To hate the term "Toxic parents"?

[morningpaper]

I really think it's horrible.

You know that there will be a time when your children will mutter this about you?

How does it HELP? If you have issues about your parents, seek professional counselling. Don't just give them a "wicked" label to shift the blame onto them. How does it help you to resolve your problems?

Some people are good at parenting, and some are shit at it, and some are downright abusive. We all fall somewhere on that spectrum.

Simplifying the problem like this is a hindrance to accepting the past and resolving issues IMO. I think this is a very unhelpful term which fosters a "victim" mentality. The only way to resolve these sort of issues is to have professional help - not to spend hours autopsying the past with strangers on the internet.

AIBU?

Agree with Anna

• some 8 yr olds are violent, they are violent children and need to be dealt with so they learn that violence is unacceptable. Taboos and political correctness can prevent this from happening. However children cannot, imho, be inherently bad since their character is still being formed.

• similarly, some parents are inherently poisonous, they are toxic parents, but since they and their children are now adults and set in their ways, there is rarely any point in addressing their behaviour or attempting to alter their personalities.

Have you ever known someone devoid of empathy who could be labeled, with e.g. narcissistic personality disorder? What kind of a parent do you think they would be!

Well we will have to disgree on this one I think

I also think language is very important. I also agree that epople don'tuse adjectives in that exclusive way. If you think a 'violent child' is irredeemably bad then that is a value judgement you are superimposing on a simple statement.

They're being called toxic parents because it's their parenting that's toxic.

That doesn't imply that in every area of their lives, they are toxic.

Some toxic parents are actually quite loving grandparents, or marvellous colleagues or friends, or brilliant committee members.

It isn't the person that's being labelled as toxic, it's the parenting. That's why it's toxic parents as opposed to toxic people.

Isn't the reason we don't use adjectives like this of children because they are children, ie they haven't developed into established people yet so it's wrong to label them "violent" or whatever?

I don't extend the same concession to adults, personally, not when I know them well and there are years and years of rigidly patterned behaviour. I'm happy to call my mother a selfish bitch. Because she is one.

Yes there's also that. You can quite happily call a colleague an arrogant git and not to have to qualify with "I mean his behaviour at that meeting was arrogant"

Interesting thread, thanks everyone

It isn't the person that's being labelled as toxic, it's the parenting.

I think that is fair enough

Have you ever known someone devoid of empathy who could be labeled, with e.g. narcissistic personality disorder?

That isn't really a label so much as a professional diagnosis of a mental health condition, which is a bit different I think

so can I call my fatehr a selfish git then? Or am I not allowed to label his behaviour/personality?

Feel no obligation to be kind to him by not calling a spade a bloody shovel.

sorry which is kind of what Greeny said more coherently.

MP, you are right that a person with a narcissistic personality disorder suffers from a mental health condition and for that I feel some sympathy for them. However, I think that for that person's child/ren the disorder is tragic, because it means a child is being raised with an absence of empathy and I do believe that it is with empathy that love expresses itself most fully.

From that perspective you can see that the child of a parent who is lacking the mental ability to apply empathy to a dependant child is undoubtedly being parented with a level of toxicity, no?

My mother-in-law's parents were highly damaged people, constantly exposing her and her brother to material and information no child should have to live with, unable to live their lives and trapped in their past, passing their burden on to her and making her feel that if she disobeyed them in any way she would be responsible for their suffering, a burden which she still feels today and which affects everything in her life.

Thank god no cod psychologist was around to describe these survivors of the Belsen and Auschwitz concentration camps as "toxic". What a vile word.

Wow lingle!

I think that was a thread-stopper.

I think "toxic" probably applies fairly well to your parents' in law's parenting.

Just because we know the origins of somebody's behaviour doesn't mean it isn't poisonous to the children it's being inflicted upon. My mother was horrifically abused too, but it didn't take the sting out of being 'brought up' by her.

I agree, Greensleeves.

Lingle - the suffering they had endured themselves did not prevent their parenting from being "toxic". I suspect that most toxic parenting comes from those who have been damaged themselves, are addicts of one sort or another, or suffer a mental illness.

The whole point is that their children are not responsible for their behaviour - using a simplistic label like that may have helped your MIL come to terms with the fact that the burden of their suffering was not hers to carry.

and sometimes there is no obvious "damage" sometimes they are just selfish individuals who value themselves above their children.

LOL yes, some people are just bastards

ah - back to my orignal post then (which no-one responded to )

"I don't use the term "Toxic" never felt the need to when there are perfectly useful terms like selfish shit/arse/git.

If you think that all parenting is just somewhere on the sepctrum of normal and that someday I will be accused by my DS of being as shitty to him as my dear fther has been to me (and my DS) I can assure you MP that you are wrong.

No problem with using the term "useless git" though if it makes you feel better. "

Completely agree with Kewcumber. It is important not to believe that all parenting is somewhere on the normal spectrum and that anything goes. It doesn't.

agree Kewcumber, your words are better

aside from this thread I don't think I've ever used the expression "toxic parenting", though if it helps others I see no reason they should not use it.

I do understand what MP means. I sometimes see someone say that they mother did something thoughtless or unkind or selfish and someone will post 'oooh, she's TOXIC. Cut her out of your life and your children's lives immediately! Read the book! Join the thread', and I think, 'hang on a minute, maybe she was a bit crap about this particular thing, maybe she wasn't the best mother, and maybe she has many human failings....but toxic? Cut her out of all of your lives?' I have every sympathy for people who were abused, hit, hurt etc, but sometimes I think forgiveness can be more healing than dwelling on all past hurts. Like Custardo, I have parenting moments that I am definitely not proud of, and I'm sure there will be things that my children see differently to me in the future, but to written of as just and only 'toxic' seems very dramatic and harsh, and for some people, I think it might be unhelpful.
I also have a horror of US therapy speak in general, which probably clouds my views too.

I am also dubious when people say, 'ah if you call your mum toxic and she cries, that's a sign of how toxic she is!' 'If you call her toxic and she tries to defend herself, that PROVES she's toxic' which feels a bit unfair to me. If my kids called me toxic I would probably cry and defend myself too. I would be very defensive and very upset, and maybe angry too. I'm only human.

mabanana - then you are protesting at the use of the term "toxic parent" when it is used inappropriately. Which I agree with. It is an expression that needs to be used with care. But that does not mean it should be banned.

I've never heard anyone say that! Is that on an actual thread somewhere?

I completely agree that to the child, the source of the parent's dysfunction is irrelevant. It may become relevant to the adult child in order to make sense of their situation and decide how to manage the relationship. But suffering is not a 'get out of jail free' card for any parent - and that includes all of us whose parents dysfunctional.

I see what you're saying mabanana, but there needs to be recognition that a small minority of parents do share characteristics which tower above the usual run of parental cock-ups and shitty moments. I wouldn't have chosen the word toxic (can't stand yank psychobabble either, makes my teeth itch), but it serves pretty well as a signifier in this instance IMO

I have moments I'm ashamed of as a parent, definitely - and I'll be devastated if my children remember those rather than all the other things I've done with them. BUT I've never pushed one of them downstairs, or dumped them in my ex's garden in the rain with all their stuff in boxes, knowing he was out, or spat repeatedly into their faces, or picked them up and thrown them at the wall. I've never told either of them repeatedly that they were stupid, lazy, spineless and would never be capable of a real relationship. I don't wish to get maudlin but this really isn't about heartless Thatcher's children refusing to acknowledge that to err is human. I don't think it is, anyway.