What's the worst thing your parents have said to you?

[again2020]

Posting on here for solidarity and to prevent me from venting to anyone in real life.

I've been offered 4 days at work from September, up from my usual 3. My parents used to do a bit of childcare before my daughter went to nursery. I broached the subject with them today about childcare 1 day a week (support bubble) and my dad had a huge rant and lost his temper with me, saying he finds DD hard work and he doesn't enjoy seeing his children or grandchildren and he doesn't have many years left to do what he wants (he's 71). Fair enough, a bit upsetting but I know not everyone wants to be childcare for their grandkids.

He later came and said his children (me and DB) have been a huge disappointment and he wouldn't recommend being a parent to anyone.

So as not to drip feed, DB is a recovering addict. He's getting a lot better though. I'm in a difficult relationship and am on antidepressants. But I don't think we've been terrible children or become terrible people. I'm sat on my own upset waiting for DD to finish playing with my mum and I don't plan on coming back to see them anytime soon.

Handhold, anyone? What's the worst thing a parent has said to you?

I was fourteen and went to a family gathering with a smidge of black eyeliner on my lower eyelid (and I mean lightly). I was informed on the way home in the car by both parents that I looked like a slut.

Thirty five years on I'm no longer in contact with them (after years of emotional and physical abuse)

@Snowdrop30 Shit, that's horrible 😧That's basically why I'm here. My mother wanted children, my father did not. And he's told me several times.

I've never had a good relationship with my mum down to how she spoke to me as a child. She called me stupid, said I'd never amount to anything and everything I wanted to achieve I'd never be able to because I wasn't smart enough.
She called me an attention seeker when I had medical issues as a child, she'd say I pretended to have chest pain and faked being unconscious, it later turned out I had a serious heart condition and had to have several surgeries to fix it, she changed her tune pretty quickly around cardiologists and surgeons and seemed to care but outside of hospital she still accused me of faking it, she probably has no idea how damaging that was to a 12 year old.

I'm now 25 and my mental health still suffers thanks to everything she said, I still question myself daily if I really am stupid even though I went on to do everything she said I couldn't. Small words like "you're stupid", "you can't do that job, you're not smart enough" or "stop faking it for attention and grow up" absolutely ruined my mental health and still does to this day, I don't trust her, I don't share anything about my life with her because I've grown to expect her harsh words and I never will forgive her. We get on okay now because I put walls up around her.

I'm now a mum myself and I've promised myself I'll never call my child stupid, doubt them or their abilities because I know how much it hurts and can damage a young person's mental health, I don't want my son to feel about me how I feel about my mum.

I blocked my mum and dad on the 9thjanuary. I told them in MAY that they hurt my feel8ngs (labeling me paranoid for over 30 years, my dad actually did go to a psychiatric hospital for a while (twice) with paranoia and depression, and yet it is I who emerges in the family narative as paranoid. I have lived with them projecting their issues on to me for decades, but it was when my mum glossed over it with a bored wave of her hand back in april that something just rose up out of me. I put my foot down and wouldnt accept that they had done nothing wrong. They have, and i gave them a free pass on it for decades and they gloss over it in fron of me l8ke it's no big deal, and i am the bad guy hurting THEIR feelings by telling them they hurt me!

She didn't say it directly to me and she never meant for me to see the message so that she could deny it and turn my brother and I against each other.

She never liked that my DC call my stepmum 'Nanna'
(my dad and SM have been together since I was 11, married since I was 14 and my SM and I have a fantastic relationship, my mother is jealous and refuses to see that our lack of relationship is due to her toxic behaviour).
My brother initially bowed to her pressure of my stepmum not being Nanna to my nephew but one day grew a pair and told her that she wasn't going to make that choice for him anymore and that SM would be Nanna. She then sent him a text telling him how hurt she was because my nephew (younger than my DC) was the only grandchild that ever felt real to her.

We're NC now.

@again2020 I am really sorry. That stuff really hurts, and it doesn't go away. I've done my time in the therapy chair over it, and it was well worth it. You are worthy of love, just as you are

That next time I visit, don't bother to bring the kids because they are too much hard work.

If he had even engaged at all with our childhoods he would know what normal kids are like.

When I was having problems in my relationship she made it all about her because she was worried if we split up she'd not see DS as often.

I challenged her on it some time later & it's okay 20 years down the line.

DF disappointed me because me because we still went on holiday with a neighbouring family not long after the father had exposed himself to me (I was 14) because he couldn't afford to pull out. I told my parents about it & they were worried I'd become a lesbian I put that to bed in the end too, shortly before he died.

So sorry for you all with the really dreadful & nasty parents - they don't/didn't deserve you

Mine were excellent really, just rather naive.

Most hurtful thing my DM said to me was when I told her I was pregnant after having a molar pregnancy needing chemo and having to wait a year to get pregnant after treatment. “Don’t get too excited remember what happened last time”. As if I’d ever forget

Sorry OP, that's hard. My dad told me to shut up and said that I always say stupid things, and when I was upset as a teenager about not being pretty my mum said "oh you'd pass in a crowd." No wonder I've never had any confidence.

Oh yeah and after confessing that I'd just been through an attempted rape by a 'friend' (came home as a student with clinical depression): 'Oh Snowdrop you do get yourself into some silly situations (while laughing). The mind boggles.

Not long after announcing my pregnancy to my family, all from my DM:

You're just the vessel for my grandchild.

If you want an abortion don't do it, I'll have the baby and bring it up.

My dad also told me I'd end up in a mental institution because I was so quiet and shy.

OMG @DontGoIntoTheLongGrass

There are loads of shockers in this thread.

