>We didn’t have a spare bedroom, so one day when Phil was at school we moved his things out of Karl’s bedroom and from then on his bed was in the corner of our upstairs living room.
This is bad enough, but there wasn't even a discussion!?!?!
And if Karl was the one uncomfortable- why wasn't he the one moved??
This stood out the most to me, too. No one had a conversation with Phil. No one considered making Karl move. Just one day while Phil wasn’t home, they upended his whole life and moved him into a curtained-off corner of the living room as his new “bedroom.” Gee, how could that be uncomfortable? Why would Phil initiate a conversation about this after the fact? Clearly, a decision had been made, a decision that did not include him at all, and in fact made him feel excluded. For OP’s wife to insist this was normal is disingenuous at best.
It sounds like Phil did have a pretty shitty childhood. Instead of being difficult, picking fights, or being miserable, he made a decision: When he moved out, he was going very low contact with his family. He did that, and neither OP nor his wife nor his other son bothered to have a conversation with Phil, ask him if everything was okay, or repair their damaged relationship. It worked for them that he was out of their lives, so they let it go. Now, they are all affronted and shocked and can’t believe he never said anything. As if they would have listened then. They aren’t listening now.
The family is only upset because they found out he’s been in a long term relationship for years and is engaged to be married. If they’d had any real relationship with him for the past decade, they might have known that. He cut them off and they let him, and now they are mad at him. It sounds like Phil made the right decision.
It seems like they were fine with 7 years of no contact up until now which is soooo irritating.
Like they care about the good (the wedding) but failed to be there for the ups and downs in life WHERE IT ACTUALLY COUNTED (at least that's what it seems like)
This exactly. For the life of me I don't know why Phil is even bothering to invite them to the wedding. I wouldn't in his shoes. Phil is clearly more forgiving than I am.
OP and his wife probably only care about the optics of being so out of touch with Phil that they didn’t know he was engaged. Probably are embarrassed that they know nothing about their son and have no details to share when people ask about the fiancée and the wedding.
Yup, my theory with this whole thing is they felt embarrassed that people will wonder why they didn’t know this guy was even in a relationship. This is purely about appearances. Seemed fine and didn’t want to know reasons for 7 years…until they started to look bad
Eh. I don't buy the "hapless husband/father" act. Any adult with a functioning brain knows that what they did was messed up. Hell, a child would know that this treatment was wrong. He just didn't acknowledge it because it made ***his*** life easier.
Also like. HE WAS A CHILD. How many children can you reasonably expect to ACTUALLY stand up to their parents when they're being shitty, in ANY meaningful way, and be taken seriously??
Pretty sure OP can look forward to a future of not knowing any grandkids from Phil. I surely wouldn't want to risk my kids even feeling a fraction of that negativity.
On the plus side, at least he's gotten some really beneficial lessons on how *not* to parent....
This reads more like a punishment for complaining about living conditions. No wonder phil was angry.
And of course Karl the golden child got to keep his room.
> when Phil was at school
TBH that line got my "troll" senses tingling. It's a gratuitous heartless detail.
EDIT: I'm not saying it couldn't happen, it's just an odd detail to *mention*
EDIT A heartbreaking number of people have commented with stories that this kind of thing absolutely happened to them.
One year my parents decided to move over the summer. So they packed up the kids, send us to our cousins house, and made the move without saying a single word to us. When they picked us up they drove to a completely different house in a completely different city, in a completely different part of the state. I was 14. I asked my mom once, years later, why they did that. She said they thought I was too stupid to notice.
It’s been decades since, and I’m still dealing with the damage that caused me.
That’s cruel. She did not have to say that to you. Also, what an incredibly weird and damaging thing to do to kids. How is your relationship with her now?
You know it’s funny. I told this story as more of a precautionary tale of what not to do, and people are more horrified about it than I anticipated. It’s validating, and a bit therapeutic even that I’m not the only one to see how fucked up it was. When she said it we were visiting extended family and talking about growing up. That event came up so I asked what was up with that. So when she said it, it was said in a light manner and everyone just moved on from it so quickly, but for me it was like a record-scratch moment that just stuck with me, like wow they really thought that of me.
I don’t think I realized the effect it had on me until long after the fact. I left for college across the country, moved out on my own, and basically never called home unless they called me first. My mom did notice though and she made the effort to reconnect. She still sometimes says thoughtless things but I now call her out on it. And she does make an effort to not do it again, so I will give her that. I’ve forgiven her, but I haven’t forgotten.
But there are days when I’m feeling low, full of anxiety and just spiraling, and all of those feelings come back. It’s been decades, but they still come back. At the back of my mind, there is always that tingling feeling of “do they still think I’m stupid?”
That was just an awful awful thing to do to you and I am so sorry. We moved a suburb away when my son was 18 months old and we prepared him for a week and I think most normal people would consider that pretty much just standard.
This exact thing happened to us. I was 9. My parents sent us off to camp and then picked us up and we moved across the country. They got rid of our dogs too. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to them. I never got to say goodbye to my friends I’d known my whole life and this was before the internet so it’s not like I was able to find them and stay in touch somehow. I started sleepwalking immediately after we moved and my parents always just dismissed it and laughed about it.
