Kids don't always have it easy– especially when their parents are making their lives miserable. These folks took to Reddit to share the most tragic and heartbreaking thing their parents ever did to them while growing up. Content has been edited for clarity.
School Bus Situation
“There’s so much but 3 that come immediately to mind:
When I was 11 I had scarlet fever but my mom still sent me to school cause y’know, I’m faking it obviously.Then gets mad at me when my teacher called to let her know the whole staff was worried about me that day because it made her look like a bad parent.
When I was 8 my teacher accidentally gave me my best friend’s report card. My best friend had terrible grades. Mom yelled at me for an hour and then grounded me for a month even though my best friend’s name was ON THE REPORT CARD. I got mine in class the next day. Straight As. Was still grounded for a month.
When I was 6 my mom was supposed to take me to the school bus stop (NYC, was a bit of a walk). I gave her the house keys, put my shoes on, two minutes later she has no idea where the house keys are and screams at me for losing them for about ten minutes and makes me start tearing the living room apart trying to find them. They were in her pocket. I missed the bus. Didn’t go to school that day.”
Figure It Out
“When my brother and I were in elementary school, the Nickelodeon show Figure It Out premiered and we were very excited about it. We were watching it and laughing pretty hard, I guess, because we caught our dad’s attention.
Usually he didn’t care too much about whatever kid’s show we would watch, but our obvious enjoyment piqued his interest, I suppose. During dinner, he tries to start up a casual conversation, ‘What show were you watching?’
‘Figure It Out,’ we say.
Startled, he asked again. ‘What show were you watching?’
Confused, we answer again, slower. ‘Figure It Out.’ Maybe he just didn’t hear us correctly.
Now, he’s mad. He asks us again, and again, and again, louder and angrier each time. We don’t know what we did wrong and just keep answering, getting more confused and defensive with each passing answer. After a few minutes of this, his hand is banging the table with every word.
Meanwhile, my mom is about dying laughing (which wasn’t helping my dad’s anger) because she knows that we’re not being disrespectful or anything, we’re just kids who don’t understand that the name of the show could be heard as rude. Finally, she explains, ‘Honey, that’s the name of the show: Figure It Out!’
The situation immediately diffuses, brother and I finally get it and start laughing, Dad’s embarrassed, dinner goes on.
We never got in trouble, but even today, 20-odd years later, that story will still infuriate him.”
“A Smug Sadistic Smirk On His Face”
“My mom got mad at me for needing glasses.
Since 8th grade I noticed my vision declining. I told my parents about it and my mom just said, ‘I don’t think you need glasses.’
Come October freshman year, I would sit in the front row of class and couldn’t read the board without squinting.
I asked my teacher to write a note to my parents saying that I need glasses. She sent me to the nurse who did a brief exam and said, ‘You can’t see off the tip of your nose!’ Told me to bring proof of an optometrist visit within a week or she would file a CPS report.
Ohhhhh man, that did not go well with my mom at all!!
She had a hissy fit and said, ‘You are getting the ugliest and cheapest glasses they have!’
While at the office I was looking at frames and my dad(with a smug, sadistic smirk on his face) was pointing out these enormous, god-awful gaudy frames that my grandmother wouldn’t wear even in death.
I got to pick the frames I wanted and got an eye exam almost every year after that(while I lived at home anyway) but man, they put me through this nightmare for something that I literally cannot control.”
“The Talk”
- “My mother and father divorced, and didn’t even have any sort of conversation about it with my brother and me.
- My father left my family when I was 7 years old, and never told me why. I blamed myself and had low self esteem ever since. My brother blamed himself and never forgave him. He became depressed as he grew up and always talked about how rejected and worthless he felt. He overdosed at age 27 and I blame my horrible ‘father.’
- My mother never had ‘the talk’ with me; never taught me how to do anything really; and was always critical of me after every little mistake I made.
- My mother always compared me to my smarter, more talented older sister.
- In 5th grade, I was having trouble learning long division. I asked her for help (big mistake); literally every time I would mess up on a problem, she would slap me HARD across my face. There were tears and mucus all over my homework paper. From then on, I was afraid to ask anyone for help with anything again. I barely passed the 5th grade because of that. Even to this day, I have a difficult time asking for assistance with anything. Forget her.
- There’s so much more, but it would take all night to write. I now have 2 children and would never ever treat any child the way my parents treated me.”
