I dont care if they knew better or not. I’m still hurt. People are still hurt and scarred mentally REGARDLESS if the abusive parent “knew better” or not.
Like yeah sure put a bandaid on the problem, that will surely heal the many years of trauma and a childhood that was stolen from me! That will surely heal all the harmed and traumatized souls who’s parents abused the fuck out of them.
Also, have any of you even TRIED coddling your narcissistic parent(s)? Its IMPOSSIBLE. They STILL FEEL THE SAME WAY REGARDLESS IF YOU PUT IT ON A GOLD GOLD PLATE OR YELL AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS. they. Dont. Care. You are a full grown adult and you SHOULD feel ashamed for traumatizing your kid. You SHOULD FEEl bad for hitting them or yelling at them all the time.
coddle and enable the abusing parent but treat the abused child like a rag doll with no feelings that can be thrown around. Hate to break it to you, but CHILDREN ALSO HAVE FEELINGS! CHILDREN CAN ALSO BE HURT. CHILDREN DONT HAVE TO FORGIVE YOU. CHILDREN DESERVE TO BE CHILDREN.
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“Did not know any better” but tried their best to hide their actions from outside viewers? Does not compute. People love to bury their heads in sand.
These kind of sentences are meant to protect a system based on apparences, not to heal people.
Nonsense. My mom studied child psychology. She still abused me, and totally stood by as my male parent did too.
She decided it was wrong in general, but not for us. And that’s just a stupid excuse.
Abusers feel entitled to abuse for whatever reason. They ignore the guilt they know they should be feeling, because they don’t like to feel guilty. They care about themselves, and no one else.
My mom famously weaponized the quote “I did the best I could with what I knew.”
Imagine my shock and surprise as an adult when I found out that the REST of that quote is “and when I know better, I do better.” Mom, you did less than the legal bare minimum multiple times and have never been accountable to the hurt you’ve caused.
She conveniently left the second part of the quote out.
I met a guy yesterday who insisted that because I’m young, I can’t understand, and when I’m middle-aged, I’ll understand my parents. That their parents were probably worse to them than they were to me. Alright, and??? I know they’ve been hurt. Yeah, my childhood was better by comparison. So?? That doesn’t negate the fact that I was hurt, it doesn’t make it okay, just because something is the norm, doesn’t make it right. I can understand their POV. And because of that, I hate them even more. Because I managed to break free from the cycle, why couldn’t they? Even if I have some wild epiphany at age 30 or 40, that won’t make me excuse or forgive them. They didn’t know any better, oh poor them. Neither did I. Until I did, and fucking left my father. And I’m better off for it. I very much understand them. And I feel some crumb of pity in the depths of my heart. But that’s where it ends. Just because you’re pitiful, doesn’t make you worth of forgiveness if you’ve hurt somebody. Why do people insist on this shit, good god. I myself did some regrettable things to others in the past. I own it, and expect no pity or forgiveness. It hurts, but it happened, it was my fault, and now I know better. People’s expectation of forgiveness is fucking preposterous to me, that shit is earned, and you don’t get to beg for it. Do better, move on, but don’t expect me to give you a cookie. “They didn’t know any better” is a lame ass excuse if they have everything at their disposal to know better and learn, and choose to do nothing with it.
It’s the same when people say old / historic people “didn’t know any different about racism.” Since racism became a thing (1100s+ kinda) there have always been people who were not racist, probably in the majority.
Stop giving abusive people a pass
Always infantilising (more often, not always) grown adults who made the choice to have unprotected intercourse. The knew how to fornicate though 😒
Tired of the coddling of harmful parents, the excuses need to end & people need to take accountability for their lack of care.
People generalize too much, some parents don’t know better, other do. Like said before if they hide behaviours they are aware it was wrong. If they didn’t know how to raise propper they should have gotten professional help.
A lot of parents have made mistakes, yelled, said a wrong thing or hit their child. They don’t understand it wasn’t a one time mistake but a pattern. Were talking about completely different situations.
Yes, all of this!!
My parents may not have known how to do better, but they knew to hide what was going on. The rings of knuckle bruises on my upper arms from my dad hitting me with one knuckle sticking out over and over and over to punctuate his rants, the dumb cow expression on my mom’s face as she ignored it…. no one saw those things outside the family. Why? Because they knew better than to do it in front of anyone.
Kids shouldn’t have to be afraid of their parents.
Parents who abuse their children are monsters.
Would they be abusive in the presence of a state cps social worker or their church pastor? I think not. They know better.
I think it is said to acknowledge not every abuse is intentional. That´s all. It says nothing about the victim.
Knowing how not to be an asshole is just the minimum to expect. Those a holes knew damn well what they were doing
Oh my god so much this. Together with ‘But she’s your mother!’
Oh my god so much this. Together with ‘But she’s your mother!’
I always hate hearing that. They always have excuses for the parents, but when the children stand up for themselves, they get called disrespectful/ ungrateful/ selfish etc.
