Things our toxic parents have done/said that is bats*it crazy

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I thought id start a thread away from stately homes where we can just list the things our toxic parents have done that other people would be horrified about but for us its a long list of things that were seen as "normal" to our parents.
I can laugh about alot of them now, obviously at the time not so funny. Just thought some light hearted dark humour of these things would help people not feel so alone and make us laugh a little in a rubbish situation I.e toxic parents.

As I previously mentioned on the stately homes board. I once brought my mum an orchid as a gift for her birthday. She moaned about it as thats not her 'usual' type of plant she likes.
Anyway she had it for a few months. In this time she kept commenting how it looked fake. One day there was no plant and I asked what had happened. They crazy woman how chopped it up as she was convinced it wasn't real. So she just chopped my gift up that wasn't a cheap purchase either. No remorse for destroying the gift I got her either.

I received a call to move into a womens refuge almost 10 years ago away from abusive ex. My mum said to me "its not that bad is it" I think i stood with my mouth wide up and said they don't just offer refuge places for anyone.

There's many more but I cant think right now. Would be good to hear some of yours?

Had a baby before married , so was told ‘ I’m going to hell’ …. More annoyingly after a few years other people have babies without being married and it’s not a problem anymore, god has changed his mind 😥

During uni holidays when I was at home, being stopped from getting voluntary work in the sector I was doing my degree in.
Then, 5 years later when I had given up on my dream and retrained as a teacher, being told, “It’s such a shame you didn’t do anything with your degree subject! Have you thought of doing some voluntary work in your sector to boost your cv?” I laughed (I couldn’t help myself, you know when a situation is so ridiculous you just have to laugh) and pointed out that I’d had a voluntary role lined up, was ready to start, and she’d completely shut it down and made it impossible to do it. She replied with “No don’t be ridiculous, I never did that, you’re just making up stories.”

This was the same woman who phoned student loans and tried to cancel my PGCE student loan on the day the course started because she didn’t want me to be a teacher. I was 26 at that point. I finally went NC the year after when she interfered in my wedding (shortly after the above conversation, funnily enough).

Wow these are awful, I'm so sorry to hear what you have been through.

A couple of classics from me:

When my (at the time) 3 year old DD was trying on bridesmaid dresses for her auntie's wedding, being told that she should get a dress two sizes too big because she 'might be fat' in a year's time at the wedding. Despite the fact she was not (and even if she was, just what??).

Going into the room where my DP and I were staying in her house for the weekend and digging out my DP's payslip he just happened to have on him, reading it, and then telling DSis all about what was in it, and accusing my DP of 'hiding' his money from me.

God I could write a book:
i separated from my ex who was simply awful to me, she told him to make sure he had my daughter half the time so he wouldn’t have to pay me any child maintenance
told me that if I was a boy she wouldn’t have had any more kids, she didn’t want girls just bots
told me continually if lived her life again she would have kids
tried to pay my ex boyfriend to get my sisters then boyfriend to leave her so she would get an abortion as she felt she was too young to have a child.
now treats, the above child like the holy grail and has little to do with any of her other grandchidlren
constantly calls my daughter a different name to what I have named her (similar but not the same name) and tells my 8 year old she doesn’t like what I have named her and she doesn’t suit it.
tells her grandchildren she doesn’t like children

Not my Father, but my maternal grandfather threatened to give my mum a " good hiding" for wearing lipstick................at her own wedding.
My paternal grandfather heard and told him to get out and never lay a finger on my.mum again.
.

When I was 8 my mother made a big fake show of trying to run in front of very slow moving cars on the roads on Christmas Day to ‘end it all’ because we were slightly late for church. Dashing out & waving her arms!

I can still remember the drivers’ faces!

Looking back it is darkly funny but as a child it was very scary - & of course was intended to be which is not funny at all really.

She also constantly threatened to kill greatly by overdosing on cat worming tablets. There were other methods of suicide proposed (including a very blunt tiny tin opener) but the worming tablets were the preferred option. As a cat owner now it strikes me that would have been a pretty expensive way to go!

Most recent ones but not the worst by any means..

Urghhhhhh was said when my mother opened her perfectly normal birthday card from me.

