Reddit user amklair asked:
"What are some of the worst parenting mistakes your 'well meaning parents' made while raising you?"
Profanity
"Getting mad at me for saying 'bad' words."
"Getting mad at me for swearing I can understand, but my dad once flipped out on me because he thought I said 'penis'."
"I said pianist."
"But even if I had said penis, getting angry with a child for using the correct anatomical term for the male reproductive organ is f**king ridiculous."- pmme_your_lbits
Perfection
"They were pushing me to be 'perfect'."
"By 'perfection' they meant the girl that:"
"Never raises her voice, always does as she is told to, is everyone's pushover."
"Has the best grades at school but never gets higher education or a job and goes straight to becoming a stay-at-home mom, is smart but not feminist."
"Doesn't wear make up, doesn't go out with friends, only women that don't care about their family do these."
"Spends all her life with her family as close as possible."
"Has social skills but only limited to relatives."- DirladaDiraladada
Praise
"My parents made a lot of mistakes but I think the one that really fits here is praising me for being really smart."
"As long as I could show that I was smart, I got praised."
"Working hard didn't matter."
"Barely working at all didn't matter."
"Once I got older and actually started to struggle with a few things, it was like someone took a hammer to a bottle inside me labeled 'self worth'."
"My identity was based around being smart and just instantly understanding everything."
"When that went wrong, I struggled."
"Working to understand something was an entirely foreign concept to me and just wasn't something I found myself capable of doing."
"If I couldn't instantly get or do something, I dropped it."
"I also felt like crud."
"I learned it was easier to just not try because trying and failing hurt a lot while not trying and failing didn't."
"I also managed to succeed in most things with barely any effort."
"I dunno."
"It's stupid and hard to explain."
"Sorry."- namenamesname
Forgetting
"On my 4-year birthday, my parents decided to baptize my brother."
"They had a big party with everyone from my family and stuff, and no one wished me a happy birthday."
"I know they didn't think about it at all, but it's something I remember very clearly, I cried myself to sleep that night."- ketchupisasmoothie
Sheltered
"Holy crap was I sheltered."
"I was super sheltered to the point where when I got to the 'real world', I had no idea what to do."
"Hell, I'm 28 & STILL don't know anything."
"I never got to hang with friends thus affecting my social skills, my mom would constantly degrade me if I couldn't figure out a problem even she couldn't do."
"For example, one of her favorite insults was "C'mon Chad, we're not re-inventing the wheel!'
" And yes, I am a Chad I might as well say."
"Everything that we would do, always had to revolve around what my mom liked."
"It makes me feel like my hobbies are garbage & aren't worth the light of day."
"She constantly interrupts me when speaking just to talk to someone else, which makes my words feel like they're worthless, like something that holds no value."
"It's made me feel......empty & to be honest."
"I hate talking about my feelings because I feel like I don't know how to describe them without sounding like an emo 16 year old."- TheNekoMatta
Clean Plates
"The clean plate rule and super strict diet."
"Now finish everything on my plate with compulsive relentlessness and have a really hard time moderating snacks."
"A neighbor once felt so sorry for me that she gave me a small bag of chips for my birthday."
"I hid under my bed and ate them."
"This does not lead to a healthy relationship with food."- streamstroller
No Explanation
"Never explaining their decisions and reasoning."
"'I'm the mom, that's why'."
"Never apologizing when they made mistakes."
:Showing love with material things."
"Teaching me to be so polite that I couldn't say no to anything or stand up for myself."-egirl25
"This."
"My mom's favorite was 'because I'm the parent and you're the child."
"I swear I heard it at least once a day."
"All it did was make me rebel more/ probably do more dangerous things than I normally would've because I thought she was saying no just to be mean instead of explaining that certain actions could hurt me."-kvrnbrch
Un-constructive Criticism
"Telling me I was a good writer, then when I asked her to read things I wrote, being told 'that has plot holes big enough to sail an aircraft carrier through'."
"No further detail, no help, no identification of what exactly the hole was."
"Fifth grade writing contest, I had been writing ongoing stories in a world I had created."
"Was gonna write up a new bit or recycle an old one in that world."
"Mom decided she'd write her own story in my world with my characters and make me turn that in."
"I didn't make it past the first round."
"Gave her a story I wrote later on for her to look over."
"She gave it back, having rewritten it."
"All my complex sentences were reduced to subject verb object."
"The flow was gone, the tone was gone, just choppy words left."
"I hate everything I write now, but everybody tells me to keep doing it because I'm 'good' at it."-DraconicArcher
Punishments
"My grandparents had the philosophy that if one kid misbehaved, all the kids got the same punishment."
"My mom has stories of coming home from some after school activity, having done absolutely nothing wrong, and getting spanked the minute she walked in the door, then sent to bed without dinner because her brother had done something that was completely unrelated to her."
"How screwed up is that?"
"At best, it pits your children against each other and causes them to act out toward one another to avoid being punished."
"Is that really what you want as a parent?"
"A seven year old beating on his five year old brother to avoid having his own ass beaten?"-830_L
Expectations
"Constantly upping the bar if I made B's then A's became the minimum."
"I watched my siblings once, oh then I got to watch them every week."
"Nothing was ever good enough."
"I workout oh well your doing it wrong, I hated running."
"I try to pray and be active in my faith, I'm 'too into it'." (
"Really wasn't they just didn't like anything that told them no."