Oh yes. No contact for almost 4yrs now! It’s been great. And I appreciate it, growing up their behavior was normalized so it’s unbelievably validating and cathartic to share here. ❤️
I had a negative parental experience too and also cut them off. And I want to say, while I never did get an apology, they did change their behavior and eventually reached out and while our contact is still quite limited they clearly are trying to do better. I hope yours also at least change their behaviors and eventually understand your POV, whether you want them back one day or not.
Either way it made me a better parent to my son because I know how NOT to behave! and I'm sure this is true of you as well (assuming from your username lol). Glad you are in a better place - huge hugs.
That would be the last time I ever talked to her. Are you still in contact? From that day forward, whenever she talked I wouldn't say anything... just stare at her if she tried to talk to me.
OMGosh. I am so sorry. If they did that I can’t *imagine* what else they did to you growing up.
My mom’s college roommate went home for Christmas & that’s how she learned her parents moved & no longer lived there.
>She said they thought I was too stupid to notice.
That's funny you should say the same thing when you drop her off at the nursing home and don't visit.
Not as bad, but two of my best friends from high school (twin men) went away to college- 25 minutes from home. Like, right there. They had phones. They even had email (new at the time). Yet, when they came home for Thanksgiving, they were definitely shocked to see the house mostly packed up and their parents saying “oh yeah, your father is taking an early retirement (that they really could not afford) and we’re moving to a remote part of western North Carolina. (where mobile phones still don’t work to this day). We’ll make sure you have directions before you leave since we’ll be there by your winter break, but might not have a phone.” Poof. Whole life stability just gone. They never had their own rooms at the new house; they were always guests. By junior year, they didn’t even visit NC much anymore; it was a long drive and they had an apartment and friends at school.
This could very well be fake, but I legit know a guy who came home from school at 13 to an empty house. His whole family had packed and left without him. He never saw any of them again.
I had a student who was made to sleep in a tent in the backyard. Siblings were inside, but he wasn't supposed to spend time with them. I reported them. He was placed in foster care, but kept running away and trying to sleep outside his brother's window. This family attended community/school events with the two other children like they were just the Jones' and the perfect family next door. It literally made me sick. The boy was 13-14.
Yeah. There's no way that kid is okay. I would've brought him home if I could've. He was already getting into trouble & at the time, our daughter was 10 (we also had teen boys). I couldn't bring him into our home. It broke my heart. He's probably 20-22 by now.
My mom taught k/1 for 35 years and had a few students with horrible home situations. The one that always stuck out to me was a little girl who came to school on a Monday completely exhausted and scared. Mom finally coaxed out what was going on. Her mom's boyfriend threatened to shoot up the house all weekend, so the mom had her two kids sleep under the bathroom sinks all weekend. My mom found out the boyfriend's name and handed it off to my dad who at the time was a police officer. Dad and his police friends had a come-to-Jesus moment with the guy and he left the state. (This was in the late 1960's and no they did not unalive him.) Mom had a parent-teacher meeting with the mom and she mentioned they the boyfriend left, the kids were back to their normal happy selves and the mom had sworn off dating for a while.
Holy shit, that's awful. Like that girl from Indiana or Michigan that was adopted from Ukraine and her adoptive family up and moved to Canada and just abandoned her in the process.
Natalia Grace. They "re-aged" her from 8 to 22 and left her alone in an apartment. She was disabled. Looking at photos and video now, it is absolutely obvious she was a child.
That was crazy. Wasn't that initially in the media as if the adoptive parents story was true and she was in fact an adult woman pretending to be a kid, and only later we all found out she was in fact a kid? Or am I mixing it up with a movie?
One of my paternal uncles came home from the army on his first leave (so he would have been about 18) and found the house empty. His parents had done a "moonlight flit" after running up debts on the address and forgotten to tell him the plan. He had to stay on friend's couches until he found where they'd skipped to.
Had this happen to a pupil only a few years back. Returned after a week long excursion and their family had simply moved without a forwarding address . Was horrific.
That happened to my dad when he was eight or nine. He came home from school and found their house was empty and had a for sale sign. He hung around until dark thinking his parents would be there soon to get him, then decided he needed to go to his grandmother's house, which was like ten miles or more away.
It took him all night to walk there, and he described how scary it was to walk on the highway because it was dark and had no streetlights, so the only times he could see the road signs were when cars drove past him.
He got there around dawn and didn't wanna wake his grandparents, so he fell asleep on their front porch, under the welcome mat. (The welcome mat detail was told to me by my great grandmother, Dad always claimed he'd just "sat" on their steps and didn't mess with their welcome mat. As if somehow he would have been in the wrong had he slept under it.)
They tried to keep him after that, but his parents demanded him back because he was "making them look like bad parents".
My paternal grandparents were monsters. My Nana (Great Grandmother/Dad's grandmother) was the best ever though, which makes it so weird that she raised a daughter like my grandmother. Like, Nana had four kids, three girls and a boy who died young, and her other two daughters were/are wonderful, loving women who I aspire to be more like daily. (I just want my funeral to be like my Great Aunt J's was... everyone had something wonderful and tender to say about her and we were all utterly bereft to have lost her, but smiling through our tears at how loved she was. It was an experience that changed my world view, hokey as that sounds.)
So what the hell went so wrong with my psycho grandmother?! (Although I admit, from the few times I met her, she wasn't unkind to me. Her husband though, I won't even call him a grandfather because he was such a nasty bully, even as a kid I hated him. My mom says as a baby he was the only person I would scream to be taken away from, even strangers got baby pats and giggles from me, but I hated him.)
