To wonder why a parent would intentionally ruin their child’s self esteem?

[SchoolCert]

In my childhood my mum used to called me names like

spoilt
ruined
fat (I was noticeably fat as a primary school child)
clumsy

she also made indirect comments that I was socially inept

3 times in my childhood she was physically abusive - but the emotional element was greater

She used to drink gin frequently at home in the evenings and be drunk knowing i didn’t like this - even when in was 9/10

My self esteem as a result was on the floor.

Why on earth would a parent ruin their child’s confidence like this?

Well in the case of my awful MIL, it's definitely jealousy and bitterness at her own situation.

I think my dm has narcissist personality disorder. She’s mean, bullying, controlling and doesn’t have a nice word to say about us. But ultimately she’s jealous of the dc and gc. So rubbishes their achievements. It’s very sad for those of us who don’t have a nice mother.

I often call my child spoilt or clumsy 😕 I honestly had no idea it could have a negative impact on their self esteem. So I need to be careful. Sometimes they might ask for something in a shop and I gently say no and explain why, then they start whining and crying and trying to grab what I've said no to. So I say stop I've explained why and try to distract, eventually I might snap and say acting like such a spoilt child. Or everything I buy ends up broken, dropped and damaged, despite help , support and teaching how to look after things. I genuinely think my child is very clumsy, possible ADHD never stops jumping about. I would never ever though comment negativity on their appearance and constantly shower with very positive and happy words , beautiful, precious, kind etc.
I'm sorry that you have been left woth zero self esteem because of this. In my experience, I genuinely had no idea these two words could cause such harm. I will be very careful from now on

My mum also drank and said nasty things while drunk. As I got older I realised she saw me as half my father and anything she perceived as a negative trait in me always "came from him". It's a side of myself I still struggle with, despite now suspecting my dad has Aspergers, that those traits are things I feel have co standby followed me as critical issues from friends, teachers and myself. I think it did make me hyper aware of them, which ironically possibly increased the tendencies as I focused on them.

I don't refer to her as mum, she doesn't deserve the title.

She would always put me down, she would talk about my younger sibling as "this x, she's so pretty, really popular, oh and so smart". Then she'd turn to introduce me and go "and this WillImNot" nothing else.

At home I was useless, thick, a pointless excuse. She would slap me with a slipper that was worn to a shiny surface, any excuse.

One of my chores was washing up, even though it caused my hands to crack and bleed as I was allergic to the liquid. She would slap me when I came home from school for not doing my chores- it would be her lunch and breakfast dishes, used whilst I was at school.

I remember getting some results back from tests, I'd done really well but she noticed a few marks dropped in one subject and made me feel like I'd failed "why did you even turn up if you can't be bothered you loser"

Parents evening one year, every teacher praised me. Except my PE teacher who was vile unless you were on her netball team. So she said I didn't put effort in and was hopeless at team sports- I'm dyspraxic, they knew it at the time. She literally started shouting in my face about how dumb I was and she had been shamed by me. It was poxy PE!

It still clouds everything I do because I put awful stress on myself and always feel I need to prove myself. I've never felt attractive. It's all down to her.
I praise my DCs constantly as a result.

Sometimes they might ask for something in a shop and I gently say no and explain why, then they start whining and crying and trying to grab what I've said no to. So I say stop I've explained why and try to distract, eventually I might snap and say acting like such a spoilt child.

Sorry - completely unsolicited advice ahead...

Have you tried enthusiastically agreeing with how they feel? It often throws them off a bit. So...

Child: I want chocolate
You: Oh my god, me too, I love chocolate! But we have dinner soon. I'm so sad! I'm think I'm going to eat two helping tonight!!

And so on.

I used to find it very effective with my DC when they were younger!

Honestly they do it because it was either done to them or because there is something missing within themselves.

I went through years of it from both parents and physical abuse from my Mum and I know for both of them there was some past trauma from their own childhoods and that mentally they both had something missing.