His Mom Got Angry Over The Weirdest Thing
“I biked home from like a get-together my parents were at. They told me to call them when I got home. The moment I pull into the driveway our car pulls in, then quickly backs out and heads back the direction it had come from. I assumed it was my mom just…checking on me or something? I opened the garage and went inside and forgot about it.
An hour later my mom gets home and is furious. She takes my phone away, is screaming and yelling all night about responsibility and communication. I ask her why she came back home, I was standing in the middle of the driveway right in the view of her headlights when she pulled in, how could she not see me? She tells me I must be crazy or must have hallucinated it or something.
It turns out, there were quite a few people in the general area who had the exact same car model as us. One of them had just happened to go down the wrong street and pulled into our driveway to turn around at the exact same time I got home. We laugh about it now but I was really mad when I found out.”
The Legos Set Him Off
“My Dad is probably the KING of getting super angry over meaningless things. I challenge anyone to find more head-scratching reasons for someone to go from zero to 60 at the drop of the hat. That being said, he’s always been incredibly generous and a great man. But many times….
Anyway, one instance that sticks out in my mind is from quite awhile ago when I was about 12. We had really good family friends whom we’d visit often and were like our surrogate grandparents whenever we were at their house. Eat whatever we want, play wherever we want, etc. One time, towards the end of one of our visits, my dad comes down to the basement where I was playing with Legos. Being 12, I had went ham on them. These people had a lot of Lego. I had bunches of cars, houses, planes built and some loose pieces strewn around them. My dad saw this and This.Dude.Flipped.
I remember him standing over me and the twisted face of abject anger on his face that so did not fit the situation. He was quietly, firmly scolding me about how much of a slob I was and how embarrassing it would be for our friends to see their basement like this. Because his kid was playing with Legos…that they gave him to play with…in the basement. I was really confused because, dude, I’m doing what I thought was supposed to be doing and am enjoying myself. What the heck?”
They Were Furious
“The only time I ever got grounded in high school was for staying out late when I did not have a curfew.
We used to love seeing The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the midnight movies in Allentown PA (I lived about 1.5 hours away in NJ). We were used to getting out at 1:30AM, having coffee, and getting home around 3:30-4AM. This was normal and sanctioned by my parents. They correctly realized there were many worse things I could be doing than catching an irreverent movie late at night. At the time I’d never drank or tried anything worse.
One night we get out and are hanging out in the parking lot with two girls who locked their keys in their car. It’s the middle of winter and it’s really cold. We waited until the tow truck guy came and got them sorted. Then we went back to their college dorm as they invited us and one of my buddies thought he had a chance with one of them. He didn’t. After a lot of hints we finally got the heck out of there and I walked in the door around 7AM.
My parents had stayed up all night waiting for me. I have no idea why. I was 3 hours later than normal, but it was routine to be out very late on a Saturday night/Sunday morning for me. That night they stayed up though.
They were furious. I got grounded. To this day, I maintain that I was in the right. I probably should have called around 6-6:30 to let them know that I was fine, and almost home, but this was almost 30 years ago. We weren’t about to get off the highway to find a payphone to wake up/anger my parents, and we sure as heck weren’t about to let hot college girls freeze to death.
Man my parents were livid. I don’t remember for how long I was grounded, but it was the one and only time I was. I stayed out late to help some strangers and got home late on a night I was allowed to go out and stay out late.”
His Mom Was Right
“My mom is very conservative and Christian, and I was raised the same way. Around 18/19 I started questioning my beliefs due to many factors: getting a job that had me working Sunday mornings (no more weekly influence of church), and I began taking college classes that taught me to look at the world not just through my own cultural context (I eventually went on to get an Anthropology degree because of this).
We were having some philosophical argument/fight about why I didn’t want to go to church any more. For the first time I let her know that I didn’t believe so much any more; not FULLY converted away from religion, but I had lost 80% of the mindless acceptance I had previously practiced.
During the course of this argument, at the end, she had had enough so she finally spat this classic line at me:
‘You just don’t like church because you don’t like being told how to THINK!’
It hit me mid-thought and I had to stop and process what she had just said for a minute. After standing there dumbstruck for a second I said: ‘Yeah…. you’re exactly right,’ which left HER dumbstruck because she couldn’t tell if what I said was a good or bad thing because I was agreeing with her but she didn’t want me to.