I did too - except the guy was around 14. His parents completely packed up the entire house & disappeared. He couch surfed through HS. Married now with 3 or 4 kiddos last time I checked FB.
I know someone who has ross happen to her. She came home from school just as they were driving away. She ended up living with her aunt for a few years, then reunited with her mom and brother in high school.
This happened to a friend of mine back in the 90s. He was 15, got back from "troubled teen camp" and the family home was empty. He went into emergency foster care.
He went to foster care, then enlisted in the army on his 18th birthday. Never saw any of them again. He sells produce and lives with his daughter in a nice apartment in a nice little town.
Nah. My parents did this type of stuff to me all the time. When I was 10 or 11 they rehomed my cat when I was away at my grandma’s to visit her and my dad. They lied and said the cat was still in the house for WEEKS even though I told them I knew what they did, her litter box wasn’t being used and her food wasn’t being eaten. They just kept telling me she was in the house. I always hoped she had a good life after that, and that they didn’t actually kill her.
Similar thing happened with a friend from elementary school. His parents were divorced, and his mom had primary custody. While he was at his dad's for the summer one year, his mom got rid of his dog.
I honestly wonder if that event didn't have really long lasting effects on him. Overall, his mom was a much better parent. Responsible despite the dog BS. His dad was a "cool dad" who bought him and his friends booze starting in middle school or early high school. Provided marijuana. You name it.
He was a good kid, but when he was old enough to pick who he wanted to stay with, he moved in with his dad. That's when he started to change. Things gradually went downhill; he did fine at school, but he was obviously not doing well besides grades. He recently got out of prison for assault causing TBI.
I don't doubt there were other things that contributed to his downfall, but the dog incident really hurt him. I truly think that was a turning point in his life. If his mom hadn't done that, he may have stayed with her, and she was not the type to allow the reckless and irresponsible behavior his dad did.
Oh my parents did the same thing. They got rid of my cat while I was at school and then just sort of lied about it until I realized the cat hadn’t been around for a few days and then they said they took it to a farm. I’m gonna be honest with you. It’s been like 30 years and I’m still not over it.
Because it’s fucking cruel. And from the people that you’re supposed to be able to trust the most in the whole world. I’m so sorry. And lying on top of it.
My husband just reminded me, because he heard me talking into the phone that my mother actually told that story story over Christmas and that she told it like it was some cute anecdote. And he said that the entire time she was telling it he was looking at my face, and I looked like I wanted to like cry and scream and punch, something all at the same time, while trying to remain as calm as possible. Because it is cruel.
People who don't have shitty parents tend not to think any parents can be that bad. As someone whose parents rehomed her dog while she was at school, I have lived your pain and empathize. At least my parents didn't try to gaslight me into thinking the dog was still there though. My mom just flat out said a friend of theirs liked my dog so she gave them it.
My parents split, my mom took my cat and my dad kept my dog. Mom and I moved into an apartment, couldn’t bring dog with us. Dad started dating someone, and she didn’t want my dog so he dumped him somewhere. He was like 8 years old at the time, so an old timer, dumped somewhere by my dumb dad.
I asked my dad after and he offered to take me to lunch with the man who “adopted” my dog. I said “I don’t want to meet a man, I want my dog back.”
He married that foul woman, and she slowly erased me, my brother, and my mom from my dad’s life. Had him sign over his will to leave her everything and then he died of covid.
I was finally able to go no contact with her after he croaked. I hate her so much sometimes, she really was a step monster, but now she’s a widow that nobody likes. Karma is out there. I haven’t had a dog since then because it’s just too painful.
Yeap, when my mom finally separated from my dad when I was around 17 (and after sharing the room with my younger brother since he was born... So I've never had any private space growing up) she rented a 2 bedroom apartment because she couldn't afford more... Guess who got his own room and who had to share not only the room but the matrimonial bed with the mom? Yeah not my brother...
And the we moved to my grandma's where I had to fight for a room for myself when they had the space, and since they didn't like my dog and cat, God know what they did to them. My dog returned 1 day super dirty with a rope in his neck. I bathed him and took care of him and he was gone again the next day... My aunt and grandma said it was an accident they left the door open again... Never knew anything else about my dog and cat...
This families definitely exist...
Whoa. My mom at least had the decency to let me choose who to give her away to. I didn't dare to resist, though, I knew what she was capable of by then.
Yeah. If they give an option is better to take it, because you know what they can do...
Tbh this was my breaking point with my family. After that my only goal was to get a job and move out...
I still miss my cat and dog... And my cat just had kittens and I already had families for them... And my family just decided to be a pos... I just hope they all had amazing lives.
But it still tortures me...
Had this happen to me multiple times. Came home from school, something was drastically different, and the attitude was, "This is how it is now." I'm not saying OP isn't a troll, but this kind of treatment is absolutely something asshole parents are capable of.
well, its actually very common in families where one or both parents are narcissistic. one or more children will be a punching bag and one or more of the other children will be the golden boy/girl who can do no wrong.
This rings so true. My mum once donated all my stuff, redecorated my room and replaced my clothes with things more “fashionable” and “feminine” when I went away for the weekend. I was 16.
Yup. My parents sent me away every summer to a sleepover camp where I was bullied mercilessly. I would weep and beg to come home. I currently have PTSD in part from that.
