30 Parents Whose Kids Turned Out To Be Complete Jerks Share What Happened

The mom of one of the columbine shooters gave a Ted Talk about this.
She wrote a book called A Mother’s Reckoning about all the signs she missed. I think every parent needs to read this book before their kids hit their teenage years.

I should have made them work harder for what they wanted. I just gave it to them and it left them with a sense of entitlement and no will to work hard to get something you want.

I wish I had applied more limits. Growing up with a helicopter mom, I tried to be different and ended up giving my daughter too much freedom. It hurt her a lot.

In my opinion, the one defining characteristic of bad parents is being resentful of their own children. Resentful that they took some of their freedom, resentful of their youth, resentful of their opportunities, resentful of their intelligence, resentful of their beauty, resentful of their possessions, resentful of their education, resentful of their accomplishments, resentful of their happiness, etc. I think this is FAR more common than most people realize. These parents may consciously “provide” for their kids while they unconsciously sabotage them. The kids pick up on this and end up aspiring to their parents’ unspoken expectations.

Good parents want their kids to exceed their own achievements and, most importantly, to be happy. Good parents are empathetic to their children. They’re happy when their kids are happy. They’re sad when their kids are sad. Resentful parents don’t really want their kids to be happy unless they credit the parents for their happiness. No achievement belongs to the kids, but every failure does.

My mom once told me that she wishes she treated my brother the way she treated me. I was the oldest and her first so she pushed me and gave me high benchmarks, but she realized too late that because she was the youngest and her *baby* she forgave him too easily and let him do anything he wanted.

That by the time she realized that he was an entitled jerk it was too late (his mid-20’s). “It’s my fault he’s a narcissist. I gave him everything he wanted and made him believe he deserved it because he was my precious little boy.”

The only thing you can really do is teach them. They will become who they will become eventually.

Also, when I say “teach them” I don’t just mean to preach things. Lead by *example.* You want to teach them to be kind and generous? Then do those things YOURSELVES. If they watch you serve others in need and get joy from that or love those around you, they may grow up wanting that joy themselves.

You want them to be responsible with alcohol? SHOW them how to be responsible.

You want them to learn from their mistakes? Then when you make a mistake, own up to it and apologize. Show them no one should be too prideful to admit they were wrong and do better the next time.

If you preach kindness and such, but your actions show otherwise, it will come off as hypocritical. Kids know when you are sincere.

Don’t be overly strict. Love. Love. Love. And love some more. Love doesn’t mean no consequences or discipline but actually the opposite. Let them learn from relatively safe natural consequences.

And then, LOVE them unconditionally and be there for them when the natural consequences happen.

Then let go and realize they are ultimately on their own journey.

We wanted our kids to be happy so I think we coddled and spoiled them. They aren’t ready to function independently in the adult world.

In retrospect, I think learning some hard lessons growing up helps prepare them and is less damaging than learning those lessons as adults.

*Edit: to clarify, they aren’t jerks, just not ready to be adults.

Not a parent but I’ll answer for my mom, who often mentions mistakes she made with my brother, who SA me repeatedly and later took his own life.

Mistake #1: insisting the oldest kids’ dad have visits with the kids after the divorce, even though he didn’t want to

Mistake #2: allowing the oldest kids’ dad to talk her into stopping visitation with the younger kids’ dad after divorce #2 because “he’s not their real dad so why should he get visitation?” even though dad #2 had bonded with the oldest kids and loved them as his own

Mistake #3: Parentifying the oldest. Parentification is when you use the older children as parental figures for the younger ones. This was very normal when my mom was raising her kids, and still common today, but it leads to A LOT of resentment among the kids, and kids don’t know how to deal with resentment in a healthy way. Most adults don’t even deal with resentment well. In many families, that resentment results in the kids hating and/or abusing each other.

I do not blame my mom one bit; my brother made his own choices and had several opportunities to reconcile things. However, these are things I know she wishes she could have done differently.

I wish we hadn’t settled during the custody case and instead fought for full custody of my stepson with limited/supervised visitation with his mom. We thought we were doing the right thing and she ruined him.