That one line lead to about 5 years of a rocky relationship. I was raised by her alone as a single mom and for the first time we weren’t as close as we had always been. She also soon after got married to an even more Christian/conservative man than her. I went off to university in the first year of their relationship and we were distant for awhile as they tried to reconcile my beliefs with theirs. Eventually, years later, we have come to mutually respect one another’s feelings on religious matters, like a ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ kind of policy.”
An Abusive Overreaction
“My father was ALWAYS very, very abusive toward me. Physically, mentally, emotionally, even so far as spiritually toxic to me (hating my religious views). He’d become angry at me for literally anything, so much as me breathing would cause him to look at me with so much disdain. But one particular time stands out to me:
I was in middle school and just got new glasses. I would be constantly made fun of because of my weight and whatever else, so glasses just made me MORE of a target. Well, I wasn’t allowed to wear my glasses outside, so I had placed them in my glasses case before recess and set them atop my desk. After recess, I returned to my glasses only to find them bent. One of my bullies admitted to doing it – it was an easy fix now that I think of it, but being so young and terrified of my father, I thought that maybe if I didn’t touch them, I wouldn’t make them any worse.
Fast forward to going home, I arrive through the back door and there he is. He sees I’m not wearing my glasses.
Where are your glasses?
They’re in my backpack, I…
Why aren’t you wearing them?
A boy at school was being mean and bent them.
The next thing I know, I’m pinned against the wall with a hand on my neck, my father inches from my face, screaming. I can’t remember what he was yelling, but I remember one small part:
And you wonder why nobody takes you seriously, loser, go to your room and get ready.
And that’s what I remember of that particular event.”
No Pictures!
“When I enlisted, my Father was surprised and proud. Mom was furious – she let me know that she didn’t carry me nine months so I could go off and get killed in some stupid war. Then she shut up. My dad had spent 30 years in the Army, then the Air Force, and she was loyal.
So off I went. Two things happened a couple months apart in my first year in Vietnam. I broke OPSEC with my parents – told them I was going to some place called the, ‘A Shau Valley,’ I’ll write again when I get back.
After two weeks or so, I got back to base, found a week-old TIME magazine with a cover story showing some 1st Cav grunts having a bad time (I wasn’t where they were) and a screaming headline ‘HECK in the A Shau!’
My folks read TIME religiously. I quickly wrote home telling Mom everything was fine, and vowed not to be any more newsy than that in my letters home from now on.
Some time later, when I was with a cav unit, one guy had a Polaroid ‘Swinger’ camera, one of the first low-cost self-developing picture cameras. I guess it was being marketed to the swinging community in California – no need for the pharmacist to view your party photos.
Anyway it was a ratty, plastic camera, and some Joe was selling photos at like $10 apiece. I had no place else to spend money – so I bought three. They were pretty nasty – the sponge goo you were supposed to put on the pictures stayed sticky for a long time in the tropical heat.
A couple of weeks later I got mail from Dad. Please, he wrote, don’t send any more pictures. Your Mother didn’t say anything, but she’s in the kitchen ostensibly cooking, and slamming around the cookery – so far she’s broken a pot and pan and dented the counter. Could get expensive.’
Plagiarize This!
“My mother was horribly abusive to me my whole childhood, but something that stands out as pretty ridiculous is the time she got mad at me for not doing my little sister’s book report. I’ve always been an avid reader, but my younger sister can barely tie her shoes, so getting her to do any of her schoolwork was always a battle. She was supposed to read the book ‘Sarah, Plain and Tall’ and write a paper about it. (Note: I was 18 or 19 when this happened, and my sister was in about the 5th grade.)
My mother demanded that I help my sister with her paper (i.e. write it for her), because I had ‘just read the same book’ and should still remember everything about it. I reminded my mother that while yes, I had read the book, I hadn’t read it since I was in the 5th grade myself. My mother insisted that I had read it more recently than that. In fact, she said something along the lines of, ‘I know you just read it the other day.’
I do read a lot, and for some reason it made my mother furious to see me with a different book every couple of days. Sometimes she’d ask me questions about the books to try to prove I wasn’t really reading them. Anyway, I told my mother again that it had been years since I had read that book and didn’t remember anything about it, and I certainly wasn’t going to sit down and read it immediately just so I could write my sister’s report for her. She sent me to my room. Like, that’s where I was before you dragged me out here to have this stupid conversation.”
