scared of having children , fear of turning into my mother. This is despite me loving children and having happily worked as a nanny for many years before changing careers.
I just don't understand how and why they couldn't love me enough to not treat me the way they did
I am sadly closer to my late husband's mum than I am to them and it's something that comes organically and I cannot change.

Probably largely due to being on the pill for bad skin messing up my hormones which led to depression, I wanted to kill my mum when I was a teen. Really went through periods of utter hatred for her. She had been and is now my absolute best friend. Even at the time, however, I would still tell her anything and everything. Personality-wise, she was volatile but also very loving and self-sacrificing.
I worry about my daughter having the same flaws as me and my mum; she definitely has the temper and I'm sure that's due to environment. However, she has awesome self-esteem and I hope that will avoid the self-destructive aspects I had when I was young. Don't have those now, so she hasn't witnessed any.

Following also, I had a very similar childhood and often wonder how to make sure my children like me when they are older

@Simonjt that sounds awful for you. I know you will make a better job of things

It comes again when they get older. My DM has turned into a hateful person. I can barely
stand to be in the same room for 60 minutes with her constant bitterness.

My parents did all they could to protect me but it meant I never felt I knew them so never let them know me.
They thought they were doing the right thing keeping all their bad news and stress a secret but it meant I never learnt how to discuss my own stresses. I’m still pretty repressed even though I try to be more open in my own marriage.
I couldn’t talk to them at all as a teen or young adult and I’m sad about that. I do really love my parents but we still have a quite superficial relationship and don’t talk about important stuff.

Reading your OP has brought back some painful memories. I don't hate my parents but they have always been so emotionally distant that I yearn for that connection everyone else seems to have, especially with my mum.

My mother had a great job when I was born, was in her 30s, yet she seemed alway out of her depth and hated spending time together (I grew up with my grandma, even though my parents lived nearby). She was absolutely horrible when I was growing up, criticizing every tiny little thing about me, never ending, and constant. When I cried she would shout that I was too weak and sensitive and nobody would like me. And she specifically said:" you are going to be a terrible mother" on different occasions. It was hell. Sometime she woyuld cross her eyes and stick her tongue out as I was speaking.

My parents also became overcontrolling when I went to uni, despite me being a very good kid, who never smoked or got drunk or slept around. Every year they tightened the grip.

I left after uni, came here to the UK, and never looked back. I want to empathise with my kids, make sure they don't feel like to have to hide their feelings, I want them to know they are worth of love. I'm still rebuilding my self esteeem which is non existent.

I should also said that I didn't hate my mother as a teenager, but always tried to gain her approval. I'm working on the fact that she doesn't like me, she doesn't understand me or my life and that's okay. But there's a hole in heart, as I know that were I to call her during a tough moment she would probably shout at me as she's done in the past. I sound silly but I need a mum I can call and tell everything to.

I had a smother and a farther
As in my mum was too much and my dad was distant. Both my parents got a bit further away, which for my smother meant we became close and for my farther meant he is now entirely absent

Good thread op. My dad was amazing, the perfect blend of nurturing parent and wise older friend. I never remember him getting upset or angry, not once. Could tell him anything. He died when my first child was newborn, I wish every day he was here and I could ask him questions about parenting. I would love for my kids to feel about me the way I feel about him.
Mum is very unwell mentally and this had a very detrimental effect on me growing up. I often wonder whether the chaos and mess I made of my teens and 20s would have been better had she taken responsibility for her MH and got help. Conversely I wonder how much worse it would have been without my dads steadying presence. My dh is like my dad in terms of temperament, and I work every day on my Mh and being there for the dcs. Only time will tell I guess what sort of job we have done.
I worry about my nieces and nephews, SIL has married a violent, abusive arsehole who makes life hell for her and her dcs. She won’t leave, thinks she can balance it out by being the nice parent but she is writing a check that will cost her hugely when it is cashed. Dh and I have offered all the help, told SS, the police and school etc but the situation remains 🙁 Our strategy now is being the safe place for nieces and nephews, fully expect to take one or more of them in when the poor kids are teens and able to leave if they want to.

I hate both my parents because they are both extremely selfish, narcissistic and damaging in their own ways.

My father if I can call him that, is a pathetic excuse of a man, physically abusive towards women, sexually abusive too (not against me thank god but against my mother and other women/teenagers!) with schyzophrenic and paranoid tendencies (he made a youtube channel about him being the new Messiah semi recently. So insane and toxic barely begins to cover it) and completely absent as a father.
He would literally fake his own mother's death so he didn't have to come to the controlled meetings with me and my sibling. For the longest time I held onto hope he would change but he is a lost cause and now just waiting for him to get hit by a car drop dead so I can mentally rest knowing he won't cause any more pain to anybody else.

As for my mother, I think she is massively unhappy with the choices she's made (she had me at 17 and then had another 2 kids by 21 and now has 5) and is so resentful she takes it out on us or well disconnect from us everytime we stop filling our purpose. I think she craves love and that's why she had as many children as she does, so she could feel loved and also so the men in her life didn't leave her (it didn't work) so as soon as one of us, children, emotionally rebel or tell her something negative, she writes us of.

