Parents are supposed to love their children unconditionally. Although, sometimes that's not always the case. Just ask these people.
Parents on Reddit share what they hate the most about their children. Content has been edited for clarity.
He Poisoned Their Minds
“I am in the middle of a nasty divorce. The kids’ (there are 4 ranging from 24 to 16 years old) dad is a heavy drinker and has dementia from it. He was never there for them growing up, and I was essentially a single parent (even though he lived with us). I was super close to my kids and would do anything for them. After the death of my mother in 2016, I got served with divorce papers by their father (he had a neighbor do it because he doesn’t have even one friend). He decided I was cheating on him, I wasn’t. But he makes up things to go along with his agenda and whatever he has made up in his head. Even after being shown the truth, he will still stick with his made up version of events and not tell or show anyone the proof I gave him.
He went from being disconnected dad to Disneyland dad basically overnight. He figures if the kids like him best, he wins (and has told me this). He is the kids’ buddy, not their parent. He has even told them that they do not have to listen to me. He has also somehow convinced all four of them I am the antichrist. If I even try to talk to any of them, I am met with malice and contempt. I’m not going to sugarcoat it, it annihilated me and fractured me in a way that I will never recover from.
After countless failed attempts to try to reestablish a relationship with my kids, I have stopped trying. Self-preservation dictates that I can no longer allow people like who my kids have turned into to hurt me. So I have moved on and started my life over. I feel bad for them knowing that they will have to take care of their father as his dementia worsens and once they realize the extent of it. Right now they are all too focused on the common enemy (me), and once I’m out of the picture, they will once again have nothing in common with their father (and he will revert to his true self, disconnected dad). They chose to cut ties with me based on lies from a mentally sick father which I cannot change, but I can live my life and wish the best for them as they are going to need it.”
Once He Heard The Name, He Knew
“I signed away my parental rights to my daughter. It sounds terrible, but my ex-wife and I separated for a while. Then we briefly reconciled. We had slept together exactly once. We were working things out and then she said there had been another man in the picture, and the kid wasn’t mine. She wants a quick, clean divorce. I refuse to proceed with the divorce until paternity is sorted out.
DNA test is finally done, and what do you know? It’s mine. A few days later, I deployed to Afghanistan. When I got back, I finally got a hearing for the divorce. It took a judge’s order to finally allow me to see my daughter. She was already walking when I saw her for the first time.
Fast-forward one and a half years and I am flat broke, killing myself to travel 600 miles on weekends to see my daughter for just a few hours, if at all (The ex was pulling no-shows and showing up late for my scheduled visits).
When my daughter called me ‘other daddy,’ I knew I didn’t have a chance. I knew that my ex-wife was going to bad-mouth me and undermine me every chance she got.
I signed away my rights shortly thereafter. She is 16 years old now. Once she is 18, I’ll be able to contact her.”
He’s Unfortunately Used To His Behavior
“My ex-wife disowned my son.
We both married young when I was in the military (high school sweethearts). She became pregnant six months into our marriage. I don’t think she connected with him at all after he was born. The most she did with him was Instagram photoshoots where she painted herself as #1 mommy. When he turned three, I left the military. A year after that, she ran for the hills. I remember it like it was yesterday.
I sat down with her at a local restaurant to talk about divorce plans. We split all of our financials and material items down the middle. We finally got to custody for my kiddo (something I dreaded to discuss because fathers never gain custody in my area), and she tells me, ‘I want absolutely no responsibility.’
I was taken back and I asked if she was sure. She was. That one sentence hurt me more than anything else that happened during that time. My biological father wanted nothing to do with me, and now I was seeing it happen with my own child but with his mother. I received full custody and she married within a year afterward (she had another child too). Her parents try their best to be a part of his life, but she still does her best to avoid him. He’s seven now and used to it, but I know it weighs heavily on him.”
She Knew It Was Time To Distance
“Five years ago, my daughter was arrested for selling substances at a local music festival. I had to pay $15,000 in lawyer, bail, and other fees. She ended accepted a felony plea deal and four years probation. One year after her arrest, she was accepted at a private university where I work. All seems to be going great, until last year.