My mum is pretty tactless but I wasn't expecting her to say "whose the father?" when I told her I was pregnant. I had been with my partner several years by that point.

I’m sorry OP, that’s absolutely terrible 💐

From the age of eight onwards, my Stepmum called me a “fat ugly bitch” most days.
She would also say, “I pity the man who marries you”, call me a “jumped up squirt” and tell anyone who would listen that I was “sly and deceitful” and a “liar”, which resulted in my paternal Grandfather being so manipulated that he would also call me sly and deceitful, and a liar... and say that while he loved me, he didn’t like me very much... 💔

My Stepmum also told me that she would make my life hell until I left and that I would never pass my exams and that I would never go to Uni. She would also refer to me as “IT” and mock the way I walked/talked and would tell me off for doing something and then the next day tell me off for not doing something and vice-versa.

I’m 30 now; no sign of marriage on the horizon despite being in a long-term relationship. I have always been in low-paid customer service/admin work after dropping out of Uni. Struggling with emotional eating and now technically just obese... currently having counselling and reading about transactional analysis, etc... to try to change my script... I have always settled/accepted less than I deserve and second guessed myself and always felt the need to justify and over explain myself to other people and felt like I would never get the things I want out of life - I believe as a result of the abuse.

I hope you have found some source of joy in your life

I don't know that I have.

I have two children. I have taken very good care of them, I have loved (as a verb) them. I know I'm a better mother to them than mine was to me because they are confident, self assured, well rounded, well liked, kind and compassionate.

But I don't know if I love them.

My eldest is in his early 20s and he moved out last weekend. I don't miss him. I am enjoying spending time with my youngest. I'm proud of him and excited for him but everyone expects me to be sad or tearful or to feel like part of me has gone and I just don't feel like that at all. I don't have any need to call him or see him. He was here and now he's gone.

I don't know how much of that is the AS and how much of it is because I'm incapable of love

Mum called me a slut once - tried to pass it off as the 'old meaning' of messy/dirty

Was called out by a visiting cousin for going on about how skinny she was when she got married as trying to fat shame a normal sized teen.

I was told I couldn't do things and that I was awful looking. I was taunted that I was gay because I didn't have a boyfriend. Recently there have been unpleasant comments about my mental health.

I grew up with very little self confidence. I should have emigrated years ago. I hate being around family, all the crap feelings come back.

I'm so sorry. That was a really awful thing for him to say about you. That really must have hurt, you're right to give him a wide berth for a while. What is your mum's attitude like?

For me, it wasn't so much what my F said. He just held grudges. I didn't do well at school and if I failed an exam he thought I should have passed, he used to call me 'disgustingly lazy'. (Okay, he didn't always use that description.) But he used to keep punishing me for some time afterwards. Actually, only the best in the class would have been good enough.

What he didn't ever grasp, though, was that he was to blame for it. He had been sexually abusing my DSis and me for most of our childhood, and I just wasn't able to focus on anything. I was in my world as a way of escape, I think, looking back; this led to me repressing the memories for years (as did my DSis), they only came back when we had D.C. of our own and we have both had years of processing our childhoods in therapy.

I actually ended up with two degrees after leaving home so it wasn't that I was incapable of succeeding. I just needed to be away from there.

Sorry OP, I hope your father at the very least genuinely apologises and was just taking out anger about something else and didn't mean to say such a hurtful thing.

My mother, with whom I cut contact 2.5 years ago, told me within probable earshot of my DD that 'we wouldn't wish her away but you should never have had a child, you're not fit to be a parent', told my DD that I was 'mentally unstable' and could not cope on my own and she would have a 'shit life' with me. Highlights from teenage years were telling me I was 'schizophrenic' when I was 14 because I wanted to lie in late on Sunday mornings instead of go to church any more (she didn't go), told me I couldn't pursue the career I wanted because 'you don't have enough personality', told me when I was about 17 that, because there was no sign of me getting a boyfriend, she was afraid she had 'turned me into a man-hater' by constantly slagging off my dad to me, but also hissing at me that I was a 'cheap little tart' because I smiled at a male colleague I happened to see outside of work when I was with her one time, age 18. She somehow also managed to dupe me into believing that she was loving and nice until the scales fell from my eyes. Very very glad to be no contact, no way I wanted my DD exposed to any more of that.

@kayakingmum

There are loads of shockers in this thread.

My mum is pretty tactless but I wasn't expecting her to say "whose the father?" when I told her I was pregnant. I had been with my partner several years by that point.

Wow!! From your mum 😢

When i got pregnant and i was not married, a woman at work with delusions of grandeur (she used to talk about "Daddy" . I talked to "Daddy" on the phone and a broader bristol accent i had never heard. But she carried on like princess Anne. She asked me "was it planned?" and I said "i think i must have misheard" just to bide myself some time, and she changed the subject. i later realised that that was a good response to a cheeky condescending question. I was 32.

@davidsSchitt I think you are dead wrong and shouldn't assume the best in others especially second guessing someone posting an event in their life-were you there?

Even now I can't tell my mother anything bad or stressful that has happened to me as she fakes chest pains and says she can't sleep at night due to the stress.

So me getting assaulted caused her anxiety and stress -and how shit it made her feel etc. =a hug just a simple hug please

If I ever got my hair cut or wore make up my dad would comment "why did you bother with that hair cut/make up when you're so fat".

I wasn't even that fat, I'm much fatter now. Which I know he hates but he wouldn't dare to say that now.

Another time he asked me to fix his computer and added "....bitch". It was out of nowhere, we hadn't had an argument in ages and I hadn't done anything. Really showed that he went around every day just seething that I even existed. Even if I behaved perfectly, he just deep down hated me and wanted me to know it.