You are JUST like your mother!
“Uncle and grandma raised me.
When I was like 5 or 6 they would say negatively, ‘You are JUST like your mother!’ When I would make mistakes or lose things or break things by accident. I was an obedient and quiet child but I was very clumsy.
Threaten to send me back to my mom but I didn’t know what that meant. However, it scared me and I would cry so hard (over getting quizzed about times tables and getting some wrong)
Uncle kept me up for hours for spelling test when I was like 4 cause I kept misspelling boat he was furious. I was terrified, to the point even my grandma intervened (they were always a team). I remember now. Always think about it when I see the word.
Grandma found a note a boy in class gave me about meeting up at a tree to kiss. She turned it into me being a ‘loose woman.’ I had never even kissed a boy before, she didn’t believe me. She forced me to lay on my back and spread my legs while she examined me. Fun fact! You cannot prove anything from that. So basically, assaulted me, had no idea what she was looking for (obviously) and decided I was telling the truth because I let her do it?
Had discharge in my panties when I was like 14, my grandma said it was DEFINITELY from a man. At the time I didn’t know enough about my body to explain what it was and why it was in my underwear. It obviously was NOT.
Uncle put a piece of bread under the diner table to ‘Prove I don’t clean.’ But we never used that table, ever, why would I think there would be trash under there?
Uncle lost his sunglasses at a restaurant and I was trying to be helpful and back track his steps and asked if he had left it on the table. I was like 13…he got hysterical and somehow the story turned too KNEW it was on the table, saw it there, and out of stupidity ,spite, or laziness, I decided to not pick them up. I wouldn’t of even know he didn’t have his sunglasses if he hadn’t mentioned it. Got home and had a huge family fight cops called and everything.
Uncle had lost his job and was obsessively cleaning the house. Asks me to help. There was some salt on a wooden table and stupid me, I thought getting it wet wouldn’t be good for the table so I thought I’d wipe it off first, then wet it with cleaner, and wipe clean again. He saw me wipe it off and exploded that I took the lazy way out. I was on probation for school stuff but it got extended at age 16 for attempting to commit suicide (fun fact, it’s actually illegal! As if that won’t make me want to wish I was dead all over again) he kicked me out of the house.
I’m talking screaming at the top of his lungs in my face . He was like 3 of me, even today I’m only 5”2. I got out cause he told me to. Called the cops said I ran away, which is also illegal. Went to juvie. Ended up going to court, my grandma and uncle and my uncles brother screaming at the judge that I was this horrible demon spawn and that I was lying! That no one kicked me out of the house, that I left of my own free will. My probation officers and the judge knew I was a good kid, saw that my family clearly needed counseling.
I had good grades. I had absolutely zero friends. I was clearly up to nothing. I read anime to my peach face love birds. I was not a dangerous child. Family blew up to the point that the judge decide there was no way in heck I was going back to live with those lunatics. Which was not what I wanted. I wanted to get out of the system! Even if my family treated me like I would be on the “outside” as you would call it. My probation officer told my uncle he needed to take anger management because it was the right thing to do.
Uncle laughed in my PO’s face. He was a very calm kind man, but after interacting with my Uncle he was absolutely clearly angry. Ended up giving up custody of me to the state at age 17. Ended up in a step down from juvi program which was WORST than juvi. They abused all of us kids. My social worker found my real dad, so I signed myself out at 18 of the program and my dad came and picked me up.
Never knew this man, like ever. Within weeks he was assaulting me every weekend. And no one believed me because I was a ‘troubled child.'”
Passive Aggressive For The Win
“My younger sister and I didn’t get along at all growing up, and still really don’t. She didn’t like that I was older and allowed to do certain things like walk to the corner store by myself or ride my bike around town and didn’t like that she got everything handed to her (as soon as I turned 10 I stopped getting an allowance and had to do chores for not only my parents but also people in my neighborhood).
At this point I was 11 or 12 and she was 6 or 7. We got into a big fight over something stupid like Mario Party or Timesplitters so I decided to take MY GameCube out of the living room and bring it back into my room because I didn’t want to play with her anymore.
