As we get older, we realise our parents are as flawed as the next person. What are some things you absolutely do not like about how they raised you or how they behaved?

31 comments

  2. I’ll start, the one thing I absolutely do not like about my mother is how she reacts to me and my sibling when we are sad or angry.
    She yells at us to stop being sad / angry. That’s it.
    That’s her solution to emotions, just stop feeling it.

    It’s so infuriating. I have to be away from my mom, whenever I’m sad or angry, which makes me sadder and lonelier.

  3. My mom has never been responsible about pets. She just brings cats and dogs home on a whim, without any thought, and without any idea how to properly care for them nor real intention to do so. She’s like a little kid that way.

    Most recently she randomly adopted two kittens of craigslist, and just dumped them into a home in no way suitable for kittens, with a large (untrained and never walked) dog and two young kids without any sense of boundaries. Feeds them adult cat food which she leaves on the kitchen counter, which is hard for them to reach, and which they have to pass everyone to get to. The dog will get excited which scares them, and the kids will grab them and hold them wrong. And there’s only one litter box, which is in the basement and even more inaccessible. Tiny kittens have to go down stairs! There was no proper introduction, either, or time to let the cats settle in somewhere safe. She just set them loose in the house, with all the chaos and excitement that caused, traumatizing the poor things. I told her she needs to set up a safe space for the kittens, where the dog and kids aren’t allowed, and which has their food and litter box and everything they need, and let the kittens slowly explore the house from there. She said she doesn’t want to. She’s had them for a few weeks now and the kittens are nervous wrecks who just hide all the time.

    She wonders why my cat is so calm and friendly. I didn’t treat it like she treats hers.

  4. My parents both do not know how to handle their emotions. My mom has always shut down and ignored us, then pretended like nothing happened a couple days later. My dad was always laid back and didn’t say much of anything. As much as I love them both, I hate what they did to me unknowingly and all of the work I have to do to undo those behaviors and break the cycle.

  5. long story short, my parents caused a lot of extremely traumatic events for me

  7. They’re full on into the whole “Fuck you, I got mine” state of mind. Zero empathy for anyone else. It’s enraging.

  8. my mom is super naive and doesn’t really think things true, she just jumps into them. that’s also what i dislike about myself, currently trying to unlearn this.

    my dad is quite selfish and manipulative. you have to be really careful around him, especially when it comes to sensitive topics. he can get awful when triggered.

  9. my dad was really mean to my mom and my mom just gave up wanting to be a mom in our later years. it’s like they switched off and it was so weird.

  10. I don’t actually love or like my parents. At all. They’re horrible abusive and/or negligent people and they’re out of my life for good.

  11. They can be extremely ignorant about things and don’t always have an open mind. My dad doesn’t really take me seriously when I try explain why I believe what I believe.

  12. My dad is a pastor and my mom is the classic preachers wife who’s only ever been that and a mother. She’s extremely naive about the world and I cannot hold a conversation with her about any current events because all she does is regurgitate the political ideologies fed to her from my dad but she cannot back them up with her own thoughts or opinions.

    Both my parents raised my sister and I not to deal with feelings/emotions. We just stuffed it and figured it out. Now as an adult, I let people walk all over me because I’m terrified of confronting behavior that doesn’t sit well with me. It’s so dumb.

    My parents aren’t bad people, but we aren’t close.

  13. My mom doesn’t really listen. I could be telling her something about my life and she just changes the subject to something not relevant.
    Also she compares me to her friend’s kids. She means to motivate me to do better but she just makes me feel like I’m not enough.

  14. My mom doesn’t really have a filter when it comes to what’s appropriate to share with people about others. She meets an acquaintance on the street and somehow works something embarassing about me or something personal that I’d told her into conversation with them. It pisses me off so much, respectfully, like why is it so hard to just leave some things out??

  15. I love my dad, but I hate how he kind of acts like I’m just always going to be there and don’t need his time or attention unless I outright ask for it.

    He has a habit of going out of his way to help friends, acquaintances, and even his friends’ kids, but not his own kids. We have to outright ask for it. Even then, he will still bring others along or into the fold.

    Like maybe I just want my dad to myself for a few hours? Jeez.

  16. My mom is the laziest human on earth.

    My dad can’t take criticism or admit he’s wrong, ever.

  17. My mother isn’t very understanding when it comes to mental health. She would ignore me during a depressive episode until I was “feeling better and done moping” and she treats my sisters ADHD like it’s just her being unmotivated or lazy. It makes it hard to talk to her when things are going wrong.

  18. My dad: He had different standards for my brother and I growing up. My brother was expected to be a Man’s Man, tears were a weakness, only allowed things that were blue or other Man Colors, basically if he acted in any way other than the manliest way possible he got yelled at. Me? I could be as tomboy as I wanted and dad was proud of me for it. This caused a LOT of friction between my brother and I that took us years and years to finally get over, our relationship took a big hit from it.

    Mom: Mom puts too much emotional weight on stuff. So she never gets rid of anything. Their house is cluttered to the extreme and it’s only gotten worse over the years, but if you ask her every god damn thing has some sort of value and must be kept at all costs. I keep warning her that she needs to work to get rid of like…60% of their crap, because if something happens to them and I need to do it, I’m just backing a dumpster up to their house and hiring some burly folks to get to chuckin.

  20. My dad thinks he knows everything about everything and cannot handle being disagreed with, especially when the person disagreeing with him can support their argument and challenge his.