Might get side eyes for this, but I stand by the fact that not everyone should have children nor be parents. I apply it to myself, too. I strongly believe that I have a lifetime to heal traumas and that I should NOT be a parent. It’s one of the many many reasons I’m choosing to be child-free.
I simply reply to statements like this with,
“that is illogical. If you steal something you can get arrested even if you didn’t know stealing was illegal, right? Lack of knowledge is not an excuse. You still have to accept your mistakes and make amends or face the consequences. My parent has refused to do that. Your statement shows you will enable or excuse abusive behavior instead of holding the person accountable. If we expand your logic to a bigger picture then we shouldn’t have prisons; how do you think that would go for society?”
If they double down “I will not accept people in my life who enable/excuse abuse or mistreatment“ Then walk away
I kept waiting (30+ years!) for the moment when I would grow up and get a different perspective as my nMom promised “I did my best”
I’m in my 40s now and I know that it’s actually not that hard to be kind, empathetic and loving. It’s the easiest way for me to be towards my kid. It takes no effort to say sorry or I was wrong. It actually feels really good.
“I did the best with the tools I had” kept me paralyzed for decades. I would forgive, be hurt, forgive, be hurt. They never look for new tools. They never reflect on how it’s going with their tools. The tool sucks, and their best wasn’t good enough. Period.
Yes, the fuck they DID.
I have come to the realization that the only thing you can do is break the cycle. No, it won’t heal your wounds or give you a childhood. But it’s a gift you can give your own children.
It may surprise you to know that in 1950-60s how kids felt was not very important to adults. Kids were supposed to go outside and work it out themselves.
Gender roles were strict and so were school rules and punishments.
Only the worst abuse was noticed
Children are also humans.
I never really thought deeply about how my parents raised me until I had a baby of my own, and then I realized that it isn’t hard to love a tiny baby, so why was it difficult for my parents to love me back then? I was only a child. Why was I treated in a mean way, when they can treat their friends in a respectful way? Why were they able to treat my younger siblings with care and I wasn’t? It is difficult to understand their parenting choices when you are now a parent yourself. My parents (especially my dad) always tells me, as if it was my fault that they didn’t use contraceptives, that taking care of a lot of children is exhausting and expensive. But I was parentified and expected to act like an adult at 10 years old because they would not stop having children they can’t afford.
Now that I’m an adult, my parents still infantilize me even if I am so much more successful than they are. My ndad still always has a lot to say about how I live my life, but had I listened to him, I’d probably be a loser just like himself.
Yes the child was the one who suffered and the one who deserves empathy not the adult perpetrator
“I didn’t know how to love myself and so I also didn’t know how to love anyone else”<- my mother, who’s been married twice and birthed four children, when she realized three of her kids went NC.
Okay, and? I hate myself and I still seem to have lots of loving people around me so maybe you’re the fucking problem. But why would she ever consider that?
I just genuinely do not care what the reason is. They can rot.
I was signed away to foster care after being SA’d by a teacher for six months when I was 12. In 1970. I was too young and scared to tell anyone. I went from a shy straight A student to a 13 year old runaway. Complete personality change. No one seemed to think anything was wrong. I spent most of my teenage years being shipped from one lockup to another (no facilities for runaways) and being beaten.
When it all came out years later, I heard the same excuse. We didn’t know any better. Good god.
I’d recommend to everyone here find a psychologist to help process the childhood traumas. I did and realized my behaviors and trauma were preventing me from romantic relationships something that was rooted in my childhood coming from an abusive family.
>Your parents didnt know any better
Then why did they have kids? IF THEY DID NOT KNOW ANY BETTER, WHY DID THEY HAVE KIDS?
I use this to shut up these enablers.
❤️🩹
I just say “yes they did.”
They graduated kindergarten. They knew better.
Beating a child and don’t know any better? How do they dress themselves if they’re not smart enough to know that.. that’s the foulest reply to an abused child ever.
Bullshit she didn’t know better… otherwise why act differently when people could see?
Even with the most charitable interpretation possible, in a situation that was more neglect and not overt harm like screaming or hitting, “they did their best with what they had” and “they didn’t know any better” just indicates that they shouldn’t have had kids in the first place because they lacked the curiosity to try to learn and do better.
I really DO believe that my mom did the best she could with what she had. But she also didn’t try to grow or learn how to do better or listen to feedback or self-reflect at all. Andthat’s what I fault her for.
You can’t change who you are or your starting point, but you can try to become the best version of yourself. And not doing that is a choice.
A lot of people don’t know what they’re doing. That’s not the main point. The main point is, a healthy person admits their mistakes and takes responsibility for them. Narcs do not. They prefer to victim blame instead of being mature, responsible adults, who care more about their family than about taking a hit to their ego.
Sure, everyone makes mistakes and sometimes terrible ones that can hurt someone badly. But a healthy person would be sorry and/or help fix the damage they’ve done or at least genuinely try. If my nmother was genuinely sorry for hurting me and stopped doing it or at least tried to become a better person, i’d have no problem forgiving her, even though she put me through an insane amount of pain.
