Children of toxic parents..am I a toxic parent? Long-sorry

[hopelessmummy]

I hope you can help me. I don't know how to make this better.

I have a very poor relationship with my son who I love to bits but he constantly tells me how horrible I am ( in his eyes) and how much he dislikes me. I don't know if he really means this or if it's meant to wind me up and hurt me for past behaviour between us.

He is 24 and has been back at home for 2 years after 4 years at uni. He never earned enough to move out but has just got a good job so will be leaving soon.

The history is this. When he was a child he had problems including ADHD, mild dyslexia, mild dyspraxia, a chronic sleep problem akin to insomnia ( which he still has), food allergies which needed a special diet, and on top of that he was classed as gifted.

The moment his sister was born- there is just a 2 year gap- he became very demanding- and jealous. To call him a "live wire" is a gross underestimation. He used to spend all his time provoking her, hitting her and generally making her and my life hell- until they were both late teens.

I meanwhile was bringing him up almost alone as my DH worked overseas a lot, I was frustrated by only working very part time ( my choice but I found it hard) and battling with 2 chronic health problems of my own.

In short, I was snappy and bad tempered much of the time. Utterly at my wits end and almost suicidal some days. To give you an example, if I told my son he couldn't go out somewhere he would climb out a bathroom window. I also criticised my DH in front of my son for not taking a stronger line - DH is very placid, overly tolerant, not very good at expressing emotion or anger, and avoids confrontation.

This nearly split us up many times- and may still do as I bear resentment for where we are now.

Now though DH and son are best mates and my son likes nothing better than to get dad on "his side" talk to him like a mate, and criticise me to him in front of me. DH tells him not to, but not as strongly or firmly as i think he should- certainly not enough to make my son stop, as this carries on daily.

My BF sums it up by saying that I am the strongest one in the family and my son resents this, which is why he sides with his dad so they can "join forces" against me.

Last night we were having a mild argument over something ( my son and I) and he called me a stupid cow, in front of and to my DH, and DH just mutters "don't talk like that". nothing more.

At every opportunity my son tells me how much he dislikes me, has no respect for me etc- yet will still have the nerve to ask me for favours such as lifts out at night and drop offs at the station. (He has a car but won't ( sensibly) drink a drop and drive.)

I don't know if he does really hate me, but he seems in complete denial over his part in it all. Whenever I try to remind him of how he was when he was younger he simply says I have spent 24 years "being horrible to him" and that I am a "horrible person".

I don't know how to build bridges and if we ever can. My BF says he will never understand until one day he might have kids of his own.

Any ideas?

Is your son ever physically intimidating? (This would be typical)

you wouldnt let a stranger treat you like this, so why are you accepting this treatment?

if some random bloke walked up to you and called you a stupid cow, what would your reaction be then?
would you accept it?

weeping in front of him? that just gives him power and huge satisfaction.

and i would have quite a few words with your hubby, who is as much a shit as your son.

it doesnt sound like you are the strong one to me..........in fact you should be stronger. your son is bully and your husband is sideing with him. you deserve better , esp after being what amounts to a single parent after all these years.

and really, deep down you know this dont you?
stop accepting this as your lot. stop enableing them to bully you. if you show respect for yourself, by not taking this crap, they will back off. and if not, your son can leave home.

i do hope you are not planning to give them any sort of christmas are you?
i suspect that they wont bother for you.
plan something for you, i would , personally like the day away from them, and have a fab time without them!

By talking to him I mean a discussion where you both try and look ahead to see if you can improve the relationship. Crying and telling him how upset you are isn't going to change things, and if he does view you as toxic will confirm his impression that everything is always about you and how you feel about things.
Discussions on here about toxic parents often seem to have the parents not acknowledging the child's hurt and bringing the focus back to themselves and their feelings.

I don't like the term "toxic parent". No-one deliberately tries to be a crap parent and sadly mothers get most of the blame in this.
It sounds as though the relationship between you and your son is awful though, and I agree once he leaves home won't improve in the short term, although may improve long term if you can both stop discussing the past and try and empathise with each other a bit more.

For now I think you need to talk to your husband, get him to back you up more and explain his passivity isn't helping and you feel scapegoated by the pair of them.

Could the 3 of you sit down and discuss all this, without tears and going over all you've done for him and how much he upsets you etc, stopping him if he is dwelling on the past rather than trying to move forward as well?

I don't agree that she should say 'Yes I am a horrible mother' when he says this to her. My father does that and it just makes my brother look down on him further - so weak he can't even be bothered to argue his corner. There is such a bad dynamic in a parent-child relationship like this, that to make it worse isn't wise.

I wish my dad would say "I was not a bad parent, though we had challenging times when you were young. But we do have a bad family dynamic, and we are all responsible now as adults for our part in that."

