34 Shocking Confessions from Adults Who Uncovered Their Parents’ Darkest Secrets

My parents moved house basically every other year. For them it was a new job, new opportunities … for me it meant regularly losing all my friends, new school, etc. I never built up a circle of friends and have problems to do so until this day. When I had a kid, I made sure she can go to the same school from kindergarden to the final exams (which start next week, BTW), so she doesn’t have to go through this. Now she’s very keen on finally getting to know a different environment when she’ll start uni in autumn. Probably she’s around here, complaining that her parents stayed at the same boring place all her life… 😉

saschaleib , Jeswin Thomas Report

my dad trauma dumped all these really dark and twisted details of what he went through on me as if I was his therapist

User , MART PRODUCTION Report

responding with “do this because I said so”. seems harmless, right? it can teach stubborn kids respect and obedience. My mom would often use it. I wasn’t allowed to question things or point out mistakes. Now as an adult, I developed an inferior mindset. I’m often extremely obedient when interacting with people. I find it hard to find my own voice

bland-soup , Andrea Piacquadio Report

Laughing at me for various s**t even though they were joking. Music, hobbies, girlfriends, my body. I understand they were joking but it took a lot to get my confidence back and they also wonder why I don’t tell them anything about my life.

beansff , cottonbro studio Report

First – Being inconsistent. One day mom would overly obsess about my homework, or how clean my room was, or what I was going to “do with my life”, etc., the next day it was all forgotten as if it never happened. Second – If I mentioned wanting to do anything, I was given a long list of why it could and would go wrong to the point where I felt beaten down and didn’t want to do it anymore, then I was accused of never sticking to anything. Third – Telling me I wasn’t trying, or not trying hard enough, when in reality I was trying as best I could. It simply made me realize that there was no point in my efforts, so why bother at all.

FinnbarMcBride Report

Growing up my father micromanaged everything to a point that he would decide how much time the window in my room will remain open, I wasn’t allowed to open or close the window as I wish. This goes for everything, I had to take his permission for every little thing, I had no free will home was basically a military camp. I felt so suffocated in that house.

SuvenPan Report

Lots of yelling and bulling, spanking, then go to church like a good little Christian family [why?] 🤷‍♀️ very confusing upbringing that’s all I’m saying

Individual-Spirit-75 , adrianna geo Report

Ignoring my autism diagnosis and acting as if I’ll be fine in life if they treat me as they did my siblings. Turns out, a huge part of learning to navigate the world when you have autism involves learning coping strategies (that sometimes might not work for most people) and thus I was pushed into situations that caused meltdowns but without any coping strategies that actually worked I just became an anxious and depressed mess.

Dragime84 Report

They stayed together “for me”, my mum made me her therapist at the ripe age of 10, my mum talked to me about our bad economy, my mum wouldn’t teach me how to talk care of myself at all until i was 16, my dad laughed and made fun of me when i failed at stuff, my dad used to jokingly almost drown me and put me in situations where i was afraid, my dad would call me a pig for eating a lot, my mum always felt the need to point out my acne even when i didn’t ask, they fought in front of me and used me to their advantages in the arguments, they only ever congratulated me when it came to grades and sports. When i was younger i never realised how bad all this was because it was all I knew, it wasn’t until I was 16 i realised how f****d up it all was

User Report

had money but never let us kids have regular medical check ups/ never got us braces no matter how bad our teeth are and said its our responsibility to do those things when we’re older :// They did horrible things but this realization often made me tear up. For context, I have a lifetime illness that needs checking up every 3 months

vent1te Report

So I just want to preface this by saying that I had a good childhood, my parents loved me, and I believe they really did try their best. One of the things they did that I think is bad parenting is they constantly tried to make sure things were “equal” between me and my siblings. For example, for awhile they experimented with paying us extra allowance for good grades. I was always good in school, so I almost always ended up with all A’s, so I got a lot of money. My sibling was (and still is) a lazy f*** so they would hardly get any except for PE. Despite that, my parents found ways to “even things out” so they would still have some spending money. It created an incentive for my sibling to continue being a lazy f***, and disincentivized me working hard. I still did because I wanted to go to college, but it definitely created animosity. I think parents should treat their kids equitably, but children are not equal and should not be treated like they are equal. Each is an individual with their own strengths and weaknesses, and what works for some may not work for others.

User Report

– Never gave me any encouragement to do anything. Anything I wanted to do was met with negativity and criticism. Looking back, I think they were trying some reverse psychology b******t, but I’ve never worked that way and now I just don’t try to do anything, really. – My Dad was the youngest of three brothers which obviously made him think that little brothers are naturally superior and always told him that he didn’t have to listen to me or do what I said. Which baby brother took as wholesale permission to do whatever he wanted – go to my room and start wrecking s**t, take any of my stuff he wanted, etc and if I told him to stop it’s always “I don’t have to listen to you! I don’t have to listen to you! Ha ha!” Unsurprisingly he also ended up getting into trouble at school a lot. We had a really bad relationship until I moved out for University. – Used to punish me for telling the truth, which just led to me lying and hiding things and never really telling them anything at all to be honest.

Apprehensive_Bug_826 Report

Let me eat as much as I want, to the point that I weighed 131kg at my peak. Losing all s**t is hard man. But I’m down to 94kg now and let me tell you, there is no possibility that my future kid(s) will ever be obese.

Ukrainian_Tractor07 , Nathan Dumlao Report

My parents weren’t bad parents but I would say they were kind of benignly neglectful. I was clothed and fed and loved but not guided in any way at all. Everything was up to me. If I did homework, if I brushed my teeth or bathed. if I went to school, applying for college. Luckily I’m pretty naturally a rule follower and self driven or who knows how I would have turned out.

00Lisa00 , cottonbro studio Report

Completely shut down any kind of relationship conversation. It was a blanket “no”. Not up for debate. Ok, I grew up in a pretty conservative part of the world but that’s not an excuse to treat having a boyfriend as sacrilegious. ( In my all girl’s K – 12 school, a student could get expelled for talking to a boy over the school wall. )

dee615 , Liza Summer Report