She cried and whined to my parents about it and they made me give her my GameCube for the rest of the day. That really made me mad. So I gave her the GameCube but didn’t give her the memory cards and gave her the crummy little MadKatz controller. I figured I won the battle. I go back into my room and play on my PlayStation, probably playing Madden or something.
About 30 minutes later I hear her SCREAMING like she’s arguing with somebody, immediately afterwards I hear thudding all the way down the stairs followed by a terrifying cry.
She threw herself down the stairs and told my parents that I pushed her. I was grounded for months and they didn’t listen to anything that I said to defend myself. Ever since then I’ve remained coldly distant to my sister.
Jokes on them though. I work two jobs and am as independent as a 22 year old can be while still living at home, and she’s a college freshman that refuses to get a job and still throws temper tantrums when she doesn’t get her way. I love my sister, I really do, but I don’t like her. Not one bit. But like my Grandfather says, ‘When you plant corn, you get corn.'”
The Milkshake Moment
“I had procrastinated on an essay and asked him for ideas on what to write. I had a day to write it, he got angry that I had waited and told me to take a zero because I deserved it and needed to learn.
I am very easily distracted and was once counting the squares in the wallpaper during my mom’s birthday dinner. My dad asked me why I was sad (I have a sad resting face and was zoned out) and accused me of trying to ruin my mom’s birthday.
On vacation I saw a pretty restaurant and asked if we could eat there. When we went in, it was very expensive and not child-friendly. I felt like I had embarrassed us and apologized, and my dad got mad and said I was being arrogant, because apologizing means I thought I controlled the situation.
I asked my dad if he could quit his dangerous job. He got angry and said this job ‘has fed me and clothed me my whole life.
He lined me and my brothers up and interrogated us on who drank a milkshake in the kitchen and spilled it on the floor. After an hour, he grounded all of us for lying. Later that day, he realized he had spilled the milkshake, because he put it in the garbage and left the full, torn garbage bag on the kitchen floor.
Looking back, my dad is not a nice man.’
A 5 Year Old Wouldn’t Do That
“I was in Kindergarten, mother was on some heavy pain meds. One morning before the drive to school her medicine cabinet is open with a few of the bottles out of their usual place. She blamed it on me, saying that whatever I took I needed to tell her and that if I didn’t stop lying I’d be in even more trouble. As a five year old kid who honestly had no idea what was going on, I began crying because I was being blamed for something I didn’t do and had no idea what any of it meant.
We gave our neighbor, who was my older brother’s friend, a ride to the high school pretty frequently, and even he was trying to convince me to just admit what I did in the morning car ride. I spent all day at school in a mope because I knew I was gonna be grounded for absolutely nothing. I get home, mother’s probably not in such a dazed state, and she decides that the cat probably climbed up in the cabinet. Nope, it couldn’t have been my older brother who’s an addict now, it couldn’t have been her when she was messed up and just didn’t remember, it was either her five year old son or the cat.
That’s my family for you. But yeah, takes the stupid/ignorant cake to a whole new level.
It Wasn’t Good Enough
“1. For crying in my room after fighting with my best friend (it was a friendship ending fight too). I was in the 4th grade. She had been my best friend since preschool and we never were friends again after that day. That’s the day I learned to never let my parents hear me cry and to never talk to them about my feelings. They heard me in my room so came in to speak to me about why I was upset. That’s when they got mad at me for crying over something so stupid.
2. For crying (silently) in the backseat of the car after them tearing my soccer performance to shreds and therefore not being able to take constructive criticism. For context, they did this every day after soccer practice after watching the last 10-15 minutes of the 2 hour practice. (Starting in middle school) They also did this after every game. “You weren’t running fast enough. You weren’t trying hard enough. You should have passed the ball [insert specific moments from the 90 minutes on the field]. You should have taken a shot instead of passing to [teammate]. You weren’t aggressive enough.” Etc. I played soccer, (by the end, not so willingly) for my entire life until I left for college.
3. For getting a cosmetic dental procedure done to straighten my front two teeth. For context, I told them I wanted braces. They say, fine, tell your dentist. Dentist says, ‘That’s stupid. I can fix them right now for way cheaper.’ I call parents and ask if I can have this done. They say yes. I come home and they tell me that they liked my smile better when my teeth weren’t so cookie cutter. — not really them mad so much as just really unsupportive and hurtful over something I was so happy about. It made the list because it is one of my most disappointing memories. I had stopped by my best friend’s house on the way home to beam and show off my new smile (I used to smile with closed lips to hide my teeth). Then I got home and beamed at my parents only to be taken down many pegs.
