Sadly, there are toxic parents out there. They injure their children for life with their cruel words and thoughtless deeds. Even worse, it has the potential to start a vicious cycle and create damage throughout generations.
What is the worst thing your parents have ever said to you? is the question posed on Reddit, and the responses to it are going to be revealed. Nobody held back as they revealed anecdotes about their parents desiring they had never been born, to feelings that were invalidated.
Please note that some of these works deal with themes of forced intimacy and attempted self-harm. Take care as you proceed.
“Your personality stinks, you should lose some weight and hope someone marries you for your looks.”
I had just lost my first job when I was fourteen years old. He doesn’t even recall saying it; it was a Tuesday to my father, but it was one of the worst days of my life and it still lingers in the back of my mind.
Upon attempting self-harm in the hospital, my mother angrily remarked, “You couldn’t even do that right.” I was fourteen years old. I keep live simply to get even with you, mama!
Today as we were leaving the hospital after having to remove our daughter, who is three weeks old, from life support. That’s when my mother decided to remind me that, in her opinion, our daughter should have been baptized because, as it stands, she is no longer eligible to enter paradise. Yes, I disregarded her and hopped in the car. She would have needed to return to the hospital if I had reacted.
‘If you come back to this house I’ll beat you and k*ll you’. Haven’t seen him for 3 and a half years after that & I don’t intend to. Blood thicker than water my a**. I’ll always cut off toxic family.
Every now and again, I drink. Alcoholism claimed my sister’s life.
She was suffering from liver failure and was in a coma in the hospital bed. My father and I were there.
“I always thought this would happen to you,” he remarked. Not her.
I was always the smart aleck; she drank, smoked, and did dumb things. She was only present if her boyfriend was there at the time; I was the church youth group kid. She was an alcoholic, although I hardly drank. She smoked; I never did. She did the d***s, not me. She wasn’t monogamous; I have always been. She persuaded them to give her their retirement and wasted it; I’ve given them money to get them through hard times.
The complete opposite of her. However, my father
“If you get AIDS we’re going to let you die alone because we’re not letting you bankrupt us.” They discovered that I was queer when I was eighteen thanks to a letter I had thrown out. “What if you want to be President?!” was one of their most hilarious remarks to me at that exact moment.
“Look, everyone experiences pain of some type. Dad, Grandma, and I all suffer from arthritis, among other ailments. Dad suffers from sciatica, Grandma’s hip replacement wore out, and I have bursitis. Give up whining and learn how to handle it.” My mother took me home when I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia.
Later, when one of her friends verbally slapped her in the face and told her that her fibromyalgia pain was intense and debilitating and that it would become worse over time and that she might end up wheelchair-bound, Karma got the better of her. She also discussed how incredibly messed up a person gets by brain fog.
As my mother apologized, she was on the verge of tears. In addition to getting me a fibromyalgia awareness bracelet, she began attending my rheumatologist appointments and asking questions on my behalf.
In college, my dad told me over the phone, “It’s not your mom’s fault she doesn’t love you as much as she loves your sister. She just doesn’t understand you. You’re too weird for her.”
Thanks, dad. That didn’t hurt at all.
On May Day 2020, my mother passed away. Without her, my dad sank very quickly. He addressed me as follows:
“I simply don’t know what life is all about anymore. I did everything I could for her.
Me: “You know I’m still here for you; you still have friends, family, and kids.”
“You were just for her too,” said Dad.
Shortly after telling me he never wanted me, he passed away.
I told my mother with pride that I had passed one of my high school examinations with a 98%. “Where did you lose the 2%?” was her response.
When I told my dad that I needed mental health support, he suggested that I should pray more.
“I got cancer because of the stress I had dealing with you.”
I should be in the urn with my deceased son, according to what my birth mother informed me. She was certain that even though he died of SIDS in his sleep, I must have k*lled him because I occasionally put myself in risk due to my epilepsy.
I’ve stopped talking to her.
Never were you [SAed]. It’s something you’re making up.
My parents have a tie.
Dad: “So you have anxiety and despair, right? Those two items would automatically cancel each other out. You are not going to return. That made me thirteen.
Mom: Throughout my childhood, she reassured me often, “You can ALWAYS return home! Whatever happens, you can always return home!
When I lost my job at age 22, I was unable to locate another with enough hours. We had lunch, and I opened up about how embarrassed I felt about not succeeding. “Tell me how that turns out,” she added, staring me in the face. For three months, I slept beneath a bridge.
“God is punishing me for everything I’ve done wrong in my life with a daughter who makes the same mistakes,” my mother exclaimed when she learned that I had lost my virginity.
“You can’t wear what the pretty girls wear because you’re fat,” my mother said to me.
that I will never measure up to my brother and that I was a failure.
“Do you know how much it hurts ME to see you just lying there?” my mother asked as my body began to fail due to an unidentified medical ailment. This came after multiple doctor appointments, two biopsies, and a two-day hospital stay. NOTE: By the time I was diagnosed, I had lost almost 100 pounds of muscle mass in just 7 months, and my entire body hurt. It hurt to lie down, to get up. Everything I did caused pain.
