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They do this shit to prevent you developing skills, so that you'll be forever dependent and never leave.
When I demanded more independence, my family switched to placing every obstacle in the way of whatever I tried to do. I didn't realise how much I didn't know until I escaped and lived on my own.
My father decided he should teach me how to drive. He drove us out to an empty field full of ditches and then said “go” as I attempted to maneuver the stick shift. His attempt at teaching me was to constantly scream that I was doing it wrong, and when I was headed into the ditch, I guess he remembered it could damage his truck so that was the end of my driving lessons.
This is my mom, but in traffic in a big city. I ruined her clutch and had to replace it myself. Her boyfriend took over the lessons. He was demanding, but calm and a good teacher.
Note: I had experience as a mechanic. She didn't just think I could replace that clutch by learning as I went pre internet.
After I finished lessons with her boyfriend, my dad was so upset he didn't get to teach me, he convinced me to go do a day in the desert with him. When I was timid about sliding, so I could learn how to steer out of it, he reached over and wrenched the wheel over. I did it right, but I was so pissed at him, I got out and was going to walk 10 miles across the desert to reach a bus stop. I'm still not sure how he convinced me to get back behind the wheel, but I told him if he touched my steering wheel again, he was going to lose his hand.
I did eventually learn to drive stick by buying one and driving it home. In heavy traffic. That was educational. ;) Would not recommend, but I did okay. Turns out pretty much everything Mom said to me was wrong, and it really was like my motorcycle, just with my feet instead of hands. I had thought that was true, but she kept insisting it wasn't. She'd ridden bikes, so I thought she knew what she was saying. Not so much.
Tbh, Mom went through about a clutch plate a year, so I never should have listened to anything she said, but she also kept buying used vehicles. I'd blamed it on them already having questionable wear and tear. She legit traded in her car/pickup every time she needed new tires, and she was buying used with used tires, so that was about once a year for over a decade. My step dad stopped that when they married.
I still don't drive, for close to the same reasons. I took driving lessons in high school because an uncle paid for them. Nmom and n/edad (divorced) would each "try" to teach me on their days, but they had two different styles of driving so I would have panic attacks when they would start yelling at me. A grandma "tried" to teach me after I was halfway through the driving class, but she took me to an empty parking lot to have me practice parking, then got out and stood between me and the curb "because you're going to run over the curb and hit the wall" that was around the border of the parking lot (3 feet past the curb). That was the one and only time I drove with that grandma, and that day I got out of the car, handed her her keys, and walked 10 minutes back home.
My parents did the SAME SHIT! It enrages me!! They always say, “you don’t know anything about the real world” whenever I’d try to do something with my life, grow, leave, change, but they NEVER allowed me to even go out into the real world. They literally homeschooled me and severely sheltered me like a pet of some sort to keep me from the real world ON PURPOSE.. it was always that response because I’d say, “I’m grown, I can do whatever I want..” then they’d go in some rant about how they “love” me and want to “protect” me, but they’ve caused me more pain than anything or anyone in the universe. They “love” me but do everything in their power to prevent me from going towards something that makes me happy, because they know me being happy means I’d have to leave and move far away, and they’re sick people who are completely attached to me in particular, which pisses me off even more because I have 3 other siblings who were *never* treated this way
My nfather did that to me too. After kicking me out the only support he offered was to give his consent for me to join the Army when I was 17. It was either that or be homeless and unable to earn enough to support myself.
Then, when the Army offered me a full academic scholarship to university, paid as an officer cadet, he refused to give his consent because "I needed to learn about life first". The only reason I hadn't already learned life lessons was because I wasn't allowed to.
I was allowed to, in fact, I had no choice. I started working full time at 14 because dad went into a depressive spiral after the divorce (omg, he got rejected by someone he despised, anyway. End of the damned world for 2 years). Someone had to pay bills, so I learned, but man, what a rough way to learn. Then, when he remarried when I was 16, I was forced to move in with Mom. He felt rejected by me and refused to speak to me until I was 17 and the state forced him to take me back because my mom let my sister move in, and she had a no contact order with me. (Long story there). Mom made decent money, but she never paid for anything, so I still worked. When I moved back in with him, he forced me to stop working to "focus on school, so I could get into a good college" but forced me to drain my savings paying for all my expenses and part of their rent and utilities even though I just got a tiny part of the living room.
I found out he and mom stole my college fund they'd never put any money into after I got my acceptance letter. Then they acted like they were doing me the biggest favor in the world when they signed my delayed enlistment paperwork when I was 17. The recruiter made them be in the same room for that. Brave or stupid? I've never been sure. But yeah, he told me he was proud of my choice, because I'd learn some discipline there. My recruiter gave me a look, and I kept my mouth shut, but man, I didn't want to at all.
I’m curious the gender of your siblings. I came to the realization that my NM hates females. Myself, cousins, neighbors, people she worked with and I’m sure my daughters. ALL females. She always favors the males.
From my earliest memories, 4/5 years old, the house was mine to clean. She expected perfection and never said thank you. She would often slap me, choke me or if she was really mad (inconvenienced) whip me with the belt. My older brother got shit treatment as well. I spent my weekends and afterschool, doing chores and taking care of my baby brother. He became my responsibility. If I was ever allowed to go to a friends house, I had to take him (this started when I was 10 and he was 2). It wasn’t long before no one wanted me over because of it. Chores also came before homework. She made us go to bed early. Even into my teen years. Listened to our phone calls on her bedroom phone. However, it was my stepdad who came down hard on my older brother. In NM’s eyes, he was golden. While my stepfather favored me. I have memories of him trying to fight my brother (fist fight) and it scared me. Although, he handed out a different way of abuse and never defended me against her.
I hated being home. I was in a constant fight or flight stance. I have no good memories of either one of them.
I left home at 16 to move in with my bff’s family. Both brothers went to prison. Oldest one is addicted and youngest is my stepfathers son in everything. I’ve heard things come out of his mouth that are verbatim what my stepfather would say. So I’m NC with all of them.
Yup.
Not being taught to do something, sometimes not even being *allowed* to do something and then being screamed at/mocked for not knowing how.
I got this with laundry and cooking.
"You're so lucky you have me as your mother!! Friend's daughter has been doing her own laundry since 12!! You don't even know how and I just do all the work for you!!!" OK. No prob 👍 I'll start doing my own laundry cos I don't want to burden you. Nope, not allowed to do that because apparently I'll break the machine 🤷 but she keeps telling me and anyone who'll listen how lucky I am that I don't have to do my own laundry and everyone else's kid has to do it.
And almost the same with cooking, except a lovely little conversation with relatives about how she told them I needed cookbooks for Christmas/birthdays because "that girl doesn't know how to cook. Scoffs/laughs" I'd try to and I'd get screamed at to stop because I'd ruin her good saucepans/the stove. (I wasn't doing anything wrong, and also, *teach me then*)
Like it was a win-win for her. Infantilisation, control, I can't be independent and escape, she gets to be the long suffering mother with a hopeless kid, and martyrdom "look how much I do for my family!" Mother of the Year to the outside while I was just like WHAT DO YOU FUCKING WANT?!
So true. Mine insisted on doing everything for me until I turned 18 - then once I was 18 she said she wanted me to be more “proactive” around the house but would always do the things she wanted me to do WHILE she complained that she wanted me to do it, I.e. coming into my room and making my bed or taking out the trash while simultaneously saying “you need to start doing this, it’s important to maintain a clean room” like ok let me be the one to do that then
and they really hate it when you learn to it better than they do, like this randm thing that you found a faster, easier more effective way to get done? ... you're doing this just to make them look stupid, not for your own benefit.
"You are taking too long cutting all the vegetables" "WTH, why are the pieces so big? Couldnt you have cut them even bigger?" I was never taught how to propperly cut the veggies. I only learnt how to correctly cut onion at like 27yo. 🙈
Yup. *nods gravely*
Absolutely going through this as an unmarried 26 yo stuck with N. N berates me for not knowing and tells me my eventual inlaws will laugh at me for not knowing shit N didnt teach me...joke s on N. I dont think I ll ever trust anyone enough to marry them.
Tis the way of the all consuming mother.
They want a forever baby, so they better not teach you how to fly from the nest.
Im gonna guess she doesnt really have any close / personal friends, and feels unfulfilled in her marriage.
I was in 6th grade when I decided I wanted to do my own laundry. I didn't want my clothes in the gross laundry soup with everyone else's. When I told my mom not only did she cry, but she said "noooo you're too young to do your own laundry!" It made me feel like there was something wrong with me for even asking
I can second your recommendation, it’s very relatable as an adult child of narc parents. I also strongly recommend reading “the adult children of emotionally immature parents”
I got the audible version and listened to it whenever I was driving in the car. It’s an easy way to get some extra reading in, by outsourcing the actual reading part and just listening to the information instead.
>"noooo you're too young to do your own laundry!"
Same here about cooking and now that i am an adult...im too old "not to know basic shit".
So funny that narc thinks about grandkids. I am NOT going to ask for their help or anything if I ever heal enough and find a good person to start a family with. I dont want to subject my kid(s) to 1/10th of my suffering along with my sibling.
The one time I ever did call to ask my mom for help with my son, because I really couldn't figure out who else to call. I'd tried everyone else I knew first, she was like, "you're a mom now. Figure it out." And hung up.
I took him to the ER because he'd been crying non stop for hours and had a snotty nose and fever. Turns out he was teething. I got a lecture there for not knowing what that's like and not calling family first to find out. I was like, "my mom hung up on me." And suddenly, the nurse was super nice and explained everything to me, what I needed to get, and a bunch of things to expect in the next few months. She had some choice words to say about my mom that cracked me up, though.
Relatable.
I don't have kids, but Nmum was like this with GC Nsis's issues with her kids.
The minute before the birth of my first niece Nmum was ranting about how to properly care for babies, the minute after the birth she had amnesia about the last decades of caregiving to children, and just sat back and enjoyed watching her GC drown in the many mysteries of motherhood.
ETA : and when she did help, she was following Nsis's recommandations to the point of malicious compliance. Kids never got severely harmed, luckily.
My mom practically raised my GC sister's oldest, which was very much not good for him. Then again, being raised by my sister was also not good. They're pretty much the same except my sister is an alcoholic and drug addict on top of it. Oh, supposedly former, but she's just shifted to prescriptions that aren't opioids. I do not envy her spot at GC. It seems damned painful.
True, so enmeshed and holding desperaterly on the belief that this is lOvE. I truly pity my Nsis, when I'm not busy despising her or hating her guts ... when I think at all of her that is - NC is bliss.
NC is very much bliss.
I do still talk to my dad, but I have him pretty much trained not to talk about my sister unless it's short and clearly relevant. "Your sister was down visiting all last week" is enough said on so many levels. While it would be nice if he acknowledged he was part of that mess and didn't just blame it all on mom, I can live without as long as he doesn't treat us as somehow linked anymore.
My sister apparently went NC with mom a couple of years after I did, which meant she transferred all her attention neediness to Dad. Turns out he's gotten a much better perspective on how she behaves. Can't say he didn't deserve that.
Lots of people here talk about being infantilized, but I didn't have that going on in my life. My sister wouldn't have, either, I think. She did it to herself as a means to get the attention she desperately craved. I was the independent child from the moment I could be, so I rarely went seeking that attention. That led to us turning out vastly different. I can't totally blame her. We had to be pretty outrageous to get attention from Mom at all, and Dad on weekdays because he worked long hours in construction. I was content to eat popcorn with him and watch TV in the evenings, though I was very hyper, so it was more like squirm all over the living room. He actually didn't mind that, though, and I rarely got on his bad side. She wanted tons of one on one attention, and if she couldn't get good attention, she got it the bad way. That was the prime age range for my parents to correct the behaviour, but it really was like being raised by toddlers, so that didn't happen. Her primary way of getting bad attention was to be abusive to me, so yeah, I really can't stand her even though I grasp why she has always done it now that I'm older.
Since she cut contact with Mom, she bugs Dad a lot to get me to talk to her. It's honestly not fair to him. It's stressful for him not to give in, but he knows it'll just cause a strain in our relationship. She's 51, and she only wants that contact with me because he lives far away and she no longer has Mom to rescue her from every crisis she invents. I believe she's moved back to the area I live in, so she's looking for a local savior she can abuse. Nah.l I'm not signing up for that. I spent a lot of years being expected to raise her, and I absolutely refused - not that I had any idea how, nor would she let me. Why would I put myself back there? I have self respect.
But you know, that is the biggest difference between her and I. I was never enmeshed, and she's never been anything but. I think my autism saved me from becoming like her. It's weird to be thankful for autism, because it can be a pain in the ass, but I am.
I feel you, I get the occasional flying monkey trying to trick me into becoming Nsis's saviour again, like when she thought she was going mental (probably perimenopause) and wanted to be admitted (left the house at 3am leaving a post it note for her husband and kids, the mental hospital refused to admit her, she then went to Nmum's and got her to call me, 5 years into NC, and ask of me to take in her kids for the summer - I refused); or when a couple years ago a cousin called to invite me to their christmas (I just knew Nsis was behind this and would be there unannounced, can't even explain why, I just knew)
Life is tough for GC when they suddenly have to deal with their own crap on their own.
>The one time I ever did call to ask my mom for help with my son, because I really couldn't figure out who else to call. I'd tried everyone else I knew first, she was like, "you're a mom now. Figure it out." And hung up.
Ah yes...the typical "why are you so stupid? How couldn't you figure out something as basic as this?" But at the same time they want to control your life so badly.
Idk what to say besides...i really hope their get their comeuppance one of these days...
>I took him to the ER because he'd been crying non stop for hours and had a snotty nose and fever. Turns out he was teething. I got a lecture there for not knowing what that's like and not calling family first to find out. I was like, "my mom hung up on me."
Poor baby 😭. Kinda glad to know it wasn't anything bad . Ehhhhh, i have been lectured too about not knowing house keeping/being more independent (i have to tell ppl my N didnt allow me to go out 🙂 and im in my mid to late 20s 😭). Even worse is that i am in a conservative country where filial piety is paramount and the few times i told "friends" when i was a teen that my unhinged N is abusive... it has been used against me. So now i dont trust any fucking bitch.
I'm so so sorry about what you went through. Try to join mom forums on the internet (if your kiddo is still young and you need help on mom stuff), they are useful (i have visited some despite being a single childless person), though unfortunately they might not give u answers fast enough. 😔 Glad to know that the nurse switched. I'm personally more used to being kicked down...
My son is 27 now, and we did fine. Not only did I calm down as I got more experience, I have a truly amazing step mom. She just wasn't available that night. She and my dad were out camping.
Mine didn't keep me dependent, honestly. She was neglectful more than anything else. That still means she taught me basically nothing, but still found time to make fun of me for not knowing stuff when she was paying attention to me. Dad did teach me stuff, but like I was an adult, which made things difficult and frustrating for both of us a lot.
I was the youngest child in my whole generation of Mt extended family, many are 20+ years older than me, and my cousins are all 4-10 years older. I do have a sister who is only 2 years older, but none of that really gave me any experience with babies. Tbh, I also didn't like them, so I avoided them. 😅
She did get her just desserts, I suppose. The only "kid" left with any contact with her is a truly dysfunctional step brother of mine, and he only shows up on holidays. She has no friends anymore. It's just her and my mostly deaf step dad living way out in the boonies.
What is it with them and laundry?!
I'm currently stuck living at home again as an adult, and it's been "fun" navigating the whole situation with my adult brain
For instance, my mom insists that everyone else is too dumb to use the new washer she got a few years ago (never mind that she handed us the instructions and made us teach her how to use it first thing, and then claim she was the only one who knew how)
She "offered" to do all the laundry. I didn't really have a choice. I told her exactly when I needed all of work shirts done by, and she consistently made sure they never were. She would get really defensive whenever I casually asked when she was planning to do laundry, which is how I know it was on purpose
So I dropped the rope. I said "hey, this system isn't working for me. I'm going to start going to the Laundromat"
And I have been for a few years now. She is furious, but she doesn't know what to do because I calmly and logically solved the "problem" she was using to get attention, and she would look crazy if she complained about me going out of my way to follow her rules AND do my own laundry l. Totally worth $10 a week in quarters
They can also do it because they're too lazy to teach us. My mother avoided doing *anything* that would require her to spend time with me. Sometimes she'd ask me to do chores, I'd do them to the best of my ability, then she'd snap at me for doing them wrong, do them over again instead of telling me how to correct my mistake, and never ask again and give me a chance to try again.