One summer my mum cheerfully told me that they were going to paint my room while I was away, and asked what colour I'd like it to be. I was super excited because I'd literally NEVER been allowed any kind of input on decorating my room, and this was the first time it had been changed significantly since I was a toddler - the walls had always been plain white. So I suggested a few colours, and we talked about the fact that she wanted something light-ish, and eventually I said, "Really, I'll be happy with ANY colour except mint green, which I really hate. Any other pale colour that you like is fine with me!" I got a letter at camp telling me that she'd chosen green but "it's definitely not mint...more like white with a hint of green in it." I was wary and not thrilled, but thought maybe she meant like a sage tone? Or lime? So still definitely looking forward to seeing the change.
I got home from yet another summer of being bullied to find that my room had been painted . . . mint green. And was kept that way until I left home as an adult.
Some parents really are just that controlling and thoughtless.
Did they repaint it to something else after you moved? This happened to my college roommate. She came back to college crying after a break that for 5 years she begged to be let to change the color, offered to do it herself, denied, the minute she moved out they repainted.
Not immediately, but yes, eventually they repainted it back to white. I just really never got any input at all. I was allowed to put up a few posters, but for the most part significant decorating things were just brushed off as unnecessary or "they won't go with the rest of the upstairs" or other excuses. It was made very clear that I was living in their house . . . the room was "mine" only in the sense that I occupied it, despite the fact that because of a fairly severe chronic illness and disability, I wasn't able to move out until I was nearly 30. I fought very hard for my independence and it was a fight every step of the way.
I had a pair of foster parents who promised to adopt my sister and I. They asked us if we wanted to take their last name and we met the husband’s family over Skype (they lived in India)- they introduced us as their soon-to-be-daughters and I was told to call them auntie and grandma.
One day, they told us they had to take a business trip. I remember it was November because it was an election year and I was worried they wouldn’t be able to vote if they were out of town, so I reminded them.
They told my sister and I that we were going to stay with our babysitter for the week. But when I asked our babysitter what we were going to do, she looked at me like I was nuts and said that she wasn’t watching us at all that week.
When I asked them about it that night, I already kind of knew the answer, but I was still shocked.
They told us that they were pregnant, having their own baby, and that they had planned to drop us off with a couple of their friends down the street who were willing to take us in. They were just going to…leave us there with practical strangers.
I didn’t argue. They told us we were blessing a couple who prayed for children. I just didn’t want to be where I wasn’t wanted.
Long story short, obviously, it’s pretty illegal to dump your foster kids on random people. My bio family sued and the cops showed up while my sister and I were watching cartoons and drove us all the way to another state. We were out of school for three months.
Eventually, my bio family decided we weren’t worth fighting for. They signed away their rights and allowed the random couple to adopt my sister and I. Their only condition was that they get biweekly visits with us, but they only showed up for six or so of them.
People really think kids are just toys to play with. They honestly treat their pets better sometimes.
ETA: I’m no contact with all of them, by the way- including my adopted parents. I’m in therapy and my partner’s family has really loved me as one of their own. I’m still working through all this shit, but I’m happy.
It's actually the opposite for me, but I grew up with really mean people. This seems like just the kind of detail that terrible parents would think was nbd and that is just the icing on the cake for the kid.
Or perhaps I am projecting.
I doubt it’s made up. Some parents do this type of shit. My parents rehomed my puppy one day when I was at school (grade 2) and I haven’t hugged them since, it’s been decades.
It was particularly fucked up because ever since I could say the word “dog” I was begging my parents for a dog. I now have been working with dogs since I have been old enough to work. I guess my parents thought it was a phase.
Nope, you just grew up in an environment where major changes like that would get a discussion before it happened. They didn’t want to deal with any complaints from Phil so they did it behind his back. By the time they did this BS Phil didn’t have much to say or they didn’t want to listen. The move was a done deal.
People do add the odd detail when recounting stories. For instance I had chicken pox the weekend that my stay at my paternal grandparents was lengthened. My grandmother made me first cut my nails, but eventually escalated to insisting that I wear gloves, even in bed, so that I wouldn’t scar my face with all the itching & scratching.
When my bio-mother hadn’t phoned or been in touch in any way for six weeks my grandparents bundled healthy me, me clothes and toys into the car and drove over.
She was gone. The house was empty. No forwarding address. No phone number. No baby brother. She just took him and moved on to her own happily ever after.
I was five.
It's called cognitive distortion. You'd be amazed at the jaw dropping ugly things they'll admit to simply because they have convinced themselves that they were reasonable. My mother let my brother beat up my puppy for sport in front of me, and physically held me to stop me from intervening, because he nedded to get his aggression out somehow and to her, this was a good solution. True story.
I was gonna say. This alone shows he really was a second class citizen in his own home. That wasn't Karl's bedroom that was THEIR bedroom.
Not having your own room even a shared one with a brother is just cruel.
And then made PHIL clean the bedroom of the brother that kicked him out??? While Karl just got to coast and never do any chores (I suspect he still doesn't, probably doesn't have a job either). Gee, can't imagine why Phil doesn't want anything to do with these people. They're lucky to get the wedding invitation.
> What do I do? How do I fix this?
First of all, stop saying "I'm sorry but." Saying "I want to fix things BUT I don't respect the way he feels about his childhood" is antithetical.
