Nobody expects their parents to be perfect. They might embarrass us in front of our friends, lose their temper over something silly, or give us advice we never asked for. But there’s a big difference between the occasional parenting mistake and making your child’s life miserable. Sadly, some parents seem to take every opportunity to tear their kids down.
Over on Reddit, people with narcissistic parents were asked to share the creepiest and cruelest things they’ve ever heard from them. And oh boy, they didn’t hold back. We’ve rounded up their answers below. Scroll down to read them.
#41
I mentioned to my father my friend from school, best friend might I add, tried to hook up with my ex girlfriend while she was visiting me from abroad. He told me he would also try and f**k her just like my friend because we were breaking up soon, it was fair game
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5points
#42
My Nmother vehemently told me that "I wasn't her daughter" during one of her narc rages at me after I accidentally locked her out of the yard. I was about 8 or 9 at the time, and one of my chores was to lock the gates to our place with padlocks in the afternoon. Nmother had gone for a walk around the block but she was still out when I was due to lock the gates. Out of forgetfulness and force of habit, I locked the gates before Nmother came back. Got a hiding for it too.
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5points
#44
I was 9, and growing as any child does, but i had always been super skinny and tiny as a kid. I reached for the last slice of pizza at dinner and my ndad glared at me and then said in front of everyone “you don’t fit into last years bathing suit anymore” safe to say my relationship with food was never the same and he put me on so many restrictive diets for years to come, when I was already underweight
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5points
#45
“You were not a**sed.”
Yeahhhhhh, sorry. Punching your teenage daughter in the face hard enough that briefly she loses both consciousness and control of her bladder… that’s abuse, my darling.
However, the reaction this was perfect. I was arguing with my dad at the time and had asked him, if he only wanted better for me than he’d had, why did he hit me? She flew around the corner outta the kitchen into my face, full of venom, and spat those words like a cobra. I laughed in her face, and my dad in an absolutely f**kin brilliant moment of clarity and humanity, told her “I could have gone to jail for the things I did to her. Go back to the kitchen.”
It wasn’t an apology. But it was the most catharsis I’ve ever experienced in one go.
Yeahhhhhh, sorry. Punching your teenage daughter in the face hard enough that briefly she loses both consciousness and control of her bladder… that’s abuse, my darling.
However, the reaction this was perfect. I was arguing with my dad at the time and had asked him, if he only wanted better for me than he’d had, why did he hit me? She flew around the corner outta the kitchen into my face, full of venom, and spat those words like a cobra. I laughed in her face, and my dad in an absolutely f**kin brilliant moment of clarity and humanity, told her “I could have gone to jail for the things I did to her. Go back to the kitchen.”
It wasn’t an apology. But it was the most catharsis I’ve ever experienced in one go.
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5points
#46
Hmmm... there are a lot to be honest. I think what affected me the most is hearing from my mother that she should have aborted me when I was about 6 or 7? In my teens, I evolved into a "satanic monster that's unworthy of love".
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5points
#47
"You're sick in the head" - I had just watched the challenger explode live and was trying to process what I saw by drawing it on a napkin
"You like his little paws? How about I cut them off for you?"
"Piece of s**t. I'm sick of you. This family is sick of you"
"Oh yeah I sh*t your cat and threw it into the creek" (He didn't, he just lied about it to make me feel bad)
"You like his little paws? How about I cut them off for you?"
"Piece of s**t. I'm sick of you. This family is sick of you"
"Oh yeah I sh*t your cat and threw it into the creek" (He didn't, he just lied about it to make me feel bad)
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5points
#48
"Youre the reason your father and I are getting a divorce". Said in the middle of the mall outside of American Eagle cuz I asked to go there next for new underwear.
They never got divorced.
They never got divorced.
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5points
#49
I have one for each parent, lucky me!
When I was 7 years old, I was sitting with my Nfather in a pub's beer garden. My birthday party was to be the following week, and a girl at school had been bullying me, so I told her she couldn't come to my party. Being 7, and a bit petty, I was complaining about her to him.