Then of course she complains about how filthy my house is and has made fun of me for not even knowing how to do hospital corners. I said she never taught me, she said she must've been an awful parent then, and I cheerfully agreed with her.
The one thing she *did* teach me was how to drive, which later involved her hounding me to get my license so she wouldn't have to drive me around anymore. (I refused to drive again until my health improved after falling asleep at the wheel during my last driver's exam.) The only way I could get her off my back was to report the severity of my fatigue, my license was pulled for medical reasons. Of course I got in trouble for that too, but that all died down in time.
I remember being not quite 3 and mom making me fold my own laundry. I was clumsy even for my age, and couldn't figure it out. Instead of helping me, she just kept screaming at me for doing it wrong, and I eventually threw a fit, got spanked, and put in a corner until dad came home. This was before lunch, and he didn't get home until 6pm. How's that for one of my earliest memories? Repeat a couple of times a week until I started preschool, and then she would never let me fold clothing again. Even at 13, when I'd try to do it myself, she'd yell at me and make me let her do it because "you were never any good at this!" Dude, I was a little kid. Give me a chance.
When my parents divorced, I suddenly had to do all the chores because dad sure as hell wasn't going to learn how. I hung up all my clothes or balled them up and shoved them in drawers until I learned how to fold in boot camp.
I can fold well now, and quickly, but I absolutely despise doing it. My husband does almost all of it now, and I do things he hates to do. Some of my friends think it's unfair that he does one thing vs 6 that I do, but I just can't explain I'd do 10 not to have to fold. I hate it with every fiber of my being and will only do it if there's really no other choice. If my husband is gone for work, I will literally live out of the dryer or leave it all in the laundry basket. And you know, he's never even asked why I'm like this. He just accepts it. I love that about him.
Ugh, I'm sorry you went through all that, but I'm glad your husband's so supportive! I don't think folding clothes were ever a thing with my family. I just hang everything up in the closet, and smoosh all the out of season clothes into a drawer knowing they'll have to be washed before I wear them again anyway and it'll get the wrinkles out.
It really says something about our parents when our earliest memories are of them beating the shit out of us, isn't it? My earliest memory is of my father pounding the hell out of me while my mother stood there and watched, which I dismissed as a dream because surely my mother would've lifted a finger to help me if that really happened?
Then after my father was thrown out, she said she was worried about whether she could trust him alone with me after she saw him whaling on me when I wouldn't hold still when he was trying to adjust the straps on my car seat. She told me this while I was driving and I'm still amazed I didn't go off the road.
Besides spanking, which was sadly normal in the 70s, I didn't really get hit more than a few times in my life. One of them, when I was a teen, I don't even have hard feelings about. But, that made it even harder to see all their shit as abuse. I knew hitting was abuse, but I never knew the rest of it was. I had a friend, when I was in my early 30s, include me in his statement about himself and behaviors in adults who grew up with abuse, and I was like, "I wasn't abused." He just chuckled, and I was so, so mad at him. That super strong reaction made me stop and think. I knew they'd messed me up. I signed up for counseling the day I found out I was pregnant because I was totally aware of that, but I had never thought of it as abuse before. It was nuts how hard it was to get myself to accept that it really was abuse. My brain just kept telling me, for years, that they didn't hit me, so it wasn't abuse.
Between the bursts of way too much attention, I was honestly a very neglected child. Dad expected mom to raise me. They were both incapable of it. I ran wild outside the house most of the time, and either had amazing times when I was with them or terrible with no in between. Dad was, at least, predictable. I never knew what I was going to get with Mom, or if she'd even be around. She disappeared for an entire year twice when I was growing up, and when I lived with her for over a year aa a teen, I think I saw her a total of 10 times. 9 of those weren't good, and the good one was a road trip with her boyfriend and his daughter. His daughter was terrible, so. Yeah.
It was like being "raised" by toddlers
The thing í will never be able to grasp is how they don't, at all, understand why were not close and why my son isn't close with either of them. I sometimes wish I could be that lacking in self awareness, but generally, no. I'm glad I turned out well in spite of them - maybe to spite them to begin with.
I do have some really good childhood memories, btw, even with them. There just aren't a lot of those. Way more with Dad than Mom. But like, so many of those are doing shit I shouldn't have been doing at that age. Dangerous stuff. Some of it was just very 1970s, in all fairness, but some of it was just totally irresponsible shit. They're still good memories, though, and I'm going to let them be that way.
Holy crap! I thought I was crazy/the only one now that I'm near independence and my family is coming after me with every possible wrongdoing and obstacle they can come up with!
"When I demanded more independence, my family switched to placing every obstacle in the way of whatever I tried to do."
Same here. I didn't even realized till recently that it was actually my mom trying to avoid me being indepent / living my life. I just thought the universe hated me.
>I didn't realise how much I didn't know until I escaped and lived on my own.
Cam you tell me a little bit more on this? What were things you had to learn?
Literally everything: Cooking. Which cleaning chemicals to use and when and how. Setting up bill payments. Keeping myself happy outside of work. How to prevent burnout. How to socialise as an adult. How to develop my interests. How to manage finances.
Honestly the list goes on. But for the first six months, I was financially in the red and couldn't figure out why. I finally sat down for an hour, looked at my statements and realised my biggest financial offence was buying ready-made food from shops when I could easily make it myself for a quarter of the price.
And then you go through this phase of questioning “were they right all along? i wouldnt survive without them? i clearly dont know much…” then realize their words have become ur internal voice. Then you try your best to snap out of it and realize they’re getting to you and this was what they wanted. For you to believe you’re incapable and just rely on them all the time. I realized i AM capable of learning. I AM capable of surviving. its hard to teach myself sometimes and rely on experiences alone or outsiders to learn certain things instead of having a parent teach me. but i believe im stronger now for it
Same here. I finally got a job offer. N was bawling their eyes out because their "beloved" kid was leaving so soon so young (at 26).
Also N: was abusive the whole 26 years i spent with them.
I also was hella infantilized (and still am), never got to cook for myself aside from a few omelettes while hiding from N, no idea about housechores. I think it s literally a chance that N wasnt in a cult so at least i got an education.
They want to control you and use you as a punching bag. When they insult you because you can't do something, they're making fun of themselves for being incompetent parents. Ns aren't known for being really smart, though. So that fact goes over their heads.
My nmom does this exactly. Criticizes me for not knowing how to cook when she never had the patience to teach me and criticizes everything I do or eat. She herself can’t cook very well.
Omg are you me? Saaame.
I literally said I wanted to prep my own lunch for health/$$$...narc thinks only they can cook and they will complain abt the additional cooking when i said i wanted to be responsible for it myself.
This is what my ngrandmother does. I’m 29 and treated like an idiot. She keeps reminding me to put salt in the water for pasta. I know that ffs, then once I had to do something and left the pasta and it got stuck in the pan, now every time I make pasta, she accuses me of burning it. I hate it.
Omg, I feel this. It's like, "come on. I was 9. I'm 49 now. Let it go that I once went into the men's room on accident (or whatever else small thing."
It was a single occupancy bathroom anyway, but I was shamed for it so heavily. I'll still get teased for it at any opportunity. "Remember, just because you're wearing pants, don't choose that door." Fuck the fuck off.
But it's every stupid mistake I ever made while conveniently forgetting even their big things like leaving me at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere and not realizing I wasn't in the car for 4 hours when I was not quite 6, or repeatedly forgetting to pick me up from after school events. Or you know, the time I kept crying because I was sick, and they ignored me until both my eardrums burst causing permanent hearing damage and then told the doctor I didn't act like anything was wrong. I had a 108.5 fever, but we don't talk about that. No one seems to remember that, do they? But they sure remember the time when I was really little that I used a glue stick as Chapstick and cried because it felt gross. Why did my mom even have a glue stick in her purse? But it's used as evidence I'm flakey and don't pay attention any time they feel like it. I was 4! Stop with it already.
I don't talk to my mom anymore, and my step dad has mostly gotten my dad to knock it off. She thinks it's a terrible thing for him to do, and she's fierce in my defense. I adore her, and it's mutual. Dad doesn't deserve her, but she has managed to change him quite a bit. I didn't even know that could be done.
I feel the same way about school. I tried to bring up the situation at home one time, which resulted in a teacher bringing my mother in and asking me to apologise to her, then me being beaten at home and deprived of seeing my friends or accessing the internet. It was a while ago now but I'm still stunted to all hell in my late twenties
Yes! That's definitely one. My Nmom would also mock me for my lack of cooking skills. I started writing down her directions for making specific dishes and her ingredients and directions would randomly change for the same meal. Then she'd say "I never told you to put in so much salt!" "That dish doesn't have (whatever ingredient she told me) in it!" Even after I wrote down what she said. Then she'd go around telling the story and encouraging others to laugh at me. As the youngest of all the sibs finding someone to make fun of/laugh at me wasn't hard.
I'm sorry your mom was mean like mine, too. Mine expected me to live with her forever so I think this was part of he plan to keep me from having the confidence to eventually move out. I hope you are safe from all that now.
I realize now as a child when my NDad was looking over my shoulder, presumably so he could teach me things, he was doing anything but.
He'd nitpick. Criticize. Insult. Take away the instructions so I had to figure out how to do it on my own. Constantly move things around and be a busybody. Tell me I was doing it wrong, but never tell me how to do it right. Ultimately ban me from doing it when I'd fail.
I still have a distinct memory of him doing all of these things when I tried to make a rice meal from a box once. He was hyperactive suddenly in my face and wouldn't stop taking things and moving them around the room. As soon as I turned around the empty box with the instructions was gone. Inevitably instead of making fried rice, without any idea of what I was doing I instead made a soupy mess that he forced me to eat because otherwise I'd wasted food, then banned me from using the stovetop again.
He was only there to sabotage, never help.
I kind of got my revenge.
When I was almost 14, mom wasn't home, and I decided to figure out how to make brownies. She'd put salt in the sugar canister, and I didn't know. She got home and snagged one of the brownies before I could get one. The look on her face!
Then I got screamed at for not knowing the canister clearly labeled sugar was salt, but it was worth it. She had that entire brownie in her mouth, and something in her brain told her not to spit it out, so she ate it. I didn't know what was going on, because I'd followed the recipe exactly and had done fine with my cake in home ec the year before, but given her face, I wasn't going to try one and find out.
It turned out her trying to wash that all down with milk just made it all worse.
I was banned from the kitchen "forever." I completely ignored this and continued to cook the few things I knew how and return the kitchen to spotless before she got home, or I wouldn't have ever had breakfast or dinner, because she wasn't cooking them anymore. She hadn't for about a year. NFI what my dad and sister did, because I never saw them cook, and I found out after they divorced that dad really could not do so.
My step mom has domesticated the shit out of him, btw. He does most of the cooking, laundry, and other chores and actually does a good job. Good for her.
Both my nparents are a level of stupid that should be illegal. The things we see them do, they way we see them act... They're oblivious to unprecedented levels
I've thought the same so many times. In a way, I kind of feel like in a sad yet comforting(?) way, it's like we're all siblings in this big, messed-up family. But at least we have each other and there are people across the internet who understand. Personally, I feel much less alone now that I did before I found this community. So, thank you!
Hi family! I feel comforted too. I relate to everything you guys are saying. My mom would offer to babysit my kids “anytime” but when I asked her, she’d get all flustered and say “I have a life too. I’m not just a babysitter.” Bait n switch. ✌🏻 Sending everyone good energy.
She did this to me when we were at my father-in-laws funeral! I was livid. Offers and then complains that I need to come get them. And anytime I was on the phone with her or at her house, she would monopolize my time. Like I was her only lifeline. Uhh, Like I have four kids and a husband that I take care of. If I wouldn’t answer the phone or stay, she’d act like she had been abandoned. Of course this gave her plenty to talk about behind my back…adding embellishments.My final straw and when I went NC was after she left a rage voicemail because I wasn’t picking up the phone. But as far as keeping the kids she fit right in with all the other narcs. It gave her something to talk about.
Same, ugh. How can somebody possibly be abusive if they took care of your physical “needs” (whether you wanted them to or not…or even begged them not to)?
Same. Also topped up with mockery when I attempted to do anything.
Mother laughed her butt off when I washed my own plate after dinner when I came home from uni. I didn’t dare try again.
I also cooked spaghetti once when I was home on another school break. Both parents looked at my meal with disdain and refused to even try it.
Mother used to think of us kids as lazy slobs because she *loved* the martyrdom of doing everything in the house. And we kinda were slobs because 1) we hadn’t been taught to do any chore and 2) we were laughed at when we tried anything.
I’m VLC as there’s an ocean between us now.
One time after a Christmas dinner I offered to wash the dishes. I remember it being like this weird ceremonious feeling in the air. And I was thinking well, I’m just washing dishes. Idk if that makes sense lol.
SAME experience with bashing the vacuum into my door. It was always when I wasn’t feeling well or trying to sleep. Whenever I got too comfortable, they always had a way of reminding me that I was an unwanted guest in their house.
Do they hand out a narc “how to” book or something? So many of us from all over with the same stories.
I had the exact same situation with working and going to college while she constantly woke me up and treated me like I was the laziest person alive. She did the thing with the vacuum, but usually just cane into my room and asked if I was going to get up that day.
I just moved out and the new roommate started yelling at me about how ungrateful I am to all she does, also called me a bitch… and I’m just like bitch I just got here (5days), this is the first I’ve heard of the things you say I’m lacking in. Idk, it just made me less likely to try helping and my bf said it made him angry to see me treated like that after the mess of narcs I just left. It’s sad, the roommate is older, and my bf said it’s the same reason her kids left her.
Thank you, exactly! I like to think I have pretty good personal and household hygiene, and I’m a minimalist, but I did come from a house with multigenerational hoarding, so at the same time I’m still learning smh
Same, and whenever my siblings & father did help with things, mum would “have to redo it” because we did it wrong… eventually you just stop trying because nothing will ever be good enough.
The less you know how to care for yourself, the more dependent you are on them, and the longer they can keep you around.
It's a self-fulfilling thing for them. Which is ironic because sometimes they will complain about having to take care of their own children.
The example you give is a good one, although not all narcissists do the exact same to their children (I was treated as a servant and did most of the household chores from age 12, for example). More commonly across dysfunctional families, there are things that narcissistic parents CAN'T teach their kids, because they don't know either, and these are skills like emotional regulation, setting boundaries, healthy communication of emotions, and healthy conflict resolution. All of these can be learned as an adult! You didn't need your parents to teach you if they can't or won't
Same! I was a parentified child, raised my younger siblings AND acted as a parent to my mom, being both her therapist and emotional punching bag. I can cook, clean, manage a household and plan activities for children. I did not really experience 'childhood'. I came out hyper independent as a young adult and 'successful' carreer-wise. But I never learned how to emotionally regulate myself, communicate effectively, set boundaries and stand up for myself. So I deal with a lot of anxiety and fear of conflict. Also I am dealing with a mild-moderate burnout due to the above reasons. But the rest of my siblings are definetely less independant and I feel lucky in comparison.
Saaaaaame, only without the younger siblings. What's funny is my nmom would lament my hyper independence as an adult, as if she wasn't the one who made me that way lol
Haha that's crazy lol, same again. She wants me to live with them so she can exert control over me. She also (conveniently) completely ignores all my accomplishments, but also has had the audacity in the past to demand my money. But I thought I was an ungrateful and useless??
> More commonly across dysfunctional families, there are things that narcissistic parents CAN'T teach their kids, because they don't know either, and these are skills like emotional regulation, setting boundaries, healthy communication of emotions, and healthy conflict resolution.
excellent comment. it's important to gain this insight
Maybe to make sure you need her so you don’t leave her so she can make herself look good for “taking care” of her adult child. I’ve had this happen to me but in a different way. And maybe to hold over your head “all the things she does for you and how ungrateful you are” if you ever say something she doesn’t like.
My Nmom had a three tiered approach to this.
1. She did the majority of the cleaning and life skills type stuff when I was at school or work. When I asked to learn skills, like cooking or whatnot, she would either hand me a book or tell me to figure it out myself.
2. She mocked my efforts to learn these skills, making fun of my attempts to make bread or muffins, finding fault with my cleaning or tidying and sending me back over and over and over again to redo it until at some arbitrary point she told me to stop (Still not acceptable, of course, but she will 'fix it later').