I agree with relady and if you want to fix your relationship that is the way to go.
I would also add that you have to realise that your son emotionally is stuck in the past but for him that was probably quite a frightening place to be. He had as you say developmental and learning issues to deal with and you were probably (for your own reasons which I understand) emotionally unavailable to him. At the same time his father was physically unavailable. So he must have velt very abandoned.
I think the other thing going on here is that because your dh wasnt around your son has put him on a pedestal and painted him as the good guy. It sounds as though your dh quite likes this position so he wont jepordize it by confronting your son when he should.

There will be a huge trust issue here as well so even if you do try and open up some real dialogue with him he will probably not trust you enough to engage with it-at first.
You do have a chance to fix things though I honestly belive that but you have to be willing to start linking in to how it was for him as a child. Show him you really want to know how it felt for him.
You dh needs to step up to the mark too and shoulder some responsibility.

As another child of toxic parent, unless he is very immature, he sounds like somebody who is struggling very much with their past and just wants an apology so he can move on with his life.

It is basically all any of us wants. but we never get it because our parents rationalise to explain their crap behaviour, blame child.

I can only comment on the way he us behaving now, based on the fact that I know my mother 'edits' her memories if me and forgets some of the downright abusive things. So without his side too I have no idea what kind of parent you actually were.

I'm not sure what is so hard about acknowledging that he feels that way and apologising.

In other news things will probably get better when he moves out. Just don't expect him to contact you much while he is still so angry.

There are alot of good commetns here, so thanks.

Just to clear thing s up- Real English- I never had mental health problems. I had physical problems such as very bad eczema and another chronic "gut" prblem- all made worse of course by stress.

Secondly, my son wants to move out as much as we want him to. He is. He has only got a job which pays enough, 2 weeks back. He is actively flat hunting. While he was working at his previous job my DH thought it best to allow him to save for a deposit for a flat/a newer car ( the other one is on its last legs) etc so that this would hasten the moving out. That's why he hasn't paid us anything. I said the "deal" was that he ought to help in other ways- doing a bit of housework, dishes etc- all of which seemed right and reasonable, but son ignores this and DH forgets- doesn't follow through, so I become the witch again.

Something one of you said made alot of sense. I continue to remind him of his bad behaviour from aged 2- 18. His response is that he was a child and couldn't be responsible. That is where we disagree.

I continue to harbour resentment over how he was, and maybe this colours my day to day reactions to him.

However, he seems to enjoy being hurtful- he knows how to upset me by dismissing my earnings, and belittling me, whereas in reality I have made a career change late in life, and become quite successful at it.

I don't know where this leaves me and DH. I have not felt much respect for him for a long time as I see him as weak-I tell him he hasn't got a single anger gene in his body- but he says that he has found a way of dealing with my son which works- adn I haven't.

so in response this is still very much about your feelings and not your sons.

well I am the one posting- not him, if that makes sense!
I don't see how you can separate the two- my feelings are a result of his, and his behaviour.

His reponse (which i am not excusing just adding context) to you now is because when he was small you had all the power and to an extent you abused it. Now you dont have the power. He is angry but it sounds from your last post you are more interested in your own hurt than his.

But how can you hold a small child fully responsible for his behaviour? I grant you that by 18 a child should be able to function without bad behaviour, but naturally it's all more complex than that.
I have to say I would be devastated if my mother said that I was expected to have been able to control my behaviour as a baby (a 2 year old!) and that she held it against me that I hadn't.
No excuse for whatever is allowing him to treat you so badly, but come on - you have to stop laying this on him. A child is a child. You do realise that "I continue to remind him of his bad behaviour from aged 2- 18. His response is that he was a child and couldn't be responsible. That is where we disagree." is really pretty cruel?

You see this is where the crossover happens. The point at which a parent who made mistakes becomes toxic is when they continue to blame the child for their own behaviour.
You scapegoated your boy when he was small and continue to do so, now he is returning the favour. It sucks doesn't it.

What do you want from him, hopelessmummy?

What do you want from us?

Do you want him to love you?

Do you want him to carry on being "difficult" so that you don't have to confront how you feel about him?

What do you want us to say?

Strikes me his ambivalent actions towards you are perhaps a result of responding to ambivalent desires in you.

Easiest way to sort any inter-personal relationship out, is to sort out what you want (and be very honest about that,) and then the way to get that. Sometimes you get a "no", but offten you get a "yes", if only because most people find it easier just to fall into line with other people's wishes, than reflect too hard on their own.

That, I think, is especially true with children, who often have a powerful need to please their parents. Even the adult ones.

In short, I suspect a lot of the "difficult" behaviour arises from the fact that, subconsciously, he's still trying to fulfill what you want from him. And what you want isn't clear, even to you.

I strongly suspect that you carry a lot of unacknowledged guilt about your mothering of him (rightly or wrongly - how should I know?) when you were knackered, and he was a child with various, complex, needs. I suspect you still feel overwhelmed by that experience, and as though you failed. Perhaps you have a deep fear of his love, guilt about receiving it, and constant, ambivalent feelings of animosity, too. Probably towards yourself and him.

