Many people have heard the saying "parents say the darndest things," as if it can be brushed off. But words can really affect a child for the rest of their life. Parents attempt to mold their children into responsible and respected adults, yet many aren't necessarily right for the job. These stories reveal the most outrageous things people have overheard parents say to children, and some, the horrible things their parents said to them, that scared them for life. (All content has been edited or clarity).
“Adults Can Be Very Very Wrong Sometimes”

“I had a patient whose father kept on asking the doctor how much weight he needed to lose in the middle of a crowded waiting room. The doctor tried to take him to the back but made the mistake of saying ‘he’s following his curve.’ The father flipped out and said ‘I know he’s a little fatty, I coach soccer and I’m absolutely disgusted by him when I see the other kids out there twenty to thirty pounds lighter than him.’
He said this in a crowded waiting room, in front of his eleven-year-old son. The doctor finally gets him to the back, the waiting room is deathly silent. I take the son to finish his physical and another patient’s mother approached him and said ‘I know it hurts right now. I know you feel so terrible. But you don’t deserve to be treated like that, no one does. And I want you to realize that one day very soon, you are going to realize that you are not the problem. And I hope when that day happens, his words stop hurting you. Because I know he’s your dad and you’re suppose to listen to him, but sweetie, adults can be very very wrong sometimes.'”
“Would Rather Be Dead From Cancer”

“My mom to me, while she was in the hospital awaiting the results of a lung scan: ‘I would rather be dead from cancer than see my only son grow up to be gay.'”
“That’s What Dresses Like That Do”

“I was walking in front a woman and her approximately twelve-year-old daughter and I heard the girl comment on how pretty she thought my dress was. This is what her mother said:
‘That’s what ‘women of the night’ wear. Is that what you want to be when you grow up? A short haired floozy like her? Are you gonna get pregnant next year? Are you gonna drop out of school and start drinking and doing illegal substances? Start sleeping around? Cause that’s what dresses like that do. Sometimes I don’t know what I did do the good lord to deserve a filthy devil worshiping daughter like you.’
I should mention that the dress I was wearing hit just above the knees and wasn’t even tight or revealing (not that it would’ve mattered anyway). Her mom was just a ‘see you next Tuesday.'”
Absolutely Worth It

“Years ago I worked at a landscape store. When someone needed bags of dirt or mulch, they would pay for it inside, then drive around back to have someone load it up. We were short-handed that day and the cashier forgot to make the call out to the yard. So I’m walking near that area and am greeted by a dad and his high school age son with ‘Well, it’s about time.’
The guy was really put out that I was taking his precious minutes away but I began loading his order up without complaint. He kept huffing and puffing while I worked. As I’m finishing up the load, he says to his son, ‘See son, this is the reason you stay in school – so you don’t have to do a job like this and be like this guy.’
I loaded the last bag and said, ‘There you go. I’m sorry for the delay. By the way, this is my second job that I work, while getting my second college degree and supporting my wife and young son, a-hole.’ The son kind of snickers and the dad’s mouth pops open. ‘You can’t talk to me that way. I’ll go to your manager and have you fired.’ I said, ‘Well, my manager’s name is Patrick and I’ll be happy to go with you to help you find him. He’ll probably think you’re an a-hole like I do and most likely, since I’m one of the most dependable employees here, I’m not going to get fired. If I do though, it’s okay because, like I said, I’m just doing this for some extra money. You on the other hand, will always be a prick and feel the need to insult people based on your assumptions and insecurities. Have a nice day.’
The son stood there with a grin on his face. I can’t help but believe he’d probably wanted to say something to his dad like that a million times but that he couldn’t because of the repercussions from this low life. That moment, made working at that job worth it.”
Put Her Father In The Hospital

“When I was 19, I was staying at my ex’s house one night when all of a sudden I was abruptly woken up from a loud crash. I went downstairs to investigate, and her father had stumbled in from drinking and knocked over a bookshelf. I tried to help him to his feet, but he refused – acting all proud and calling me worthless. We started to argue and at this point his daughter (my ex) came down. She tried calming the situation down and got in between us, as she stepped in between us, her father said the most disturbing thing I’ve ever heard.
‘You’re such a disgrace and I wish I had let your mother abort you because you serve no purpose in life.’ Then I attempted to chime in, but he cut me off ‘You! Who do you think you are, I made her scream louder than you when she was younger!’
At this point my ex was balling her eyes out, I put the pieces together and punched her dad to the ground. Before I knew it I was in the back of a cop car with bloody knuckles and single. After this incident she broke up with me because I put her father in the hospital.”
“I Feel Sorry For Her Having A Mother Like That”