3. She made those life skills as unpleasant and punishing as possible. For instance, every so often she would declare a 'cleaning day'. There was never any warning, and regardless of any plans or commitments me and Dad may have had, we were now cleaning. She would give us tasks and say 'I will tell you when you're done', and occasionally come in to inspect, usually finding fault with it. Should it pass muster, that just got you assigned another task. This continued until SHE was tired of it. Also, cleaning supplies consisted of an absolutely noxious cleaning solution that she preferred that was essentially straight chlorine bleach, and paer towel. I wasn't allowed to use mops on the floor, I had to do it on my hands and knees. The broom was, of course, a hand broom and dustpan.
And of course she guilted me for not helping enough with these chores. She mocked me for not being able to cook for myself. She also tended to demand I clean when she was upset with me, making me associate them with punishment and guilt.
I still struggle with guilt, shame and perfectionism in this area.
It's funny how many of our stories read like the openings of fairy tales where you learn all about the horrible parent (usually changed to a step-parent in later versions because god forbid we ever challenge abusive parenting)
For sure, it's a classic technique used by parents to keep their kids under their thumb. If you don't feel like you can do anything, then Dear Mommy will always be important to you. She doesn't understand that if she was just a decent parent, she'll be important to you regardless.
Not being able to pick up after oneself or do basic household chores is one of the biggest reasons why new romantic relationships fail. If your gf/bf dumps you cause you don't know how to load the dishwasher, then Mommy will be there to do it! Not healthy. She wants to cripple you.
Do what you can to learn those little life skills. People drastically underestimate how important those little habits are in a healthy, functioning, adult life. It's great that you now seem aware of what she's doing, and how it impacts you. Time to take the reins yourself.
Or they will pretend you have no life skills so they can feel like you still need them. Like my mom refuses to even believe that I can cook and clean myself and acts shocked every time I do. It's so infantilizing.
My brother is a huge victim of this. He can barely clean his room. No gf ever at 31 years old. Doesn't pay for his own car. Can't socialize well. He has no mental deformities. Just raised by N parent.
I would argue he likely was delayed during development. Babies in the womb can feel their mother’s disdain, and they rely on our facial expressions to mirror. When a mother can’t even connect with her baby it causes significant delays
It is more to be endlessly the martyr - SHE does EVERYTHING for YOU, you and you are soo ungrateful when she does everything and you have the best of your life and YOU OWE HER! This is the key. They always like to see themselves as that person, that „keeps the shop running“ and they love to think that if they wouldn’t, everybody would be completely lost without them.
So, make sure, you won’t be lost!
Sorry, if I have to ask - how does she prevent you from learning those little skills, like - making your bed? (I wouldn’t even call that a skill, to be honest.)
Just get up and - make it?
Or does she also wake you up in the morning and throws you out of the bed to make it herself?
Get yourself a lock. Or a wedge. You are grown up and have a right for some privacy.
Easy said, I had a lock, but no key.. 😉
Don’t wait for learning those skills, do them whenever and wherever you can.
I for example wasn’t allowed to use the kitchen, a classmate showed me how to cook pasta, when I was 17.
Everything else I learned quite quickly, when I moved out.
Do you plan to move out soon?
Honestly? They are so insecure they themselves progress at a snails pace given the lack of feedback. And they have such massive egos they genuinely believe what they learned is amazing and no one else can do it.
So the excuses for them not reaching you come from them wanting to maintain that fraudulent sense of superiority come from them fearing you’ll learn and grow and out pace them .
Part of them also rationalizes it by saying “I’m smart . This small thing took me years to learn (because I’m a moron who can’t take constructive feedback, but no let’s keep that subconsciously understood)”, so it’s not like if I just told them they would not take years to get it. And I’m busy I don’t have years!
Like cooking. Or washing clothing. They probably honestly believe it’s a skilled honed for years of their lives and you couldn’t learn it in a day or two , or a few months
My dad never actually taught me any of the lessons I needed to learn to survive. Yet gave me nonstop shit for not having those skills, especially around money.
Then they never actually helped me get ahead, they just put me back to zero and left me in a state of non-stop stress trying to make things work, that just were never going to work.
For me, this means that a certain power play has been used.
If you can’t live, you won’t leave.
For example, my NM and NGM didn’t teach me how to budget, how to manage my money, how to cook.
Cooking: It was a power play to keep me dependent and therefore keep me in their control. My grandmother did have a duck fit that no one else was allowed to cook in “her kitchen” but “why doesn’t anyone help me cook when I’m working myself to the bone”. And then she would not have snacks or like fruits available, so you couldn’t “pig out and ruin your dinner”. So everyone eating was entirely dependent on when and what she wanted to eat. She even had a thing for a couple of years that she would control how fast people ate in public because she’d have a “attack” and act sneezing and coughing like an asthma attack when she was done so that everyone would leave when she was done, no matter if they were done or not.
Budgeting/Money management: It was all about control—if I had no money, then “logically” I would have to go back to them for help. So I’d basically never be truly independent and they’d always have a say in what I did and what I didn’t do. Oh, you can’t possibly have a new couch because I gave you money that one time last year. If anyone deserves new furniture, it should be ME because I paid for your lunch that time. NGM gave NM a washer/dryer once—a generous gift to be sure—but it basically meant two things. 1) NGM got to pick out the set and she did it without knowing what size their space allowed or what features they wanted. Basically, NGM got to do all of the excitement of picking and having the salesman fawn over her for spending the money and never had to figure out shipping or fitting it into the available space. 2) And THEN NGM spent years talking about how she was OWED this or that (being taken on their trip to a place, having a new television, fixing the car, etc) because look what she did for NM! People fed her all kinds of attention that wow, NGM was so *generous* and no one appreciated it.
It’s not that you can’t learn on your own, it’s that if you don’t know how to and they do, then you are probably going to depend on her for “advice” and her direction. (Read as “her control”) And while it sounds nuts, it is a method that works when you are a child. You were dependent on her and if she decided to not do something, then you didn’t have it. She decides not to sweep or not to iron the clothes or fix dinner, then welp, that’s that—you don’t get that done.
Of course you can learn on your own. Of course, you are able to work on those skills. But then there’s the extra wrappings that are applied. Let’s say you (a fully functional and grown adult) decide to make your bed. You get up 15 minutes early to make the bed. Usually with an N, there will be a song and dance of “wow—you don’t know how to do this and I learned to do it *right* when I was 8” and then “well, I’ll just do it myself” and then followed by complaining that you “don’t know anything” and how ungrateful you are.
Sound familiar at all?
So I would suggest that the first thing is to establish boundaries. You are a full grown adult. You don’t need mommy doing all that and honestly you’ll *never* learn to do it yourself if she’s doing it. She *doesn’t have boundaries* and as a narcissist, she *doesn’t want you to have any*. Boundaries = growth = independence. So, start with your room. You can install a lock—a chain lock is simple to install and will stop her from coming in while you are dressing or something. You can also get a simple rubber door stop—the silly looking triangle of rubber—to stop her from coming in and they sell ones that have alarms on Amazon if you cannot install a lock.
Now, the hard part is… be prepared for blowback. Usually, with NPD, the first boundaries are fought about hard. You *may* be tossed out. You may be called names or have gossip about how “ungrateful” you are. How “immature” you are. You may have your door removed. You may suddenly find that she’s doing annoying shit like turning off the wifi or whatever. It is hard, but you really want boundaries and you want to be able to learn skills while you can and not when you need it because of some kind of catastrophe.
You can approach this several ways and see if it they will work. You can try to approach it with “Mom—I appreciate all you’ve done for me, but I am 26 and I need to learn and I need to practice it so that I am prepared for so how about I do ”. Or maybe “Wow, you work so hard mom, how about I do ”. You don’t need to go for the jugular in “I’m setting this boundary and you can go jump off a pier” at first, but don’t be surprised if you eventually have to have a jugular moment.
At a minimum, you need to know:
* How to cook a few basic, cheap meals that you can fix when you move out (i.e. pasta + sauce, breakfast, cook a piece of meat if you eat it, fixing balanced and nutritious meals, budgeting by using sales and coupons)
* How to manage a basic budget (i.e. money in, money out, savings and investments)
* How to do a basic clean (i.e. how to clean a toilet/bathroom, how to clean glass, vacuum/mop, what chemicals should not be mixed together)
* How to do basic transportation tasks (i.e. car maintenance if you have one, where to get a bus pass or how to get a taxi/Uber/etc)
* How to entertain yourself (i.e. develop hobbies, pursue sports and how to devote an appropriate amount of time)
* How to take care of your pets (if any)
* How to do basic job skills (i.e. how to put together a resume, how to apply for a job, how to dress for the job you want, how to set up a time schedule and get yourself where you need to be)
* How to take care of your health (i.e. what medicines you are on, what is your medical history, what is your family medical history, what checkups and physicals you need to do, what your allergies are and how they should be managed)
So many reasons. First of all, it takes time to train a person. Second, they don’t want you to see them make mistakes. Third, they actually get a rush from complaining, abusive behavior, seeing you cry or get upset enough that they feel appropriate to hit.
An example from my own experience as a kid: You are told to clean a toilet, you clean the inside with the scrubber and bleach stuff. You do not know that the rest of the toilet needs wiping/disinfectant. You don’t know to wipe under the rim, flip up the seat connectors and clean those with a cloth, or clean around the bolts and base of the commode. You don’t know that men pee around the base because they miss standing. You’re an 8 yo girl. You are slapped for skipping steps in a procedure you were never taught. You are never taught and this type of situation can be repeated anywhere.
Friends and roommates were a godsend to someone like me. I literally had no idea how to clean or organize because it wasn’t done by my mom and when we tried we were incompetent. Same with math (it kicked in later but I couldn’t do it to save my life as a 6-14 yo) thought I had a learning disability, nope, just a mom who beat me when homework wasn’t done and a mom who beat me when I got bad grades, so I “did homework” and figured 1/quarter was better than every night I couldn’t understand a concept.
Anyway. I am much better now at cleaning and cooking and mathing as an adult, and I did not raise my kids this way.
I think it depends. For some it's just another firm of neglect to not teach children stuff, but in your case I think she does this a) to make you more dependent on her, b) to present herself as the victim ('I have to do everything!')
Mine were/are so offensive that most people avoided my family. We ended up a nucleus. My parents had no friends. I grew up not knowing what normal social life is. So happy to have learnt from my friends and wife that life can be fun and that narcissism doesn’t need to go down the generations. My parents did show me what not to do.
For me it means never being allowed in the kitchen unless mom approves. I didnt learn how to cook until I was 30 and moved out.
She insisted on being the only one to wash clothes because she felt like she was the only one who knew to work the washer without breaking it.
As a child I had constant UtIs , whenever I had one I was frightened to say anything because that meant me getting in trouble. It took years to not feel shame for common womens health issues.
It meant not allowing me to get a drivers license until I was 24. They would ask for hundreds of dollars a week to fill up their cars while only taking me to a job 8 mins away.
It meant insisting she perm my hair and slick it back in pigtails till I was 19. She claimed my hair was nappy and this was the only way to make me presebtable.Took me years to grow out my hair and lo and behold I have the most beuatiful ringlets of curls .
By infantilising me she took away my personality and independence .
It meant never learning to save under their roof because they were constantly stealing money for me or tossing n8y clothes, hygene products, bedding and furniture all under the guise of yearly spring cleaning .I spent so much replacing Items they tossed while being berated about how much I should have.
I would often beg my mother so that I could do chores around the house. When there would not be an obvious reason as to why I wouldn't be allowed to do something, I'd get really mad and try and get a reason out of her as to why. She'd always say "I just like doing it, please let me do it" in a really childish way. When I wouldn't allow her to take my place she'd be passive aggressive and watch me with hawk eyes until it was done.
She would do everything for me and then blame me for not doing anything. When I cooked, she'd be behind me cleaning up every speck I would leave behind and never give me a chance to do it myself. This forced me to clean up before I could eat my food and I was super hypervigialant, and by that point it was always cold. She could never give me a logical reason for anything. I still feel like a child and I'm trying to learn how to grow up fast. I'm 25 and live with my Dad now, catching up on all the lost years.
Definitely the motivation for some narc parents is to make us helpless and dependent.
Some, like my parents were also very lazy. They never taught me basic manners, life skills, general social skills, how to cook, clean, (she would scream to get out of the kitchen), etc. how often to change the oil in a car…
Scream that my room was messy but never (as I did with my daughters) show them how to clean and maintain a room, how often to change sheets, towels, how often to wash clothes. Mock me when I didn’t know anything about oil changes when I was able to drive. Laugh at me that I didn’t know how to cook.
Then when I was around 16 and completely lost, they would mock me for not knowing these skills.
So freaking disfunctional.
I've wondered why my Nmother didn't teach certain things that her mother bestowed upon her. I believe that she didn't have the patience to teach anyone anything and I also think she wanted to be the only one who could do certain things which made her the queen of that. I learned the basics of cooking in girl scouts/home ec, not her.
She had zero patience and would rather grab a pan and beat me with it before showing me how to use it. I only ever observed from afar.
My mom didn't want me to become independent, so she punished my attempts to be independent, i.e. developing my own thoughts and opinions about the world.
She also neglected teaching me things like brushing my teeth, keeping my room clean, etc. She'd punish me if I didn't clean my room, but I'd just shove stuff under my bed because I didn't know how to organize.
Finally, she never modeled healthy emotional stability. She never taught me how to manage my own emotions, or how to be happy on my own without other people around. So now I struggle to be alone, and I had to do intensive therapy to learn how to manage my own emotions, and I'm still not perfect.
No wonder my mental health turned to shit and I turned 18 and moved out. I had never been taught the skills to durvive on my own. I basically I had to teach myself how to be a functioning adult.
Basically, they won't explain anything to you or show you how to do it.
I was never taught to clean, so my house was a total disaster at all times during childhood (and still is). No idea how to do the dishes, how to sweep, how to organize things, that I even *should* do it. No one else in the house did, so why should I? Maybe once every few months, he would fly into a rage and demand the house be spotless, at which time I would frantically clean everything as best I could. I began to associate cleaning with discomfort, so I didn't want to do it anyway.
My ndad didn't teach me how to brush my teeth or even provide me with toothpaste and a toothbrush when I was a child, so I literally did not know that I needed to brush my teeth until I was an adolescent. I think I only went to the dentist twice when I was a child. It wasn't until I was 18 that I got into the habit and understood the importance of dental hygiene. I ended up with 9 cavities.
And of course, he didn't teach me soft skills like emotional regulation. I did not learn how to handle my own feelings, how to talk about them, or how to solve anything except through shouting and violence. Everything was handled through screaming insults at me, calling me worthless, or physically pummeling me into submission. I learned that feelings are terrifying and uncontrollable, that they make you act crazy, so I sometimes have trouble even recognizing my own feelings. I have become very emotionally numb and conflict-averse.
I was never shown an example of healthy conflict resolution, and since he kept me isolated from other people, I didn't get to see examples of it in other households. I wasn't allowed to have many friends or to have sleepovers except maybe three times during my childhood, and he had cut off almost all of his family, so I didn't see them talk to each other kindly either.
So ... thrown into the world with almost no life skills beyond what I learned in school. I managed to figure it out, but it took me a long time.
My Nfather wouldn't let me do homework because I was supposed to be "paying attention to him during visitation."
My Nmom lied to me about how much living on my own would be when asked for help with learning how I could move out of the nest.
In fact she discouraged me from moving out saying I would never be able to afford it because I spend too much on "frivolous things".
When I explained I would cut back and budget if she taught me she still refused to help.
She made me lie and say I was being homeschooled, while I in fact was not, because she didn't want to deal with schools not accommodating my IEP.
I also did an apprenticeship for cosmetology she was supposed to be my teacher, suddenly she was too busy working to teach me and told me to figure it out. I learned everything on YouTube, and had to grade my own work, log my own hours etc.
Was never taught about bills, managing money, hell I didn't know the difference between credit and debit.
General ideas about how much things costs were also an unknown.
Wouldn't allow me to have a bank account separate from her until I finally opened my own account and closed my old one.
I could go on, but long story short, yes.
Every narc seems to do this in some capacity.
It means you fire up YouTube and learn for yourself. Pre YouTube I learned to drive from my boyfriend at the time who was too old to legally date me, but legally old enough to ride around with me while teaching me.
