Redditor GemJoltik34 wanted to spread the word on the ways we can recognize toxic parenting.
"What is a sign of toxic parenting?"
I know I wasn't built for parenting. That's ok. It's just not for me.
Know it All
Knowing Cedric The Entertainer GIF by CBSGiphy"Always believing they're right because they're the adult and therefore not letting the child have any say."
rhi_x
Not Bad
"If you feel like you can't be open and honest with them, even over things that are not bad."
keiome
"I can’t remember the last time I was deeply honest about my feelings or things I was struggling with. Somehow they always either 1. find a way to use it against me or 2. they find a way to blame it on things that are unrelated when in the end, it’s usually their crappy way of parenting."
"This is mainly about my mom. But in my dads case, he is emotionally cut off. He doesn’t express himself like ever. My mom is the complete opposite."
tequila-la
Standards
"Being unable to apologize, setting and enforcing standards they themselves don't follow."
19whale96
"When I tell my parents about something I feel like they should apologize my dad listens to me, if he disagrees with what I said he tells me why and if he thinks that my reasoning is correct he says 'you're right, I'm sorry,' my mom yells at me, cries, 'you're talking back, I would've never done that to my mother.' Guess who I have a better relationship with."
Confident-Thanks-143
Feelings
"When they constantly invalidate your feelings."
Hot_Comfortable_6373
"This one in a huge way… my feelings were never validated. Every time I cried it was 'stop the crocodile tears, you’re just looking for attention.' Every time I was mad 'you don’t have real reasons to be upset.' Hell, even when I was physically hurt it’d usually be something like 'rub some dirt on it.'"
Garden_Circus
Lessons
frank costanza seinfeld GIF by HULUGiphy"Never actually teaching your kids anything, just criticizing, 'I told you so' and 'because I said so.'"
eveningspliff
"This was my life just about every day until I moved out. My parents expected me to know things and got pissed when I did something wrong."
playingitloud
People should be required to take parenting classes. Seriously...
Mental Space
Doctor Help GIF by Apple TV+Giphy"Parents not understanding kids have bad days too. They may not have a bad day like an adult would, but to their little minds they can get just as overwhelmed as we can mentally."
minimomma1989
Learning Bad
"Not being allowed to make mistakes and constantly being shouted at for them."
sami2503
"My significant other has legit PTSD from not meeting his parents standards and being yelled at and screamed for it. Apparently if he didn't clean to their standards they would trash the room and make him start all over again instead of just getting the parts he missed."
YoHeadAsplode
I Feel It
"Treating kids like they aren't supposed to have emotions."
Bee0099
"Damn... felt this one. My mom was this way and reacted with anger anytime I tried to talk to her about my feelings, whether it be something she did to me that traumatized me or just something that upset me during the day."
"Then had an ex who did the exact same thing (not relevant to parenting but yeah). So the treatment I received from my mom and ex made me put up a wall around my emotions. Completely ruined my recent marriage. Just hope my son always knows he can talk about his feelings around me."
leebron-jahamez69
Expectations
"The 'I guess I’m just a bad parent' line."
HoneyOaksTree
"Or 'Well, I wasn't perfect,' or 'I don't think I ever claimed to be perfect,' or 'I know I was not a perfect parent,' always with the implication that the only reason their offspring have a problem with them is due to their expectations of perfection, and therefore, the problem is with the child and their unrealistic expectations."
LeisurelyLoner
Just say it!
Sorry Pop Tv GIF by Schitt's CreekGiphy"Never apologizing. Own up to your mistakes!"
bellum1
"Seriously. Like my mom will give a somewhat apology, it'll be along the lines of 'I was in the right, but maybe I shouldn't have blown up and overreacted like I did.' Like sometimes she's right with that but other times she's just trying to only take partial blame."
berrys_a_ghost
Grownish
"Refusing to let them grow up. My Mom did this with me and I see it in kids I babysit. It’s one thing to enjoy the occasional sick cuddles. It’s another thing to keep them in diapers because you don’t want your baby to grow up."
