Do abusive parents ever think we might cut them off?

[NeverAgainChild]

When parents are abusive towards their child, do they consider that their actions have consequences that last a lifetime, or wether they want a relationship in the future with their child - or does it not matter enough to change?
If you are a parent who is estranged from your adult child, especially if your behaviour contributed to it, or if you are someone who has cut contact with abusive parents, what are your thoughts?

I said ‘done (and will do) your very best not to repeat said behaviours’. And, yes, that may include therapy. Or, for some people, not having kids at all.

Your very best is, quite literally, all you can do.

Mine don't even bother with their grandkids, they certainly aren't interested in me!

What doesn’t he like about it? He’s hardly going to have said ‘I don’t like the way you parent me’. What’s he actually said is the issue and have you addressed it?

Are you genuinely not seeing how your responses here mirror what’s in the article I shared?

Ahh, the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind...

Most recently he doesn’t like that I expect him to go back to bed when he wakes up at 3am and not wake everyone else in the house up. His father lets him go on his devises when he wakes up, he prefers being parented that way.

We all bare our parental scars. I would have loved a strong bond with my brother but my mother wouldn't allow it. I have four children and they are all very close. There are age gaps between them so their experience of me being a mother is different. But I've always given them the space to have a relationship with each other without interfering.

I’m sure your son will realise when he is older that it is ridiculous going online at 3am

it’s also ridiculous to take him at his word

I have a teenager and we have all sorts of battles - mind none that I want…..

she once fell out with me for two days and the silence was absolute bliss 😂😂

I have always felt that my mil does this thing where she keeps her kids apart - I find it strange - she talks to them all but never asks to see them together - and when she has done she seems very uncomfortable for her

I worry about NC culture tbh. I think people are flawed and parenting is hard (and was even harder for the generation of parents born during or just after the war) and it should be a high bar to cut people off. I know a woman who says she flushed her mum's ashes down the toilet. We all have to decide what's right but that just seems... Dehumanising and not just to the deceased.

(That said as I've posted before I'm not keen on doing practical care if the need ever arises so it's not like I'm the Jesus of offspring myself)

I can only hope, but it still won’t surprise me as his take on the world it quite different to ‘reality’ a lot of the time.

🤣 yes their take on reality can be a little distorted at times

keep the faith they do usually transform slightly when they get to the end of their teens

And what else?

I think there should be a high bar for parenting, tbh.

In my experience, people don’t want to cut off their parents. They want to be from loving supportive families and when they go LC or NC, they have very real reasons. Barring MH issues, that woman didn’t flush her mum’s ashes shits and giggles.

Screenshot from the article you claim you read.

I agree with that - I don't have kids in part because I don't think I could be as selfless as a person ought to be. It's something a lot of people do to fulfil themselves. However I think that contemporary therapy culture is a bit scary in terms of responses to difficult relationships.

I think if people who have ruined their relationships with their family had that level of self-awareness and insight into their behaviour then they probably wouldn’t be estranged from their family.

I fought for years to keep my mum in my life. But in the end, her life is simply too dysfunctional and she is a risk to my children (facilitated contact with a convicted paedophile and has continued to do so with other children, not mine, before and since we went NC, including some he has abused). You can lead a horse to water and all. She has zero self awareness into her behaviour because she has been groomed. She doesn’t think that though. If you ask her why we are NC, she will tell you a whole made up story.

Mine was horrendous, didnt protect me. Pretended she was a saint. It was so confusing. I eventually stood up to her and she decided to go NC to pay me back. Best thing that ever happened to me. We've been NC for years.

I'm sometimes sad for the relationship I never had. It hit me one day as we were leaving their new place abroad. My son cried his eyes out as we were leaving in the car. They gave a quick wave and just walked indoors. No feelings except for themselves and just live to impress. I'm sure it's a sad, lonely, soul sucking existence..

I think this is one of those situations where if you know, you know. People saying they can't imagine it, can't imagine flushing a parents ashes down the loo - you don't know.