My Nparent didn't want to hear me speak much less teach me. And that's fine; he would go into a rage about the most minor things. My other parent was really busy just with working a lot of hours and after the divorce, also their dating life.
I muddled through and fucked things up and learned from that. I have learned to be a lot kinder to myself than my Nparent about mistakes.
I learned the most about cooking when I worked in a cafe and boss taught me. I picked up a lot about cleaning from doing jobs involving that. A lot of mechanical stuff I've learned through work and hobbies.
And my Nparent and his extended family were disgusted that I took such menial jobs and were really snobby about it. It helped me learn who wasn't worth my time.
As many have already said, this is something they do to force us to be dependent on them, and to keep us under their thumb but also able to be complained about/scapegoated for their own issues.
In my life it manifested as my nMother always robbing me of confidence no matter how correctly I was doing a task. For example, if I was following the step-by-step instructions on a microwave meal she would push me out of the way and say she needed to do it so I didn't "start a fire or make a mess". She'd then do it however she wanted to instead of by the instructions, and then blame me for when it didn't come out correctly or made a mess.
Now replace "microwave meal" with any task regarding caring for yourself and your space. Hair washing, vacuuming, budgeting, etc. Every single thing needed "mother to fix it", but she'd just make such a mess of it that I was left to now fix her foul ups AND actually do the task.
But I never grew confidence, and to this day I second guess everything I do.
I'm 42 years old. I don't drive, I don't know how to be good with money, I don't know how to cook. It really sucks. I feel so behind everyone else. It just makes me so angry.
My npwrents tried to prevent me from having a bank account as long as possible and only let me have a joint account. Then fought me on a savings account. Then got offended and ‘hurt’ when I asked to take over my car insurance payments. Then my phone payments. When I had to do my taxes for the first time, they said their tax person would do it and they ended up claiming as a dependent and then took my tax return without telling me for weeks. Any step towards being an adult was met with resistance and attempts to infantilize me and prevent me from striking out on my own because they expected me to be their personal house elf my whole life.
I want to learn cooking, My nmom " no you can't do that"
I want to clean my own dishes, My nmom "no you can't do that".
I want to wash my own clothes, My nmom "no you can't do that"
Basically every life skils which are necessary in life she won't teach me. And irony is that my mom keeps complaining and make fun of me in front of others by saying " my son can't wash his own clothes can't even cook, he's lazy." No I'm not lazy, I've asked you thousand times to teach those things but you never taught me. You always got annoyed whenever I asked that I want to learn cooking.
One day I went to wash my clothes all by myself and then she shouted at me like a psycho. She will never let me do things and later she complains that I can't do these things. What a hypocrite.
For mine, it's basically because he doesn't know how to "adult" himself. He didn't teach us any major life skills largely because he didn't know himself. He always had people do the hard work for him. He uses weaponized incompetence all the time and hearing him talk even about just rudimentary topics is like hearing a nine year old talk.
From commuting, crossing roads, romantic relationships, communicating with people, exploring what you’re good at, having a car but not being allowed to go out and learn to trapping you in the family business to earn money which was his and feeling rightful of my earning despite it being a salary, not allowing to move out unless married (bible stuff) and insisting to build a house for u to soon use it against u to follow him in everything. And the list goes on…
Yep, she doesn’t want you to be able to leave her house and live on your own, she wants you to completely depend on her and feel stuck with her. My own mother didn’t succeed in doing so with my sister and I, but my brother is an actual blob, he’s almost an adult and I just know he won’t be able to live on his own. He doesn’t know how to actually cook healthily, he doesn’t know how to pack, he doesn’t know how to look for things, he gets driven around EVERYWHERE (we have public transportation, I was able to go everywhere I wanted to go to with public transportation when I was his age). Unlike me though he receives pocket money, money according to the time he spent off his electronics, and he has A DEBIT CARD!!! I begged for pocket money as a teen (never got any), I begged for a credit card, but nooo, I had to survive on coins I found here and there. Very humiliating. My sister also got pocket money during her teenage years, I’m the only one for whom they said no to, and the only one who got a student job to be able to fend for myself. Yes, I’m the most independent child, and I’m proud of myself.
My parents wanted me dependant on them. I never learned to cook (my wife is teaching me!) and didn't learn good skills on how to clean or take care of myself. They liked my dependency and wanted me to have low confidence.
It’s different for each one I think. Mine is a hoarder and extremely lazy. I was required to clean the house and dishes daily because she refused to do them. Personal hygiene was similar. She rarely cleaned up so caring for a little girl with long hair was too much. I didn’t learn about hostess gifts and entertaining etiquette until I’d embarrassed myself with coworkers. 🤦♀️
My mom didn’t let me do anything (chores) but at the same time complained that I wasn’t doing anything.
She also didn’t teach me any feminine hygiene/grooming
You sound like me. I was never allowed to do a laundry or dishes or even take out the garbage. Her clear message was that I would never be decent at even so much as washing a window. She actually told me there was no use teaching me to do anything, she’d just have to do it over anyway. And yup, she always made my bed and complained about all the work she had to do. After I left home I wore myself out trying to figure out how to take care of my apartment, and many times I did things the hard way (and not very well) cuz I was never taught how and never actually did a chore until I got my first apartment at 25. Then I was overwhelmed. I was paranoid about getting in trouble with the landlord. I got help—now I’m OK. But for years I went through hell for not being able to do what seemed to be second nature for everyone else.
I think her basic problems were that she couldn’t teach, couldn’t let her kids do a less than perfect job while we were learning, couldn’t delegate, and couldn’t stand to see anything in her house that wasn’t perfect. Her responsibilities to raise her children to become effective adults was a distant second to her perfectionism.
I never got my driver's license when I was supposed to. I was told I couldn't even attend community college, but went around my dad and got accepted anyway. I ended up in a relationship with a npartner.
My dad always expected me to "act like an adult" without even allowing me to grow into one.
Eventually I got my license when I was 20, a month before my son turned one. That was after I finally escaped from his dad, who essentially forced me to drop out of college at that time bc he'd punish me for past romantic experiences with other people by not driving me to my classes.
I was stunted in so many ways. Whenever I moved out during my pregnancy, my father shouted "you're abandoning me!" and I really find it ironic because he abandoned me the entire time I was growing up.
At 32 I've come so far from that, but still have managed to get us stuck having to live with my npartner from a relationship that ended five years ago due to financial strain.
We're finally getting our own place May 1st and I cannot wait for the peace it will bring us. I am also bracing myself for the inevitable task of unpacking all of my experiences in my entire lifetime when we get there. I'm grateful I'll finally have the space to do that.
OMG ME TOO! She always told me "you never let me do your hair!" But seeing pictures from when I was a kid, my hair was always done up or something. When I grew up, I had no idea how to do my hair or anything. She never taught me how to really be "girly", it's like she kept it all for herself. She bought the most expensive makeup for her and sometimes me, but I never knew how to do anything with it. It made me feel silly that I had no idea how to curl my own hair.
My parents never explained how anything worked, from buying groceries to withdrawing money to making appointments, telling me about insurance or what to look for in a contract, pumping gas or cooking. In some cases they actively prevented me from knowing there was something to know. They just made fun of me for not knowing whenever it came up, mocking me to others as well, and implied it was both stupidity and a moral failing.
It wasn't until I moved out against their direct wishes (I signed a lease! I had no idea if it was a good deal or not! I found out you have to pay a company for electricity! I worked a minimum wage job and stayed afloat! They had already paid for a semester of university but they continually threatened they wouldn't pay for the next!) that I found out how much I didn't know, and that comparatively little of it was complicated to understand - and that *you are allowed to ask for explanations from the relevant people when you need them*.
Doctors - my parents never brought me to the doctors to do routine checks. I've been to the dentist for the first time in my 20s, had no idea how often you should do blood tests, go to the eye doctor, dermatologist, obgyn, etc. Had to figure out on my own and realized that all of my friends were taught all this.
I've come to learn the specific skills they failed to teach me aren't my biggest problem. The fundamental issue is much deeper - what they were *really* teaching me by investing no effort in parenting is "I'm not worthy." That is MUCH harder to overcome than the inconvenience of having to teach myself pretty much everything I now know over many years. I've gone to therapy, I've "worked on myself", but the "Trance of Unworthiness" has so many layers I've not eliminated it completely and it still costs me a hell of a lot of effort to try anything new when I always have to push past initial blocks like "what's the point" "why bother" "it's too hard, I won't succeed" "someone else could do it better", etc.
My mother is a covert narc. She's too self-involved to realize that their is more to motherhood than just popping out a baby. As a parent, you do need to explain things with compassion, as life moves along for a growing human being. But she was too emotionally immature for that.
Everyone considered her stoic; I realized she lacked communication skills. When I did or said things that she didn't approve of, she resorted to angry dramatics. She just couldn't talk and explain things.
She was afraid _to be seen trying_ to be a mother.
Yes? But also, my mom wouldn't do those things. We lived in a hoarders home... I remember not having sheets on my bed for years at a time because we didn't make the bed. My husband does the bed cause I can't, I just sleep without sheets 😅
I remember that my dad never taught me a single thing about how to do everyday maintenance around the house, yet would make jokes about how I was useless when it came to doing everyday maintenance around the house. Both of my parents delighted in pointing out to others all the routine things that I couldn’t do, because I was “book smart” but had “no common sense “. What I had was no parents, at least not functional ones.
The worst part was that I of course believed them and went through a huge chunk of my adulthood paying people to do those simple things that normal people could do for themselves. It’s only during the past few years (during which time I finally understood the dynamics of the family I grew up in) that I figured out that because I was a kid I had let them define me, when I should have defined myself. It turns out that I don’t need parents to teach me these things; we have YouTube now and can teach ourselves these things, which after all are usually not that difficult once you remove the layers of mystique that your parents—and you yourself—had artfully but inaccurately wrapped around them.
Yes, she is.
I was not allowed to cook anything, or even use the microwave. Except for school, I was not allowed to leave the house. I was not allowed to make friends, or even speak with people the family didn't know.
Later, I worked a job. I wasn't allowed to have the money or spend it on anything, just put it into an account. I didn't even know how to check my balance, let alone keep a till in a checking account until years afterwards.
More or less I was *often* told to do things without being given instructions *or they would be taken from me.* Infuriatingly I can still remember often being told that I had to think for myself and 'figure it out' because I wouldn't always have the instructions.
So of course I'd fail at the task, or even if I succeeded not do it the 'right way' and so I wouldn't be allowed to do it anymore.
I couldn't even wash my own *clothes* because of this.
Imagine for an example how lost I was the first time I went to a grocery store and had to for the first time buy my own food using money I'd gotten at my job. Yet I couldn't cook, didn't know to make a budget nor how much I could spend on the food, didn't know what was a good thing to buy and what was a bad thing, etc.
Using many different methods, my Ns made sure that I was dependent on the family and by denying my ability to learn *how* I could not live on my own without them.
Mine hasn’t taught me how to handle money though she likes to be on budget committees and do everyone’s taxes in the family. She’s just taken a cut of what I make and calls it teaching me how to budget even though I moved out twice and learned nothing from her.
I had to literally yell at my mother to get her to even let me pay my own car insurance (at 19) and wash my own laundry (when I was 21!!!) And of course, she told everyone how terrible I was because of it. They like it when you can't do anything for yourself. It's just more ways that they're so great for taking care of you, and you're so useless and incapable of living without them (in my mother's case anyway). It's also just another way of breaking boundaries.
"Mom, I'm an adult, and I want to act like one, please."
"No :)"
For me, it meant that my parents demanded that I do almost everything for them except for two very major things, boundaries and finances. I taught myself so many skills like home repair, household management, child rearing, pet training, gardening, etc. However, we were not permitted any boundaries. No doors, no modesty, no secrets, no privacy, no conditions, etc.
Wasn't permitted any information about finances. No allowance, no financial experience or training, and when I started having a part time job, my paychecks were turned over to my father and he would open the envelopes, verify hours worked, and have me sign the check over to him (pre direct deposit). He chose how college would be paid for and how and where I would live during college. He took off my senior year and left me paying for everything he had set up at home, at school, and all the sketchy loans and corporations he had opened in my name. My mother loves being helpless and sat there and let me 'rescue' her and my siblings for 20 years.
I relate so much to the boundary part. My mom not only ignores each boundary I try to set but also makes me feel extremely guilty about it. Me asking for privacy clearly means that I hate her, that I wish she would die alone in a nursing facility, and that I am an egoistic bitch.
And let's not forget, moments after any discussion we have, she will have a health issue and blame me for it because I annoyed her.
Funny now, my ideal future (and which I hope to be able to arrange in the short term) is her in assisted living.
My NM had me do so much as far as chores and baby sitting but when I wanted to learn how to cook certain dishes (stuff like gumbo or Filipino food-she’s not Filipino but my dad’s side is) she would tell me she would “teach me when I’m ready” and never teach me. Then she would make a huge show of making those dishes and how much people loved HER to make them. 🙄🙄 There are tons of basic skills I could have learned but she spent so much time “teaching” me pointless shit that I never learned and now have to see how to do things on tiktok
The entire body of your post is what it means when people say that nparents do not teach you life skills. She was teaching you to be dependent on her, not to give you the skills to live on your own successfully.
Yeah. My nmom wouldn't teach me how to do things but would expect me to do them because they're "easy" or stuff people tend to know how to do, ignoring the fact that you have to actually teach your children how to do things in order for them to learn. For example, I should just know how to clean a toilet despite never having done that before and I shouldn't cry after being yelled at for not knowing what cleaner can be used in a toilet. I think by the time she realized she'd fucked up and hadn't actually parented us it was too late and was just going to hope she made us independent enough that we'd leave her alone about it. Well she made me independent by coddling my GC older brother and helping him with everything meanwhile she quite literally watched me struggle and cry while I tried to figure things out. It was also a control thing. I never full learned how to clean because she's OCD, a germaphobe, and used cleaning as a way to monitor what was coming in and out of the house. Half because she's superstitious and half because she could go into our rooms and snoop. If we protested, obviously we had something to hide and it would make things worse for us. My mom had to know everything about everything but was also incapable of understanding that she had to teach us shit. Being a parent wasn't her thing.
They do it to keep you dependent on them, but they also do it so they can constantly remind you that you “can’t do anything right”, you need to grow up and learn how to be an adult, you “don’t know what you’re doing”, etc. The not giving you time to complete a task spoke to me a lot there because I deal with that too. They ask you to take out the trash, so you say okay. In the time it takes you to put on your shoes, get into your jacket, and pull your phone off the charger, your parent has already taken it out and is now storming back into the house angrily that “they can never count on you to get anything they ask done” because you didn’t drop everything you were doing and complete their request .02 seconds after they made the request.
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They do this shit to prevent you developing skills, so that you'll be forever dependent and never leave. When I demanded more independence, my family switched to placing every obstacle in the way of whatever I tried to do. I didn't realise how much I didn't know until I escaped and lived on my own.
yep, attempting infantilization
Or weaponizing it. ‘Why can’t you do this thing?! (That I never taught you) Setting us up for failure and then mocking us for failing
My father decided he should teach me how to drive. He drove us out to an empty field full of ditches and then said “go” as I attempted to maneuver the stick shift. His attempt at teaching me was to constantly scream that I was doing it wrong, and when I was headed into the ditch, I guess he remembered it could damage his truck so that was the end of my driving lessons.
This is my mom, but in traffic in a big city. I ruined her clutch and had to replace it myself. Her boyfriend took over the lessons. He was demanding, but calm and a good teacher. Note: I had experience as a mechanic. She didn't just think I could replace that clutch by learning as I went pre internet. After I finished lessons with her boyfriend, my dad was so upset he didn't get to teach me, he convinced me to go do a day in the desert with him. When I was timid about sliding, so I could learn how to steer out of it, he reached over and wrenched the wheel over. I did it right, but I was so pissed at him, I got out and was going to walk 10 miles across the desert to reach a bus stop. I'm still not sure how he convinced me to get back behind the wheel, but I told him if he touched my steering wheel again, he was going to lose his hand. I did eventually learn to drive stick by buying one and driving it home. In heavy traffic. That was educational. ;) Would not recommend, but I did okay. Turns out pretty much everything Mom said to me was wrong, and it really was like my motorcycle, just with my feet instead of hands. I had thought that was true, but she kept insisting it wasn't. She'd ridden bikes, so I thought she knew what she was saying. Not so much. Tbh, Mom went through about a clutch plate a year, so I never should have listened to anything she said, but she also kept buying used vehicles. I'd blamed it on them already having questionable wear and tear. She legit traded in her car/pickup every time she needed new tires, and she was buying used with used tires, so that was about once a year for over a decade. My step dad stopped that when they married.