Not knowing better than that constitutes parental unfitness.
Of course they knew better. Why would they hide it from others if they didn’t know better?
Oh they knew better, everybody knows how to act. They chose to forward the abuse from their parents onto you. The disorder is a choice, and they chose to abuse people very intentionally. And they will continue, until there cut off
They did know better, though.
according to those morons, i guess being starved growing up was just a “mistake” as well
Can you say this to my estepdad? He’s pissed at me for going NC with my mom and told me he’s “been patient enough” and I need to forgive my mom. He also told me “if she can’t be part of your life, then I don’t want to be part of it either”. He went full DARVO too
my mother loved weaponizing the quote ” parenting never had a handbook ” mind you these were the things she’s done to “justify” what she did tw in advance:
during one of my depressive episodes I did start to self harm and one time when we were in the car she noticed the day or two old scars on my arm and started verbally assaulting me telling me do “ I can show you how to properly take yourself out “ which inevitably caused me not to sleep for a minute now being that i’m genuinely terrified that she will do something to me in my sleep being that this isn’t the first time she has threatened to off me in my sleep and discard of my body where no one else would find it.
I also had an email account to keep in touch with friends from my home state and some people I met online. They knew everything that happened between me and my mom (and she hated that so in result she broke my phone and i never had one for a year and my friends thought i died). One day, she got mad because she didn’t have the password (I genuinely forgot it), and she locked my sibling out of the room. She then proceeded to physically assault me pushing me into a glass mirror, grabbing my hair, and hitting me with a handheld lamp. She even put a plastic bag over my head and knelt on my neck until I couldn’t breathe. When she finally got up, I threw up and passed out. I woke up to clean up the mess.
so yeah
Right? It’s kinda similar to people crying “faaaaamily” but they would never say it to the actual offender doing the offending
It’s odd, I was thinking of something similar to this last night. How many times I heard something like that by adults. I understand what they were trying to convey but at the same time it was as if they were trying to put more emotional responsibility and compassion on the child towards the adult as if the child has more experience than the adult in the moment. At the same time, I think it’s possible it was so you’d form those things within you, which your parents may have lacked, so it could serve a purpose for your inner growth. (Planting a seed if you will)
My response is always “Don’t care”
My parents certainly did know better. Even after they fled to small town texas where their antisocial behavior would be more tolerated, strangers were still calling them out for beating their children in public.
Even if they genuinely didn’t know better, I have the right and obligation to be better than the previous generation, and if cutting contact is what I have to do to make that happen then so be it.
My parents literally blatantly ignored people who told them things (including my doctors) and still claimed to not know better. I went through my old medical notes once out of boredom and the amount of times she completely ignored my doctor telling her something was completely normal or not an issue is huge. Some of them I remember, or at least I realized why she did some things. I was too young to remember a lot of them though
They knew enough to hide it from everyone else, which means they did know better.
The ppl that say this are the ppl that wont intervene in the abuse to try to stop it. They’re the ones to let that shit keep happening
My parents don’t consider yelling abuse
They could have picked up a few books on parenting.
I couldn’t pick up books on being a “better child”. It’s not the same.
I was the second child 14 years after the first. Mine knew better they just didn’t want to care.
I hear you.
‘They didn’t know better’: Seriously, how (expletive) stupid were they? In my case, their siblings knew better, so why didn’t they?
The thing is, they did know better. That’s why they were so nice and loving in front of others, but so nasty and vindictive when you were alone with them. They absolutely fucking knew what they were doing and they intended to hurt you.
I hate that argument more than anything. “They didn’t know what to do,” okay? And? I was a CHILD. They were ADULTS. Furthermore, I’m a parent now and I would absolutely never do what they did. So it’s not an excuse.
My dad certainly knew better, because his mother did the exact same thing to him and he constantly ranted about how damaging it was to him.
But he chose to do it to me, anyway.
Sorry but there was a whole system in my kindergarten to beat kids with a wet towel on our bare behinds bc this DOES NOT LEAVE BRUISES. because they know better and want to hide their doing.
I had the good fortune to have narcs at home and all around me as a kid. Kindergarten, nanny, doctors… It was hell
Andrew Vachss, an attorney who represented abused children, once said ‘behaviour is truth’ and this totally applies here. Don’t care what their intentions were, what their thought process was, whether they knew or didn’t know, that’s their problem and they have to deal with it. Too many times intentions are trotted out as a smokescreen to give the perpetrator empathy by taking it away from the victim. Everyone can say I didn’t mean that, I didn’t know, I actually love my kid, those are very easy claims.. The facts are that someone was hurt as a result of what they did.
Mine knew better but didn’t care. Some people do try their best but it f course will make mistakes. Nparents only do what suits themselves.
“Didn’t know any better”? Give me a break and stop making excuses for shitty people
“They didn’t know better”
And yet they had access to self help books at the library for free and never thought to crack one open.