I wish you had never been born.
My mother’s illness made it difficult for her to maintain a pregnancy. Of her thirteen pregnancies, four were successful. The only planned pregnancy that made it through was mine.
“You turned out the way I wanted, and you were the only one I wanted.”
“Your mom didn’t die just so you could throw your life away.” from my father.
uttered during what amounted to a quasi-intervention, while sobbing.
I’ve only ever saw my dad cry four times in my life, and my mom passed away giving birth to me.
It was hurtful, for sure, but I think I needed to hear it at the time.
After your sister, I never wanted kids of my own. (I’m position #2).
Anxiety and depression are decisions.
When I went home by a different route than he did after dinner, he threatened to throw me out of the house.
It seemed completely unexpected. I assumed he was kidding, but in reality, he was furious and ready to throw me out into the street. resulted in a heated dispute that almost prompted the police to be summoned.
When I was twenty, it really altered how I felt about him. A few weeks later, I departed for a job across the nation. He doesn’t recall the incident at all now days and asks why I only see him once every five years and never take his assistance with anything. I’ve fulfilled your wish, old man.
When they discovered I was gay, they said, “This is just like when your mother had a miscarriage.”
Since my mom and dad were divorced when I was a year old, my dad has been alone himself. When I was thirteen, I was attempting to pass out in the back seat of the car on the way to his place for the weekend. At this point, he had only recently started seeing someone with a daughter who was a few years younger than mine. Despite my lack of appetite and his frustration that I wasn’t interested in conversing with him during the journey to his place, he had me go to his place that weekend.
He then stops, turns to face me again, and says, “You know, I could just take you back to your mom’s.” I no longer need your love for me. My girlfriend and her daughter are both mine.
Not with me. I heard my mother tell my sister that since she wore slacks to church, she wouldn’t make a decent mother. That was in 2005, 19 years ago. My sister owns two dogs with her spouse.
Following her second marriage, my dad made friends with her new spouse. Given that she abandoned the daughter we shared, it’s particularly strange. I wasn’t even invited to the holiday parties that my ex-wife and her husband attended. My father told me that “Brent” was like the son he never had when I challenged him about it. Brent enjoys Christianity, country music, and NASCAR. None of those things were lies.
My relationship with him and my mother dissolved as a result. Since then, my dad and I haven’t spoken very often. It was almost three decades ago. After my mother and sister passed away, we never even talked. When my mother was near death, I did manage to patch things up with her. Stage 3 cancer is what my dad has, and
I was nine years old when I heard my mother tell my father, “I don’t want (me), I’ll take the younger one, he’s less annoying,” during their divorce.
“You are born sinful and need to ask for forgiveness and purify yourself, it is going to be very difficult and you will suffer a lot in life, but if you don’t do it, you will go to hell after you die.”
If you agree with what I wrote above, having children is ethically wrong because to the enormous load you place on them and the very real possibility that they will suffer in hell for all eternity.
After looking over my computer search history when I was sixteen, my mother began to assume that I was bisexual. She started a rather violent one-sided fist fight, and after I told her that I had never had “feelings” for my 13-year-old sister, she started crying and told me she could never love or trust me.
“I love you, but you’re still going to hell. Pack up your sh*t and move out as soon as you turn 18.”
“Toylil, there are two kinds of individuals in this world: book smart people and street smart ones. You are neither.
My mother’s first child died. The boy was stillborn and had no parents. She informed me that she became pregnant with me because she believed that if she had a son, my dad would give up drinking. I’m not a boy. I basically felt that it was my responsibility to do whatever it took to make my father pleased. And because he was never content, I felt inadequate all the time.
that all she has ever had is wrecked by me.
The joke is on my mom since I stopped talking to her after my dad passed away, and it’s been incredible.
“I wish you had died and your sister had lived,” was a common statement made by my mother to me.
It hurts like crazy now.
When I was fifteen, I had indulged in a package of temporary hair color. Mom said I wouldn’t be so big if I focused as much on my hair as I did on my weight.
Just to be clear, I’m 5’7″. My weight at the time was about 130 pounds.
It is a terrible thing for parents to tell their kids, “You are just like [other parent]!”
You remind me of someone I detest.
It’s not just one item. She would always remember the problems I had with her and use them against me. Bring it up in a quarrel sometimes, even months or years later, and act like I’m the issue. I find it difficult to share anything and to be vulnerable with people because of this (well, aside from reddit, I suppose).
EDIT: Whoa, I had no idea so many people could identify with this. When I was younger, it was challenging. I then started therapy as an adult because I don’t want to lead a life devoid of human interaction. My relationship with my mother is one area where it has really helped—far better than it did previously. Now, should she—or anyone else—do this: 1) I am aware
“Your appearance resembles that of a simian,” “You are fortunate to be intelligent because you lack beauty,” and “Your father’s genes have cursed you with that large frame.”
There are a few, but “you’re not an easy person to love/it’s difficult to love you” was the first that immediately came to mind.