Paciem
"My parent still asks 'Do you need to go potty?' In freaking public and I graduated high school and sometimes people I know are around and I'm even more afraid of leaving the house now."
Z3e24c123
"Trying to restrict my drivers license, not allowing me a job, and trying to limit my money intake so I won’t have enough money to move out. I always have the military as a back up option but man I don’t want to have to choose between living with my mother and potential death."
EmptySeesaw
Okay... So?
"Parents who press their personal beliefs and practices upon their children. Maybe your daughter doesn't want to wear dresses all the time. So what? Maybe your son doesn't want to be the doctor that you weren't able to be. Okay... So? For example, my parents are very religious and everything would be about religion and honoring God."
"Yet, the ironic thing is, that my parents are extremely abusive- physically, verbally, mentally, and emotionally. Don't force beliefs upon your children. Widen their perspective. Show them what's out there. And let them make their own decisions. Don't yell at them or hurt them if they're not doing it your way."
tessa_simone
Bad Instructors
"Telling your child to do something, then getting mad when they do it wrong. One time my mom made me fold her laundry, then got mad at me because one her shirts was inside out. I think about that every time I fold clothes now."
Nickynui
"How my dad 'taught' how to pile firewood. Told me to pile firewood, after me saying I'm done, looked at the pile, yelled at me, destroyed the pile, THEN showed me how to pile the firewood. Now when anyone asks me to do something I try to get as explicit instructions as possible."
Siukslinis_acc
Shut up Dad...
Oh No Facepalm GIF by AminéGiphy"Crap my dad has said to me growing up were definitely red flag toxicity. Crap like 'Your grandpa embarrassed me in public growing up, now it’s my turn!' and 'I think your friend is gay, he better not make you gay!'"
TrinixDMorrison
Comparisons...
"Comparing your kid to someone else’s or vice versa."
TheStrangestAverage
"My parents did that, but what made it worse is that I'm neurodivertent and I was being compared to the academically gifted kids. It's an unbelievably unfair comparison to make because I will never be like them, I know I'm smart in different ways but mom wanted a kid with straight A+'s; basically someone she didn't have to put too much effort into helping them learn.
"Like I get it mom, your upset cuz I'm much different than you expected; throwing it my face and making me feel bad I couldn't learn like the other kids is so shi**y."
pixie13903
Control
"Authoritarian need for control over their children. Belittling and nasty psychological warfare that gets personal for no reason. 'I'm your parent not your friend' mentality."
xXxmisschiefxXx
"Yeah my mom wanted me to drink some tea she thought would help with a cough when I didn't want to because it was nasty. Now at this time I was like 7-8 and she was heavy on that mentality of... I'm not your friend."
"She thought well we live in the middle of nowhere, why not take him out side with a hammer and threaten to break his fingers one by one that's not traumatizing at all then she just forced it down my throat. And told me it was for the best it was terrible like I don't even know what was going through her mind."
Outside_Budget_9104
One Sided Looks
"Victim blaming, only seeing the wrong things and ignoring the accomplishments and good and such."
water_hat19
"This is true my mom yells at us when we can't read her mind and guess what she wants tells us she will always support us. Then I went to state for science Olympiad and took 4th in forestry and 6th in rocks and minerals 7th in ornithology and 14th in bridges. And all she did was complain about how I didn't call her during the award ceremony. When they asked us to mute our phones she also complained about giving me a ride."
Outside_Budget_9104
Choices
Giphy"Telling you to take responsibility without giving you freedom. Responsibility is only possible if you have the freedom to make the wrong choice but choose to make the right one."
TheMetaReport
Some parents cause far more damage than happiness. And we have proof... It's not a decision to be taken lightly.
A scorned lover chasing down his ex-girlfriend with an ax, or a jealous classmate enacting revenge by offing those closest to them one by one until the climactic confrontation, are all elements torturous moviegoers are used to seeing out of pure entertainment.