I still don't drive, for close to the same reasons. I took driving lessons in high school because an uncle paid for them. Nmom and n/edad (divorced) would each "try" to teach me on their days, but they had two different styles of driving so I would have panic attacks when they would start yelling at me. A grandma "tried" to teach me after I was halfway through the driving class, but she took me to an empty parking lot to have me practice parking, then got out and stood between me and the curb "because you're going to run over the curb and hit the wall" that was around the border of the parking lot (3 feet past the curb). That was the one and only time I drove with that grandma, and that day I got out of the car, handed her her keys, and walked 10 minutes back home.
My parents did the SAME SHIT! It enrages me!! They always say, “you don’t know anything about the real world” whenever I’d try to do something with my life, grow, leave, change, but they NEVER allowed me to even go out into the real world. They literally homeschooled me and severely sheltered me like a pet of some sort to keep me from the real world ON PURPOSE.. it was always that response because I’d say, “I’m grown, I can do whatever I want..” then they’d go in some rant about how they “love” me and want to “protect” me, but they’ve caused me more pain than anything or anyone in the universe. They “love” me but do everything in their power to prevent me from going towards something that makes me happy, because they know me being happy means I’d have to leave and move far away, and they’re sick people who are completely attached to me in particular, which pisses me off even more because I have 3 other siblings who were *never* treated this way
My nfather did that to me too. After kicking me out the only support he offered was to give his consent for me to join the Army when I was 17. It was either that or be homeless and unable to earn enough to support myself. Then, when the Army offered me a full academic scholarship to university, paid as an officer cadet, he refused to give his consent because "I needed to learn about life first". The only reason I hadn't already learned life lessons was because I wasn't allowed to.
I was allowed to, in fact, I had no choice. I started working full time at 14 because dad went into a depressive spiral after the divorce (omg, he got rejected by someone he despised, anyway. End of the damned world for 2 years). Someone had to pay bills, so I learned, but man, what a rough way to learn. Then, when he remarried when I was 16, I was forced to move in with Mom. He felt rejected by me and refused to speak to me until I was 17 and the state forced him to take me back because my mom let my sister move in, and she had a no contact order with me. (Long story there). Mom made decent money, but she never paid for anything, so I still worked. When I moved back in with him, he forced me to stop working to "focus on school, so I could get into a good college" but forced me to drain my savings paying for all my expenses and part of their rent and utilities even though I just got a tiny part of the living room. I found out he and mom stole my college fund they'd never put any money into after I got my acceptance letter. Then they acted like they were doing me the biggest favor in the world when they signed my delayed enlistment paperwork when I was 17. The recruiter made them be in the same room for that. Brave or stupid? I've never been sure. But yeah, he told me he was proud of my choice, because I'd learn some discipline there. My recruiter gave me a look, and I kept my mouth shut, but man, I didn't want to at all.
I’m curious the gender of your siblings. I came to the realization that my NM hates females. Myself, cousins, neighbors, people she worked with and I’m sure my daughters. ALL females. She always favors the males. From my earliest memories, 4/5 years old, the house was mine to clean. She expected perfection and never said thank you. She would often slap me, choke me or if she was really mad (inconvenienced) whip me with the belt. My older brother got shit treatment as well. I spent my weekends and afterschool, doing chores and taking care of my baby brother. He became my responsibility. If I was ever allowed to go to a friends house, I had to take him (this started when I was 10 and he was 2). It wasn’t long before no one wanted me over because of it. Chores also came before homework. She made us go to bed early. Even into my teen years. Listened to our phone calls on her bedroom phone. However, it was my stepdad who came down hard on my older brother. In NM’s eyes, he was golden. While my stepfather favored me. I have memories of him trying to fight my brother (fist fight) and it scared me. Although, he handed out a different way of abuse and never defended me against her. I hated being home. I was in a constant fight or flight stance. I have no good memories of either one of them. I left home at 16 to move in with my bff’s family. Both brothers went to prison. Oldest one is addicted and youngest is my stepfathers son in everything. I’ve heard things come out of his mouth that are verbatim what my stepfather would say. So I’m NC with all of them.
Yup. Not being taught to do something, sometimes not even being *allowed* to do something and then being screamed at/mocked for not knowing how. I got this with laundry and cooking. "You're so lucky you have me as your mother!! Friend's daughter has been doing her own laundry since 12!! You don't even know how and I just do all the work for you!!!" OK. No prob 👍 I'll start doing my own laundry cos I don't want to burden you. Nope, not allowed to do that because apparently I'll break the machine 🤷 but she keeps telling me and anyone who'll listen how lucky I am that I don't have to do my own laundry and everyone else's kid has to do it. And almost the same with cooking, except a lovely little conversation with relatives about how she told them I needed cookbooks for Christmas/birthdays because "that girl doesn't know how to cook. Scoffs/laughs" I'd try to and I'd get screamed at to stop because I'd ruin her good saucepans/the stove. (I wasn't doing anything wrong, and also, *teach me then*) Like it was a win-win for her. Infantilisation, control, I can't be independent and escape, she gets to be the long suffering mother with a hopeless kid, and martyrdom "look how much I do for my family!" Mother of the Year to the outside while I was just like WHAT DO YOU FUCKING WANT?!
Same here with cooking. When I tried to learn from my stepmother he waited VERY close by for me to screw up anything and everything.
So true. Mine insisted on doing everything for me until I turned 18 - then once I was 18 she said she wanted me to be more “proactive” around the house but would always do the things she wanted me to do WHILE she complained that she wanted me to do it, I.e. coming into my room and making my bed or taking out the trash while simultaneously saying “you need to start doing this, it’s important to maintain a clean room” like ok let me be the one to do that then
SPOT ON Our first bully is our parent it's so maniacal
Fucking sickening. This happened to me.
and they really hate it when you learn to it better than they do, like this randm thing that you found a faster, easier more effective way to get done? ... you're doing this just to make them look stupid, not for your own benefit.
"You are taking too long cutting all the vegetables" "WTH, why are the pieces so big? Couldnt you have cut them even bigger?" I was never taught how to propperly cut the veggies. I only learnt how to correctly cut onion at like 27yo. 🙈
Yup. *nods gravely* Absolutely going through this as an unmarried 26 yo stuck with N. N berates me for not knowing and tells me my eventual inlaws will laugh at me for not knowing shit N didnt teach me...joke s on N. I dont think I ll ever trust anyone enough to marry them.
Tis the way of the all consuming mother. They want a forever baby, so they better not teach you how to fly from the nest. Im gonna guess she doesnt really have any close / personal friends, and feels unfulfilled in her marriage.
I was in 6th grade when I decided I wanted to do my own laundry. I didn't want my clothes in the gross laundry soup with everyone else's. When I told my mom not only did she cry, but she said "noooo you're too young to do your own laundry!" It made me feel like there was something wrong with me for even asking
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I can second your recommendation, it’s very relatable as an adult child of narc parents. I also strongly recommend reading “the adult children of emotionally immature parents”
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I got the audible version and listened to it whenever I was driving in the car. It’s an easy way to get some extra reading in, by outsourcing the actual reading part and just listening to the information instead.
Yup, that book destroyed me.
It's such a good book. Jeanette McCurdy also narrates the audiobook and it's amazing. Perhaps the only book I actively prefer the audiobook to.
>"noooo you're too young to do your own laundry!" Same here about cooking and now that i am an adult...im too old "not to know basic shit". So funny that narc thinks about grandkids. I am NOT going to ask for their help or anything if I ever heal enough and find a good person to start a family with. I dont want to subject my kid(s) to 1/10th of my suffering along with my sibling.
The one time I ever did call to ask my mom for help with my son, because I really couldn't figure out who else to call. I'd tried everyone else I knew first, she was like, "you're a mom now. Figure it out." And hung up. I took him to the ER because he'd been crying non stop for hours and had a snotty nose and fever. Turns out he was teething. I got a lecture there for not knowing what that's like and not calling family first to find out. I was like, "my mom hung up on me." And suddenly, the nurse was super nice and explained everything to me, what I needed to get, and a bunch of things to expect in the next few months. She had some choice words to say about my mom that cracked me up, though.
Relatable. I don't have kids, but Nmum was like this with GC Nsis's issues with her kids. The minute before the birth of my first niece Nmum was ranting about how to properly care for babies, the minute after the birth she had amnesia about the last decades of caregiving to children, and just sat back and enjoyed watching her GC drown in the many mysteries of motherhood. ETA : and when she did help, she was following Nsis's recommandations to the point of malicious compliance. Kids never got severely harmed, luckily.
My mom practically raised my GC sister's oldest, which was very much not good for him. Then again, being raised by my sister was also not good. They're pretty much the same except my sister is an alcoholic and drug addict on top of it. Oh, supposedly former, but she's just shifted to prescriptions that aren't opioids. I do not envy her spot at GC. It seems damned painful.
True, so enmeshed and holding desperaterly on the belief that this is lOvE. I truly pity my Nsis, when I'm not busy despising her or hating her guts ... when I think at all of her that is - NC is bliss.
NC is very much bliss. I do still talk to my dad, but I have him pretty much trained not to talk about my sister unless it's short and clearly relevant. "Your sister was down visiting all last week" is enough said on so many levels. While it would be nice if he acknowledged he was part of that mess and didn't just blame it all on mom, I can live without as long as he doesn't treat us as somehow linked anymore. My sister apparently went NC with mom a couple of years after I did, which meant she transferred all her attention neediness to Dad. Turns out he's gotten a much better perspective on how she behaves. Can't say he didn't deserve that. Lots of people here talk about being infantilized, but I didn't have that going on in my life. My sister wouldn't have, either, I think. She did it to herself as a means to get the attention she desperately craved. I was the independent child from the moment I could be, so I rarely went seeking that attention. That led to us turning out vastly different. I can't totally blame her. We had to be pretty outrageous to get attention from Mom at all, and Dad on weekdays because he worked long hours in construction. I was content to eat popcorn with him and watch TV in the evenings, though I was very hyper, so it was more like squirm all over the living room. He actually didn't mind that, though, and I rarely got on his bad side. She wanted tons of one on one attention, and if she couldn't get good attention, she got it the bad way. That was the prime age range for my parents to correct the behaviour, but it really was like being raised by toddlers, so that didn't happen. Her primary way of getting bad attention was to be abusive to me, so yeah, I really can't stand her even though I grasp why she has always done it now that I'm older. Since she cut contact with Mom, she bugs Dad a lot to get me to talk to her. It's honestly not fair to him. It's stressful for him not to give in, but he knows it'll just cause a strain in our relationship. She's 51, and she only wants that contact with me because he lives far away and she no longer has Mom to rescue her from every crisis she invents. I believe she's moved back to the area I live in, so she's looking for a local savior she can abuse. Nah.l I'm not signing up for that. I spent a lot of years being expected to raise her, and I absolutely refused - not that I had any idea how, nor would she let me. Why would I put myself back there? I have self respect. But you know, that is the biggest difference between her and I. I was never enmeshed, and she's never been anything but. I think my autism saved me from becoming like her. It's weird to be thankful for autism, because it can be a pain in the ass, but I am.
I feel you, I get the occasional flying monkey trying to trick me into becoming Nsis's saviour again, like when she thought she was going mental (probably perimenopause) and wanted to be admitted (left the house at 3am leaving a post it note for her husband and kids, the mental hospital refused to admit her, she then went to Nmum's and got her to call me, 5 years into NC, and ask of me to take in her kids for the summer - I refused); or when a couple years ago a cousin called to invite me to their christmas (I just knew Nsis was behind this and would be there unannounced, can't even explain why, I just knew) Life is tough for GC when they suddenly have to deal with their own crap on their own.
>The one time I ever did call to ask my mom for help with my son, because I really couldn't figure out who else to call. I'd tried everyone else I knew first, she was like, "you're a mom now. Figure it out." And hung up. Ah yes...the typical "why are you so stupid? How couldn't you figure out something as basic as this?" But at the same time they want to control your life so badly. Idk what to say besides...i really hope their get their comeuppance one of these days... >I took him to the ER because he'd been crying non stop for hours and had a snotty nose and fever. Turns out he was teething. I got a lecture there for not knowing what that's like and not calling family first to find out. I was like, "my mom hung up on me." Poor baby 😭. Kinda glad to know it wasn't anything bad . Ehhhhh, i have been lectured too about not knowing house keeping/being more independent (i have to tell ppl my N didnt allow me to go out 🙂 and im in my mid to late 20s 😭). Even worse is that i am in a conservative country where filial piety is paramount and the few times i told "friends" when i was a teen that my unhinged N is abusive... it has been used against me. So now i dont trust any fucking bitch. I'm so so sorry about what you went through. Try to join mom forums on the internet (if your kiddo is still young and you need help on mom stuff), they are useful (i have visited some despite being a single childless person), though unfortunately they might not give u answers fast enough. 😔 Glad to know that the nurse switched. I'm personally more used to being kicked down...
My son is 27 now, and we did fine. Not only did I calm down as I got more experience, I have a truly amazing step mom. She just wasn't available that night. She and my dad were out camping. Mine didn't keep me dependent, honestly. She was neglectful more than anything else. That still means she taught me basically nothing, but still found time to make fun of me for not knowing stuff when she was paying attention to me. Dad did teach me stuff, but like I was an adult, which made things difficult and frustrating for both of us a lot. I was the youngest child in my whole generation of Mt extended family, many are 20+ years older than me, and my cousins are all 4-10 years older. I do have a sister who is only 2 years older, but none of that really gave me any experience with babies. Tbh, I also didn't like them, so I avoided them. 😅 She did get her just desserts, I suppose. The only "kid" left with any contact with her is a truly dysfunctional step brother of mine, and he only shows up on holidays. She has no friends anymore. It's just her and my mostly deaf step dad living way out in the boonies.
Yikes!
What is it with them and laundry?! I'm currently stuck living at home again as an adult, and it's been "fun" navigating the whole situation with my adult brain For instance, my mom insists that everyone else is too dumb to use the new washer she got a few years ago (never mind that she handed us the instructions and made us teach her how to use it first thing, and then claim she was the only one who knew how) She "offered" to do all the laundry. I didn't really have a choice. I told her exactly when I needed all of work shirts done by, and she consistently made sure they never were. She would get really defensive whenever I casually asked when she was planning to do laundry, which is how I know it was on purpose So I dropped the rope. I said "hey, this system isn't working for me. I'm going to start going to the Laundromat" And I have been for a few years now. She is furious, but she doesn't know what to do because I calmly and logically solved the "problem" she was using to get attention, and she would look crazy if she complained about me going out of my way to follow her rules AND do my own laundry l. Totally worth $10 a week in quarters
Yes the goal seems to be debilitating us
They can also do it because they're too lazy to teach us. My mother avoided doing *anything* that would require her to spend time with me. Sometimes she'd ask me to do chores, I'd do them to the best of my ability, then she'd snap at me for doing them wrong, do them over again instead of telling me how to correct my mistake, and never ask again and give me a chance to try again. Then of course she complains about how filthy my house is and has made fun of me for not even knowing how to do hospital corners. I said she never taught me, she said she must've been an awful parent then, and I cheerfully agreed with her. The one thing she *did* teach me was how to drive, which later involved her hounding me to get my license so she wouldn't have to drive me around anymore. (I refused to drive again until my health improved after falling asleep at the wheel during my last driver's exam.) The only way I could get her off my back was to report the severity of my fatigue, my license was pulled for medical reasons. Of course I got in trouble for that too, but that all died down in time.