When asked why she doesn’t ever visit me she replied with a very loud tutting noise and said she can see me and my home via photos posted on social media. I live 5 minutes or less away.

I was diagnosed with a heart condition and she point black refuses to acknowledge it and ignores me when I try to talk about. She doesn’t want to know anything about it or what it is or how it could affect me and my own children. I have since decided to never tell her anything.

She spoke in a very nasty way to my child so we’re currently very low contact as it takes me days to recover from being around her.

Not quite on the scale of some of these but being told by FIL that he didn’t know how we managed financially, as he proceeded to tell us about a forgotten bank account he’d discovered with upwards of £250K in it. Read the room!

My DF was in hospital with sepsis, my DM phoned and told me he was dead, be was not and recovered. She denies it to this day but she was on speaker phone and DH heard it as well.

My dad tore up my student loan application and threw it at me. (Back in the day when it was paper). This was my punishment for putting the heating on.

My god! That is beyond batshit, I’m so sorry she did that xx

When I was a child, my mother would punish and swear at autistic me (so anxiety has been a part of my life since birth) if I wasn’t cheerful enough. Apparently she has the right to dictate how I feel.

Screaming at me (how dare I?) when I came home from uni, really upset to find out that she had thrown all my books away without even asking me.

Screaming at me when I was a child because she was wearing one of my brooches and I asked her not to (a child’s teddy bear brooch - wtf??)

Once, she came home from work, full of a story about how Mrs X said she’s a wonderful person and will definitely go to heaven for all the good that she has done.

Trying to come up with every excuse in the book not to follow a relative’s wishes that he had stipulated in his will.

Years ago, she had an argument with my (then) dh. We had a 2 day old baby and he snapped at her because she had belittled him in front of the visiting midwife. Accusing him of rudeness, in front of the MW because he was cooking dinner for me instead of taking to the midwife. She decided to punish me for this, even though I had nothing to do with it. The punishment included ignoring me and her new granddaughter well past New Years Day (this happened around Christmas). And she also phoned me up and told me I was going to be disinherited.

These are the few that come to mind…

A couple of times a year she would go through my things and throw away anything I had been seen to be enjoying- books, toys. When I got older it would be my diary. (Which she would also read, and laugh about over the phone to her sister.) Things I didn't obviously love were safe.

She would tell me I could do something- go to a friend's house after school for example - and then when I got back would scream and rant because she "had said no such thing and I knew it."

I once got her a badge on her birthday and she screamed and raged to the point of stamping her foot on the floor and threw it in the fire.

I'm on another excellent thread about narcissistic mothers. My DM was one.

She said all kinds of vile things to me including that she should have had me aborted, I was fat (I wasn't), I'm bigger than I think I am (I'm not), I'm not clever (I am), everything I've got was easy (no it wasn't). And on and on. She was jealous, spiteful and indiscrete. She knew nothing about anything but she thought she knew it all.

Pretended she had a brain tumour to manipulate us.
Pretended she had a different life-threatening illness.
Opened email accounts in names of relatives (close to their own addresses, so if one used Jen1978@hotmail she might do Jen78 say) and wrote us emails pretending to be them to try and get information to manipulate people.
Followed my adult sibling in the car to „prove“ he was seeing a married woman (no evidence of this).

Having my underwear examined as a teen to see if I was having sex .

Being told as a student that as I contributed nothing to the household budget I could only bath once a week, couldn’t use heated rollers as they sucked up electricity and couldn’t help myself to a biscuit because I didn’t pay in .

Mother telling me that they wished my cousin was their daughter and they would swap now if they could . Telling my boyfriend that this cousin was worth ten of me .

My DM was also obsessed with sex and attention. She always thought she was better than me and everyone else.

Despite her damage the consolation I've got is that she apparently dreaded dying alone (so why alienate your only child then) and she did die alone. I hope she knew it.

Also not one of her friends or men that she put before me all my life came to her funeral.