I dislike her because she has never put our interests first, life is always about her and her needs, if she does one good thing she will have you thank her for it for life but will never acknowledge all the things she's done wrong or damaged us. I was sexually abused as a kid (and then teenager), she was often sleeping next door or bringing them into the house, she could have known or at least tried to find out why I was becoming so depressed and put the dots together, instead she focused on my weight gain (I was comfort eating) and blamed it all on hormones, when I finally told her what happened she didn't believe me and completely dismissed me as being a liar and drama queen and when she finally found out who did it (family friends) hoping she would show a bit more compassion/care her answer was ''why are you telling me this, they are more friends with your (former) step-dad than me." (implying he had failed me more than she did and it wasn't her problem since it wasn't her side of the family) and went to bed. If she has a small hiccup in her day, she will talk your ear off about it for days on end but if you dare tell her about anything of importance she minimizes it or dismiss it and will never ever acknowledge she was anything short from perfect, if you want her to love you or even acknowledge you, you need to treat her like the mother martyr, queen of motherhood who sacrificed her youth and happiness for her kids, anything else than that and you aren't worth a word from her. I moved out at 16 and she would never so much as text me if I didn't text first (once I didn't text to see if she would text but we only chatted a YEAR later when I had to reach out about something)

I hate my parents because I don't feel either of them ever loved me. They needed me to serve a purpose that adds to the narrative of their life and the role they want to play in it but they never actually cared about being parents and what it implies. I felt I spent most of my childhood trying to find ways to make them love me and hitting a wall again and again and again, and it was infuriating and damaging. I hate them because they are both alive and yet I feel I have been orphaned for years and it makes me so sad that I find the fact that they are alive and not caring much more painful than I would their death.

I think what kids need is love, knowing that you are there for them and that, while you are human and won't always be perfect and do things right, you will always do your best and that they don't have to fight for your love and approval. I am sure they will still find ways to dislike/hate you for a bit but ultimately acknowledging that you aren't perfect and may mess up but love them can make a world of difference imo.

Another thing that came to my mind yesterday is that I'd like my children to be able to tell me how they feel, their emotions. I never told my parents anything about it, all of our interactions are just polite but that's it. I got shouted at too many times, ridiculed, belittled and punished when I tried to open up.

The weird thing is they always insisted on knowing everything that went on in my head, because they are my parents and I must not withold any information from them, they have power over me etc.. but if I didn't say exactly what they liked then I would be shouted at, go figure. My mother was completely unsympathetic when I was a teenager, emotionally unavailable and mean as well, always telling me how shit my hair was, and my nose and my fashion sense. I think our relstionship had a bad influence on my ability to befriend women.

I just get worried they think I'm a loser and talk behind my back (which is what my father has always thought of people).

to everyone, so many sad childhoods.

Like PP have said I don't hate my mum either but feel sadness that I don't have a mum figure in my life, haven't had that special love by a mum as I should have had.

Another book that I've found very helpful is by Shefali Tsabary, The conscious parent. She says having children is a blessing for us because it makes us ask ourselves these questions and we can grow as persons and become more authentic. To me this rings so true, as I can see now that the things my mum did to me were the result of her own unprocessed pain.

This thread is very helpful

Both of mine were abusive and I don't have anything to do with them now.

But I think the teenage years are a time when we are preparing to leave home, and to do that we need to make an emotional break from our parents.
We also need to bond with the group we are going to live with. So we become tribal, we reject their way of doing things and want to find our own way. We feel their restrictions are pointless and want to work out our own rules.

OP a practical tip from that book is to try and view difficult situations without judgement, and with curiosity instead. If you feel very emotional and triggered, pause and think about 'What is triggering me here'.

Another tip for stressful situations in which we might revert back to programmed behaviour (I think this is from Philippa Perrys book) is to react like in that moment you want to react (eg shout, call your dc names, even smack) but only in your head. It allows the strong emotions to be released even though on the outside you don't do or say anything you'd regret later. I've found this immensely helpful

@4amWitchingHour, your post rang so true with me. I feel very much the same about my mother.

I'm also pregnant, and planning to read the book you recommended. I'm desperate not to replicate my mother's behaviour with my child.

It’s a sweeping statement. I never hated my parents, never even felt anything close. Hatred? Are you serious? Probably annoyance, yes. But hared? Nope.

I don't know if you can stop it, it's normal to a certain extent when you're a teenager, your brain isn't fully developed but everything in your mind and body is pushing you towards independence. At times I hated my parents too, but now I really don't. My dad had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalised, he was often angry, upsettingly so, my mum was often quite distant and they didn't always support me so well. Now though I love them both and get on well with them, so in a way I don't see what the problem was with me hating them as a teen. It's unreasonable to live with anyone and not feel every emotion around them surely? I don't hate my kids and hope I never will but I'm sure there will be times I hate what they do.