Can you get a parent being toxic to one of their offspring and not the other?

[Alambil]

Just wondering...

*leopardino" I see what you're saying but the issue with internet forums is that you kind of have to take people at face value or not at all, as you're never going to hear both sides of the story.

it's not like "real life" where you often at least partially get the opportunity to see it from both sides.

mynewme,

I'm not trying to diminish the experience of those who were abused. The point I rather make is we might be quite happy to dismiss the real experience of ronshar's mum.

I'm sure a lot of people were abused and controlled by their parents.

In our family of 5 there is one obvious golden child. My mother has admitted to this in the past and said it was because Golden Boy reminded her so much of herself. The role of scapegoat used to be shared between me and one brother but has been mine for the past decade. Our mother has the remaining two siblings competing for role of second favourite. I think the reason me and my brother are the least liked is at least partly because we refuse to compete in this way.

The favourite/scapegoat issue was even obvious to outsiders, to the extent that my friends' parents would take me under their wing a bit, even to the extent of inviting me to spend a lot of time in their homes so that I could escape from my own home for a while. Even now they have taken on the role of adopted grandparents to my own children, so I don't think I could have been a particularly horrible child.

I think I didnt explain properly.

The golden child has told mother very recently that she feel that she was bullied by all of us as a child.
The reality as we all see it, having discussed it at great lenght amoung ourselves since she made her allegations, is that a different sibling was on the receiving end of the usual sibling rubbish that happens in most big families.
Mother has admitted that she remembers no bullying to golden child.
So is it all part of golden childs superiority complex or is it that golden child just likes to cause shit for the rest of us?

Mother has no real idea of the damage that has been caused by her behaviour.

I dont think I am a narc bully. But then I wouldnt would I?

Both my parents told me (scapegoat#1) that I was a good-natured, helpful, obedient and easy child. My sister, however, received preferential treatment. Mum says Sis "needed" her more - others who knew us suggest it's simply that they already had their primary scapegoat in me. It's really not about the individual child, it's all to do with deep-seated needs of the parents.

This idea that a child someohow deserves abuse - or, indeed, deserves privilege - is what leads to problems for that child as an adult.

Ronshar, my sister says she felt sidelined as a chilld (we were all terrorised, so I'm not pretending her childhood was idyllic or anything). She's long felt envious of me, ironically. I see this as mainly due to my parents' attempts to set up rivalry, plus a child's confusion at being told she's the best while seeing insufficient evidence of it. The fact that her baseline is different from mine doesn't mean she wasn't bullied, iyswim.

I think that may be even harder to get over than the scapegoat role. Certainly my "Lost Child" brother and I have more self-awareness, and a greater capacity for contentment, than the 'golden' ones.

garlicbutter- I have a similar situation to you. I was the "easy" one. My sister was the "difficult" one, yet I felt she received preferential treatment. One of the issues was that on account of being "difficult" my sister found school quite tough from a friendship POV, and I think my parents let her off with quite a lot at home because they knew she was going through hell at school, although IMO that was mainly her own fault (I know that makes me sound like a bitch but I'm trying to be honest and give you my perspective) and I don't think my parents helped her by cutting her so much slack. However, I am convinced that at the time they thought they were doing the right thing and that her need to feel happy at home was greater than mine because I was happy at school.

Shit- crosspost. Now having read your next post, I feel like I was totally belittling your experience- sorry!

Garlic.
Yes I do think to a point that maybe golden child does feel a bit left out because we still have a bit of you and us mentality.
It is made harder because golden child moved away as part of constant career changing and settling down with a partner miles from where most of us now live.

Which is harder the one who is made to feel different or the ones who are made to feel not quite good enough?

Fascinating thread. My DH is the scapegoat, my SIL the golden child. I would not say that the PIL were narcissistic, but we think DH was a more difficult baby apparently, they failed to cope with the transition from having one child to having two children, and their marriage was in a different, more precarious place when he came along. That all crystallised into DH being the problem. I also think they had a very set attitude to gender roles and preferred parenting a girl, though FIL was a good father to DH in many ways (when they went off to do 'blokey' things, not when in the family group).

As so many have said, the damage to each child is very different. My DH is independent, married, a parent, has a few key very long-standing friendships and despite quite a bit of residual emotional damage, is pretty sorted. SIL is unable to sustain personal or professional relationships except with slaves/doormats, and is more and more alone. She has never attained any proper adult distance from PIL, is narcissistic, aggressive and massively entitled. Underneath it all she is insecure and troubled. It is so desperately sad.