Ugh, how much time have you got. My father said he'd beaten up grown men so he'd have no trouble beating me to pulp, he'd murder me and I'd be in my grave by sundown. At the age of 19 I asked if my uni boyfriend could come and stay over the holidays, he said he wasn't running a brothel. (We had sex on your bed while you were out, Dad.) Once as a teenager, I was doing my homework and declined an offer to go with him to the DIY shop and he called me a nasty selfish bitch. He said if I didn't like him hitting me, I shouldn't make him angry. At the age of about 12, he spent an evening ranting at me about how women in public weren't attractive and didn't dress well enough and then finished with "I don't have a high opinion of women" (ya think?). Remember, I'm his 12 year old daughter. My mother did something he didn't like once (I can't remember what but it would have been something like cooking something he didn't like or forgetting to mention something) and he spent a crazy amount of time stamping around screaming "YOU DID WRONG!" at her on repeat.

Oh, I'll probably be back later with more.

When I was mid-teens I had really bad acne. My mum took me to the GP who suggested the pill, but said one of the said effects was possibly weight gain. He weighed me and said I was already slightly overweight (I have looked back at photos of me at this time and I really wasn't). My mum became obsessed with making me lose weight. Different meals to the rest of the family, no snacks, no treats. One evening they were all having apple pie for dessert and I was made to sit at the table whilst they all had the pie. I asked if I could have a small piece as it had been a few weeks of this 'diet'. Mum said no, we argued and she lost the plot and sent me to my room. Afterwards she came up with a huge bowl piled up with pie and custard (a ridiculous amount that not even a grown adult would eat) and told me I was to stand there and eat the whole thing in front of her as I clearly didn't care about being fat. And how I didn't appreciate all her 'efforts' to help me. We were in a stand off for ages with me crying saying I didn't want it, and her saying she wasn't going anywhere until I'd eaten it all. Eventually she relented after I was a sobbing snotty mess but the message was clear- don't ever challenge her.

When I was about 16 or so, went to my Saturday job but ate a snack/cereal bar instead of having Bran Flakes (which was the only acceptable breakfast in our house). My mum found the wrapper in the bin and fished it out, and actually came to my work and confronted me with the wrapper to have a go about my 'unhealthy choices'.

I had a long term friend, who had been a friend for years and who my mum knew, which developed into feelings. We agreed to go to the cinema and walk as a 'proper' date, and he brought me flowers. When my mum asked about the flowers the next day and I said it had been a date with the friend, she absolutely lost the plot and was furious that I 'hadn't told her' that my meeting my friend (which I did all the time) was an actual date. I was 20 at the time, baffled by what it had to do with her at all!

When I was 10, had an ear infection whilst on holiday. Was made to feel like I was making up how bad I felt when I couldn't sleep all night. Got taken to the GP and given antibiotics which were these huge tablets, which even an adult would struggle with. After a day or two one got stuck in my throat and I was nearly sick and after that I couldn't swallow them (getting upset worried I was going to choke). I was told I was being ridiculous and was made to stand in the kitchen battling to swallow these tablets twice a day. After a few days of tears and distress they did cut the tablets in half for me but why they didn't do that in the first place and instead shouted and ridiculed me for days I don't know.

I do actually have permeant hearing loss in that ear now because the infection was so bad.

These are just a few examples. I work in child protection now and if I ever saw things like this written down in a report I'd be utterly horrified for that child.

Got punched in the nose by my brother, mum found out and the first thing she said was 'what did you do?'. Erm, asked his girlfriend politely 'to please pass me the TV remove.' My bad.

Where do we start ? The most major one which had the biggest impact was constantly telling me, from a very young age, not to have children as 'they ruined her life'. She would bang on about ignoring the biological drive in your 30s ,as it would pass and you would be happier without them.
My now DH didn't believe me when I told him she said this ,so he checked with her when they 1st met. She answered "Yes, and I completely stand by it.Do not have children
They ruined my life! It's my biggest regret ". He told her that was a horrific thing to say to your child!

Ooh, one of the more light hearted ones...

My mum bought my bras for me as a teen. I wasn't told or taught how to measure myself so she did it. She told me what size I was.

Eventually, I was the same size as her (34B). When those bras stopped fitting me properly, she made me feel that it was because my body was wrong. It wasn't her fault or the shops' fault that those bras didn't fit me properly. It was mine.

She would tell me all the time that my boobs were small, too small and that I'd never get married or find a boyfriend because my boobs were too small. I didn't have the confidence to think I needed a bigger size because bra size (evidently) carried a value judgement for her (and therefore me) and I wasnt 'good enough' generally to need a bigger size.