    My mum is obsessed with other women’s weight. The first thing she will comment on when telling me she has seen someone, especially if she has not seen them for a while before that, is her perception of their weight and size.

    Both of them are of the blessed generation that avoided ww2 and coming to adulthood in the immediate aftermath, enjoyed free post 18 education, could buy a house with one average income, had decent defined benefit pensions, were able to retire in their 50s with a fully paid off house… but insist they have always had it harder than anyone else and they are not significantly better off than their parents and children.

    I love them very much though and my god things could be worse! I have always known they love me and that is worth *a lot*.

  21. My parents will probably never outgrow my childhood. They will always believe they know what is best for me, not considering that their own experiences may not apply anymore as the world has changed in the past 30 years.

  22. My dad does not know how to express his anger in a healthy way.
    The more therapy I have, the more I can see that after a hard day at his stressful job, my father would assign his children tasks he knew they would fail (e.g. telling a 3-year-old to tidy their room alone with the door closed without getting distracted) and then when the child inevitably failed (got distracted and started playing) he would hit, scream, literally throw toys out of the window onto the lawn… now I see it as a way he could get his work frustrations out.
    I had a conversation with him recently and he STILL thinks that at some point as a parent “you just have to unleash on a kid”… punishing children as if they were adults with bad motivations.

    My mum has such low self confidence that she won’t stick up for ANYONE including herself, unless someone sticks up for them first and she can just agree.
    So she never stuck up for her children when they were getting hit, and she won’t stick up for us NOW when my dad says something ridiculous, unless WE call him out on it and then she’ll basically say “yeah!” to side with us.
    If you call her out on it or criticise her in any way she IMMEDIATELY infantalises herself, apologises in a baby voice, or sulks like a tween. I’ve even heard a teenagery, sullen “oh yeah, right!!” come out of her mouth once when I apologised for something I’d said.

    They are not, and have never been emotionally available or mature, and it’s CRAZY to me how much it can affect you into adulthood.
    I’m nearly 40, and I’m dangerously prone to overworking myself – particularly now I work from home. I’ll work through breaks, through lunch and I’ll work late because I’m terrified of “getting caught” not doing the task I was assigned… but then I overwork myself to the point of burnout and I mentally cannot COPE with the task I’ve been assigned, although I still can’t stop thinking about it (queue anxiety induced insomnia)… at which point I just endlessly procrastinate so that at least I’m at my computer just in case someone checks on me.

    I’m in therapy, I’m on medication and i’m working on it… but it’s a hard nut to crack.

  23. My Mother’s self destructive streak and denial. She would have benefited hugely from therapy before she became a raging alcoholic to deal with her horribly traumatic childhood.

    My Dad’s lack of interest He associates me with the end of their marriage (youngest) and feels guilty I think. We never bonded. He’s a good man but never reaches out to me, it stings as he is very close to two of my siblings. I feel forgotten and am working through these feelings as a 35 year old with chronically low self esteem.

  24. Dad is emotionally fragile, which contributed to his addiction issues. Recognizing his fragility and confronting it was the critical step in him getting sober after 28 years. He’s still pretty emotionally unavailable, but working on it.

    There is little to dislike about my mother. She’s a pretty awesome person. If I had to pick something, I’d say it is that she was horribly abused as a kid, and this trauma resurfaces very easily when she is challenged on anything. She’s in therapy and this isn’t her fault, but it is so frustrating to watch her get walked over and taken advantage of as she shrinks in the face of conflict.

  25. My dad refuses to acknowledge that he’s older. He should be seeing a doctor for various things but he doesn’t want to. He’s of the mentality that he’s going to die doing what he loves for work and that’s that. We don’t fight him on it, he’s in his 70s so seeing as how that’s longer than some parents live it’s not something worth arguing about.

  26. They both need to learn how to validate our opinions.
    Like understand THIS IS HOW I FEEL .

    I want Them to start acknowledging person’s emotions, thoughts, experiences, values, and beliefs.💯 cause right now it’s seem like they don’t give shit.

  27. My mom’s biggest flaw is that she is so non-confrontational that she clamps up at the slightest disagreements.

    Her reasoning is that she’s afraid to hurt people with her words, and doesn’t know how to choose them wisely. And that fear paralyses her.

    And I told her countless of times that silence is way more hurtful than anything she could say; I once even begged her to tell me to go fuck myself if it’s what she felt like and that it was preferable to big long silence, I still can’t get her to just TALK.

    You know, I just want at least one word, that acknowledges that she heard me. And sometimes, she can’t even give me that.

    (Not all the time. Sometimes, we can have a discussion and a heart-to-heart. But it has to involve tears, begging, and sobbing. It’s exhausting).

  29. My mom is overbearing and a chronic worrier. For example, when I was a teen my dentist recommended getting my wisdom teeth removed as there was a high chance of impaction and I figured that was a good idea. My mom freaked out and printed off articles listing the potential risks and tried to convince me I was going to die. It definitely made my surgery date a lot more stressful and traumatic than it needed to be.

    My dad is extremely passive and passive-aggressive. The guilt trips aren’t as bad as they used to be, but he’s still passive to the point that he allowed his partner to berate me while he sat there silently. I was visiting them to deliver a wedding invitation and I was verbally attacked by this woman while he sat there looking away. It really sucked.

  30. I was raised to believe a man is always right and to be respected, that a woman or girl is somehow less than. I fucking hate it. I’m raising my girls different!!

  31. My mom is controlling, insensitive, and never apologizes for anything. My dad never stands up for himself.

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