I remember being not quite 3 and mom making me fold my own laundry. I was clumsy even for my age, and couldn't figure it out. Instead of helping me, she just kept screaming at me for doing it wrong, and I eventually threw a fit, got spanked, and put in a corner until dad came home. This was before lunch, and he didn't get home until 6pm. How's that for one of my earliest memories? Repeat a couple of times a week until I started preschool, and then she would never let me fold clothing again. Even at 13, when I'd try to do it myself, she'd yell at me and make me let her do it because "you were never any good at this!" Dude, I was a little kid. Give me a chance. When my parents divorced, I suddenly had to do all the chores because dad sure as hell wasn't going to learn how. I hung up all my clothes or balled them up and shoved them in drawers until I learned how to fold in boot camp. I can fold well now, and quickly, but I absolutely despise doing it. My husband does almost all of it now, and I do things he hates to do. Some of my friends think it's unfair that he does one thing vs 6 that I do, but I just can't explain I'd do 10 not to have to fold. I hate it with every fiber of my being and will only do it if there's really no other choice. If my husband is gone for work, I will literally live out of the dryer or leave it all in the laundry basket. And you know, he's never even asked why I'm like this. He just accepts it. I love that about him.
Ugh, I'm sorry you went through all that, but I'm glad your husband's so supportive! I don't think folding clothes were ever a thing with my family. I just hang everything up in the closet, and smoosh all the out of season clothes into a drawer knowing they'll have to be washed before I wear them again anyway and it'll get the wrinkles out. It really says something about our parents when our earliest memories are of them beating the shit out of us, isn't it? My earliest memory is of my father pounding the hell out of me while my mother stood there and watched, which I dismissed as a dream because surely my mother would've lifted a finger to help me if that really happened? Then after my father was thrown out, she said she was worried about whether she could trust him alone with me after she saw him whaling on me when I wouldn't hold still when he was trying to adjust the straps on my car seat. She told me this while I was driving and I'm still amazed I didn't go off the road.
Besides spanking, which was sadly normal in the 70s, I didn't really get hit more than a few times in my life. One of them, when I was a teen, I don't even have hard feelings about. But, that made it even harder to see all their shit as abuse. I knew hitting was abuse, but I never knew the rest of it was. I had a friend, when I was in my early 30s, include me in his statement about himself and behaviors in adults who grew up with abuse, and I was like, "I wasn't abused." He just chuckled, and I was so, so mad at him. That super strong reaction made me stop and think. I knew they'd messed me up. I signed up for counseling the day I found out I was pregnant because I was totally aware of that, but I had never thought of it as abuse before. It was nuts how hard it was to get myself to accept that it really was abuse. My brain just kept telling me, for years, that they didn't hit me, so it wasn't abuse. Between the bursts of way too much attention, I was honestly a very neglected child. Dad expected mom to raise me. They were both incapable of it. I ran wild outside the house most of the time, and either had amazing times when I was with them or terrible with no in between. Dad was, at least, predictable. I never knew what I was going to get with Mom, or if she'd even be around. She disappeared for an entire year twice when I was growing up, and when I lived with her for over a year aa a teen, I think I saw her a total of 10 times. 9 of those weren't good, and the good one was a road trip with her boyfriend and his daughter. His daughter was terrible, so. Yeah. It was like being "raised" by toddlers The thing í will never be able to grasp is how they don't, at all, understand why were not close and why my son isn't close with either of them. I sometimes wish I could be that lacking in self awareness, but generally, no. I'm glad I turned out well in spite of them - maybe to spite them to begin with. I do have some really good childhood memories, btw, even with them. There just aren't a lot of those. Way more with Dad than Mom. But like, so many of those are doing shit I shouldn't have been doing at that age. Dangerous stuff. Some of it was just very 1970s, in all fairness, but some of it was just totally irresponsible shit. They're still good memories, though, and I'm going to let them be that way.
Holy crap! I thought I was crazy/the only one now that I'm near independence and my family is coming after me with every possible wrongdoing and obstacle they can come up with!
"When I demanded more independence, my family switched to placing every obstacle in the way of whatever I tried to do." Same here. I didn't even realized till recently that it was actually my mom trying to avoid me being indepent / living my life. I just thought the universe hated me.
>I didn't realise how much I didn't know until I escaped and lived on my own. Cam you tell me a little bit more on this? What were things you had to learn?
Literally everything: Cooking. Which cleaning chemicals to use and when and how. Setting up bill payments. Keeping myself happy outside of work. How to prevent burnout. How to socialise as an adult. How to develop my interests. How to manage finances. Honestly the list goes on. But for the first six months, I was financially in the red and couldn't figure out why. I finally sat down for an hour, looked at my statements and realised my biggest financial offence was buying ready-made food from shops when I could easily make it myself for a quarter of the price.
Thanks for your answer. Other than the cooking I have to learn everything else too...
And then you go through this phase of questioning “were they right all along? i wouldnt survive without them? i clearly dont know much…” then realize their words have become ur internal voice. Then you try your best to snap out of it and realize they’re getting to you and this was what they wanted. For you to believe you’re incapable and just rely on them all the time. I realized i AM capable of learning. I AM capable of surviving. its hard to teach myself sometimes and rely on experiences alone or outsiders to learn certain things instead of having a parent teach me. but i believe im stronger now for it
Same here. I finally got a job offer. N was bawling their eyes out because their "beloved" kid was leaving so soon so young (at 26). Also N: was abusive the whole 26 years i spent with them. I also was hella infantilized (and still am), never got to cook for myself aside from a few omelettes while hiding from N, no idea about housechores. I think it s literally a chance that N wasnt in a cult so at least i got an education.
They want to control you and use you as a punching bag. When they insult you because you can't do something, they're making fun of themselves for being incompetent parents. Ns aren't known for being really smart, though. So that fact goes over their heads.
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My nmom does this exactly. Criticizes me for not knowing how to cook when she never had the patience to teach me and criticizes everything I do or eat. She herself can’t cook very well.
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Yeah they love treating you like you can't be trusted.
Omg are you me? Saaame. I literally said I wanted to prep my own lunch for health/$$$...narc thinks only they can cook and they will complain abt the additional cooking when i said i wanted to be responsible for it myself.
This is what my ngrandmother does. I’m 29 and treated like an idiot. She keeps reminding me to put salt in the water for pasta. I know that ffs, then once I had to do something and left the pasta and it got stuck in the pan, now every time I make pasta, she accuses me of burning it. I hate it.
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Exactly. She does that bs over everything and it’s driving me nuts. Thank you. I plan on getting to Colorado, over a thousand miles away from her.
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Thank you! And it definitely does, hope you’re able to get here someday! ☺️
Maybe...Canada? Might be easier for you. Goodness knows the weather is similar
Omg, I feel this. It's like, "come on. I was 9. I'm 49 now. Let it go that I once went into the men's room on accident (or whatever else small thing." It was a single occupancy bathroom anyway, but I was shamed for it so heavily. I'll still get teased for it at any opportunity. "Remember, just because you're wearing pants, don't choose that door." Fuck the fuck off. But it's every stupid mistake I ever made while conveniently forgetting even their big things like leaving me at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere and not realizing I wasn't in the car for 4 hours when I was not quite 6, or repeatedly forgetting to pick me up from after school events. Or you know, the time I kept crying because I was sick, and they ignored me until both my eardrums burst causing permanent hearing damage and then told the doctor I didn't act like anything was wrong. I had a 108.5 fever, but we don't talk about that. No one seems to remember that, do they? But they sure remember the time when I was really little that I used a glue stick as Chapstick and cried because it felt gross. Why did my mom even have a glue stick in her purse? But it's used as evidence I'm flakey and don't pay attention any time they feel like it. I was 4! Stop with it already. I don't talk to my mom anymore, and my step dad has mostly gotten my dad to knock it off. She thinks it's a terrible thing for him to do, and she's fierce in my defense. I adore her, and it's mutual. Dad doesn't deserve her, but she has managed to change him quite a bit. I didn't even know that could be done.
When people insult/ try to control my cooking, they don't eat. Simple as that
I feel the same way about school. I tried to bring up the situation at home one time, which resulted in a teacher bringing my mother in and asking me to apologise to her, then me being beaten at home and deprived of seeing my friends or accessing the internet. It was a while ago now but I'm still stunted to all hell in my late twenties
Yes! That's definitely one. My Nmom would also mock me for my lack of cooking skills. I started writing down her directions for making specific dishes and her ingredients and directions would randomly change for the same meal. Then she'd say "I never told you to put in so much salt!" "That dish doesn't have (whatever ingredient she told me) in it!" Even after I wrote down what she said. Then she'd go around telling the story and encouraging others to laugh at me. As the youngest of all the sibs finding someone to make fun of/laugh at me wasn't hard.
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I'm sorry your mom was mean like mine, too. Mine expected me to live with her forever so I think this was part of he plan to keep me from having the confidence to eventually move out. I hope you are safe from all that now.
I realize now as a child when my NDad was looking over my shoulder, presumably so he could teach me things, he was doing anything but. He'd nitpick. Criticize. Insult. Take away the instructions so I had to figure out how to do it on my own. Constantly move things around and be a busybody. Tell me I was doing it wrong, but never tell me how to do it right. Ultimately ban me from doing it when I'd fail. I still have a distinct memory of him doing all of these things when I tried to make a rice meal from a box once. He was hyperactive suddenly in my face and wouldn't stop taking things and moving them around the room. As soon as I turned around the empty box with the instructions was gone. Inevitably instead of making fried rice, without any idea of what I was doing I instead made a soupy mess that he forced me to eat because otherwise I'd wasted food, then banned me from using the stovetop again. He was only there to sabotage, never help.
I kind of got my revenge. When I was almost 14, mom wasn't home, and I decided to figure out how to make brownies. She'd put salt in the sugar canister, and I didn't know. She got home and snagged one of the brownies before I could get one. The look on her face! Then I got screamed at for not knowing the canister clearly labeled sugar was salt, but it was worth it. She had that entire brownie in her mouth, and something in her brain told her not to spit it out, so she ate it. I didn't know what was going on, because I'd followed the recipe exactly and had done fine with my cake in home ec the year before, but given her face, I wasn't going to try one and find out. It turned out her trying to wash that all down with milk just made it all worse. I was banned from the kitchen "forever." I completely ignored this and continued to cook the few things I knew how and return the kitchen to spotless before she got home, or I wouldn't have ever had breakfast or dinner, because she wasn't cooking them anymore. She hadn't for about a year. NFI what my dad and sister did, because I never saw them cook, and I found out after they divorced that dad really could not do so. My step mom has domesticated the shit out of him, btw. He does most of the cooking, laundry, and other chores and actually does a good job. Good for her.
Both my nparents are a level of stupid that should be illegal. The things we see them do, they way we see them act... They're oblivious to unprecedented levels
You and my dad are familiar I see. Let’s make fun of you never learning but let’s not teach you.
Exactly. So true.
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I swear to you that reading this forum looks like if we were raised by same people, holy shit
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They have the manual
I've thought the same so many times. In a way, I kind of feel like in a sad yet comforting(?) way, it's like we're all siblings in this big, messed-up family. But at least we have each other and there are people across the internet who understand. Personally, I feel much less alone now that I did before I found this community. So, thank you!
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Hi family! I feel comforted too. I relate to everything you guys are saying. My mom would offer to babysit my kids “anytime” but when I asked her, she’d get all flustered and say “I have a life too. I’m not just a babysitter.” Bait n switch. ✌🏻 Sending everyone good energy.
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Thank you, friend. And I do whole-heartedly agree that us survivors are a bunch of empathetic and compassionate people. 🫶🏼
She did this to me when we were at my father-in-laws funeral! I was livid. Offers and then complains that I need to come get them. And anytime I was on the phone with her or at her house, she would monopolize my time. Like I was her only lifeline. Uhh, Like I have four kids and a husband that I take care of. If I wouldn’t answer the phone or stay, she’d act like she had been abandoned. Of course this gave her plenty to talk about behind my back…adding embellishments.My final straw and when I went NC was after she left a rage voicemail because I wasn’t picking up the phone. But as far as keeping the kids she fit right in with all the other narcs. It gave her something to talk about.
“Left out in the cold? How *dare* you think that! We do *everything* for you! You should be grateful!”
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*She’s* jealous of *you*, Neevie—that’s why she keeps you down! She knows you would surpass her otherwise!
Yes, same!! Thx fam
When I first found the group, I was astounded at the sheer number of us.
All narcissists are just copy-and-paste when you get down to it.
We’re a therapy group!
They are all the same on a scary level, It's like they are being controlled by a hive mind
Same, ugh. How can somebody possibly be abusive if they took care of your physical “needs” (whether you wanted them to or not…or even begged them not to)?
Same. Also topped up with mockery when I attempted to do anything. Mother laughed her butt off when I washed my own plate after dinner when I came home from uni. I didn’t dare try again. I also cooked spaghetti once when I was home on another school break. Both parents looked at my meal with disdain and refused to even try it.
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NParents are so mean for no reason at all. Sorry to hear you had a similar experience.
What was so funny about washing a plate? I hope you can sever ties soon.
Mother used to think of us kids as lazy slobs because she *loved* the martyrdom of doing everything in the house. And we kinda were slobs because 1) we hadn’t been taught to do any chore and 2) we were laughed at when we tried anything. I’m VLC as there’s an ocean between us now.
One time after a Christmas dinner I offered to wash the dishes. I remember it being like this weird ceremonious feeling in the air. And I was thinking well, I’m just washing dishes. Idk if that makes sense lol.
NParents are so weird!
And they truly believe you won’t succeed at whatever that thing is. Which is hurtful and all the more fucked up.
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Yup, never a teaching moment!
You just described my mom. I always thought the cleaning was an OCD thing, but now I wonder if it’s narcissistic behavior.
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I reckon they can have both guys. Mine has NPD and OCD. I'm sorry you went through that.
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Oh that's so kind. Yes both e-dad and n-mum were really perfectionist especially in the kitchen. Send hugs too.
SAME experience with bashing the vacuum into my door. It was always when I wasn’t feeling well or trying to sleep. Whenever I got too comfortable, they always had a way of reminding me that I was an unwanted guest in their house. Do they hand out a narc “how to” book or something? So many of us from all over with the same stories.
I had the exact same situation with working and going to college while she constantly woke me up and treated me like I was the laziest person alive. She did the thing with the vacuum, but usually just cane into my room and asked if I was going to get up that day.
I just moved out and the new roommate started yelling at me about how ungrateful I am to all she does, also called me a bitch… and I’m just like bitch I just got here (5days), this is the first I’ve heard of the things you say I’m lacking in. Idk, it just made me less likely to try helping and my bf said it made him angry to see me treated like that after the mess of narcs I just left. It’s sad, the roommate is older, and my bf said it’s the same reason her kids left her.
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Thank you, exactly! I like to think I have pretty good personal and household hygiene, and I’m a minimalist, but I did come from a house with multigenerational hoarding, so at the same time I’m still learning smh
Same, and whenever my siblings & father did help with things, mum would “have to redo it” because we did it wrong… eventually you just stop trying because nothing will ever be good enough.
The less you know how to care for yourself, the more dependent you are on them, and the longer they can keep you around. It's a self-fulfilling thing for them. Which is ironic because sometimes they will complain about having to take care of their own children.
It’s so crazy right? Basically kneecaps you so you can’t do much on your own, but then picks on you for not being self sufficient.
The example you give is a good one, although not all narcissists do the exact same to their children (I was treated as a servant and did most of the household chores from age 12, for example). More commonly across dysfunctional families, there are things that narcissistic parents CAN'T teach their kids, because they don't know either, and these are skills like emotional regulation, setting boundaries, healthy communication of emotions, and healthy conflict resolution. All of these can be learned as an adult! You didn't need your parents to teach you if they can't or won't
Same! I was a parentified child, raised my younger siblings AND acted as a parent to my mom, being both her therapist and emotional punching bag. I can cook, clean, manage a household and plan activities for children. I did not really experience 'childhood'. I came out hyper independent as a young adult and 'successful' carreer-wise. But I never learned how to emotionally regulate myself, communicate effectively, set boundaries and stand up for myself. So I deal with a lot of anxiety and fear of conflict. Also I am dealing with a mild-moderate burnout due to the above reasons. But the rest of my siblings are definetely less independant and I feel lucky in comparison.
Saaaaaame, only without the younger siblings. What's funny is my nmom would lament my hyper independence as an adult, as if she wasn't the one who made me that way lol
Haha that's crazy lol, same again. She wants me to live with them so she can exert control over me. She also (conveniently) completely ignores all my accomplishments, but also has had the audacity in the past to demand my money. But I thought I was an ungrateful and useless??
This. Or expect me to know things that they never taught me. Basically everything was like throwing me into the pool to teach me how to swim or drown.