So I spent hours trying on 34B bras and crying because they didn't fit. I'd spent so long being told my boobs were "too small", it didn't even occur to me to try a bigger size.

She even joked about it with her boyfriend when I was late teens that she had better/bigger boobs than me and suggested on one occasion that he see them au naturel and compare them to say whose were 'best'.

I just accepted this and that she was right (such is the nature of long term emotional abuse) and just believed I couldn't find bras to fit me because my body was the wrong shape for bras.

When I finally had my size measured properly, I was a 34DD.

She just couldn't cope with the idea that I had bigger boobs than she did.

She also told me all through my teens that I was fat and too fat. She'd buy me clothes that were too big for me which then hung badly and didn't fit properly and she told me that it was because I was so fat nothing would look good on me and it was my own fault for being fat.

I wasn't fat. I was just a different shape to her and curvy but I didn't have an ounce of fat on me in reality.

But I also spent years planning where I was going to sit in pubs, restaurants etc so that I could get to the bar/toilets easily without either a) being seen by others or b) bumping into things and sending people flying with my body. In reality, I was 8 stone by 18 and stayed that way until my mid 30s when I was 9 stone.

I just couldn't see it.

In the early 90s wearing leggings and a crop top, i wasnt overweight but did have slight tummy rolls when sitting down. Who didnt. My size 20 mum told me i needed to lose weight before it became a problem. I was around the age of 12 🫠

Some of the more recent things that actually ended our relationship are more disturbing (she is married to a convicted paedophile). But it was only when I went to therapy to deal with that and the impact it’s had on my family that I recounted stories from my childhood that I realised how bonkers it was. I honestly thought it was normal until I heard myself say it out loud to my therapist. 😂

For about 2 years, she woke me up by feeding me ice cream in bed. Like I mean literally I didn’t have an alarm clock, no one shouted in time to get up for school and opened the curtains, like I do for my dc. She literally sat on my bed and spooned ice cream in my mouth until I woke up and ate it. I remember waking up every morning with a spoon being shoved in my mouth. I ate ice cream for breakfast for years. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I have all sorts of expensive dental issues as an adult, as you can imagine. I would have been around 10-12 maybe.

At some point, the ice cream must have stopped working to wake me and she just stopped waking me up. I missed a year of school because she just got up and went to work and never woke me. I’d wake up at like 9/10am to an empty house, just the dog. My school was a car ride away (20 minutes?) as we lived rurally. It’s not like I could have walked there. Someone needed to drive me. She just couldn’t be bothered, so she almost pretended like i wasn’t there. I used to get up and walk the dog and cook my meals.

No one from school ever came to check that I was even alive. This was late 80s ish and we were a ‘naice’ middle class family, so everyone looked the other way politely so as not to acknowledge the dysfunction. Eventually I did get back in school and it went very well and the school provided me a lot of support and guidance that I wasn’t getting at home. My own dc are that age and older now, and I just think wtaf?!

Oh another one.

I was in the top sets for all subjects at school in the days when your position in the class and year in each subject was also shown on your end of year report so it was clear to everyone that I was a high attaining student.

When it came to GCSE options, she actually made an appointment with the school to discuss my options because she disagreed with me doing 10 GCSEs and thought it would benefit me more to do Childcare and RSA typing what with me being a girl. At that time, the only girls who did childcare and typing were in the bottom sets (what would be SEND nowadays) in the hope that they would get jobs as nursery nurses or in a typing pool. (ETA: that was the thinking then. Not that it's my personal thinking now!)

The school told her in no uncertain terms that I should be looking at university and a career and that childcare and typing weren't suitable courses for me. She argued that these would be unnecessary because I would only get married, have children and I needed a job I could do when the children were a bit older - so a nursery nurse or secretary would suit me well. (She was also really worried that I'd never get married and no man would want me if I was educated and had a career. Especially if I only had tiny boobs to offer him...)

Anyway, school stood their ground. I did 10 GCSEs, A Levels, got a first class degree, a masters and went into a professional career. And she tried to sabotage all of it.

I eventually went nc with her.