4. For not wanting to take the ACT again after getting a 31 (out of possible 36) because my brother had gotten a 33 or 34 on it. My mother believed until the day that I got my acceptance letter that there was no way I’d get into the school I wanted. I was told as much by her. Well, guess what, Mom? I got in and didn’t have to take that test again because I had a pretty decent score and had already aced two university Calculus classes and two university Chemistry classes and had a 4.0 in school, etc.
5. For being depressed. Context: I was depressed all through high-school and college (see above for some examples why). I didn’t have the knowledge or vocabulary to express that it was depression, but I was passively suicidal in HS and actively planning it in college, but I digress. I finally caved and told them (over the phone as my college was over 500 miles away and I had no car anyways) because I was going to get my antidepressant filled and would be using my dad’s insurance card. They took me saying, ‘You probably don’t know this, but I’ve been depressed for years. I had a panic attack, went to the school’s counseling office, and my therapist wants me to start anti-depressants.’ as a personal attack. They yelled and said something along the lines of, ‘How could we know!? You hid this from us! It’s not our fault!’ Fun times.
To clarify, they never abused me physically or even too much mentally. They have a tough love sort of approach to things, but they do love me very much. We are on good terms after A) I no longer lived with them B) they got a lot nicer after they found out about the depression. I still can find time with them to be a bit tough as they pick apart the contents of my fridge/pantry, the state of my house, and my weight. They just want the best for me even if they don’t always go about it the right way. They are imperfect, for sure, and I definitely won’t be so unfeeling towards any future children. There is tough love, and then there is disallowing feelings.
Thanks to anyone who reads this far down into the thread. I teared up a bit writing it out but it was also a bit cathartic to share.”
Don’t Make Him Angry…
“Man, my dad is a ball of unpredictable so there’s so many examples.
To be quite clear, most of our relationship is pretty light/joking. We’ve had our rough patches, and he has a heck of a temper, but our relationship is still quite positive for the most part. It just seems that sometimes he flips his mean switch at people, and more often thanks bit, it’s at me and my two brothers. Drink is a big part of it.
Of course, he finally stops and my brother just couldn’t hold it. As soon as the door started to swing open, my brother projectile vomited all over the door and the edge of the seat. Dad was absolutely furious. Roaring ‘OH!’ over and over and beating his fists into the steering wheel. Thirteen year old me burst into tears and dived out the opposite door to hide it best I could, while my brother was still stuck vomiting into the street with my mum trying to soothe him and keep sick off of his clothes. Dad got out of the car, screaming at my brother for not holding it in longer and for ‘being a girl’. Then he noticed me sobbing and shaking and turned on me all ‘and what is your problem?’ My mum chewed him out for it, but it took a good hour for him to chill out enough to realize that you can’t yell at one child for getting car sick because of his erratic driving, and a other for being afraid of him for erupting.
There’s others but this is already too long. I’ve learned to live with him.”
I was making his sandwiches for work for him when he happened across some dog pee from our puppy. Told me to come clean it up. I told him I was busy and asked if he could just grab the mop. He went on a long whine about my lack of responsibility. This while I made him his lunch and finished folding his clothes that I’d washed out of the dryer. I pointed this out. ‘It’s about the disrespect though.’
He has also yelled at me because I wasn’t as far in Fallout 4 as him and wouldn’t help him figure out how to destroy the institute. Dude was playing on my game and wanted me to spoil the game for myself finding a walkthrough for him. Refused to use Google because: ‘thats why I have kids! To do this for me!’
My dad used to complain about my being in my early twenties and not being in a relationship yet. When I actually finally got into one, he once accused me of abandoning our family. Apparently spending a few hours a week at my boyfriend’s place was the same as walking out on him forever. He once phoned me and tried to guilt me into taking a two hour journey home, because the dishes hadn’t been done, he needed his washing done and he was, and I quote: ‘angry at being the only one at home’. My brothers were both there at home with him. I’d actually worked a longer shift than him that day, but I was still expected to come home and clean up after him. I pointed this out. He told me not to bother coming home if I was going to disrespect him.