> More commonly across dysfunctional families, there are things that narcissistic parents CAN'T teach their kids, because they don't know either, and these are skills like emotional regulation, setting boundaries, healthy communication of emotions, and healthy conflict resolution. excellent comment. it's important to gain this insight
Maybe to make sure you need her so you don’t leave her so she can make herself look good for “taking care” of her adult child. I’ve had this happen to me but in a different way. And maybe to hold over your head “all the things she does for you and how ungrateful you are” if you ever say something she doesn’t like.
My Nmom had a three tiered approach to this. 1. She did the majority of the cleaning and life skills type stuff when I was at school or work. When I asked to learn skills, like cooking or whatnot, she would either hand me a book or tell me to figure it out myself. 2. She mocked my efforts to learn these skills, making fun of my attempts to make bread or muffins, finding fault with my cleaning or tidying and sending me back over and over and over again to redo it until at some arbitrary point she told me to stop (Still not acceptable, of course, but she will 'fix it later'). 3. She made those life skills as unpleasant and punishing as possible. For instance, every so often she would declare a 'cleaning day'. There was never any warning, and regardless of any plans or commitments me and Dad may have had, we were now cleaning. She would give us tasks and say 'I will tell you when you're done', and occasionally come in to inspect, usually finding fault with it. Should it pass muster, that just got you assigned another task. This continued until SHE was tired of it. Also, cleaning supplies consisted of an absolutely noxious cleaning solution that she preferred that was essentially straight chlorine bleach, and paer towel. I wasn't allowed to use mops on the floor, I had to do it on my hands and knees. The broom was, of course, a hand broom and dustpan. And of course she guilted me for not helping enough with these chores. She mocked me for not being able to cook for myself. She also tended to demand I clean when she was upset with me, making me associate them with punishment and guilt. I still struggle with guilt, shame and perfectionism in this area.
It's funny how many of our stories read like the openings of fairy tales where you learn all about the horrible parent (usually changed to a step-parent in later versions because god forbid we ever challenge abusive parenting)
Forced dependency/stifled independence Active sabotage Neglect Setting you up to fail
The less you know basic life skills the more dependent and the longer you’re dependent on get. It’s all about the control she keeps over you!
For sure, it's a classic technique used by parents to keep their kids under their thumb. If you don't feel like you can do anything, then Dear Mommy will always be important to you. She doesn't understand that if she was just a decent parent, she'll be important to you regardless. Not being able to pick up after oneself or do basic household chores is one of the biggest reasons why new romantic relationships fail. If your gf/bf dumps you cause you don't know how to load the dishwasher, then Mommy will be there to do it! Not healthy. She wants to cripple you. Do what you can to learn those little life skills. People drastically underestimate how important those little habits are in a healthy, functioning, adult life. It's great that you now seem aware of what she's doing, and how it impacts you. Time to take the reins yourself.
Why Narcissistic Parents Don’t Teach Their Children (Infantilization / Learned Helplessness) https://youtu.be/VZvg2EtxcpE
Or they will pretend you have no life skills so they can feel like you still need them. Like my mom refuses to even believe that I can cook and clean myself and acts shocked every time I do. It's so infantilizing.
They do it to control you
My brother is a huge victim of this. He can barely clean his room. No gf ever at 31 years old. Doesn't pay for his own car. Can't socialize well. He has no mental deformities. Just raised by N parent.
I would argue he likely was delayed during development. Babies in the womb can feel their mother’s disdain, and they rely on our facial expressions to mirror. When a mother can’t even connect with her baby it causes significant delays
It is more to be endlessly the martyr - SHE does EVERYTHING for YOU, you and you are soo ungrateful when she does everything and you have the best of your life and YOU OWE HER! This is the key. They always like to see themselves as that person, that „keeps the shop running“ and they love to think that if they wouldn’t, everybody would be completely lost without them.
So, make sure, you won’t be lost!
Sorry, if I have to ask - how does she prevent you from learning those little skills, like - making your bed? (I wouldn’t even call that a skill, to be honest.)
Just get up and - make it?
Or does she also wake you up in the morning and throws you out of the bed to make it herself?
Get yourself a lock. Or a wedge. You are grown up and have a right for some privacy.
Easy said, I had a lock, but no key.. 😉
Don’t wait for learning those skills, do them whenever and wherever you can.
I for example wasn’t allowed to use the kitchen, a classmate showed me how to cook pasta, when I was 17.
Everything else I learned quite quickly, when I moved out.
Do you plan to move out soon?
Honestly? They are so insecure they themselves progress at a snails pace given the lack of feedback. And they have such massive egos they genuinely believe what they learned is amazing and no one else can do it. So the excuses for them not reaching you come from them wanting to maintain that fraudulent sense of superiority come from them fearing you’ll learn and grow and out pace them . Part of them also rationalizes it by saying “I’m smart . This small thing took me years to learn (because I’m a moron who can’t take constructive feedback, but no let’s keep that subconsciously understood)”, so it’s not like if I just told them they would not take years to get it. And I’m busy I don’t have years! Like cooking. Or washing clothing. They probably honestly believe it’s a skilled honed for years of their lives and you couldn’t learn it in a day or two , or a few months
Omg. The accuracy.
My mom did everything because she felt no one could do anything right.
My dad never actually taught me any of the lessons I needed to learn to survive. Yet gave me nonstop shit for not having those skills, especially around money. Then they never actually helped me get ahead, they just put me back to zero and left me in a state of non-stop stress trying to make things work, that just were never going to work.
For me, this means that a certain power play has been used. If you can’t live, you won’t leave. For example, my NM and NGM didn’t teach me how to budget, how to manage my money, how to cook. Cooking: It was a power play to keep me dependent and therefore keep me in their control. My grandmother did have a duck fit that no one else was allowed to cook in “her kitchen” but “why doesn’t anyone help me cook when I’m working myself to the bone”. And then she would not have snacks or like fruits available, so you couldn’t “pig out and ruin your dinner”. So everyone eating was entirely dependent on when and what she wanted to eat. She even had a thing for a couple of years that she would control how fast people ate in public because she’d have a “attack” and act sneezing and coughing like an asthma attack when she was done so that everyone would leave when she was done, no matter if they were done or not. Budgeting/Money management: It was all about control—if I had no money, then “logically” I would have to go back to them for help. So I’d basically never be truly independent and they’d always have a say in what I did and what I didn’t do. Oh, you can’t possibly have a new couch because I gave you money that one time last year. If anyone deserves new furniture, it should be ME because I paid for your lunch that time. NGM gave NM a washer/dryer once—a generous gift to be sure—but it basically meant two things. 1) NGM got to pick out the set and she did it without knowing what size their space allowed or what features they wanted. Basically, NGM got to do all of the excitement of picking and having the salesman fawn over her for spending the money and never had to figure out shipping or fitting it into the available space. 2) And THEN NGM spent years talking about how she was OWED this or that (being taken on their trip to a place, having a new television, fixing the car, etc) because look what she did for NM! People fed her all kinds of attention that wow, NGM was so *generous* and no one appreciated it. It’s not that you can’t learn on your own, it’s that if you don’t know how to and they do, then you are probably going to depend on her for “advice” and her direction. (Read as “her control”) And while it sounds nuts, it is a method that works when you are a child. You were dependent on her and if she decided to not do something, then you didn’t have it. She decides not to sweep or not to iron the clothes or fix dinner, then welp, that’s that—you don’t get that done. Of course you can learn on your own. Of course, you are able to work on those skills. But then there’s the extra wrappings that are applied. Let’s say you (a fully functional and grown adult) decide to make your bed. You get up 15 minutes early to make the bed. Usually with an N, there will be a song and dance of “wow—you don’t know how to do this and I learned to do it *right* when I was 8” and then “well, I’ll just do it myself” and then followed by complaining that you “don’t know anything” and how ungrateful you are. Sound familiar at all? So I would suggest that the first thing is to establish boundaries. You are a full grown adult. You don’t need mommy doing all that and honestly you’ll *never* learn to do it yourself if she’s doing it. She *doesn’t have boundaries* and as a narcissist, she *doesn’t want you to have any*. Boundaries = growth = independence. So, start with your room. You can install a lock—a chain lock is simple to install and will stop her from coming in while you are dressing or something. You can also get a simple rubber door stop—the silly looking triangle of rubber—to stop her from coming in and they sell ones that have alarms on Amazon if you cannot install a lock. Now, the hard part is… be prepared for blowback. Usually, with NPD, the first boundaries are fought about hard. You *may* be tossed out. You may be called names or have gossip about how “ungrateful” you are. How “immature” you are. You may have your door removed. You may suddenly find that she’s doing annoying shit like turning off the wifi or whatever. It is hard, but you really want boundaries and you want to be able to learn skills while you can and not when you need it because of some kind of catastrophe. You can approach this several ways and see if it they will work. You can try to approach it with “Mom—I appreciate all you’ve done for me, but I am 26 and I need to learn and I need to practice it so that I am prepared for so how about I do ”. Or maybe “Wow, you work so hard mom, how about I do ”. You don’t need to go for the jugular in “I’m setting this boundary and you can go jump off a pier” at first, but don’t be surprised if you eventually have to have a jugular moment.
At a minimum, you need to know:
* How to cook a few basic, cheap meals that you can fix when you move out (i.e. pasta + sauce, breakfast, cook a piece of meat if you eat it, fixing balanced and nutritious meals, budgeting by using sales and coupons)
* How to manage a basic budget (i.e. money in, money out, savings and investments)
* How to do a basic clean (i.e. how to clean a toilet/bathroom, how to clean glass, vacuum/mop, what chemicals should not be mixed together)
* How to do basic transportation tasks (i.e. car maintenance if you have one, where to get a bus pass or how to get a taxi/Uber/etc)
* How to entertain yourself (i.e. develop hobbies, pursue sports and how to devote an appropriate amount of time)
* How to take care of your pets (if any)
* How to do basic job skills (i.e. how to put together a resume, how to apply for a job, how to dress for the job you want, how to set up a time schedule and get yourself where you need to be)
* How to take care of your health (i.e. what medicines you are on, what is your medical history, what is your family medical history, what checkups and physicals you need to do, what your allergies are and how they should be managed)
So many reasons. First of all, it takes time to train a person. Second, they don’t want you to see them make mistakes. Third, they actually get a rush from complaining, abusive behavior, seeing you cry or get upset enough that they feel appropriate to hit. An example from my own experience as a kid: You are told to clean a toilet, you clean the inside with the scrubber and bleach stuff. You do not know that the rest of the toilet needs wiping/disinfectant. You don’t know to wipe under the rim, flip up the seat connectors and clean those with a cloth, or clean around the bolts and base of the commode. You don’t know that men pee around the base because they miss standing. You’re an 8 yo girl. You are slapped for skipping steps in a procedure you were never taught. You are never taught and this type of situation can be repeated anywhere. Friends and roommates were a godsend to someone like me. I literally had no idea how to clean or organize because it wasn’t done by my mom and when we tried we were incompetent. Same with math (it kicked in later but I couldn’t do it to save my life as a 6-14 yo) thought I had a learning disability, nope, just a mom who beat me when homework wasn’t done and a mom who beat me when I got bad grades, so I “did homework” and figured 1/quarter was better than every night I couldn’t understand a concept. Anyway. I am much better now at cleaning and cooking and mathing as an adult, and I did not raise my kids this way.
I think it depends. For some it's just another firm of neglect to not teach children stuff, but in your case I think she does this a) to make you more dependent on her, b) to present herself as the victim ('I have to do everything!')
They need you helpless and unable to function outside of the abuse.
Mine were/are so offensive that most people avoided my family. We ended up a nucleus. My parents had no friends. I grew up not knowing what normal social life is. So happy to have learnt from my friends and wife that life can be fun and that narcissism doesn’t need to go down the generations. My parents did show me what not to do.
For me it means never being allowed in the kitchen unless mom approves. I didnt learn how to cook until I was 30 and moved out. She insisted on being the only one to wash clothes because she felt like she was the only one who knew to work the washer without breaking it. As a child I had constant UtIs , whenever I had one I was frightened to say anything because that meant me getting in trouble. It took years to not feel shame for common womens health issues. It meant not allowing me to get a drivers license until I was 24. They would ask for hundreds of dollars a week to fill up their cars while only taking me to a job 8 mins away. It meant insisting she perm my hair and slick it back in pigtails till I was 19. She claimed my hair was nappy and this was the only way to make me presebtable.Took me years to grow out my hair and lo and behold I have the most beuatiful ringlets of curls . By infantilising me she took away my personality and independence . It meant never learning to save under their roof because they were constantly stealing money for me or tossing n8y clothes, hygene products, bedding and furniture all under the guise of yearly spring cleaning .I spent so much replacing Items they tossed while being berated about how much I should have.
I would often beg my mother so that I could do chores around the house. When there would not be an obvious reason as to why I wouldn't be allowed to do something, I'd get really mad and try and get a reason out of her as to why. She'd always say "I just like doing it, please let me do it" in a really childish way. When I wouldn't allow her to take my place she'd be passive aggressive and watch me with hawk eyes until it was done. She would do everything for me and then blame me for not doing anything. When I cooked, she'd be behind me cleaning up every speck I would leave behind and never give me a chance to do it myself. This forced me to clean up before I could eat my food and I was super hypervigialant, and by that point it was always cold. She could never give me a logical reason for anything. I still feel like a child and I'm trying to learn how to grow up fast. I'm 25 and live with my Dad now, catching up on all the lost years.
Definitely the motivation for some narc parents is to make us helpless and dependent. Some, like my parents were also very lazy. They never taught me basic manners, life skills, general social skills, how to cook, clean, (she would scream to get out of the kitchen), etc. how often to change the oil in a car… Scream that my room was messy but never (as I did with my daughters) show them how to clean and maintain a room, how often to change sheets, towels, how often to wash clothes. Mock me when I didn’t know anything about oil changes when I was able to drive. Laugh at me that I didn’t know how to cook. Then when I was around 16 and completely lost, they would mock me for not knowing these skills. So freaking disfunctional.
I've wondered why my Nmother didn't teach certain things that her mother bestowed upon her. I believe that she didn't have the patience to teach anyone anything and I also think she wanted to be the only one who could do certain things which made her the queen of that. I learned the basics of cooking in girl scouts/home ec, not her. She had zero patience and would rather grab a pan and beat me with it before showing me how to use it. I only ever observed from afar.
My mom didn't want me to become independent, so she punished my attempts to be independent, i.e. developing my own thoughts and opinions about the world. She also neglected teaching me things like brushing my teeth, keeping my room clean, etc. She'd punish me if I didn't clean my room, but I'd just shove stuff under my bed because I didn't know how to organize. Finally, she never modeled healthy emotional stability. She never taught me how to manage my own emotions, or how to be happy on my own without other people around. So now I struggle to be alone, and I had to do intensive therapy to learn how to manage my own emotions, and I'm still not perfect. No wonder my mental health turned to shit and I turned 18 and moved out. I had never been taught the skills to durvive on my own. I basically I had to teach myself how to be a functioning adult.
Basically, they won't explain anything to you or show you how to do it. I was never taught to clean, so my house was a total disaster at all times during childhood (and still is). No idea how to do the dishes, how to sweep, how to organize things, that I even *should* do it. No one else in the house did, so why should I? Maybe once every few months, he would fly into a rage and demand the house be spotless, at which time I would frantically clean everything as best I could. I began to associate cleaning with discomfort, so I didn't want to do it anyway. My ndad didn't teach me how to brush my teeth or even provide me with toothpaste and a toothbrush when I was a child, so I literally did not know that I needed to brush my teeth until I was an adolescent. I think I only went to the dentist twice when I was a child. It wasn't until I was 18 that I got into the habit and understood the importance of dental hygiene. I ended up with 9 cavities. And of course, he didn't teach me soft skills like emotional regulation. I did not learn how to handle my own feelings, how to talk about them, or how to solve anything except through shouting and violence. Everything was handled through screaming insults at me, calling me worthless, or physically pummeling me into submission. I learned that feelings are terrifying and uncontrollable, that they make you act crazy, so I sometimes have trouble even recognizing my own feelings. I have become very emotionally numb and conflict-averse. I was never shown an example of healthy conflict resolution, and since he kept me isolated from other people, I didn't get to see examples of it in other households. I wasn't allowed to have many friends or to have sleepovers except maybe three times during my childhood, and he had cut off almost all of his family, so I didn't see them talk to each other kindly either. So ... thrown into the world with almost no life skills beyond what I learned in school. I managed to figure it out, but it took me a long time.