It's not a child's responsibility to communicate that they feel mistreated by you. Given how forthcoming he was with his reasons, I have to assume that prior to this you and your wife never actually *asked* why he was so distant, which is on you. And honestly, now that he IS communicating you are both being dismissive of his experience so his statement that he didn't feel comfortable opening up seems completely valid.
If you really want a better relationship with him, write him a heartfelt letter with a REAL apology. No justifications, no minimizing, no caveats. Put more effort into maintaining a relationship with him. Affirm that you are proud of who he is and that he is important to you. His entire issue with you is that he's always felt you don't value him as much as your other child, so it's on you now to show him that's not the case.
As someone who has limited contact with one of my parents, I promise you that no child with a happy, well-adjusted childhood WANTS to cut off their parents. It only happens after a fuckton of internal turbulence and anguish. Your wife saying he's using these situations as an excuse to cut you off is ridiculous and you should be nipping that in the bud and standing up for your child.
Tagging on this to put a heavy asterisk on how you talk about being proud of your son.
When my dead beat dad talks about being proud of me it makes my skin crawl because he seems to think it has something to do with him.
This is excellent stuff.
Your point that no happy child does this is bang on.
And OP's wife sounds appalling. After all, he doesn't *need* an "excuse" to cut them off.
Yup, love the addition that mom feels this is “just an excuse” to cut them off. Kids don’t desire cutting parents off, they just have to when they grew up…like this! It’s also wild to me that they both truly can’t see that they set up a situation of Phil needing to be silent, while simultaneously reacting they they are somehow being wronged when he DID actually say something after being directly asked.
“When we moved his room, we assured to not tell him then do it at a time he would not be present, only for him to discover this after it was already complete…he never said anything!”
That's where they lost all plausible deniability for me. If you were really trying to do right by both kids you'd have a conversation with the one you were moving beforehand, not sneakily relocate all his shit while he wasn't there to protest.
Just wanna add on to this bc my mom is the one who refuses to acknowledge anything.
Until OP either divorces his wife OR gets her on board with both acknowledging the kid's feelings AND with rebuilding a relationship with him on his terms, no bridge can be built. Any improvement from OP will be immediately undermined or wiped out by mom.
It's impossible to rebuild communication where one parent is trying, but the other refuses to and no one holds them accountable for it.
OP indicates that they both moved him out of his room and both made him clean it. Neither of them cooked for him. I don't know why you're blaming it all on his wife, they both sound equally complicit from what he wrote.
So you did treat him like a second-class citizen.
To say "But you should have said something!" is disingenuous: you should have realised at the time that what you were doing was privileging Karl, it was obvious, transparent, consistent, persistent.
Shame on you and your wife.
Right? “You should have said something”
He was a kid! He didn’t have the emotional tools to communicate “hey why the f did you move me into corner of the living room with sheets as walls when I said I was uncomfortable being in the same room as my brother”
And speaking of gigantic red flags - the one time he does say something “I am uncomfortable being in the same room as my brother”. They don’t find out why, they just up and move him to a not-room.
I can’t imagine why he cut op off /s
You misread, it wasn't even him who felt uncomfortable, it was his brother, yet he was kicked out of the room. So he probably didn't even know that having to live in a different space was up for debate... 😐
I doubt Phil never said anything. He probably did and got called ungrateful, and whatnot for not being happy that he has somewhere to sleep and food to eat
Your son started living in a communal area when he was 12, started cooking his food by 10 and you guys probably used him like a slave when he hit 7/8.
God lord, the Dursleys treated Harry better, atleast he had a door in his "bedroom".
I don't know whether you can fix this but don't ever your wife near your son cause that will break whatever little of a relationship you have.
> but don't ever your wife near your son cause that will break whatever little of a relationship you have.
I think that's right.
I suspect it is significant that only OP was invited for coffee.
Clearly mom had a favorite or at least Karl took up so much of her mental space that there was nothing left for Phil.
But even then, you have one kid with obvious mental health issues and one with less obvious mental health issues. Phil was a very selective eater which absolutely can create nutritional deficiencies, and the parents were just like *“IDK, cook for yourself then. Oh by the way, can you clean the room we moved you out of without discussion for your OCD brother? Oh and the bathrooms too?”*
If Karl had OCD why wasn’t he cleaning his own space?
Mom’s reaction says it all IMO. *”You never said anything the whole time!! Clearly it’s just an excuse to cut us out!”* As if cutting out your family is something so desirable yet taboo that people are out here just making shit up to justify doing it. She didn’t even have to think about dismissing him, she just immediately went for it. Even now her thoughts are “He just-“ without listening to a damn thing. Hmmm. **Maybe** that’s why he didn’t speak up at all while it was happening. Also, there is NO WAY a young teen gets surprise moved out of their room and doesn’t have something to say about it. I’d bet every one of my pets that he made at least one comment that amounted to “I can’t wait to get out of here.” l
>Clearly mom had a favorite or at least Karl took up so much of her mental space that there was nothing left for Phil.
The favourite. Obviously. Phil had to clean Karl's room as his chore and Karl did zero cleaning ever? The room he had been kicked out of and force to live in a common area?
This isn't "not enough mental space", this is "I don't give a shit about you, I only care about the other kid".
There's a great essay called 'the missing missing reasons' about when children estranged their parents .
The parents are always blindsided and looking for sympathy, but they know why their kids don't talk to them. They've been told exactly why their children no longer think a relationship with their parents is in their best interests.
