To ask - can a parent crying in front of a teenage child ever be emotionally abusive?

[WithEase]

I’ve experienced this and it felt like my mum was being abusive

My mum would have arguments with my dad, usually on a Sunday. She'd go to the bedroom crying. She would beg me to come and give her a hug, but I always felt that the argument was her fault. She'd be desperate and crying.

As I got older I resented and resolved not to give into it and she called me hard.

I am not sure this was abusive but it was emotionally manipulative and I still dislike her for it..

On the other hand last year I had major surgery and spent two weeks crying post op from the anaesthetic. DS who is ASD found it hard to see me cry. I don't think I was manipulating him, I was at the mercy of some strong emotional upset, plus couldn't walk properly.

Howeverr I am going to have a little chat with him about it prompted by this OP. I hope you are OK. X

Thank you.

This post is really helpful

Thank you OP ❤️ your mum sounds similar to mine

Why is it too much? I would cry if my daughter dropped out of school and then did not go on to college.

I take myself off to another room and eldest no doubt knows what I'm doing - I'm a single parent and it's bloody hard sometimes and can be overwhelming and shit. I don't expect anything from them - it's not done to manipulate a situation or them - sometimes I just need an outlet

I don’t think crying in the situation you’ve described is abusive. She probably didn’t make eye contact because she was trying to hold it together.

Things my mum cried about.

Working on her birthday, she wanted me to do it, instead of revising for A Levels.

Not making her a cup of tea she had not asked for.

There are loads but I'm not giving head room to remembering them.

But she was in a moving car! Whatould you gave her do, jump out?!!

Thanks to everyone who’s contributed to this thread thus far.

The other relevant thing is - in the August I was 18 - some 18 months later - she’d just come back from church and she said

“they announced the A level results in church today of your school year. How do you think I feel?????!!!!!!

she’s an adult, ffs!!!

FFS mums have enough shit to wade thought without the idea of crying being considered abuse!
anyone … anyone… man, woman and child can cry for attention… is that abuse

It depends on the context.

My mother regularly used (fake) tears and general hysteria as manipulation and control.

She even once pretended to faint and drop to the floor simply because I wanted to study the subject of my choice at university.

I was verbally, mentally and physically bullied by my father at home, including being hit in the face and she used manipulation/tears to blame me for it, imply I should be OK with it and to paint herself as a victim, making me guilty for complaining about my father.

No need to say I have been no contact with her for years.

This is a really good point. I never saw my mum cry. Not once, including at the funeral of her mother. I had a difficult relationship with my mother largely because she seemed so disconnected with her own emotions and in a constant state of papering over difficult things and trying to make like everything was always fine even when it really wasn't.

It left me feeling that I didn't ever really "know" her: it felt like there was something dishonest about her reactions.

I think crying can be manipulative but I don't think there's anything wrong with a child, within reason, being allowed to see and understand that their parents have feelings.

Oh gosh OP - I can definitely identify with the hysteria bit.

Even my own abusive mum didn’t go as far as the fainting bit - but she did have a similar vibe !

it’s awful when parents behave like this - I do sympathise

my Dad wasn’t actively abusive - just the passive enabler

As a one off that wouldn't be abusive - she was having a natural response to the shock of learning her DD wasn't attending college anymore, maybe not ideal but not abusive. But the 'drunkenly tantrum' of your account suggests there's more to this than that one isolated incident.

I also think things can not be abusive but can be unhelpful and affect the quality of our relationship with our parents and how we feel about ourselves.

My dad was the one prone to crying in our family whereas I hardly ever saw my mum cry, even at funerals. He once burst into tears in front of me and my sister when we were about 12/13 and 10 because we were always wanting to do different things and complaining that we didn’t want to do the thing the other one wanted to do. This was at the weekends my dad had us, not long after my parents had separated. When this happened I felt terrible and we stopped moaning so much. I still remember it quite well.

Yes agreed and it wasn’t an isolated incident

Yes, crying can be abusive, but mostly it isn't. We are an emotional family. We all, myself, DH, two DD's, cry at films, books, news stories. We cry when we are happy, when we are sad. We cry if someone is being hateful, or if someone brings joy. We cry to release emotion. I think that's healthy tbh.

I think I only saw my mum cry when her mum died. I found that really, really unsettling.
My kids have seen me cry, mainly when they younger and I was working stupid hours and sometimes would just crack with the pressure/ inability to deal with one more fucking tantrum.i tend to cry out of frustration or despair, rather than to get my own way. Largely because I was brought up with the 'don't cry or I'll give you something to cry for' mentality - and I was a sensitive soul who felt a lot. Crying was associated with shame for a long time.

I don't think I've ever seen dh cry, not even when his dad died.

Completely agree with this. My two teens (adhd/asd) drive me to tears regularly. Usually private tears but sometimes it's inevitable that one of them walks in and finds me crying. It's in no way manipulative or abusive. It's just real life and sometimes it makes you cry! We're not robots. I think it does kids some good to see they've pushed you too far on occasions.

Confused about why this isn't the part you're focusing on re abuse.

In front of them though? There’s just no need, they don’t need to be guilt tripped

I'm sorry, OP, that you went through all of that. Yes, this would have been an emotionally abusive situation.

As always on these threads, people who haven't had abusive parents (or don't recognise them as such) don't get it, OP.

Those tears in your situation of dropping out - yup, abusive. She made your situation all about her and her feelings, and those were more important than her concern for you (as well as being just the tip of an iceberg of abuse that means things land differently to a one-off set of tears). But that is extremely common, and it seems accepted that a child needs to live up to parental expectations.

Yes, I've worried about my son (he was suicidal for a year, for example), but I've never cried about his situations in front of him. Those tears belong when I am on my own. Otherwise I would be saying, 'not only are you responsible for your own life, but you are responsible for my feelings too'. This is how you create a boundary-less people-pleaser - someone who doesn't understand where they end and another person begins.

Of course he has seen me cry - I'm a huge cryer at films, and I cried when my Dad died. He doesn't need to see me cry over him.

Omg !! You’ve absolutely hit the nail on the head in your analysis here.

Yes, as you correctly predict - I was a boundary - less people pleaser. And as you can probably imagine, I was a PRIME bullying target at school. Teenage kids can be brutal and I was humiliated, bullied physically and emotionally, with awful untrue gossip spread about me.

Sorry about your son but glad that you seem to be talking about his emotional problems in the past tense ❤️

So why start with a minor example?
I just knew there’d be a drip feed when you didn’t get the answers you wanted.