She was arrested picking up a package at the post office. The package was from Germany and contained a class x amount of Ecstasy. She’s been in the county for over a year now. Her bail/bond is $20,000, and the court keeps getting continued. I suffered a nervous breakdown, on advice from my therapist I went no contact. My husband and I tried very hard to provide for her. All our efforts ended up being pointless. She’s looking at spending the next 10 – 20 years in prison. I love her and I will always love her, but I know I need to distance myself.”
She’s Ruining Her Parent’s Relationship With Her Kids
“I have four grown children. One of my children (I’ll call her ‘Amber’) has mental health problems. I would say her behavior makes it very difficult to love her. Her siblings want nothing to do with her. But Amber thinks she is perfectly sane and everyone else in the family is crazy and evil. She also thinks she is superior to us all and will one day be rich and famous.
The other day, she came over to our house. She sat down and spent about 30 minutes telling us that we had starved and abused her when she was a child (NOT true). She launched into a spiel about how we are horrible people, and she claimed her father abused her when she was growing up(NOT true). She then told me (I’m her mother) I am a disgusting person because I blew a kiss to my three-year-old grandchild. Amber has three children and claimed we have abused them (NOT true). We love those three girls very much, but currently Amber will not let us see them and is probably telling them bad things about us. It is heartbreaking. After Amber had yelled at us for a while she told us if we don’t confess to the abuse we had done, then we can have no contact with her or her children. On her way out, she grabbed a bottle of our most expensive drink and said it was not fair that we had a bunch of these fancy bottles when she didn’t. My husband collects different types of beverages and drinks them very moderately. During this visit, we noticed Amber had lost a LOT of weight and looked to be almost sick.
Amber also accused her husband of being a pervert and forced him to ‘confessing’ to having all of these dirty and inappropriate thoughts. Because Amber is involved with social services, they found out about Amber’s accusations and her husband was unable to be alone with his kids for about a year, until he convinced them he was not a pervert. Amber has been hospitalized once for mental problems but never got diagnosed. Her children were put in a foster home for three months because she was physically attacking her husband (hitting, scratching, etc in front of the kids). We were able to get the kids back, but it took a $5,000 legal bill and three months. There is so much more craziness. She has currently started having a relationship with a man who lives near her. By the way, her husband is still with her. Apparently, the man from down the street is also staying with them and the kids. We are just praying she is using birth control. She seems to get especially crazy after having a baby, though her youngest is currently two.
She also asserts both my husband and I were abused by our fathers (NOT true). She claims there is a family curse. She seems to really believe this.
She sent us a text message last night reiterating the ‘no contact’ unless we confess. At this point, we were quite relieved she wants no contact. Her disgusting accusations have cast a pall over our love for her, and even our love for her children. We feel we need to withdraw from her family completely to avoid any more pain (but we would be there to help our grandkids in a heartbeat if there was an opportunity).”
Her Family Was Done With Her
“My great-grandma was a young Creole teenager- French Creole was her first language, and she was a quarter-to-half black like me, with tan skin and loose brown curls. She was born in Florida, but when things started getting worse in Florida, her family relocated to Texas. For those who don’t know, Creole people tend to play heavily into colorism. Although they are definitely mixed race, they prioritize light-skinned people. The looser your curl, the lighter your skin, the more white you look, the better. Her parents had high expectations for her to marry a wealthy, light-skinned man who would take care of her.
Instead, she met my great-grandfather. A poor, dark-skinned man jumping from job to job working for farmers and trying to make a living. The two of them fell in love. They were just teenagers. Her parents threatened to disown her if she continued seeing him, and like a rebellious teenager, she refused. They wanted her to do better. She wanted to be in love.
They might have broken up eventually if she didn’t get pregnant. But she did, and that was the end of it.
Her parents basically said, ‘you’ve ruined your life,’ and disowned her right there.
The whole family disowned her. No one would speak to her- aunts, uncles, cousins, not a single person stood up for her. So she had no choice. The two of them moved to California, so he could get a job picking oranges. He built a house. They had their first daughter. She was 16. She never saw her family again.”