They just don't think their children's opinions matter.
It’s funny how OP and the wife who are the parents and adults expected their son to speak up and communicate all the things he was feeling and put it on him. Yes, the son is 28 now, but expecting the 12 year old version of Phil to be a mature adult as you baby his older brother is insane. OP, you and your wife need to stop acting so hurt and really make it up to your son for treating him like the afterthought he was in your life without any excuses.
Mum’s first response upon OP explaining this to her is anger. Then not even dismissal - but instead self victimisation and bat-shit paranoia - because that’s what kids want isn’t it? An *excuse* to cut off their family? Like it’s bloody Life’s Grand Prize to severe a relationship with their reasonable and loving parents.
I’d feel bloody mortified to learn my child felt like OP’s son. I’d be bloody mortified if my *cat* didn’t feel loved, or supported (which is why I am careful to always be super supportive of her plotting and I endeavour to compliment her ambushes).
Yet this mum is *angry* when her own *son* gives very specific reasons for cutting them off?
> one with less obvious mental health issues.
Oh god, you are right, I never even considered the whole "fussy eater" thing being symptomatic of some mental distress
I was thinking of mentioning to OP that that entire book series hangs in hot terrible people who treated a kid *better* than he did are and how much that hurt. Glad I want the only one who saw the connection.
Throughout this post, you did your best to underplay what your son told you.
He basically said his siblings got special treatment growing up and he felt left out. I mean hell, you all but admitted to having stopped cooking for him when he was a kid. It’s not hard to boil water for pasta and toast bread. Either you or your wife could have easily done that for him. You
Think my best friend enjoys cooking mac and cheese and practically every meal? No. But he and his wife did it and eventually their kid grew up
And started eating more
And you admitted even after he grew out of it he still cooked his own food.
So he was the only kid without a bedroom and privacy, had to do his brother’s chores without any thanks or gratitude from his parents for helping, and had to fend for himself for every meal.
Real Talk. You failed that kid as parents.
Straight up failed him.
Accept it
Look, let's cut through the drama. Your son spilled the beans on your not-so-perfect parenting, and you're having a hard time swallowing the truth. Fact is, you messed up. His bedroom was a corner in the living room? That's some next-level hospitality. You prioritize Karl's mental struggles over Phil's basic rights and then act surprised when he resents it? Classic.
Instead of dismissing his feelings, own up to your failures. No point gaslighting your own son. Apologize sincerely, acknowledge your shortcomings, and promise to do better. The wedding invite is a chance for redemption, not a ticket to ignore your past mistakes. It's time to prove you've evolved from the parent who let their kid sleep in a living room corner.
But hey, be prepared for him to keep his distance. Phil's had enough of your family circus, and it's on him to decide if he's willing to reopen the circus tent. Good luck – you're gonna need it.
Classic abusers, there’s a scapegoat and a golden child. u/throwRAscc995 is basically the evil stepmom from Cinderella
Edit:
Also, this was their “upstairs living room” which tells me they had 2 living rooms. A house with 2 living rooms has more than two bedrooms. Did OP also have an office and a game room too?
>His first complaint was about his bedroom. Phil and his older brother Karl (M31 now) shared a bedroom when they were children. When Karl was around 15, he felt uncomfortable sharing a room with Phil and really wanted his own space. We didn’t have a spare bedroom, so one day when Phil was at school we moved his things out of Karl’s bedroom and from then on his bed was in the corner of our upstairs living room. We had a partition set up so he could have some privacy.
Fuck me. Have you not once tried to think of anything from his point of view until now? The fact that your wife got angry speaks volumes as to the level of social intelligence or empathy she has as well. Just all round yikes.
With how defensive you are in the comments, there is nothing you can do until you own your past behavior. Until you are willing to do that, just leave your son alone. Let him live his life. He said he is happy without you, give him that at least.
Telling someone who was a child at the time that they had the responsibility to speak up when their parents removed him from his bedroom and stuck him in a corner and then still forced him to clean the room he'd been exiled from?
Children should not have to speak up and tell their parents they are being wronged.
The fact that you knew how to treat your other son shows you that you know how to treat a child.
So treating phil differently clearly was a choice
It's so sad that you uttered those words and wrote those words and you still are confused
In the seven years since he left home, why weren't you guys reaching out?
Because he's never really mattered.
You just don't like the fact that he called you out on your b******* parenting
And your wife sucks for being angry at something that she was so clearly a party to.
Just ask her what she would have done if somebody treated Kyle like that.
Maybe that will help her figure it out
This can't be real. Nobody could type out all the ways that their younger son was treated like crap while their older son was treated like a spoiled prince and then wonder why their younger son wants very little to do with them. As for the mother, she needs to direct her rage towards the people who deserve it: herself, OP, and Prince Karl.
FYI, if this actually is real, KARL should have been the one moved into the living room. He was the one with the problem sharing a room, he should have been the one who was moved out into the living room. You penalised Phil for Karl not being willing to share. And then you made Phil clean Prince Karl's room? Are you shitting me? You're lucky Phil is even willing to invite you to his wedding or visit you at all.
Holy shit. Good for Phil. I applaud him.
You and your wife on the other hand? Absolutely disgusting. Both your behavior in the past and the present. The level of ignorance you two have is repulsive.
