Was my mum abusive?

[Purplelightening]

I am looking for perspective around my mums treatment of me when I was a child/ teen. Without waffling too much, it's probably easiest if I write a pros and cons list. My DH has labelled her as abusive, a term ive never used to describe her. I would like to understand if this was the case?

Pros.

She worked hard to provide for us, often putting her needs last

She instilled strong values in me and my siblings, to always stand up to what is right.

She provided us with good education and paid for additional tutors if we needed them.

Was supportive if I was ever in serious trouble or very upset.

I was able to engage in long conversations with her about various topics, she didn't dismiss me.

She was fun to be around and often lighthearted and silly.

She did genuinely make me feel warm and safe in her presence and I enjoyed her company, at the time.

She didn't give us too many restrictions and I felt I had a relatively free childhood.

She always cooked us healthy meals

Cons:

When i caught nits in school she would often leave me with them, and refuse to cut my hair to help the situation. I ended up being bullied a lot because of this.

My hair was thick and dry and she didn't brush it for me. I remember when I was 6/7 I had to cut huge matts out myself.

She has never told me I'm smart, sometimes referred to me as aversge. but would consistently tell me how smart my brother and sister were growing up. Even though I am now more highly educated than them.

She often told me how my sister was so beautiful and how I had a chavvy face (the face i was born with, not referring to makeup)

She tried to turn my brother and me against my dad from as young as I can remember (he wasn't exactly the best, but he was ok), slagging him off to us all the time. He lived with us.

She made it very clear that if her children didn't go to university they were a failure.

She on occasion excluded me from conversation she was having with my older siblings, saying it was none of my business. (Not private conversation, just about random topics, I also wasn't noisy at all I just tried to be part of the conversation at times).

She would somes gang up with one of my older siblings against me. And then deny this ever happened and called me paranoid.

I answered back to her once and she slapped me across the face. Only the one time though. She denies remembering this.

When I was a young child, if I was napping, to wake me up she would sometimes chuck a jug of cold water over me.

She didn't make me bath often.

I remember having to have loads of fillings when I was young, I also had infected ulcers. But I am unsure if I was at the age where I should have maintained these myself, 9 or 10 maybe? Perhaps I didn't tell her about them, I can't remember.

Im sure there are more if I gave it more thought, these are what has come to my head. Any thoughts?

She sounds like a right nasty cow! The nits and hair matting alone is awful - you would treat a pet better than that!
Extending some grace to your mother, is it possible if she was working and had at least 3 children that she wasn't coping? Although the jug of cold water on a napping child does just suggest she was a complete psycho.
On balance I would say yes, she was abusive.

She sounds as if she had some sort of mental disorder to me...she was certainly neglectful.

Yes. I'd say abusive/neglectful/narcissistic

How awful. That's definitely neglectful.
As PP said, it sounds like she had MH issues? Idk if she was treated for that at all but maybe not as many years ago there was a lot of stigma.

Neglectful and abusive. She physically neglected your care, she physically abused you by slapping and pouring water on you, she emotionally abused you by her horrible comments about your looks, and at least where I am, parental alienation is considered a form of child abuse.

I'm so conflicted. As much as I feel like it was neglect and abuse. I also question whether I am blowing these things out of proportion. Because at the time I never blamed my mum, or thought her particular cruel. On a day to day basis she was fine and what I would describe as a normal mum. I also don't think the neglect was intentional, whether she was just unaware of how much my hair was a mess/ the nits/ the teeth problems?

I think the mistake is worry about whether or not the situation needs the label of abuse. It's just semantics really.
Clearly, there were aspects of her behaviour that were very poor. You recognise that. Does it mean you should cut off contact with her because she was an "abuser"? I would focus more on what your relationship with her is like now, and whether you can forgive her for the very poor behaviour and move past it. Best wishes.

Yes she was you dont need her to accept it to make it true abusers often dont remember or try to deflect it onto their victim. But your a survivor move on decide what you want your relationship to be....or cut her off....more importantly make sure you have no underlying issues from it keep talking

I'm sorry you grew up with this treatment from your mother. She was neglectful and at times abusive.

My mother sounds very like yours with all the same pros really, but she had an underbelly that other people never saw. She once knocked me out when she hit me over the head with the hair brush because I wasn't sitting still enough for her. Think I was around 9ish when that happened. Later as a mid teen she tipped a plate of bolognese over my head breaking the plate in the process. These are just two of the many things that happened during my childhood.