“When I was about 17, I was going out with a girl who lived not too far from me. For context, the mother gave birth to her around 16-17 years old.
One day, in the middle of an incredibly minor argument about putting clothes away in the house or something, the mother says to her daughter ‘god you are so useless, I should have just gotten you aborted like everyone told me to do.’
I don’t talk to or get along with that girl anymore, but god I feel sorry for her having a mother like that.”
“Mommy Doesn’t Like Us Talking About This Kind Of Thing”

“I have an ex that has some friends with a couple of kids, like 6 and 10 or so. We were driving back home from a restaurant, and I was riding in the back of the monster mom minivan with the 10-year-old.
The moon was pretty bright in the sky and the 10-year-old was looking up at it, and she turns to me and says, ‘Why does the moon change shape during the month?’ I love questions like this, especially since I could tell she really wanted to know. So I pulled out my iPod which had the Planets app on it, which has pictures and dates of the moon phases and things, and I explained what it was all about. And this kid’s mind was totally blown. I knew she’d been struggling in school, but she was into this moon stuff and actually getting a scientific explanation to her question and how cool the lunar cycle is and we looked at each other and just grinned at the awesomeness of it all.
Right about this moment, her absolute witch of a mother says, in the most condescending sing-song tone you can imagine, ‘Oh listen to him, giving my kid a science lesson. I’ve had to sit and listen for like ten whole minutes while you talked about, like, the MOON and whatever. God, what a nerd.’ And the kid’s face, it was all sad and like ‘Okay, I guess Mommy doesn’t like us talking about this kind of thing.’
And she wonders why her kid hates school and is not doing well, with her crummy attitude. Why I didn’t kick this woman in the back of the head is beyond me. Well, I guess she was driving at the time.”
He Should Have Any Color He Wants

“When my little brother was seven, he got a brand-new bike, with no training wheels (oh, happy day!). Naturally, the first thing he did was crash it and break his arm. Off he and my step-father went to the emergency room.
While in the ER, the doctor asks him what color of cast he wants. Little bro says he wants purple. The ER doctor sniffs, and snaps that purple is a girl’s color, and he can’t have a purple cast. I honestly would have been tempted to yell at him; who says that to an injured little kid?
But, my little bro, without blinking an eye, snaps ‘Purple is NOT a girl’s color! It’s MACE WINDU’S LIGHTSABER COLOR! And he’s THE COOLEST JEDI and a BAD MOTHER!’
Step-dad and doctor stare at younger brother for minutes. Doctor quickly asks him his second favorite Jedi. Little brother says Anakin Skywalker, and trots home with a red cast.
We find out Little Brother watched ‘a movie where Mace Windu ate cheeseburgers and shot people.’ My other brother is promptly grounded for letting his seven-year old brother watch ‘Pulp Fiction’ with him.
Still- I’m somewhat irritated by that ER doctor and how he treated my brother. Kid wants a purple cast, darn it, let him have it.”
She Was Only 7

“My mom is adopted and her siblings are not. Her grandmother had a vast collection of beautiful jewelry with a long family history dating back to the 1700s. She once told my mother ‘You like these pretty jewels? I’m going to leave them to my granddaughters. My real granddaughters.’ My mom was 7.
My mom’s sisters and female cousins inherited the vast collection of jewelry- it doesn’t matter that some of it was rather valuable, much of it had been passed down through the women of the family for generations and had a ton of sentimental value. My mom got nothing, the rest of the surviving family also got thousands of dollars a piece.
She Had To Be Taken Away From Her Mother