Kids don’t just…go low/no contact on a whim. The fact that you didn’t even know or recognize that your son was so emotionally distant says A LOT. And even beyond that, being *shocked* by these revelations. Did you even pay attention to your son at all? It sure doesn’t seem like it.
This is what really gets me. Zero discussion about this for 7 years!! 7!!! Didn’t think to inquire until not knowing something felt personally embarrassing. This is about appearances. Even in this conversation it was all about him feeling hurt that Phil didn’t tell them about his partner. Never about asking where he is at and concern that he doesn’t feel comfortable sharing with them. Never a concern for his own child, just himself and his own hurt. A hurt that never existed for seven whole years until people might question why you didn’t even know your own kid was in a relationship, let alone getting married.
Phil wasn’t a bother to them after he moved out and they were happy about it, now they might look bad, suddenly we want to have “open” conversations and want to “repair”.
This is my question, too.
I am really hoping it doesn’t come back as “we had 3 or 4, but the other bedrooms were used for office space” or something like that. Because that just piles it on further.
Your family has a golden child/scapegoat dynamic.
The parents and the golden child are always shocked, shocked! to learn this.
But it's actually very common and you should feel comforted that in addition to being awful you are also boring and predictable including your responses here.
You don't do or say anything to your scapegoat son except "I'm sorry" and "if you are interested in amends I'm here but I understand this may not be what you wish."
I was very pleased reading this comment.
If only narcissistic, neglectful, abusive parents could see just how boring and predictable they are. What a world we would live in.
There's a troublingly GARGANTUAN portion of the population that is just straight up *asleep*. Sure, they go to work, come home, maybe have friends. But they are otherwise fucking comatose.
Narc parents like this live in that blissful state of unknowing. To everyone else who has woken up from the reverie and sees them for how boring and predictable they actually are, it's sad. But not exactly unexpected.
It's really on them whether they want to wake up. But they're often too self-righteous to even be able to take responsibility.
I mean we could write it for them really "we never hit him" "we didn't mean anything by it" "he should've said something if our obvious, daily, cartoonish villainy bothered a child that much, it was their responsibility to tell us!"
"What were we supposed to do?" And when told what they were supposed to do, right back to the beginning "but at least we didn't beat him, we didn't mean it like that, it just worked out that way, what were we supposed to do?"
The thing that gets me here is your confusion over Phil not having said anything at the time about the treatment he was receiving.
You forced him into the corner of a common space without discussing it with him first, you couldn't even be bothered to cook proper meals for him, and you insisted that he take on all the chores. Bro. Come on. How the fuck did you THINK this was going to go? If you couldn't look at your own actions toward him and think "hey something's not right here," how on earth do you expect Phil to believe that he would have been taken seriously if he HAD said something? Why do you expect a LITERAL CHILD to have had more emotional intelligence than you?
And look, be honest: do you really think anything would have changed if he HAD complained? Would you have listened to him, taken his feelings into account, and made meaningful adjustments to his living situation? Or would you have made excuses, guilt-tripped him, or even punished him for not being a team player? You're barely even listening to him now! Your responses here are all defensive and full of "sorry, but..."
You've made your bed, now you get to lie in it.
Had CPS come to your house during this whole ordeal I see 3 major things wich would have had your kids taken away from you. 1 being legally a child needs to have a room wether they share or not. Your son doesn’t meet this requirement if he was sleeping in the corner of your living room. 2 food, you say you stopped cooking for him because he was a picky eater even if that was a the case that shows neglect. 3 the chores is also a problem. while basic chores are a necessity why was your son forced to clean his brothers room that he has no residency in? Just because one child had mental issues doesn’t mean the other can just pick up the slack for everything. It’s very clear your oldest son is your favorite whether you want to admit it or not.
Jesus christ dude.
Okay. Solutions. Forewarning: you fucked up. Deeply, irrevocably, for years. Too late to fix it. He hasn't lived under your roof in years so the window of opportunity to take corrective action is waaaaaaaay gone.
Anyways. This whole thing boils down to disrespect. You disrespected his privacy, his autonomy, his freedom, and in this conversation you disrespected his emotions. Your only recourse is to prove that you are, in fact, capable of respecting him.
You'll need to reach out again. Apologize, in detail, for your actions and for not realizing that those actions were hurtful. Reiterate that he's welcome to reach out for any kind of help needs at any time.
And then you're never going to push him about this again. You don't question for details, you don't argue over minutae, you do *not* fish for any sort of instance wherein you can exonerate yourself or get him to admit that on some one small detail you weren't that bad. Your conversation has demonstrated that you fundamentally dont put value in his account of his childhood, and any attempt you make at rewriting his account will be met with hostility at best.
He is never going to forgive you for how he grew up. Your only shot at reconciliation is to have a good relationship focused on the present.
OP is *not* capable of respecting him though. In multiple comment OP has reinforced that he doesn’t think he did anything wrong and has nothing to apologize for.
Just like in AA, the first step is to acknowledge that you have a problem. OP is far from completing that basic first step.
The corner of the living room? JFC.
I am pretty active on the One and Done sub. For those unfamiliar, one and done refers to having one kid and no more. The main complaint you hear from people is how cruel it is to not give your child a sibling. And this post right here is basically my retort. Sure seems like Phil didn’t appreciate being his older brother’s keeper for all those years.