If one belives that it is possible for a new born baby to come into the world already "difficult" or in my case "demonic", then I have nothing more to say. What a preposterous point of view Leoapardino. :(

Sometimes Toxic parents change who is the scapegoat and who is the golden child. If I were you Leopardino, I wouldn't get too comfy in the goldenchild throne.

Well yes and no - in that yes, the parent(s) can pick on one scapegoat and the rest of the children don't cop it in the same way; but no because they will all be damaged by it, as others have said.

Have you not read A child called It by Dave Pelzer? Or that dreadfully sad story by the Chinese woman, Adeline Yen Mah, Falling Leaves? Both autobiographies of children who were singled out for abuse by psychotic mothers (well, step mother in the Chinese case).

And yes, there are "golden children" who perceive the imbalance in the relationships and use it to their advantage.

Weird- I was about to mention Dave Pelzer.

Either he's lying, or his whole family are lying, but more scary is the possibility that they all think they're telling the truth.

People who grow up in dysfunctional families all end up playing roles; some amongst which are hero, appeaser, bystander, golden child and scapegoat. These are all present within such emotionally unhealthy families.

The role of Golden child is a poisoned chalice; it is a role certainly not without price either. It can be just as damaging as being the scapegoat albeit in different ways.

Appeaser- that was definitely me!

My grandparents used to leave one child at home (my Dad) when they took the other on holiday for a week! How's that for toxic!

I'm the scapegoat - my mother is a narc and my father an enabler. It's very present in my mother's mind - just a few months ago there was a huge blow-up; it was my father's birthday and my mother asked, apropos of nothing, that I clear my old bedroom out. Right then. So she could store some of my sister's furniture I got flustered and said I didn't have any boxes (my sister's old room is a shrine to her of course), and there was a huge row. My mother said to my husband "it's alright for you, you didn't know her when she was fifteen!"

My sister has had cars bought for her, her uni fees were paid, her wedding paid for and a house deposit. It's all punishment for how 'bad' I was when a teenager (I was a perfectly normal teenager of course but it's taken me a decade to realise that). My main crime was that I was fat and ugly and reflected badly on my mother :/

My sister likes being the golden child. When I had my eldest DC she had hysterics, begging my parents to remember she was still their baby. Her DH is very like my father. She's a very successful high-earning businesswoman but very infantile in her private life.

Attilla - is that transactional analysis, that terminology around the roles in a dysfunctional family?

I really think it would help me to see my family using that particular set of tools

I think I would feel much less messed up and less guilty if I could apply some logical system like that to the horrific car crash that is our family and my childhood

sorry for threadjacking

BaggedandTagged - have you read all 3 of his books? Iirc, some of the rest of the family (except the mum) fully accepted Pelzer's version of events but gave excuses for why they let it happen - especially his Dad. Haven't read them all for a few years now though.

Ah, I see. I knew there was a furore because one of the brothers did an article in (I think) the NY Times saying it was hugely exaggerated- i.e. admitted Dave was the scapegoat but that a lot of the really bad stuff never happened. However, he may have now retracted it.

I read all the DP books. Horrific.
All the responsible adults have said that they failed to stop what was happening to him. Police reports were made but the mother fobbed them off.

Ime it really does help to have learned how dysfunctional power games work (and change, as others have said). The underdogs are far more motivated to learn, of course, leaving the golden ones unable to understand what keeps going wrong in their lives - and, in my family's case, why the same patterns are repeating amongst the next generation.

It does all link in with TA, littlepigs, though you'd get more of a direct anaylsis from reading books about toxic parents & their adult children. That said, Berne's two TA classics are a very easy read and cast instant light on what malfunctioning people are up to! I think they're a great start for anyone who's not read many psychology books before :)

I think maybe one of the ways a scapegoat benefits in adult life is that when something bad happens, they automatically think "what did I do to cause this?" whereas a golden child thinks that no part of what happened to them was their fault. Both are probably wrong, but the scapegoat looks to themselves first, so they are always looking to see what they could do to make things better for themselves, whereas the GC just blames everyone else.

Not just your family, garlicbutter.

My 'golden child' sister is doing with her DCs exactly what our mother did with us. So, so sad.