I was once told by my dad that although he loved me, he didn’t really like me. As a teenager, I had a very poor sense of self. You really boost my self-esteem, dad.
“As long as you remain who you are, nobody will ever want you.”
My mom all my childhood “I should have aborted you”…like yeah but you didn’t so now what?
“With your brother, I’m moving to (midway across the nation). Nothing here is relevant to me.”
All five of her grandchildren, myself, my sister, and her two sons-in-law are excluded.
He says to me in therapy, “I’m angry at you because your mother refused to get an abortion,” when he’s trying to figure out why I appear to irritate him more than everyone else.
explained quite a bit, in fact.
I was alone when I moved halfway through high school. was the lowest point of my depression ever. argued with my mother, who exclaimed, “At least I have friends.”
My mother did not raise me in the slightest, so you’re a lousy father.
“I should’ve drowned you in the bathtub, like Andrea Yates”
For context, Yates drowned her five(?) children in the mid-1990s as a result of extreme postpartum depression and religious delusion. She was a young mother.
“I wish you hadn’t been born.”
There have probably been a few, but the one that touched me the most was when my mother told me to stop laughing so loudly. They made me stop laughing for a long while—a few years at least. We began family therapy at last, and I told her that troubled me. She vowed not to do it once more. After about a month, she repeated the action.
“Well, then we’d have two problems wouldn’t we?” was her response when I told her at eleven that I was suicidal and wanted to jump out the window. She was criticizing me for having untreated ADHD and receiving poor grades.
As the eldest, I left home at 17 to enlist in the Army. I moved home after leaving the service, bought a house at age 23, and sold it at age 25. My mother refused to allow my wife and I move in temporarily while we were selling that house and looking for a new one, which took two months. “Doing something like that would ruin our relationship” was her justification. And that’s despite allowing my younger sister, who is now 26 years old, to continue living there for more than a year at a time. Thank you, mother; you certainly ruined our bond 👍 Though it wasn’t the worst thing she said, that really hit home.
That nobody liked me explained why I had no friends—stuff like that. I was in primary school at the time.
It was funny when my dad warned me to never contact him again and to get the f**k out of his house while I was a student.
Either “We made mistakes raising you” or “I wish you were addicted to d***s instead of video games” is what I can’t pick between.
“Your genetic makeup is flawed.” – my beloved elderly father.
They kept telling me that if I didn’t choose science or technology as my major, I would never amount to anything and would always live a life of insecurity.
My friends and teachers were all surprised that I hadn’t chosen a language, history, or art program, but I didn’t find out until after I had already committed to that course.
“The light behind your eyes is gone now.” since I departed from the Mormon faith. Though our connection has now been restored, I’ll never forget her telling me that.
“it’s not like you’ll ever be a model” – said to 12 year old me who needed braces to correct actual problems. my parents refused to take me back to the dentist.
not really the worst thing they’ve said, but it had a profound impact on ugly 12 year old me.
“Your grandmother would be disgusted with who you’ve become if she were still alive,” or words to that effect.
This is from the woman who, in her greatest parenting moments, threatened to cover me in old cat litter.
My father asked, “Got it out of your system yet?” following my attempt at s*icide.
I don’t recall which class I was failing, but I failed a test, which infuriated my mother, who branded me a “f*g idiot.” I think that was in middle school. I still occasionally think about it.
It’s important to remember that neither of my parents was violent. They spoilt me badly, although my mother can be a bit of a brat and will occasionally say things in haste that she regrets afterwards.
“You do not have autism. You’re merely indolent.
Why? My teacher had made it clear that we didn’t have to and that he didn’t expect us to work on the scientific project during the break, but I was slipping behind since I was actually doing WAY too much work on it.
She f*g uses my ADHD diagnosis against me, just like ISTFG has done ever since I received one (seeking for an autism assessment also). I made a small mistake on something not too long ago, and she claimed that persons with mid-to-low functioning autism were “more responsible than me.”
She works as a social worker, too 💀.
My father told me when I was about eighteen that he hoped I would enroll in some lessons that would help me learn how to be less emotional and more in control. After my husband passed away 20 years ago, my father wants me to “tell him about the hard stuff” and “cry it out” with him because he finds it incomprehensible that I am not leaning on him during this difficult time.
At eleven, I discovered my dad was not the kind of person I thought he was, and I stopped going to see him. He sent me a “get over it” card on my thirteenth birthday.
When I was about eleven, my mom warned me not to be a deadbeat like my dad.
“Someone thinner would look better in that shirt.”
About me, not to me. My mother informed my sister that I’m just acting like I’m not here. That’s good, then.
The Bible says to “love thy mother and father” in Spanish, not “honor,” as it does in English. It was once mentioned to me by my father that loving your child is not a commandment.
We took a class trip to Washington, DC, while I was in the eighth grade. Even though it had only been a year since 9/11, I was still extremely afraid to board a plane.
I finally admitted to my dad that I had been thinking a lot about flying and that I was afraid to board a plane.
His consoling remarks
“Just remember what we learned in church, everyone has a time to go”
Regards, Dad!
(22 years later, I still give him st about this s**y advise).