Me: "She's so mean! She calls me names and says I'm ugly. She isn't even that pretty herself."
Ndad: "Wait, which kid are we talking about? The one with the blonde hair?"
Me: "Yes. Lisa."
Ndad: "Lirael, that little girl is beautiful. Look, there's something you need to understand. You are ugly. "
A pause
Ndad: "But you have my personality, so you'll do OK."
Then he went back to drinking his beer while I cried. Been NC since the age of 14, thankfully. Asshole.
And then, when I got married and moved to America without my Nmother's consent (at the age of 25, lol), after much screaming and various threats and attempts to emotionally blackmail me into moving back to the UK she dropped the following gem on me over the phone:
"It would have been better if you had died!"
Wow, thanks mum. It would have been better for her if I had died, than for me to have fallen in love and started a new life in another country and lived happily ever after. Brilliant. Been NC with her for about 3 years now. It has been f**king blissful.
When I was 7 years old, I was sitting with my Nfather in a pub's beer garden. My birthday party was to be the following week, and a girl at school had been bullying me, so I told her she couldn't come to my party. Being 7, and a bit petty, I was complaining about her to him.
Me: "She's so mean! She calls me names and says I'm ugly. She isn't even that pretty herself."
Ndad: "Wait, which kid are we talking about? The one with the blonde hair?"
Me: "Yes. Lisa."
Ndad: "Lirael, that little girl is beautiful. Look, there's something you need to understand. You are ugly. "
A pause
Ndad: "But you have my personality, so you'll do OK."
Then he went back to drinking his beer while I cried. Been NC since the age of 14, thankfully. Asshole.
And then, when I got married and moved to America without my Nmother's consent (at the age of 25, lol), after much screaming and various threats and attempts to emotionally blackmail me into moving back to the UK she dropped the following gem on me over the phone:
"It would have been better if you had died!"
Wow, thanks mum. It would have been better for her if I had died, than for me to have fallen in love and started a new life in another country and lived happily ever after. Brilliant. Been NC with her for about 3 years now. It has been f**king blissful.
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5points
#50
"We're proud of you."
Why is that a bad thing, you ask? Because it was only ever said to me after I disappointed them. Only after I had turned out to not be good enough. Turned out to be a failure.
Get a good mark on a test? Nope.
Get booked to play at Disneyland with my school band? Nope
Hit the Honor roll? That's just the bare minimum, really.
But screw up, lose my job, flunk out of college, spend to long on the internet, whatever. I would get dragged into the kitchen, sat down on that damn chair, and screamed at, shamed, and degraded, until I agreed to give up something. Let them take something away from me, let them shave another bit off.
And then, after I had submitted utterly... then my EDad would say "We're proud of you."
The greatest thing I could do in their eyes, the thing that earned those words, was allowing them to take away pieces of me.
I hate those words.
Why is that a bad thing, you ask? Because it was only ever said to me after I disappointed them. Only after I had turned out to not be good enough. Turned out to be a failure.
Get a good mark on a test? Nope.
Get booked to play at Disneyland with my school band? Nope
Hit the Honor roll? That's just the bare minimum, really.
But screw up, lose my job, flunk out of college, spend to long on the internet, whatever. I would get dragged into the kitchen, sat down on that damn chair, and screamed at, shamed, and degraded, until I agreed to give up something. Let them take something away from me, let them shave another bit off.
And then, after I had submitted utterly... then my EDad would say "We're proud of you."
The greatest thing I could do in their eyes, the thing that earned those words, was allowing them to take away pieces of me.
I hate those words.
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5points
#51
My dad has accidentally sent me and my sister p**n links MULTIPLE TIMES (now I'm actually questioning if it's an accident...), and he would blame it on random people using his computer. The kicker was he once blamed it on my 85-year-old GRANDMOTHER.
5points
#52
I was sitting at the kitchen table reading (around 11–14), and she was boiling something in a big pot on the stove. Out of the blue, she said that the Bible says in the end times, there will be a famine, and women will boil their babies and eat them. It kind of freaked me out because she was boiling something, and WHY would she tell me that? I knew somehow that she was implying she had complete control over my life, whether I lived or died, and that she thinks God approves of that.