Good Thing He Waited To Act
“My son was in college and not doing the work. I was paying for school. He started withdrawing from classes in the last month of the term, then just hanging around with friends instead of going to class. He kept just enough credits to sign up for the next term, so I was unaware of his lack of progress until he needed to sign up for a fifth, then a sixth year to complete his degree. He eventually graduated but looked for work so slowly, it took almost two years to land any job at all. I was at my wit’s end with what to do with him. Friends, family and even some professional counselors I consulted told me he was in need of ‘tough love,’ and I should kick him out; with the expectation that faced with cold reality, he would suddenly get a lot more responsible.
I demurred. While I was very unhappy with his attitude and progress in launching his life, I could also imagine a lot worse things could happen to him (such as narcotics and criminality) if I withdrew the only stabilizing influence he seemed to have (living at home being supported by me). In the end, he hated his first job, worked hard to get a better one, and then a few years later a wonderful one. He’s fully on his own, he’s got an active circle of professional friends, he’s financially responsible and may buy a house next year. I’m so glad I ignored all the well-meaning but harsh advice and just let him mature on his own timeline. Sometimes a harsh limit may work for some kids, but sometimes it isn’t needed. Hard to know what’s right in the heat of the moment.”
Doing What’s Right For Everyone
“My son is a psychopath. And I mean that literally – from an unusually young age he met every single criteria for ASPD. His behavior became increasingly aggressive, inappropriate, and alarming as time went on. Eventually, we discovered a long list of incidents and offenses (both violent and dirty) against his peers and even close family members. We informed the police, social services, and the local mental health teams of everything we had found, and pushed for their help in stopping him and keeping everyone safe.
He was placed into a secure home with constant supervision, and we have made it absolutely clear that we will never accept him home. We cannot support him because of what he has done, and what he continues to do, our priority is protecting his victims and potential victims and making sure everyone is safe and supported. He’s incapable of empathy, and acts without consideration for others, and has caused so much harm, but at the same time, he’s still our son, and we love him and don’t want any harm to come to him either (despite feeling like he would deserve it at times).
It’s particularly difficult to come to terms with as I was the victim of childhood abuse. To be frank, the whole situation breaks my freaking heart, but we just have to get through the days as well as we can, and my wife and I lean on each other.”
She Choose Her Boyfriend Over Her Kids
“My mother basically disowned my brother and me when we were kids.
She left my father for another guy, a real piece of work. After that, it was all downhill. She basically stopped paying attention to us, and started focusing 100% of her attention and energy on this guy. Whenever we made her mad or upset, broke the rules, etc (we were 8 and 9-year-old kids) she would tell her boyfriend to hit us, and he did. It was almost as if she enjoyed it. She would sleep until noon, making us stay in bed until she got up.
She was also making her boyfriend work two jobs while she did absolutely nothing besides spend his money. Never bought us anything, never gave us anything. Stuff like making dinner for us, birthdays, and holidays were always a huge chore for her. One time in the summer when I was 12 or 13, I stayed with a friend for three days and two nights. Well, when I got home she never even knew that I left. My brother ended up going to live with our grandmother and I went with my father. My mother eventually married her scumbag boyfriend, had two kids with him and divorced about five years ago after almost 15 years together.
Well, guess what? She is now all alone and makes every attempt to connect with me. I’m not interested. I do stay in touch with her because she’s my mother, but I can never forgive her for what she did to us. Even though I have tried and I would like to forgive, something inside me just won’t let it happen. Unfortunately, I don’t think I will ever love her like you’re supposed to love your mother even though I have tried. And it’s all because of her piece of trash boyfriend. Hope it was worth it.”
