To think others don’t have to put up with this degree of emotional blackmail from parents?

[Struggling33]

Said when I was growing up: ‘Your father is going to have a heart attack and die any day and it will all be your fault because you’re such a difficult child.’

Honestly, is this just the sort of thing parents say sometimes in the heat of the moment? Or is it really not acceptable?

I ask because I feel pretty affected by it. Yet I genuinely don’t know whether I’m oversensitive or whether my feelings are justified.

Hahaha! Did you go back with I didn’t ask to be born?

@StormingNorman ooh no, that would’ve resulted in days of the silent treatment and being shot hurt looks. With the odd “you’re so hard and ungraaaateful”.

I’m so sorry to all those who have experienced similar.

I am now 42 and a mother of three children, yet this continues. My mum is convinced my dad doesn’t have long left to live now and of course it is all my fault.

There’s a lot of truth in this.

My mum still picks. She’s always been the slimmest person she’s ever met but wishes she has my ‘curves’. I’ve lost two stone and she apparently hasn’t notice. Not a single word 😂

Food shame was a big thing too. Performative underrating, announcing that she has an appetite like a bird before eating just as much as anyone else and never getting me a birthday cake because she thought I was big. The birthday cake still niggles.

My mother said this to me as an adult (not about being a difficult child though) whenever she wanted to push my buttons. She was a narcissist.

It wasn’t a usual thing, but when I was 9 or 10, after my folks had had one of their rows, my DM said she was going to put her head in the gas oven.
I was terrified that she was actually going to do it, so was crying at school, and when asked why, told a teacher. Who then contacted my DM….😱

My DM was very cross and highly embarrassed that I’d told a teacher such a thing - I was supposed to understand FGS that she hadn’t actually meant it!

My folks generally had a good marriage though, and were generally good parents. The rows when I was that sort of age, though (usually about money) certainly cast a blight.

Certain things from my childhood, though, especially the rows, made me determined that I would never inflict the same on my own.

That's awful op.
Not at all a reasonable or normal thing to say (though you're not alone).
It's cruel and shit and the kind of thing only a very flawed person would resort to... It's an attempt to influence someone into behaving a certain way. The kind of tactic someone uses when they have nothing else.

In reality if you have a good relationship with someone and the thing you want them to do is reasonable you wouldn't need to come out with this crap at all.

Your feelings are justified. My mum said similar, including that she wanted to kill herself when I was a baby because I wasn't eating. She constantly repeated that throughout my life. Other shit too.

That doesn't make it normal or acceptable. Just that there were a lot of fucked up parents throughout the times, just like there are now. You're allowed to say and feel it wasn't ok, because it wasn't.

My father blamed me when he had a heart attack. Me having a boyfriend with a different coloured skin to my own induced it. Not his massively unhealthy lifestyle.
He has continued to say that he is dying for the last 30 years 🙄 and now has my brothers acting as flying monkeys because I refuse to engage with it anymore. They are forever telling me he is dying and I should be kinder to him, visit him etc. He probably is dying now, but he is late 80s so not exactly unexpected.

It took me a long time to recognize his treatment of me as abuse. And it has caused seismic issues throughout the rest of my life.

I generally had a great relationship with my mother but I was a slightly chubby child and she used to go on about it a lot. I think it was because she had been very slim until she had children. It was dressed as "I don't want you to end up like me" and I think it came from a place of love. Needless to say it had the opposite effect and I have a rather unhealthy relationship with food.

I am the youngest of five. I've always known I was unplanned but as much as I know I was very loved, no one wants to hear how devastated she was to find out she was pregnant again and "if abortion was legal back then I wouldn't have hesitated" 😳 Pretty sure it was just a statement of fact but but... Lucky for her I'm a resilient soul!

I think the intent is important. Half my family is south American and it’s common to shout these overdramatic things at your kids but neither the parent nor child takes it seriously. Different if it’s said maliciously to hurt or scare the child.

Born in the 70s here and it was only really when I had my own child I realised just how fucked up some of my childhood was. My mother’s moods could flip like a switch and I loved her and was terrified of her in equal measure. She hit me and the belittling made me feel so bad as a child.
We walked on eggshells around her a lot of the time.
Now she’s widowed in her seventies and still tries the emotional blackmail regularly with us. I ‘grey rock’ a lot now I’m aware of how dysfunctional our relationship was.
My own child has had a far happier, more secure upbringing thanks to awareness of how not to do it!

Yes my father has been dying for over 30 years now too. It makes it genuinely difficult to know now whether he is actually us close to the end or whether it’s just more of my mother being my mother.

My mother seemed to have a way of sucking the joy out of anything, any situation or event was fraught with potential danger, negativity, problems or consequences. When I finally realised it was ok to be happy and live in the moment it was a huge relief.

I have ended up pretty much NC with my mother as a result. She won't leave him alone, he can barely leave the house, and I cannot go back to that house, as it sets me back every time.

I have lost count of the number of times I have been guilted into doing things because it might be 'the last time' or his 'last Christmas'. Or the way he treated my husband.

My brothers do not understand because their experience of growing up with a racist, misogynistic father was very different to mine. I thought my younger brother got it. He has recently shown me that he doesn't. Which makes me sad all over again.

My mother was going to jump off the cliff - regularly or wring my neck.

I had forgotten about it until til now.

Oh goodness, such sad stories here. So many people carrying such unnecessary bad feelings into adulthood. ❤️

My mum said the most horrible things to me, she wanted to abort me but it wasn't allowed at that time, my dad kept her because of us children, when she was in her 60s and I was 30ish she told me it was my fault she was fat because she couldn't lose the baby fat after having me! Parents can be awful but I used this to make me a better parent and avoid saying anything negative to my children and I have a really good relationship with my children who know they can come to me with any problem they have and know I won't use it against them

Mine always said stuff like that, too. Along with lots of other emotional and physical abuse.

I've been NC with them for over 10 years now.

I think repeated comments like that, targeted at a child who has done nothing to deserve them, are not acceptable.

But, occasionally my mum would say to me and my brother, when we were fighting and arguing and being horrid to each other, 'One day I'll have had enough and I'll run away and leave this family and you'll never see me again. Would that make you happy?'

Writing that out it looks very bad but my mum was actually an exceptionally good mother, we had a pretty idyllic childhood, and she loved us completely! She just occasionally got to the end of her tether with our behaviour (towards each other, in most ways we were pretty good kids) and snapped. I totally forgive her for that. She is only human after all.

I was told my mum was on anti depressants because of me… I struggled a lot as a teen :(

Plenty of my mates heard that from their parents. We also used to used to get’ stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about’, meaning a smack.

That was parenting 70s style.

Mine didn’t say those other things mentioned above, thank God.

No.Some parents might have said that kind of thing. Mine certainly didn't.

I don't have any contact with my mum now (finally went no contact s few years ago- it's very hard to do and incredibly difficult but ultimately better for my health). My mum told me all sorts of things as a child/ teenager, here are some:- she was raped, she was only alive because I was there, I was the reason she divorced my dad, she had cancer (she didn't), she told me about her affair while with my dad and got me to rake messages/ hide it from my dad- even took me to meet him, told me my dad was having affairs, she wanted to die, that she chose to be a landlady as she didn't want me growing up on a council estate (rather than that is what she wanted to do), that she needed half my student loan to pay the mortgage, that my grandma tried to kill herself.... I could go on.

It isn't normal or healthy. I have raised my children completely differently.