The effects my Dad on me are still felt today and I'm in my 70's. He was emotionally abusive. He criticised everything,, Whatever I did was never good enough. He didn't celebrate my successes (though apparently told other people about them). He scapegoated me so everything was my fault. I still find myself apologising for things that I am not responsible for.

He ruined my self confidence so I was vulnerable at school and got badly bullied. My life saver was finding and marrying a good man who made me feel loved and valued. However after he passed away almost three years ago, it has not been easy to build new friendships and living on my own is not always the best. I just have to keep reminding myself that I'm a good person who is kind and helpful, not the sort of person my Dad told me I was.

Of course some people are just assholes, but ime, this rings 100% true.

My mum (born 1948) was brought up to believe that being self-centred was the worst thing you could be (closely followed by being fat, of course 🙄). I had a lifetime of "you/we don't matter, it's all about other people". She 100% applies this to herself as well, wasn't just me. Having ANY self-esteem is seen as a character flaw. She was careful to praise me, but it had no impact because of her constant self-flagellation - to a child's mind, if mum is so awful how much worse must I be?

I'm nearly 52 now and unsurprisingly I still have terrible confidence issues, always err on the side of pleasing other people, spent 25 years in an emotionally abusive marriage, etc. I have also been very overweight (size 16-22) for most of my adult life.

I have tried SO hard to instil confidence in my dds, but I have so little in myself that I know it's an uphill battle. My mother would very much prefer all women, esp her relatives, to be self-effacing to the point of being non-existent. And THIN.

In her mind, praising/standing up for us is for other people to do, NOT ourselves. Even faced with the immutable fact of many, many people not being like that, therefore by being how she thinks would expose us to appalling treatment in every part of our lives, she insists that makes no difference. Self-effacement to a fault is simply 'the right thing to do'.

She does get angry when any of us are treated badly, not that she'd ever do anything more than rant privately, she'd never say boo to a goose outside her own four walls. But she still can't cope with the idea of any words (or, worse, actions) that might mean we're standing up for ourselves.

It's incredibly sad and a shit legacy.

Thank you for the advice, I will definitely give it a try and hope it will work :)

I’ve known some mums do that even these days.

One calling their beautiful red-head girl “ginge” (shouting it out in the street and the shops) and one calling her DD “speccy” and “four eyes”.

It makes me so uncomfortable, it’s horrible and such a stupid way of thinking.

My mum was the same. They say bringing up your own kids makes you realise how hard it is etc. and be more sympathetic. Mine are 18 and 20 and I've discovered its easy to be nice to kids and develop a good relationship with them. It makes me even less sympathetic. My mum alternated between using me as a therapist, even when I was 6 years old. Crying over her crush on her pottery teacher and her marriage problems etc and bullying me and my dad. She's a nasty woman. I was the scapegoat but she idolised my sister.

It didn't help that I was a plain Jane and my mum was very good looking. She thought looks were an achievement/failing rather than genetic lottery. She has a nasty personality though and now can't understand why I'm low contact.

I’m so sorry so many of you went through this.

What jumps out from these comments is how many mothers seemed to feel that the best way to prepare a female child for adulthood was to erase as much of their sense of self worth and personality as possible and to get them to feel insecure about looks.

I dare say in their own minds they were probably doing what they felt was best but from their own traumatised perspective.

I have to say that women who bully their daughters about their appearance and weight in this day and age occupy a special circle in hell. My daughter has peers at school whose mums have put them on fad diets.I can’t believe anyone in all good conscience could nag a child to lose weight or put them on a diet without medical supervision.

No idea, but my parents were exactly the same. The worst part is they (and others) don't even consider emotional abuse as abuse and so the narrative among wider family is that we had a great childhood - that's the real kick in the .

This is very interesting. May I ask how her daughters ended up as self-confident women and from what age? I have very high self esteem now but it took until my 30s to get there! Your post made me realise that my parents' misogynistic views permeated my childhood. They can't abide my success and independence now and so we're very LC.