How is the relationship with your mother now, do you see her?

I’m so sorry you had to go though that. Yes she was cruel and abusive.

The pros and cons are so at odds with each other. To have such strengths and also be neglectful and nasty at times makes it sound like there was something going on with her, a mental health condition or some kind if disability that prevented her from being a decent parent all the time.

Yes she was neglectful and abusive.

Sounds to me like Stately Homes reasoning.

She was abusive and neglectful. Just because she did good things too doesn't dismiss or take away/minimise the neglect and abuse she did commit against you.

The only part that sounds actually abusive is the hair thing which is neglect. The rest just sounds like she was a flawed person like we all are.

The putting you down and constantly comparing you to your siblings alone is abuse in my books.

I suffered emotional abuse of this kind and like you, I ‘surpassed’ my siblings in terms of education, career, finances and generally having a more interesting life. This is literally NEVER acknowledged but I know it must eat the abusers up inside.

What’s your mum like now?

Neglect is neglect whether it's intentional or not.

My niece is a social worker, and one thing she's said to me that really stuck with me was that in most of the child neglect cases she deals with, the parents aren't being deliberately neglectful. They're not looking at their kid and thinking 'My child is dirty and has matted hair but I'm going to leave them like that on purpose'. They're usually either people who have for whatever reason lost the capacity to notice or act on this sort of thing - sometimes because of serious mental health issues or dysfunction, or addiction, or a chaotic/transient living situation, or abuse by a partner, or learning disabilities, or because they were brought up similarly themselves and simply don't know any different, or for all sort of other reasons. Neglect and cruelty are not the same thing - but of course, they're both incredibly harmful, and it makes no difference to the child whether the neglect is deliberate or not. If you were left with nits and tooth decay and matted hair, the impact on you was the same whether it was deliberate or not.

It very much sounds as if your mother was an extremely dysfunctional and unstable parent whose mental health was fragile at best, and who failed you on many practical levels. It also sounds like she was emotionally and perhaps physically abusive. No decent parent wakes up a sleeping child by throwing cold water over them or refuses to treat their head lice.

No your wrong she showd emotional abuse as well as physical and emotional neglect anyone who does this is abusing even if they have mental health issue it is still abuse. Have you ever done any training?

Deliberately alienating you from your father and being abusive to him in front of you and your siblings is completely out of order. It is frighteningly common though. Virtually all of my friends remember their mothers being deliberately cruel and abusive to their fathers.

The contrast between the pros and cons is so stark and must be so confusing. The pros show a loving mother but the cons show a neglectful and abusive mother. My mother was more in the middle, with very few of the pros mentioned but also without that extreme of cons.

But as a child you don't know any different. For me it's only as I've become older and seen how my friends act around their children that I've come to realise that some of the things I experienced as a child was not normal loving behaviour. Or seeing people's shocked faces when I've described childhood events.

I think what you've described was abusive. That said, it was your lived experience so I think you should label or think about it however works best for you. All that matters is how you feel about it and deal with it if it's affecting you now.

She was neglectful (hair and teeth) and cruelly abusive (cold water wake ups / excluding you from conversations / dissing your face and intelligence). The fact that she was also fun and warm on occasions means nothing. All abusers are also nice sometimes.

Absolutely this was abuse and neglect

Do you have children @Purplelightening? If yes, then can you imagine behaving as your mother did towards them? Sometimes it’s easier to see things when you look at them from a different perspective.

I have children and my heart felt so sad for you reading your ‘cons’ list. You were reliant on your mum for physical care and she was neglectful. Your mum should also build you up and make you feel good about yourself. Instead she negatively compared you to your siblings and down played your abilities. She also tried to negatively impact your relationships with others - your dad and siblings. A caring mum would put their child’s best interests first and help facilitate relationships, not be a barrier.

So yes, I think your mum was abusive and neglectful. But that doesn’t mean she was ‘all bad’. You can still have some positive memories of her, but that doesn’t mean what she did was ok.

It probably says a lot about my childhood because I read all that and thought. Ok, she had her flaws but she was a whole lot better than my mum. 🙈.

but yeah, she was quite neglectful and not all that nice.