I cut contact with my father in my late teens and never saw him again. He died some twenty plus years later. I never regretted it for a second. He was monstrous. Domestic violence, coercive control. He should have gone to prison. I had known from the age of about 13 that as soon as I was old enough, I was done. The plan was to move away for uni and disappear. I couldn't see any other way out. My relationship with my mother has taken longer to rot because it took me a long time to begin to see her behaviour for what it is, to understand how badly she let me down and accept some hard truths about our relationship. I don't think my father saw it coming but then I don't think he ever thought about anyone but himself. A while ago I told my mother that my plan had been to leave home and cut contact and she was utterly shocked. I just wondered if she'd genuinely thought I was just going to put up with abuse forever, and realised she hadn't thought about me at all. She didn't treasure her relationship with me post divorce and see she was lucky to still have it, she took me for granted as she always did. She switches between acting like we're best friends to sly digs and starting weird conversations where I fall into the trap of revealing something personal and then she jumps at the chance to make it about her or tell me the path I'm taking is morally wrong. She seems very competitive with me, but at the same time really mean. I never feel happy or comforted or supported, just anxious and drained and unable to understand.

I think for a long time people in abusive family relationships were pressured to stay in them. There's massive social stigma around cutting contact with your parents. Maybe there's an over correction now, or maybe not, but I do know that women especially have been expected to care for aging parents who abused them as children.

And what about the parenting style of all the pps who are advocating cutting all ties with their parents?
I am assuming, because of the aggressive questioning of @jinglejangle, they are all very confident that they are getting everything right and their parenting will never be called into question.
I am slightly uneasy at the ease and willingness of pps to cast themselves in the role of victim and egging each other on in their own pity party.

I think this is one of those situations where if you know, you know. People saying they can't imagine it, can't imagine flushing a parents ashes down the loo - you don't know

Nailed it @Crazycamels.

I am very LC with NarcM but if you asked her she'd tell you we're super close, more like friends than mother and daughter really. I've told her, literally spelt out to her why my childhood was horrific but I really shouldn't have wasted my breath. Her version of reality is that she's a perfect mother and I was a challenging child and I if I ever did successfully go completely NC she would be baffled as to why.

I'm cut off/v low contact with my family.

One of my biggest fears is that I could make a mess of my children's childhoods, as a complete mess was made of mine. I put the effort in every day to try not to. It's actually not that difficult to raise your children without drugs, alcohol and violence, and to be nice to them.

Your responses seem a bit emotionally immature, tbh.

I agree with you on all these points tbh.

If you’re worried about how your children will perceive your parenting, I think that’s 99% of the battle as the goal isn’t some perfect upbringing you give them, but more “if the come to you later in life and say XYZ wasn’t ok, you don’t disagree with them or deny them their feelings.” Most people who cut off their parents do so because of the sheer stubbornness to listen to their child’s issues with them.

Who is advocating cutting all ties with their parents? What are you even talking about?

I am assuming, because of the aggressive questioning of , they are all very confident that they are getting everything right and their parenting will never be called into question

No, I think you’ll find that people who have gone NC or LC are very worried about repeating toxic patterns and hyper vigilant with their own parenting. As has been demonstrated by comments on this thread.

I am slightly uneasy at the ease and willingness of pps to cast themselves in the role of victim and egging each other on in their own pity party.

Like the parents who think they’ve done nothing wrong and have been the victims of ‘this generation’s agenda’? You are so wholly lacking in any self awareness that you are unable to maintain narrative coherence.

NC was easier when I went NC with my parents. No internet or mobile phones, I just went NC roughly the same time as I moved home.

They told an Aunt, that I was recently in touch with, that they didn’t understand as they ‘gave me horses and taught me discipline’.
Yes, I had horses growing up, a dog too. Discipline was instilled by beating the daylights out of me often, to the point of broken bones. Also withdrawal of food. Proper charmers. Terrible people, just awful. They were surprised at my vanishing act and it appears that they genuinely had no idea why I disappeared. I didn’t disappear, I went to Yorkshire.
No longer in touch with that Aunt, it was a fleeting thing. She was given my phone number which she promptly cascaded to the estranged family. I changed my number within hours of the calls that came to me. No loss.