Time to let it all go, really.

He shouldn't be treating his mother like that. It's a bad pattern. It will serve him ill in the long run. Perhaps even mess up his future relationships.

Anyway, all the above is surmise. I haven't a clue. But it's proffered in a "suck it and see" kind of way.

Good luck.

The real smithfiled You scapegoated your boy when he was small and continue to do so.

I think that is an extremely cruel thing to lay on me.
What do you mean scapegoated him? Much of the time I was physically protecting my DD from his punching, nipping, destroying her room etc etc.

I want to have a better relationship with him; I want him to behave with a bit of civility and not continue to be offensive .

I want him to know I love him, and try to move on from 24 years of shoutng, arguing and negative emotion.

hopeless,

My dd was the most awful child aged 7-11. We had endless issues and dramas and violence. when things began to settle down, I felt that would never be able to love her again, as the pain of her words and her anger and her rejection was so great, I felt it had placed a permanent barrier between us and had permanently damaged the relationship.

I was angry with her for a very long time, because she broke my dream of idealised mother/daughter relationship.

In the last 2 years, i've come to realise that the relationsip has healed. There is a scar of wariness on my part, and of verbal attack on her part, but in general, we are closer an more loving than ever.

You can redeem this relationship. You have to let go of your anger at the childhood that never was. Start a whole new page in your relationship, and start positive appreciation of your son. You have been negative mummy for so long, this may be an ingrained habit. COnsider the last time you praised him, or appreciated him, or told him you were proud of him. When did you last hug him, or kiss him, or show any physical affection towards him?

I think "I'm sorry" goes a long way. He is no going to apologise to you in this decade. Someone has to go first. But you should acknowledge and apologise to him for your mistakes. You don't need to wear a hair shirt, nor do you need to keep apologising or the same thing. But an acknowledgement of your failings is a small slice of humble pie to eat if it can mean resolving your differences.

To this end, I would invite him to dinner - just the two of you so he has no wing man in the form of your husband.

And start demonstrably loving him. Not with things, like cars and insurance, but with kind words and pride and tolerance and acceptance.

I think this is a really complicated issue because your son has special needs and you struggled with health problems so it's not surprising things were difficult, especially if you were relatively alone to cope with them.

One of the markers of a toxic parent is that they don't want to take any responsibility for their poor relationship with their child and blame the child for everything and are not receptive to the hurt they feel - they are mostly concerned with their feelings. My parents have used me as a dumping ground for their unresolved issues, for example and are hugely defensive about their 'perfect parent' status which they truly believe they have.

It doesn't sound as if that is you because you are analysing your relationship with him and want to resolve the problems.

Try not to think of him as difficult though - it's normal for children to be jealous of younger siblings and it sounds as if a lot of misunderstandings went on when your son was little which have caused him to grow up resenting you.

Do you think family therapy could help?

What does your daughter think about him/your husband/your place in the family?

'And start demonstrably loving him. Not with things, like cars and insurance, but with kind words and pride and tolerance and acceptance.'

I completely agree with this. My parents think that by throwing money at me they are showing they love me, while simultaneously telling me what an awful person I am the whole time. I would have much preferred them to love me for who I am rather than give financial support.

Hi HM

Sorry - you said you felt suicidal and at your wits end. That's a mental health difficulty or illness to me - nothing to be ashamed of.

I don't think you sound ready to have a healing talk because you are holding on to so much resentment I don't think you could just say "ah f*ck it, Sorry Son!" and mean it. Especially if he isn't gracious about it.

It might be better if you went for counselling yourself, got into a better place where you could let go and move into the present and future. Maybe if your husband acknowledged your feelings more you wouldn't be putting such a negative focus on your child? Maybe you can't express your anger with DH so you load it onto DS? I don't know, I'm just guessing with that one. You just all seem so trapped in the past.

I do sympathise of you having him in the house. We did our journey with never anything less than 200km between us, albeit with regular visits! That certainly helps you to focus on your goal of a healthy relationship and not the day-to-day irritations.

Oh and hi TRS! How you doing? x

Oh my god, you are blaming a 2 year old for their behaviour when YOU snapped and was bad tempered at him because your life was a little bit hard and he didn't jump as high as you told him to. I mean 2 years old?? Yes, that was and still is toxic parenting. All this thread is doing is making me so sad for your son you have damaged his inner child with that awful behaviour, and for me to repeat - even if I am having a tough day, "I will not snap at my beautiful children- they are innocent children and I am the adult!!!!" Thank you for the harsh reminder that I do not want to create the sort of relationship with my babies when they are adults that you have.

'Much of the time I was physically protecting my DD from his punching, nipping, destroying her room etc etc.'

Why do you think he behaved like this?

I am not trying to be cruel I am trying to help you. You have a huge opportunity here to heal your relationship with your son. In doing that you will also be helping him to have good relationships with women in his future.