When ever I get sick, I get a cough. Every single time. And I get sick frequently too. I don’t even smoke, it’s just always been like this for me. After a couple of days of this, my dad inevitably loses his mind. He yells at me for coughing, for my labored breathing annoying him, for my voice sounding abnormal and therefore irritating to him. He’s pretty understanding to a point. Recently I had a migraine/vomiting combo and he was fine and super sympathetic with dealing with the projectile vomiting for me, and making sure I was comfortable and stuff. He still got angry when the coughing started up again though.
Same brother got car sick once when he was about 10 and begged to get out of the car. We had driven from South Yorkshire to London (UK) on a very hot and busy day and had spent about two hours driving around looking for somewhere to park. My dad kept finding spaces, then losing the race to take them. He finally found one and commenced the most violent, jerky parallel park imaginable so no one could muscle him out of it. My brother was pleading to be let out, and I was too by now as well. Dad kept jerking in and out of this space, trying to get straight, not quite having enough room for his car.
When the older of my brothers was sixteen, he took a huge poop right before he left for a party. Thing was huge, wouldn’t flush. He was going to miss his ride there so left it. My dad yelled at him over they phone for having pooped out something so big that it wouldn’t flush and threatened to ban him from his vegetarian diet if it ever happened again. Again, he got yelled at because: HIS POOP WAS TOO BIG.
My brother and I apologized, quite scared of him for his yelling. Dad snapped, ‘You just don’t give a care do you?! You just take whatever you want!’. I was intimidated and asked him to calm down. He lost his freaking mind at that. Got in my face shouting and swearing. Thought he was going to hit me. Retreated to my room crying, mostly out of fear. THEN he switched to yelling thorough the door at me both for crying and for making him feel guilty. We’re not allowed to talk about that incident anymore.
My youngest brother opened the new coffee machine my dad bought and started setting it up. I thought he’d been asked to, so when he asked me to help, I did (I was a barista for work so taught him how to stream milk). My dad walked in, yelling and throwing things because he wanted to be the first to open/use it.
I was telling my mum a story about something that had happened that day. My dad yelled at me because it was boring and making him angry. He couldn’t hear his roadcam videos on Facebook. So engine noises?
Linked to this, he told my brother to get in the shower and get ready to go out and help our uncle with something. My brother complied. Dad then yelled up to ask him if he had any ketchup. My brother called back that ‘not on the shower I don’t’. Dad flipped his lid. I told him to go up and check his desk. He told me to go off myself and that ‘that lazy little loser should bring it to me’. He was in the shower… My dad stamped his feet and nearly flipped the dinner table over that.
He yelled at me because he couldn’t find any ketchup. This apparently was my fault because I was JUST at the supermarket buying his daddy drinks, and should have known he used it up the day before.
He yelled at me because I’d washed and dried his work trousers. ‘They didn’t need washing!’ This one was particularly confusing, because he demanded I wash them the night before. I’m pretty sure he was only yelling at me because they weren’t bundled up on the floor where he left them, and the eight seconds of confusion he went through before he thought to ask me put him in a bit of a foul mood.
He couldn’t find his phone. Asked me to call it. I couldn’t find my phone to call his. He yelled at me about not looking after my things. I was laughing for like twenty minutes after, mainly because I found my phone first (forgotten I’d put it on charge) and his turned out to be in the freezer, of all places. He then yelled at me for laughing at him.
I asked my dad a simple question about my car or something I think? Literally something minor about the engine size or something. Our two dogs were playing together and running in and out of the house, making happy dog-play yappy noises. He yelled first at the dogs to shut up, then at me because when couldn’t concentrate and lost his chain of thought. Yelled at me about bothering him with questions after after I said ‘ok’ a little disappointed. It was just the one thing…
Wow
“When I was about 9, I had a friend over for a sleepover. She came from an extremely poor family and she had learning difficulties. I assume she was neglected because she constantly had lice and her clothes were never clean. She had no other friends at school but me because of this.
Anyway I was having a shower while she hung out in the room i shared with my sister. My sister kept her pocket money in a coin tin on her dresser.
When i returned from my shower my friend casually brought up the fact she had money in her backpack. Turns out she had taken all the money from my sisters coin tin and tried to pass it off as hers. Why she even brought it up to me I still don’t know but I saw my sisters’ tin was open and asked her if she took it from there. She broke down crying and said she did and then i asked her to put it back.