“I was 12 years old, a new girl arrived at our school. She was unpopular, quiet, wore a lot of makeup, and seemed to have no self-respect. I was a bit of a loner myself so I befriended her for a while. She told me about all the different guys she’d had relations with, about smoking stuff and drinking. I was shocked and a bit put off but continued to hang out with her.
I went to her house a few times. She lived in government-funded housing. Ugly, low-income, depressing. Her house was a mess. Her mother reminded me of Mrs. Crabtree from South Park with a pack a day habit. Yelled at her a lot. This girl would sometimes be busy after school, she would say she has stuff she has to do but wouldn’t elaborate. Eventually she ended up telling me that she has slept with men for money that her mom sets up. They would come over to touch and sleep with her in her bed. This was a couple times a week. Then her mom would take her to the mall and buy her a pair of bell bottoms or whatever and keep the rest for herself. I was disgusted.
We were in her bedroom one day. Her mom came in and told her that I had to go home because someone was coming over. My friend went into her mom’s room to argue with her and I stuck my head in the hallway to listen. I don’t remember everything they said but the last line always stuck with me, ‘He just wants a bj. And remember to swallow or we don’t get all the money.’
Eventually, me and my friends were pulled out of class and had to talk to the school counselor about her. Apparently they were concerned about her already, I forget why, so I told the counselor, and we told her other stuff about the girl. The next day the girl wasn’t in class, and we were told that she was taken away from her mother and going to be put in foster care.”
Filled His Head With Stories

“Back in the 90s I was living in California. There’s a lot of people into alternative medicine out there. Someone I knew had parents that were into reiki, and magic and all this stuff. They filled his head with stories about how much magic power he had as a child and how he had healing powers and was some sort of messianic savior. He was just a kid.
His mom got cancer, and his family had him convinced he could cure his moms cancer. For years the poor kid spent hours a day trying to cure his mom’s cancer as she got worse and his family kept the pressure on him. She finally died and this kid blamed himself for years believing he could have saved her and failed. It really messed him up.”
They Wouldn’t Let Her Have A Babydoll

“My ex sister-in-law. When her daughter, my niece was around 2, she would always carry around my daughter’s baby dolls when we would babysit her. She loved it. So for her birthday we bought her a baby doll.
Her mother threw the doll in the trash and yelled at us for buying her one. The reason? She’s not allowed to have baby dolls because that’s going to make her, a toddler, want to go out and get pregnant so she can have a real baby.”
“Something You Can Never Come Back From”

“I had pretty serious complications with a disease in high school and ended up having 14 surgeries and being hospitalized off and on for a year. I actually ended up being told there’s a chance I may not pull through (severely malnourished/underweight/surgery complications) and my parents were told they should call family and think about funeral arrangements etc. I even got a Make A Wish letter. Fortunately, I pulled through so we didn’t act on any of the above.
Last year of high school was my first year in remission and I just wanted to be a normal kid and whatnot. Got caught sneaking out. Hadn’t done anything yet, just got caught with my boots on at the front door. They screamed at me forever. They told me they’d rather have let me died.
We had a big fight. I told them I would never forget those words. They apologized profusely but it still hurts. We have a good relationship now but I will never forget that my parents wished death on me. I was never allowed to receive counselling after my hospitalizations (I go independently now) so at the time I was super messed up from being so physically destroyed like that.
It’s just something you can never come back from.”
Can’t Imagine How She Treats Him In Private

“My mom and I were in the supermarket waiting in line to check out. There was a woman in line ahead of us with her young son and who I assume was her elderly mother. The little boy was pretty quiet as his mother was checking out. Then he said something to her- I couldn’t hear what it was. Maybe he asked for some candy or told her he was hungry, but whatever it was, it set this woman OFF.
She started screaming and beating the daylights out of him. She was hitting him, pushing him into the racks of candy and gum, and pulling at his clothes and screaming at the top of her lungs. This was all in the middle of a very crowded supermarket in a checkout aisle. Everyone just sort of froze and stared dumbstruck at this insane woman. Her ancient mother was trying to pull her off her kid to no avail.
Suddenly, this mid 30s-ish man comes running over to this crazy woman and grabs her arm as she swings back for another punch at her kid. He says very calmly, but loudly and clearly, ‘Ma’am if you don’t calm down, I am going to call the police and have you arrested.’ She just sort of looked at him, stunned, then snatched her arm away, gathered her groceries and her kid and just left.
I can only imagine the kind of horrible things that kid went through at home if his mother would beat him in a supermarket.”
He Was Just A Lefty

“Was helping out at some fundraiser thing a few years ago. They had a little table full of crayons and paper so kids could draw stuff.
I’m at a stall across from this table, see a dad sitting down while his son is drawing. He takes the crayon out of the kid’s left hand and slaps it, says something like ‘that’s the devil’s hand’ and he puts the crayon into the right hand.
This was 2010.”
“I’ll Mess You Up So Bad”

“My mother once gave me a razor told me to go kill myself, but to go do it in the bathroom so it would be easier to clean. As I walked away, she said ‘and shut the door, I don’t want your younger sisters to see it.’ I was 14.
Okay, I’ve got another one: I was 18 or 19, and she was slapping me around on day, I’m yelling ‘I am now an adult, this is assault! I’m going to call the police and you will finally go to jail.’ And my mom, the psycho is like (paraphrased a bit) ‘Go on, call the police, but then I will get some acid and a knife and mess you up so bad that it will be worth the jail time to see you messed up beyond recognition.’ So, then I hightailed it out of there quick smart!”
“Where Did We Go Wrong?”