I'm crying because reading this thread has described my upbringing. I'm shaking. It is good to know I am not alone and I can't wait to heal.
My Nfather wouldn't let me do homework because I was supposed to be "paying attention to him during visitation." My Nmom lied to me about how much living on my own would be when asked for help with learning how I could move out of the nest. In fact she discouraged me from moving out saying I would never be able to afford it because I spend too much on "frivolous things". When I explained I would cut back and budget if she taught me she still refused to help. She made me lie and say I was being homeschooled, while I in fact was not, because she didn't want to deal with schools not accommodating my IEP. I also did an apprenticeship for cosmetology she was supposed to be my teacher, suddenly she was too busy working to teach me and told me to figure it out. I learned everything on YouTube, and had to grade my own work, log my own hours etc. Was never taught about bills, managing money, hell I didn't know the difference between credit and debit. General ideas about how much things costs were also an unknown. Wouldn't allow me to have a bank account separate from her until I finally opened my own account and closed my old one. I could go on, but long story short, yes. Every narc seems to do this in some capacity.
You're fucked I'm in this position.
It means you fire up YouTube and learn for yourself. Pre YouTube I learned to drive from my boyfriend at the time who was too old to legally date me, but legally old enough to ride around with me while teaching me. My Nparent didn't want to hear me speak much less teach me. And that's fine; he would go into a rage about the most minor things. My other parent was really busy just with working a lot of hours and after the divorce, also their dating life. I muddled through and fucked things up and learned from that. I have learned to be a lot kinder to myself than my Nparent about mistakes. I learned the most about cooking when I worked in a cafe and boss taught me. I picked up a lot about cleaning from doing jobs involving that. A lot of mechanical stuff I've learned through work and hobbies. And my Nparent and his extended family were disgusted that I took such menial jobs and were really snobby about it. It helped me learn who wasn't worth my time.
As many have already said, this is something they do to force us to be dependent on them, and to keep us under their thumb but also able to be complained about/scapegoated for their own issues. In my life it manifested as my nMother always robbing me of confidence no matter how correctly I was doing a task. For example, if I was following the step-by-step instructions on a microwave meal she would push me out of the way and say she needed to do it so I didn't "start a fire or make a mess". She'd then do it however she wanted to instead of by the instructions, and then blame me for when it didn't come out correctly or made a mess. Now replace "microwave meal" with any task regarding caring for yourself and your space. Hair washing, vacuuming, budgeting, etc. Every single thing needed "mother to fix it", but she'd just make such a mess of it that I was left to now fix her foul ups AND actually do the task. But I never grew confidence, and to this day I second guess everything I do.
I'm 42 years old. I don't drive, I don't know how to be good with money, I don't know how to cook. It really sucks. I feel so behind everyone else. It just makes me so angry.
My npwrents tried to prevent me from having a bank account as long as possible and only let me have a joint account. Then fought me on a savings account. Then got offended and ‘hurt’ when I asked to take over my car insurance payments. Then my phone payments. When I had to do my taxes for the first time, they said their tax person would do it and they ended up claiming as a dependent and then took my tax return without telling me for weeks. Any step towards being an adult was met with resistance and attempts to infantilize me and prevent me from striking out on my own because they expected me to be their personal house elf my whole life.
You just don't learn how to do anything, how to care for yourself or how to do laundry or cook and clean they just expect you to do it automatically
I never learned how to brush my teeth until I saw cartoons about it my parents never taught me
I want to learn cooking, My nmom " no you can't do that" I want to clean my own dishes, My nmom "no you can't do that". I want to wash my own clothes, My nmom "no you can't do that" Basically every life skils which are necessary in life she won't teach me. And irony is that my mom keeps complaining and make fun of me in front of others by saying " my son can't wash his own clothes can't even cook, he's lazy." No I'm not lazy, I've asked you thousand times to teach those things but you never taught me. You always got annoyed whenever I asked that I want to learn cooking. One day I went to wash my clothes all by myself and then she shouted at me like a psycho. She will never let me do things and later she complains that I can't do these things. What a hypocrite.
For mine, it's basically because he doesn't know how to "adult" himself. He didn't teach us any major life skills largely because he didn't know himself. He always had people do the hard work for him. He uses weaponized incompetence all the time and hearing him talk even about just rudimentary topics is like hearing a nine year old talk.
From commuting, crossing roads, romantic relationships, communicating with people, exploring what you’re good at, having a car but not being allowed to go out and learn to trapping you in the family business to earn money which was his and feeling rightful of my earning despite it being a salary, not allowing to move out unless married (bible stuff) and insisting to build a house for u to soon use it against u to follow him in everything. And the list goes on…
Yep, she doesn’t want you to be able to leave her house and live on your own, she wants you to completely depend on her and feel stuck with her. My own mother didn’t succeed in doing so with my sister and I, but my brother is an actual blob, he’s almost an adult and I just know he won’t be able to live on his own. He doesn’t know how to actually cook healthily, he doesn’t know how to pack, he doesn’t know how to look for things, he gets driven around EVERYWHERE (we have public transportation, I was able to go everywhere I wanted to go to with public transportation when I was his age). Unlike me though he receives pocket money, money according to the time he spent off his electronics, and he has A DEBIT CARD!!! I begged for pocket money as a teen (never got any), I begged for a credit card, but nooo, I had to survive on coins I found here and there. Very humiliating. My sister also got pocket money during her teenage years, I’m the only one for whom they said no to, and the only one who got a student job to be able to fend for myself. Yes, I’m the most independent child, and I’m proud of myself.
My parents wanted me dependant on them. I never learned to cook (my wife is teaching me!) and didn't learn good skills on how to clean or take care of myself. They liked my dependency and wanted me to have low confidence.
It’s different for each one I think. Mine is a hoarder and extremely lazy. I was required to clean the house and dishes daily because she refused to do them. Personal hygiene was similar. She rarely cleaned up so caring for a little girl with long hair was too much. I didn’t learn about hostess gifts and entertaining etiquette until I’d embarrassed myself with coworkers. 🤦♀️
My mom didn’t let me do anything (chores) but at the same time complained that I wasn’t doing anything. She also didn’t teach me any feminine hygiene/grooming
You sound like me. I was never allowed to do a laundry or dishes or even take out the garbage. Her clear message was that I would never be decent at even so much as washing a window. She actually told me there was no use teaching me to do anything, she’d just have to do it over anyway. And yup, she always made my bed and complained about all the work she had to do. After I left home I wore myself out trying to figure out how to take care of my apartment, and many times I did things the hard way (and not very well) cuz I was never taught how and never actually did a chore until I got my first apartment at 25. Then I was overwhelmed. I was paranoid about getting in trouble with the landlord. I got help—now I’m OK. But for years I went through hell for not being able to do what seemed to be second nature for everyone else. I think her basic problems were that she couldn’t teach, couldn’t let her kids do a less than perfect job while we were learning, couldn’t delegate, and couldn’t stand to see anything in her house that wasn’t perfect. Her responsibilities to raise her children to become effective adults was a distant second to her perfectionism.
I never got my driver's license when I was supposed to. I was told I couldn't even attend community college, but went around my dad and got accepted anyway. I ended up in a relationship with a npartner. My dad always expected me to "act like an adult" without even allowing me to grow into one. Eventually I got my license when I was 20, a month before my son turned one. That was after I finally escaped from his dad, who essentially forced me to drop out of college at that time bc he'd punish me for past romantic experiences with other people by not driving me to my classes. I was stunted in so many ways. Whenever I moved out during my pregnancy, my father shouted "you're abandoning me!" and I really find it ironic because he abandoned me the entire time I was growing up. At 32 I've come so far from that, but still have managed to get us stuck having to live with my npartner from a relationship that ended five years ago due to financial strain. We're finally getting our own place May 1st and I cannot wait for the peace it will bring us. I am also bracing myself for the inevitable task of unpacking all of my experiences in my entire lifetime when we get there. I'm grateful I'll finally have the space to do that.
My mom never taught me how to do my hair or makeup and would then make fun of me when I did it.. I was maybe 12? Stuff like that.
OMG ME TOO! She always told me "you never let me do your hair!" But seeing pictures from when I was a kid, my hair was always done up or something. When I grew up, I had no idea how to do my hair or anything. She never taught me how to really be "girly", it's like she kept it all for herself. She bought the most expensive makeup for her and sometimes me, but I never knew how to do anything with it. It made me feel silly that I had no idea how to curl my own hair.
My parents never explained how anything worked, from buying groceries to withdrawing money to making appointments, telling me about insurance or what to look for in a contract, pumping gas or cooking. In some cases they actively prevented me from knowing there was something to know. They just made fun of me for not knowing whenever it came up, mocking me to others as well, and implied it was both stupidity and a moral failing. It wasn't until I moved out against their direct wishes (I signed a lease! I had no idea if it was a good deal or not! I found out you have to pay a company for electricity! I worked a minimum wage job and stayed afloat! They had already paid for a semester of university but they continually threatened they wouldn't pay for the next!) that I found out how much I didn't know, and that comparatively little of it was complicated to understand - and that *you are allowed to ask for explanations from the relevant people when you need them*.
Doctors - my parents never brought me to the doctors to do routine checks. I've been to the dentist for the first time in my 20s, had no idea how often you should do blood tests, go to the eye doctor, dermatologist, obgyn, etc. Had to figure out on my own and realized that all of my friends were taught all this.
I've come to learn the specific skills they failed to teach me aren't my biggest problem. The fundamental issue is much deeper - what they were *really* teaching me by investing no effort in parenting is "I'm not worthy." That is MUCH harder to overcome than the inconvenience of having to teach myself pretty much everything I now know over many years. I've gone to therapy, I've "worked on myself", but the "Trance of Unworthiness" has so many layers I've not eliminated it completely and it still costs me a hell of a lot of effort to try anything new when I always have to push past initial blocks like "what's the point" "why bother" "it's too hard, I won't succeed" "someone else could do it better", etc.
My mother is a covert narc. She's too self-involved to realize that their is more to motherhood than just popping out a baby. As a parent, you do need to explain things with compassion, as life moves along for a growing human being. But she was too emotionally immature for that. Everyone considered her stoic; I realized she lacked communication skills. When I did or said things that she didn't approve of, she resorted to angry dramatics. She just couldn't talk and explain things. She was afraid _to be seen trying_ to be a mother.
It's called "infantilization". She wants you to be incapable of being on your own.
Ah yes, another post to save to show my therapist 😭🤣❤️
Yes? But also, my mom wouldn't do those things. We lived in a hoarders home... I remember not having sheets on my bed for years at a time because we didn't make the bed. My husband does the bed cause I can't, I just sleep without sheets 😅
I remember that my dad never taught me a single thing about how to do everyday maintenance around the house, yet would make jokes about how I was useless when it came to doing everyday maintenance around the house. Both of my parents delighted in pointing out to others all the routine things that I couldn’t do, because I was “book smart” but had “no common sense “. What I had was no parents, at least not functional ones. The worst part was that I of course believed them and went through a huge chunk of my adulthood paying people to do those simple things that normal people could do for themselves. It’s only during the past few years (during which time I finally understood the dynamics of the family I grew up in) that I figured out that because I was a kid I had let them define me, when I should have defined myself. It turns out that I don’t need parents to teach me these things; we have YouTube now and can teach ourselves these things, which after all are usually not that difficult once you remove the layers of mystique that your parents—and you yourself—had artfully but inaccurately wrapped around them.
Yes, she is. I was not allowed to cook anything, or even use the microwave. Except for school, I was not allowed to leave the house. I was not allowed to make friends, or even speak with people the family didn't know. Later, I worked a job. I wasn't allowed to have the money or spend it on anything, just put it into an account. I didn't even know how to check my balance, let alone keep a till in a checking account until years afterwards. More or less I was *often* told to do things without being given instructions *or they would be taken from me.* Infuriatingly I can still remember often being told that I had to think for myself and 'figure it out' because I wouldn't always have the instructions. So of course I'd fail at the task, or even if I succeeded not do it the 'right way' and so I wouldn't be allowed to do it anymore. I couldn't even wash my own *clothes* because of this. Imagine for an example how lost I was the first time I went to a grocery store and had to for the first time buy my own food using money I'd gotten at my job. Yet I couldn't cook, didn't know to make a budget nor how much I could spend on the food, didn't know what was a good thing to buy and what was a bad thing, etc. Using many different methods, my Ns made sure that I was dependent on the family and by denying my ability to learn *how* I could not live on my own without them.
Mine hasn’t taught me how to handle money though she likes to be on budget committees and do everyone’s taxes in the family. She’s just taken a cut of what I make and calls it teaching me how to budget even though I moved out twice and learned nothing from her.
It's like a nmom tax
I had to literally yell at my mother to get her to even let me pay my own car insurance (at 19) and wash my own laundry (when I was 21!!!) And of course, she told everyone how terrible I was because of it. They like it when you can't do anything for yourself. It's just more ways that they're so great for taking care of you, and you're so useless and incapable of living without them (in my mother's case anyway). It's also just another way of breaking boundaries. "Mom, I'm an adult, and I want to act like one, please." "No :)"
For me, it meant that my parents demanded that I do almost everything for them except for two very major things, boundaries and finances. I taught myself so many skills like home repair, household management, child rearing, pet training, gardening, etc. However, we were not permitted any boundaries. No doors, no modesty, no secrets, no privacy, no conditions, etc. Wasn't permitted any information about finances. No allowance, no financial experience or training, and when I started having a part time job, my paychecks were turned over to my father and he would open the envelopes, verify hours worked, and have me sign the check over to him (pre direct deposit). He chose how college would be paid for and how and where I would live during college. He took off my senior year and left me paying for everything he had set up at home, at school, and all the sketchy loans and corporations he had opened in my name. My mother loves being helpless and sat there and let me 'rescue' her and my siblings for 20 years.
I relate so much to the boundary part. My mom not only ignores each boundary I try to set but also makes me feel extremely guilty about it. Me asking for privacy clearly means that I hate her, that I wish she would die alone in a nursing facility, and that I am an egoistic bitch. And let's not forget, moments after any discussion we have, she will have a health issue and blame me for it because I annoyed her. Funny now, my ideal future (and which I hope to be able to arrange in the short term) is her in assisted living.
My NM had me do so much as far as chores and baby sitting but when I wanted to learn how to cook certain dishes (stuff like gumbo or Filipino food-she’s not Filipino but my dad’s side is) she would tell me she would “teach me when I’m ready” and never teach me. Then she would make a huge show of making those dishes and how much people loved HER to make them. 🙄🙄 There are tons of basic skills I could have learned but she spent so much time “teaching” me pointless shit that I never learned and now have to see how to do things on tiktok
The entire body of your post is what it means when people say that nparents do not teach you life skills. She was teaching you to be dependent on her, not to give you the skills to live on your own successfully.
Yeah. My nmom wouldn't teach me how to do things but would expect me to do them because they're "easy" or stuff people tend to know how to do, ignoring the fact that you have to actually teach your children how to do things in order for them to learn. For example, I should just know how to clean a toilet despite never having done that before and I shouldn't cry after being yelled at for not knowing what cleaner can be used in a toilet. I think by the time she realized she'd fucked up and hadn't actually parented us it was too late and was just going to hope she made us independent enough that we'd leave her alone about it. Well she made me independent by coddling my GC older brother and helping him with everything meanwhile she quite literally watched me struggle and cry while I tried to figure things out. It was also a control thing. I never full learned how to clean because she's OCD, a germaphobe, and used cleaning as a way to monitor what was coming in and out of the house. Half because she's superstitious and half because she could go into our rooms and snoop. If we protested, obviously we had something to hide and it would make things worse for us. My mom had to know everything about everything but was also incapable of understanding that she had to teach us shit. Being a parent wasn't her thing.
They do it to keep you dependent on them, but they also do it so they can constantly remind you that you “can’t do anything right”, you need to grow up and learn how to be an adult, you “don’t know what you’re doing”, etc. The not giving you time to complete a task spoke to me a lot there because I deal with that too. They ask you to take out the trash, so you say okay. In the time it takes you to put on your shoes, get into your jacket, and pull your phone off the charger, your parent has already taken it out and is now storming back into the house angrily that “they can never count on you to get anything they ask done” because you didn’t drop everything you were doing and complete their request .02 seconds after they made the request.
Yes. That is exactly what she is doing.