He Gave Her So Many Chances
“I had to raise my sister for several years. I was a senior in high school when my parents had my sister – completely unexpected. They were 58 and 55. I never really got to know her much as I went away to college when she was 5 months old and was in the Air Force by the time she was 1 1/2. I saw her twice on leave and got pictures, but the way life was working out we never really got time together. Fast-forward, our dad died when she was two, and my stepmother was raising her. She was a terrible parent, like the kind that saw one of her kids run away at 16 to halfway across the country, another runaway at 15 and get married, and one that is just a loon who spent his life bouncing around whatever hot pyramid scheme program was out there as a career. She was overall a horrible person, and unfit to be a mother. So when my sister was 11 and begging for help, I took leave and went to her. Surprisingly, my step-monster was happy to get attorneys to draw up the paperwork for me to become my sister’s guardian, and even pay for it.
So I’m raising my sister and things were okay until she was about 14. Then I caught her doing these videos online, talking dirty trying to get guys to touch themselves. So that was a mess of trying to get those down and suing the people that hired her to do them. She then ran away for a week, hiding out at a friend’s house; I found her there when she was caught shoplifting. She also had a breaking and entering charge at 14, trying to steal the phone of a boy she was dating to see if he was talking to other girls. It happened on base and I managed to talk it out of being a bigger thing. A few weeks later, she was charged again with breaking and entering; this time, it was with friends breaking into the NCO club to try to steal drinks. I was told I had to leave base housing at that point, my security clearance was suspended to make sure she wasn’t putting me in a position I could be compromised. To make things even worse, she arrested with a stolen military ID trying to get into a bar. When she was 15, she escaped rehab twice. Thankfully, by the time she was 16, things seemed good and she is taking school seriously.
At 18, she was accepted to the Rhode Island School of Design and graduated with honors, and had an actual decent paying job with a web company with benefits and everything. As the months went on, she started getting stoned a lot, and lost her job. She resorted to selling her car to pay bills, but still lost her apartment and had not bothered looking for work. Got her trust fund at 24, blew over $400k in two years, with nothing to show for it. Had multiple cases against her for substances. She was restricted to the state but decided to go follow Phish around anyway and sell molly. Got picked up for hooking and possession out of state, was returned to Rhode Island, where she was detained and somehow released pending trial yet again.
While awaiting trial, she was caught holding enough packaged for sale crack to qualify as a distribution charge. By then, I hadn’t heard from her for almost seven years, and only managed to keep up with her reading the police blotter or from the occasional attorney that she had contacted me to verify I would pick up her legal tab – I wouldn’t. Against any logic, she was out of prison in under three years. I heard she dimed a bunch of people out to make it happen. She showed up at my house and asked for a place to stay. I said I couldn’t have her in my house, but I’d get her a place for the night and then help her locate a place of her own. That night, she broke into my house, nearly got shot by me while doing it, and tried to spin some story she was looking for something she dropped in my house earlier that day, despite never actually entering my house. I told her she had to go; she threatened she would call the Department of Children and Family Services, and tell them I was abusing my kids if I didn’t go with her to an ATM and give her all the money I could withdraw. Furious, I told her to get the heck out before I exercised the castle defense law and dropped her.
I took out a restraining order the next day, and in doing so found she once again left the state when she wasn’t supposed to have and violated her parole, so back to the clink. Since then, she’s been dead to me.”
Cutting Out A Very Toxic Person
“I disowned my grandmother. She’d been a toxic, emotional manipulator for years, and I finally cut her off. When my mother escaped my abusive father and turned up bloodied and bruised – she asked what my mother had done to upset him. My grandmother called him and told him we were there and to get us. Eventually, she lent my mother the money to move us out after countless beatings, harassed about being repaid really soon, and spent the money on new pretty blinds for the conservatory.
A few years ago, I found myself in a similarly abusive relationship and asked to borrow a small sum to not be homeless. She kept pushing for more and more information about the relationship, assessing how worthy or at fault I was, then accusing me of pressuring her. Then dangling the carrot of help with more emotional manipulation, with me desperately trying to not be homeless. I wrote this all out to her and blocked her everywhere. She was never going to help, just enjoyed the opportunity to judge everyone as usual.
This all resulting in an emotional breakdown and having to live in the corner of my mother’s bedroom for almost a year, which I eventually clawed myself out of the darkest pit and wouldn’t wish that sort of despair and humiliation on anyone else.”