“I was seated in the back of a restaurant, which was pretty quiet. About halfway through my meal an elderly couple sat in front of me. Ten minutes or so after they were seated, two men (early twenties maybe) sat down with them, obviously a couple. One of them was clearly the child of the elderly couple, cause, well he called them mom and dad. Anyway, upon sitting down, the old people’s kid introduced his boyfriend to them. Initially, the parents didn’t know their kid was gay, because the dad became very angry and the mother actually started to cry. They said things like ‘Where did we go wrong?’ and ‘Being gay is a sin!’
Things like I would expect homophobic parents to say to their gay kid, but somehow I didn’t really think they ever really would. The guy’s parents left in a storm and he started crying. Not bawling, but some tears. His boyfriend consoled him, and they paid and left without finishing their meal. I of course starred, (because the dad was nearly shouting), which I don’t feel bad about because It allowed me to give the dad an absolute look of disgust as he left. The whole thing ruined my day. I’m eating sonic next time and staying in my homophobe-free car.”
“I’ll Just Fill Them Until You Die”

“My mom used to tell my little sister casually that she was supposed to have been aborted.
My mom is a dumb witch apparently because it was actually me she planned to abort. Her memory is bad and she mixed us up. (My dad and other family members confirmed this) So I told my little sister how it was really me and not her. She cheered up a little and it didn’t hurt my feelings at all. I don’t care if she didn’t want me, if I could have chosen I probably wouldn’t have considered her pick of the litter either.
Also, one time when I forgot to refill the ice trays she said ‘Don’t worry I will just fill them until you die, which will hopefully be soon.’
And my little sister started crying and saying ‘how could you say that to her!?’ And I was just like ‘wow mom really? That doesn’t even make sense. You’re gonna fill them till I die? Why? Will you no longer need ice once I’m dead? Am I the reason for the warmth of soda around here?'”
Sure, Blame It On Mom

“A few years back, a new gas station opened in my home town. It’s owned and operated by a really nice family, who just so happen to be of Indian/Middle-Eastern descent. Not sure, specifically, because I don’t really care. It may be somewhat relevant that I’m talking about a small, rural Ohio town.
So one day, I’m hanging out with my girlfriend. We were taking her little sister out for lunch, just for something to do. In the middle of the meal, as passing conversation, this little girl said to us ‘You know that new gas station in town? Don’t buy anything there. They support the Taliban or Al Qeida.’
After exchanging a quick what-did-I-just-hear glance with my girlfriend, I immediately responded with, ‘Who told you that?’
‘Mom did.’
Both Of The Parents Sound Awful

“After a crippling on the job back injury, I was laid up for two years before I could get a new job. When the time came and I started looking for jobs online, my Dad said: ‘You will never get a job by searching online. You should apply to McDonald’s – you’re such a disappointment, that at this point, the best I could hope for is that by the time you’re 40, you’re a fast food assistant manager.’ Two months later I was hired by a video game company from an online application and became fairly successful. He never apologized nor admitted he was wrong.
My mother is a very verbally abuse person who I could spend hours talking about in this thread. One that sticks out: she loved calling my ex-fiancee ‘easy’ to her face. She was the nicest, most sensible girl, but because she dated me, my mother considered her ‘easy.’ She once asked her, ‘Do your parents know you sleep around with every loser you meet?’ I’ll never forgive my mother for the part she played in driving that girl away.”
Just About Her Image

“I was walking in the city when a small girl ran out of a store, fell and knocked her head on the ground. Everyone around it felt the pain and felt bad for the crying toddler. I was about to help the kid when I saw the kid’s mother, about 26 years old, trying to talk it off by basically saying: ‘come on, it’s not that bad. stop crying, you’re embarrassing me.’ I got pretty mad inside at that point.”