83 Things Narcissistic Parents Said That Their Children Still Remember Years Later

My dad was single and dating wasn’t going well, I guess. He lamented to a table full of his own dinner guests that young women like me aren’t interested in men like him, they’re interested in men like (insert my boyfriend’s name).

My bf was sitting right next to me. It made my flesh crawl but it’s not the first time he said s**t like that. I always felt his feelings toward me were extremely abnormal, to say the least. I wasn’t surprised he felt that way, I was just mortified he said it in front of so many people, some of them strangers to me.

Other people at the table were like “surely you don’t understand how that sounds,” and dad doubled down. He knows how it sounds.

Edit: I was about 30 years old when this happened.

My dad called me a “wh*re”, (direct quote) when I was 12 for wearing a sports bra with an open flannel with jeans, while at home. It was 94, so it was the trend. Basically starting puberty made me inappropriate. Recently my 11 year old came out of her room in a similar outfit the other day, as she wears one for pajamas around the house, so did my other daughter, without long sleeves over it, and all I see is girls being comfortable at home. Literal children just being comfortable in their own skin and bodies. It’s so weird my dad took offense to me just existing and being comfortable, while at home without company.

They was other stuff too, but this sticks out.

My mother would always say "I've know since I was young that my kids wouldn't live long, especially my daughter god told me she wouldn't make it past 16" and she would stare at me when she would say it with this excited dead stare. I was so uncomfortable. I was also terrified to turn 16. I thought she was going to k**l me.

When I was about five my nDad told me that it was his job as my father to break my spirit.

When I was about seven I got placed in a highly advanced academic program at school - very competitive. My nDad was deeply bothered to learn that his daughter was so intelligent. He went on a rant at the dinner table about what a waste of money it would be for him to send me to college, "just so [my] husband could have intelligent conversation. "

I was pregnant with my first and only child at age 38. Had a great career, debt-free in my own home, a stupendous partner, and was stable AF. At seven months pregnant, my mom asked me if I'd give her legal guardianship of our child. I laughed so hard when she asked, but it was not a joke. She was dead serious. She kept insisting she'd be a better parent than I could and be able to give our daughter a better life than we could. 'You could keep her for as long as you can, but that way it's legal... Just in case.'

I was speechless. Like legit, hung up on her, speechless.

I knew I had to have new boundaries in place cause of the baby, but I didn't realize I had to put up the proverbial walls months before the baby even arrived.

In the very few IRL visits we've had since, I've caught her coaching my infant to call her 'Mama.' Nipped that in the bud by explaining that the next time I caught her coaching my kid, she would have all access and communication revoked. Presents sent back unopened. Blocked phone calls. Missed holidays and birthdays.

I can handle my mom's flavor of crazy, but I refuse to allow my kid to be a pawn in her ego games.

When I was 19, my emotionally immature mother said, “You know, if we were married, we would be headed for divorce court.” It’s been like 17 years and I’m still so f**king dumbfounded and disturbed by that comment.

When I was 10 years old, my mom told me she was going to k**l herself the weekend my father remarried. She was driving me home from her weekend visitation. My dad was getting married the following weekend. She told me to expect a call on Sunday to let me know she was dead. I screamed, and cried, and begged her not to leave me, especially with my wicked stepmother who treated me like the red headed stepchild, and an alcoholic dad who knew I was being treated unfairly, but just kept his mouth shut to avoid confrontation. But no, she insisted she had to go. She couldn’t stand the idea of my dad remarrying, when she was alone.

So, the whole weekend of my dad’s wedding, I had to smile and pretend to celebrate, while the entire time, I was wondering, “Is my mom dead? Has she done it yet?” Every time the phone rang, I almost passed out from anxiety. Meanwhile, of course she didn’t do it. She picked me up the following weekend, and didn’t say a word about it. No explanation, no apology, no acknowledgment of my trauma at all. Just pretended it never happened.

Every time I see pictures of my dad’s wedding, I just think about me, that poor sad and scared kid, who had f**king no one to talk to, no one to make me feel safe and loved, and no one to rely on.

That’s why I don’t feel the slightest twinge of guilt for being no contact with my mom. I’ll never speak or lay eyes on that woman again. Even in death. I’m not participating in any funeral or burial arrangements when she dies. They can throw her in the trash, for all I care.

"Satan told me to k**l you and your sister with a potato peeler yesterday. You should thank god I didn't."

I was 7. My sister was 5.

"to be honest, I can't hug you now that you have [gestures at b**bs]" from my dad is really up there for me

She would take my phone and flirt with a boy I dated, pretending to be me.

My mom told me in sixth grade that no man would ever want to marry me if I never showed off my b**bs. I was 12 and would continue to wear baggy shirts or jackets to hide my chest until I was out of high school and moved into my dorm at college.

When my brother died, my dad said my brother didn't deserve a funeral because my brother was an a***ct.

Starting around 8–9 years old, my dad started saying, 'you’re a lesbian,' 'you look like a lesbian,' 'you like girls,' etc. This was the late '90s, and I looked like a basic girl then. He’d say this to me sometimes when I had friends spend the night.

I always got so much anxiety about how he’d embarrass me in front of them or accuse me of liking my friends in a romantic way. I just stopped inviting them over.

It was confusing. As I got a bit older, I honestly thought I must be a lesbian, and my crushes on boys were wrong. It was f**ked up.

“You don’t even really have to spank or smack your child… a little bit of guilt goes a long way. They will feel that and correct themselves”

Hard to choose the creepiest but this was up there in the top 5.

I got pregnant after five years of trying to conceive, at the start of the pandemic, so I was terrified of losing my child. My mom said, 'No big deal, I already have a plot in the graveyard you can use to bury it. See, I always think ahead.' Thankfully, it was a good pregnancy, and I now have a healthy (alive!) 4-year-old daughter.

My mom had a miscarriage before I was a year old, and always blamed me for it (I left her in a bad state, she had to take care of me and couldn’t take care of her pregnant self, etc.). So as soon as I was learning to talk, she would make me apologize to God in my nightly prayers for k**ling my baby brother, since I had already been baptized when it happened, and I had to carry that sin until I could atone for it in my first communion.

I was 11 and forgot to take out the trash. My mom decided to tell me I was the reason for her first divorce. My older brother was the golden child; I was the destructor. After she married again and had another child, she said, 'You are the piece of s**t that will never allow me to let go of my first marriage.'

Mom wanted me to put her name on my bank account under the pretense that it was for security reasons. When I refused, she kept trying to talk me into it and eventually exploded, 'If something happens to you, I can't access your money to do anything about it!' She's in her 70s, I'm in my late 30s. Why this is running through her mind weirded me out and told me to run.

When I was nine my parents were divorcing. My Dad wanted me to come visit him for the weekend. (GCBrother had already visited several times.) nMom got furious and started hitting me over the head with a hardback book. Later on when I asked her why she said "I guess I just saw you getting the guy in the end."

I really have no idea what was going on in her mind. He had always treated me like utter c**p. She was one sick puppy.

My bats**t crazy stepmom told my aunt (the sister that was closest to my dad, and the only member of my dad’s family that would tolerate her) that as a teenager, I was 'overly flirtatious' with my dad because I secretly wanted to sleep with him. Luckily, I only found out she felt this way long after my stepmother had died. The confrontation would have been beyond ugly had I known, but I had been estranged from her and my dad for about seven years before she died. Needless to say, I don’t miss that witch.

Around a year after a spout of ED that ended with me hospitalized, we went out for AYCE sushi. Afterwards I said something like “I’m so full I could puke” (I was probably 15 at the time). She responded with “maybe you should you are getting fat again”.