"All of this was to supposedly push me to achieve more and be stronger and instead I just gave up on trying because what's the point if getting B's which was really hard with my ADD wasn't good enough why bother trying for A's.-gsp1991dog
"My internal monologue: 'why bother doing the best for a lot of effort, when I can do decently with a lot less effort, and get yelled at the exact same no matter the result?'- just_a_random_dood
Bottle It Up
"Sometimes a kid just needs to be upset and have a parent listen and sympathize/empathize instead of approaching feeling negative emotions like a problem that needs to be fixed."
"My brother and I were never allowed to be upset or angry or sad without being just hounded to death about needing to just let things go and think positively."- CamembertlyLegal
Superficial
"I was one of those 'model gorgeous' kids and my parents basically made my worth about my looks."
"I now have an eating disorder and really low self esteem because I was taught my accomplishments didn't matter as long as I looked pretty."- ThornyThong
Abuse
"Always my dad:
"Forced us to SWALLOW a bottle of liquid soap when I said bad words."
"I thought this was what it meant to have your mouth washed out with soap until I was eighteen."
"Made us eat off dirty dishes when they weren't completely washed."
"Made us sit at the table till our plates were empty when we wouldn't eat."
"Sometimes we were there till past midnight or one in the morning."
"Told me that being bullied in school was just teasing and kids messing around, and that if it was bullying I obviously did something to start it."
"Threatened to kick my brother and I out of the house."
'When I told him about books I was writing he would criticize them to the point that they were no longer mine."
"Ignored the fact that my sister had a learning disability and refused to allow my mother to get her the help she needed."
"Yelled at me when I nearly broke my leg and had to have and x-ray, told me if my leg wasn't broken I was grounded because x-rays are expensive."
"When I had to get an echo-cardiogram because of a potential heart problem he told me I'd better hope I had one because of the cost."
"I could have been dying!"
"Refused to take my sister to a doctor after the treadmill fell on her, because 'she wasn't hurt that bad'."
"Her collar bone was broken."
"That's not all of it, but that's all I care to share so yeah."
"Not as bad as others, but it was traumatizing for me as a kid."- amfdiat
:Anyone else had their own wooden spoon with their name on it?"
"I can tell you, my mom spent a lot of money on wooden spoons because she broke so many on my butt."
"Now I got a butt of steal."- Hammertime400
"Being shamed, them being selfish, manipulated by both parents, things like that."
I"'ve been abused for years and my mom didn't figure it out until me and my sister moved out and into my dads."- oil_in_oil
Standards
"Maybe not so bad, but apparently only four year olds cry and teenagers aren't allowed to cry if they are panicking."- BiroAceDragon
Lack of Discipline
"My parents were both brought up by very strict parents."
"They didn't want my sister and I to feel so sheltered or restricted, so they, pretty much, let us do and get away with anything."
"We never had any real chores or schedules, and so we missed out on learning some critical skills."
"Things like time management, impulse control, procrastination, laziness are things I still struggle with to this day and I am 30."
"I also have a terribly hard time making decisions, even about simple sh*t."
"I have a deep fear of conflict and confrontation."
"My parents are amazing and I love them so much, but I wish they had been more demanding of us as kids."
"I would be a more successful adult if they had been."
"I have been working my ass off to fix these problems of mine."
"Getting a little better every day."
"Also am trying to do that with my 2 sons."
"I want them to have good work ethic, and self motivation so they can be as successful as possible."- Night_Samurai
Staying Silent.
"OH boy am I late, but this is very relevant to me."
"My sister was never the smartest academic wise."
"If social smarts were graded she'd be all A*s."
"She also never tried that hard and I could see why, her school was really sh*t."
"We went to different secondary schools."
"However, this pissed my parents off to no end, mainly my dad."
"They tried motivating her, mainly via threats, and when that didn't work they just gave up on her."
"No positive encouragement in my house."
"Then comes me, pretty smart academically, in one of the best all girls schools in the country."
"However, at the time, I was horribly depressed and had little to no friends."
"My parents saw me as a model child, so to keep me from going astray my dad would always say 'you don't want to end up like your sister, do you?'."
"As my grades were the only thing going for me, I agreed."
"Cut to 2017-19, I start to see my sister as a person, not a dumpster."
"She's moved to my school and thriving."
"Although my dad did manipulate her into taking chem instead of history, which she later failed but that's another story."
"My social life picks up but my grades droop a bit."
"Dad ain't happy."
"Cut to now, after a series of happenings, including my dad going all out verbally abusive to her, my dad and sister hardly speak, one convo in the last 5 months I think."
"My dad only cares about my physics predicted grade, C/B, my worst predicted, and not my very good ones, such as an A*/A** in history."
"So now I feel like my dad doesn't care about my successes, apart from the ones he can compare to my sister, which he still does a lot."
"Now you may be wondering, where's the mistake?"
"Well reader the fault lies in my mother."
"During this time, she did nothing to stop my dad."
"Thinking standing up for me or my sister would make things worse."
"Even when she says she will talk to him, she never does."
"And that sit hurts man."
"It hurts even more when she tries to make it about her feelings being hurt, when her oldest daughter, 18 at the time, is literally being verbally assaulted by her husband for wanting to get away from him."
"She had the best intentions but ended up breaking mine and my sisters trust in her almost completely."
"Not to say my dad did nothing wrong, he's a manipulative c*nt and I'm pretty sure he's aware of that."- ohdear11829
As we grow older we tend to realize that parents we thought had all the answers were just figuring out as they went.
There are some things we can give a pass... but some we will have to discuss in therapy for years.
Maybe even group therapy.
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