My mother did it to me. She developed a programme to do it as well. It was called ‘The de sensitisation programme’
It involved regularly making sure I didn’t ’become big headed’ so I was made to feel ugly. I am autistic and she would make me do things that made me upset or uncomfortable to try and get me used to it (it made it worse). If o made a mistake she would make fun of me till I cried. I had a terrible blushing problem that got so so awful I could hardly function I was a nervous wreck. She would criticise me and dress it up as kindness saying it was better she told me than a stranger.

At one point I was so upset she told me if I dared to run away she would use my ugliest school photo on the news and that everyone would laugh at me.

If we went shopping she would tell me I was the wrong shape for any clothes I wanted (I cried over a pair of denim shorts that she told me looked awful as I was ‘the wrong proportions’

My Dm wasn’t that bad, but she would complain to me and siblings) ‘Why can’t you be more like so and so down the road/ or our cousins?’ Who she thought were better/nicer.

I still don’t understand why - we were all generally well behaved and doing well enough at school.

I vowed never to compare dds to anyone else, and I never did. I never thought anyone else’s DCs were better than mine anyway!

My mum was the same.
I think with my mum it was just because she was an incredibly spiteful and bitter woman. She wanted me to have the same life as her. She resented the way her life had turned out and wanted the same for me.

I was more popular and confident than she was at school and so she set out to completely destroy my confidence. She attacked everything - called me ugly, criticised my weight, the way I ate, the way I spoke, the way I laughed, telling me nobody liked me really. It all pushed me into myself and by the time I left school I was the opposite of the confident child I had been and had become really shy.

When I started to regain confidence in my 20s and started socialising with friends at the pub on a Saturday and enjoying life like everyone else my age, she lied and told everyone in the family I was an alcoholic, which kick-started the shift from abusing me to lying about me and smearing my name to everyone who would listen to try and make them not like me.

Some women should never have been mothers.

I've never told my mum how I feel and she's never asked why we aren't close. I don't know if she knows why and has just accepted it or if she'd be genuinely shocked if I brought up how my childhood has affected me.
She'd probably just reply with "oh, it was the same for everyone growing up back then" no doubt.

Just out of curiosity has anyone ever had an apology from their parents for how they were treated growing up?

I don’t think my mum even knows the word “sorry”, I’ve never heard her say the word for anything to anyone. It’s a word she never uses.

If I ever mentioned any of the abuse to my mother (there was also some more serious abuse) she would cry and say ‘oh you’ll never let me forget will you’ like she was the victim so it was pointless.

Mine I think did it for a couple of reasons -

Her own self esteem was really low, and she used attack as the best form of defense. Eg she knew I was cleverer then her (academically) so called me a swot or a show off to hide her own insecurities

She saw anything that was different to her as a criticism, eg I chose not to wear make up and she always had a full face. So she'd criticise my looks because she felt affronted I didn't follow her lead

She saw anything similar as competition and had to put me down - we were both slim, she'd gloat if I was bigger than her

She was very bitter that she had been left as a single parent and hated my dad so would also criticise anything that she perceived as my dad's traits or looks (bad teeth, wearing glasses, personality)

She also had a drink problem and I think that made her bitterness and venom worse, I think she used to ruminate on all this stuff when drinking and feeling sorry for herself

It's shit, I don't have to worry about it now but only because she died young due to the drinking, so no winners. I haven't had children and I'm glad I haven't continued that cycle (obviously I hope if I had had them I would have found a different way!)

@SchoolCert It sounds very tough living with an aggressive alcoholic, the trauma is horrendous.

OP thank you for responding to my post, I can tell that you are a lovely kind reassuring person, I have no advice about how you can heal, I wish you the best of luck, you're safe now.

There are obviously messed up mothers.
Your mother sounds like an alcoholic, unfortunately.
Did she have a supportive partner?
Was her childhood free from abuse?
Did she suffer mental illness? Treatment for meatal illness is very much improved.

It is really unfair that you suffered.