But anyone witnessing acts of violence in real life can tell you, it's a lot more traumatic than anything that was ever depicted on the screen–especially when it involves someone they know really well.
Redditors shared their accounts of horrific incidences close to them when frog_without_a_cause asked:
"What's the most horrific act committed by someone you know personally?"
You think you know someone...
The Violent Co-Worker
"Worked with a guy who got done for manslaughter, he bashed someone's head in with a table in a pub, this was after he stabbed a guy in the chest with darts, this was over a darts game. He also served time for beating a policeman into a coma with the policeman's own truncheon after the policeman caught him breaking into a car."
– godca_grema
The Friend With The Rifle
"Guy I considered a close personal friend hunted down his ex, shot her with a rifle and then turned the gun on himself."
"Neighbors reported hearing him say 'You knew this was going to happen.'”
– hurrydeath
Brought To Justice
"A former coworker murdered his friend when the friend agreed to work with the police to bring down my coworker for stealing a shipment of human growth hormone. Apparently it was a vicious murder. They burned the body, iirc, but it's been a while."
"My coworker ended up being on the run for many years, and was eventually turned in after his story ran on America's Most Wanted, his fiancee saw it, and he confessed who he was to her. She waited until he was asleep and went to a pay phone to turn him in."
– -aged-like-wine-
Dark Web User
"Someone I was close friends with till college was raping his wife's daughters from her first marriage for years. He was also filming it and distributed the material, and was teaching other pedos internet security and how to use the dark web. A laptop involved in a sting in the UK undid all his careful trail covering. The investigation revealed over a decade of traceable data of his activities building a CP criminal network."
"I don't like to think about it."
– tacohexadecimal
Growing Up Fast
"One day while we were in school, an acquaintance's father killed their mother and then himself and set their house on fire. Their father was somewhat abusive, and their mother was thinking of leaving him. It completely changed the acquaintance, he was only 13, but had to basically grow up and mature overnight. He and his siblings had to move in with their grandmother with basically nothing but the clothes on their backs. He was able to get a driver's license at 13 because their grandma couldn't drive, so he could help. Somehow, against all odds, he and his siblings are all perfectly normal people."
– powerlesshero111
"Violent Horrible Person"
"I lived down the road from Terry Joe Volner. He rode my bus everyday, and was also a violent horrible person."
"He murdered a 5 year old because he had feelings for the kids mom and I guess she didn't feel the same. So he murdered one of her kids, took a picture of the child's body and sent it to the child's mom and told her he was going to kill her other kids that he was babysitting if she didn't come home right now."
"He got life."
"Then he beat his cellmate to death with his bare hands so brutally they considered the death penalty."
"He got life again."
– PwrtopUltimate
Felon In Service
"I knew a guy in the Marines, he was already a sh*thead, but one day he suddenly got orders back to the US. He was just gone, turned out that the FBI had been monitoring him trying to groom little girls online and sending nudes. The FBI arrested him when his plane landed."
– poopbutt42069yeehaw
You never know the things people are capable of until they snap.
Targeted For Wealth
"I had an acquaintance who owned a iron working shop."
"Some employee of his thought he was fabulously wealthy because he was well off."
"The Dirtball employee went to their house and tortured four of them to death to get their fabulous wealth ( $40,000) Unfortunately the housekeeper was there as well and they tortured her too."
"The junkies ordered pizza and left their DNA to be found. Burned the house. Really very sad, this guy was known to hire guys who had criminal records and give them a second chance. His son was 10 years old."
– KaiserSozes-brother
Why Mum Was Terrified
"I only met him once as a kid, but my grandads brother in law. He approached me and my mum in a cafe, I was 8, and tried starting normal conversational small talk. My mum panicked and asked him what the hell he was doing out of prison, he brushed her question off and he knelt down to talk to me, which made my mum pick me up, sling me over her shoulder, and run back to the car. I just remember being so scared by her sudden moves I quietly burst into tears in the car and we drove half way home. Mum then stopped in a supermarket car park, got in the back, unbuckled me, and we cuddled in the back for what felt like days (most likely an hour tops) whilst we both cried. I had no clue what was happening but mum calmed me down and she kept saying "youre safe. I love you" over and over."