I told my parents because i was brought up that it was wrong to steal and I didn’t know what else to do. They said nothing that night but after she went home my dad went off at me. I was in trouble because she stole and i should have known she would. Even though I did the right thing and got her to put it back and told my parents he told me I wasn’t allowed to be her friend anymore or have anybody else sleep over again.
Let’s note my dad has issues, I love him because he’s my dad but he genuinely is a cruel person.
My mum just goes along with whatever he says because its easier for her.
The way they handled that situation still makes me angry.”
The Tapes Were Brutal
“My dad had a tape recorder in which he would dictate business things, like notes for his secretary, while he was in his car. Fits in your hand, grey, probably Sony.
He left it next to his computer – the only computer in the house – with some important notes and forgot to take it to work the next day. Us kids were allowed to play games on that machine and Monkey Island was the best.
He tells my siblings to not play with it and leaves, all while I’m in the bathroom and can’t hear it. Then we play PC games for a couple of hours, but it’s my turn and my little siblings get bored. They play with the tape recorder.
We’re at dinner, it’s like 8pm and my dad gets home, goes to his study and tries to do some more work. Big contract. All his notes are on the tape recorder, and he couldn’t do it at work because he left all that at home. We hear him yell ‘WHAT?!? OH!’ from the study and WOMM BOMBOMBOMBOMBOM he comes storming in the kitchen and he smacks the first kid that’s sitting at the table.
SMACK! – and sibling 1 starts immediately crying.
SMACK! – and sibling 2 is bawling his eyes out.
I am paralyzed. I sit the longest way around the table, so I am going to be last. I can’t talk. And I know something horrible: I’m gonna get smacked, too, and I didn’t even do anything because I was busy playing Monkey Island.
Sure enough, sibling 3 and me get whats coming to us and BOMBOMBOMBOM my dad is out of the room. Leaving 4 bawling children and a bewildered mom.
She goes talk to him, and she also gets ticked and sends us all to bed without finishing dinner.
15 minutes later my dad calls me down and I’m like now what? Am I going to get into extra trouble because I’m oldest?
No. My dad tried to see if we erased and played over all of his tape. He found that a) we didn’t, and that b) my squeaky voice was on that tape, telling my siblings to, ‘Stop playing with daddy’s toys he doesn’t like that.’
I got ice cream for dinner that night and an apology. I think he waited with the apology to my siblings until the next day because they were asleep by then, but we all got an apology ice cream.
I was still mad at the slap in the face though, because if my dad had literally listened to the tape for 10 more seconds he would have realized that the damage we did wasn’t so bad, and that I had nothing to do with it.
Don’t worry though, I saw it as pre-punishment and got up to no good later on to get even. With 4 kids, there’s always the possibility for that.”
What Kind Of Dad Does This?
“My dad has eaten an entirely raw diet since I can remember. And every time I hung out with him, he would insist that I also eat raw food. Some truly disgusting things including raw beef, raw oysters, sea urchin, and a horrible concoction he called ‘precipitate’ made of warm water, clay or bone meal, and coconut oil. It really made me dislike his company,
I always wished we could be like a normal father/daughter for once and go get burgers and milkshakes or something. But not only did he make me eat ‘healthy’ food, he would shame me for wanting unhealthy food. Like I was a fat, mind-controlled sheep for wanting a McDonald’s burger.
Anyway, one time I was at home waiting for him to pick me up, and I was hungry. I knew he’d get mad if I hopped in the car with a pop-tart or something, so I made a solo cup with some bland grainy cereal and milk. When I got in the car with it, he just sighed angrily.
He was angry because we were going out to eat, and I guess he suspected I ate the cereal so I wouldn’t have to eat the terrible food he orders. He just kept on ranting and ranting about it. All the way down the road, dumb rants that have no point or benefit. It frustrated me so much because I consciously knew he was acting like a spoiled child, and I was more mature than he’d ever be, but I’m forced to listen to his nonsensical ranting because he’s the adult.
What an idiot. I hope when he’s old, he looks back and realizes how nice I was for continuing to spend time with him and talk to him at all. Nobody in my life would blame me for cutting contact. He forced me into a very bad position for years when I was a child, and I’m still nice enough to respond to his texts and visit him. I just wish he knew it now. He has 2 young kids and I want them to feel more loved than I did.”