5points
#53
Creepiest, my mom told me she envied my b**bs. Meanest, when I was, like, 14/15, she spent Christmas Eve plastered. On Christmas Day, she was sober, and we went to my grandparents'. She told me as we were walking up to their house, 'I wish I never had you; you and your brother ruined my life.'
5points
#54
Don't get married and stay with me forever.
5points
#55
“I can leave you here and I wouldn’t care” - my father to me, when we were at the airport without my mom. I was 7.
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4points
#56
I heard my NFather say "you're not old enough to say no" to my younger brother and I never felt so creeped out or homicidal before.
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4points
#58
"There's the real world, and then there's Jane's world."
Usually said when they couldn't refute what I was saying, so they would just deny it happening.
Usually said when they couldn't refute what I was saying, so they would just deny it happening.
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4points
#59
Not said to me, but my wife.
We had just returned from the hospital where we held our 25 day old son while he took his last breathes. He had been a cesarean 15 weeks early and was only with us for 25 days. This after we’d had three miscarriages and a failed IVF transfer inside of two years.
My mother looked my grief stricken and heart broken wife in the face and said “we thought something like this might happen”
My parents were supposed to meet him that day, they had not visited the NICU previously. We were called away at 6:22 that morning to be with him before they transferred him to another hospital that could do the surgery that might save him, but he coded on arrival, and they could not revive him. It was clear that his loss was inevitable within minutes of our arrival at the hospital he had been transferred to. The rest of the family who we had been staying with asked if I wanted my parents to wait for us. I elected to leave the choice to my parents, in hopes that they would somehow redeem themselves.
“We thought something like this might happen.”
My mother doesn’t seem to understand why we are not sharing our grief with them.
We had just returned from the hospital where we held our 25 day old son while he took his last breathes. He had been a cesarean 15 weeks early and was only with us for 25 days. This after we’d had three miscarriages and a failed IVF transfer inside of two years.
My mother looked my grief stricken and heart broken wife in the face and said “we thought something like this might happen”
My parents were supposed to meet him that day, they had not visited the NICU previously. We were called away at 6:22 that morning to be with him before they transferred him to another hospital that could do the surgery that might save him, but he coded on arrival, and they could not revive him. It was clear that his loss was inevitable within minutes of our arrival at the hospital he had been transferred to. The rest of the family who we had been staying with asked if I wanted my parents to wait for us. I elected to leave the choice to my parents, in hopes that they would somehow redeem themselves.
“We thought something like this might happen.”
My mother doesn’t seem to understand why we are not sharing our grief with them.
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4points
#60
So many examples, but here’s a few recent ones.
Nmom had a dream I was mad at her for lending a friend $600. Then she asked me if I had any friends who need $600 so she can make me mad. When I said it’s just a dream, she said “you don’t know that. You don’t know as much as you think you do.”
I pointed out my aunt’s house from my dad’s side of the family to Nmom and she said “I know. I drive by it every day to see if you’re spending more time with her than me.” I help my aunt with dinner 3x a week. Nmom admitted to stalking me basically.
She wanted me to co-sign on a second house for her years ago. I told her no. Parents co-sign for kids, not the other way around. Also, maybe I want to buy a house someday. She said “why would YOU need a house?!” Like I don’t know, lady. To live in maybe?!
Nmom had a dream I was mad at her for lending a friend $600. Then she asked me if I had any friends who need $600 so she can make me mad. When I said it’s just a dream, she said “you don’t know that. You don’t know as much as you think you do.”
I pointed out my aunt’s house from my dad’s side of the family to Nmom and she said “I know. I drive by it every day to see if you’re spending more time with her than me.” I help my aunt with dinner 3x a week. Nmom admitted to stalking me basically.
She wanted me to co-sign on a second house for her years ago. I told her no. Parents co-sign for kids, not the other way around. Also, maybe I want to buy a house someday. She said “why would YOU need a house?!” Like I don’t know, lady. To live in maybe?!
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4points