"I found out years later he slit my Grandad's Sister (his wifes) throat and brutally beat her to death. Hence my mums fear."
– Mikatsurie
Gentle Classmate
"Guy I went to school with was real calm, very smart, and everyone loved him. He was a gentle person from what I remember. He had lost his mom a couple years before this, she was a nurse and they found her dead in a hospital room during her shift. Unknown causes."
"Our senior year of highschool, dude is a championship wrestler, dominating his grades, and just doing good. He lived with his dad who was a police officer for years and years. At lunch one day he left school and came back. Everything was normal and the day was finished out. His dad did not show up for work that evening, and the police dept sent someone to go knock on his door. They found the house ransacked and his dad lying in bed with a single gun shot wound to the head, deceased."
"Later that night they called my grandmother in for questioning because she cleaned their house once a week. Not much later than that, the guy I went to school with broke down and confessed they he had come home on lunch to ask for money, and he and his dad got in an argument, his dad laid down like normal for his shift, and he took his dad's service pistol, and shot him, and after realizing what he'd done, he'd freaked out and turned the house upside down to make it look like a robbery, then went and finished the day at school to try to make it seem like he had no clue what had happened. Shocked everyone."
– optiplexiss
Family dysfunction ran deep with these disturbing cases.
Attacking Mother
"Someone I sorta knew from school hid behind his front door, waited for his mother to come home and hit her on the head with an axe when he was around 14. He probably instantly regretted it and called an ambulance. Luckily, she survived and suffered no permanent damage. I think he went to a mental facility after."
– heyguysitsjustin
The Drownings
"Her 2 year old daughter drowned under suspicious circumstances, nothing could be proved. About 3 years or so later, she had another kid. Also drowned under suspicious circumstances. She was investigated but found nothing, attributed to sh*tty coincidence. Couple more years later, she had a 3rd kid with her man. Father came home early to find that she wasn't in the house, but his son was left alone in the bath tub. He was dead by that point."
"She got slapped with 3 murder charges and life."
– halosos
False Prophet
"Burn a baby alive."
"The story:"
"I knew someone at a music school. She then left, and one day she showed up at the school again because she was stopping music and wanted to sell her instrument. She told me she was living in an isolated community in the middle of the mountains, and looked so happy and radiant that I felt jealous."
"A couple of months later I turn the TV on and there she was. The community was actually a sect commanded by a guy who claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus. He had impregnated a woman from the sect and said the baby was the Antichrist and had to die. They burned the baby alive when he was only two days old."
– needtogetcreative
Abusive Dad
"My father beat the sh*t out of my mother and myself when I was a toddler. I have an uneven skull because of it. Until I found out, I thought it was a birth defect. I didn’t find this out from my mother until I was an adult when I had to take him to court because he had opened numerous credit cards with my social security number when I was a kid and had tanked my credit by the time I was 18."
– FutureMarcus
Water Under The Bridge
"A guy I knew killed his father in front of his mother and younger brother trying to protect his mum from severe abuse. After he served his sentence, the family accepted him back and they’ve been living a normal life to this day."
– HectorVK
Selective Hearing
"I have a family member try to go off their meds, they said it was because one of us yelled at them down the stairs to stop taking their meds. We never said that but they thought we did. Pretty f'ked up."
– Snugg_Bugg
These disturbing accounts really go to show that you really don't know what people are capable of when they're under pressure.
In the heat of a moment, most of us have made conscious decisions not to do something completely irrational.
But not everyone has the wherewithal to really think about the consequences of causing violence on another person when they have snapped.
And when that person who did something regrettable–or disturbingly, not at all remorseful–is someone you know, it's all the more tragic.