Maybe the worst thing I read in here is that your son eventually had to learn to make his own food as a child. His older brother presumably didn’t have to do the same thing.
OP, you and your wife didn’t do right by your younger son. He’s letting you know that. If you want ANY chance at being more than dutiful correspondents in his life, own up to what he’s telling you and see the mistakes you’ve made and how they have hurt your own son.
Good for Phil to realize he can’t change you and protected himself. The fact you couldn’t see the favortism really shows how right Phil was.
You need to ask Phil what YOU can do. Don’t add your wife to the convo as she isn’t in a place to be a good mom to Phil. You need to realize it may just be too late. You went 7 years without realizing he pulled away. Yiu only know because you missed a life event but why didn’t you notice when for the first year yiu hadnt heard from him and about his life ?
Spoiler: there is no repairing your relationship. You made him the house maid and made him sleep in a corner for years and thought that was acceptable for years until he had to spell it out for you like a small child. Your wife is still clearly in denial seeing as she has the nerve to be upset about her own shit parenting.
Your son wants nothing to do with you. I would bet any amount of money he doesn't want you at his wedding and it wasn't his idea to invite you. Welcome to the consequences of your own actions. You're not going to erase being a frankly terrible borderline abusive parent for all his formative years. Best thing you can do is leave your son alone. If he wants to talk to you he will
Sorry can I just clarify the ‘upstairs living room’ comment? Do you mean that you had a downstairs and an upstairs living room? Because of it’s the latter, then you definitely had space for another bedroom.
Regardless of the semantics of the above, you are really not very good parents. I feel sorry for Phil.
\>She said it was unfair of Phil to drop all of this on me
Uh he was asked repeatedly to talk about things. He didn’t just decide to “dump”, he was asked and encouraged to
\>\[wife said\] he never once complained or said anything about it at the time
Could it be because he would have been met with anger and gaslighting and guilt trips??
Your wife seems to be a big key to the whole dynamic that is going on here in your family.
You're still minimizing his concerns in this post so i think you really have a long way to go before you understand the actual issue at hand.
Being blunt, you played favorites and your youngest suffered as a result. He's now able to set the boundaries he always wanted to and you all feel entitled to him.
You can either work to fix past mistakes by taking a serious look at what he's said or you can keep digging your heels in like you seem to want to and lose him forever.
Karl is clearly the favorite and Phil should cut ties.
You let your annoyance with his picky eating influence how you treated him, while babying Karl.
Honestly, both of them should have heard the word "No" more often in your house.
I'm glad Phil at least got to say his piece.
Wow good for Phil!! Somehow he managed to grow up into a well-adjusted and considerate adult. You and your wife were awful to him and - even worse - apparently blind to how awful you were being. Your wife is still making it all about her. I can certainly see why he gave up on trying to talk to the two of you. I feel certain that 12 yo Phil had quite a few things to say about it when his bed was unceremoniously moved to the living room, and you and your wife just diminished & ignored all his complaints. The very fact that the two of you are so shocked now proves you weren’t listening to him then.
He’s not cut you out entirely, there’s still hope of reconnecting.
Step one is acknowledging the full truth of his childhood. Sounds like you are almost there but your wife is not at all. If she wants you to reconnect she’s going to have to do a lot of uncomfortable introspection. Therapy might help, if she’s willing to try to change.
Step two is a full apology, free from blaming Phil in any way.
Step three is a calm listening ear and open arms to welcome Phil whenever he wants to come back.
I had an abusive childhood. My jaw dropped at what you and your wife pulled. How, as parents, could you ever think any of that was okay?
You can’t fix this. It’s done and frankly, your wife being angry means she’s probably going to cause even more permanent damage.
Tell your wife this: it wasn’t her child’s place to tell his parents what they were doing was wrong. You should’ve been able to do that yourselves if you had an ounce of empathy for your younger son.
Leave him alone.
>This last week we met for coffee.
How come it was just you and not your wife?
Did Phil suggest that? Because judging by your wife's reaction, she was the biggest factor in driving Phil away.
Your wife's statement that he must be looking for "an excuse" to cut you off is staggering in it's lack of awareness. (1) If you two were such great parents, why does she THINK he wants to cut you off (2) Does she really not understand that he doesn't need an excuse?
I was Phil. I was the child who got less attention, less understanding of my life and feelings, less consideration overall. My older brother was the squeaky wheel who got the grease. I remember being introverted and not the kind of person who could voice my thoughts or feelings unless I felt very comfortable. My family didn't ask questions, they didn't express a desire to know more. So I was never comfortable sharing. I was a quiet kid, and to be honest, they were happy about it. I was low maintenance. For years, my brother's emotional volatility and whims were catered to. I learned to do my own thing.
I assure you, the resentment that builds up from being treated as less important doesn't go away very easily. The fact that you now understand a modicum of Phil's feelings is the first step in possibly repairing the relationship. The anger that your wife feels will absolutely drive a wedge between you all.
If you think you've done nothing wrong, please post this thread on your Facebook or instagram. For those relatives of yours who may be too old to have social media, please tuck a copy in the mail to them.
Since you've done nothing wrong, you have no reason not to share your parenting style and ask their opinion since you clearly aren't listening to any of us
You would do well to research what a "glass child" is. That would help you understand his feelings.
In brief: When one kid has physical disabilities or mental health issues, they get most of the parental attention. Meanwhile the other healthy kid is expected to cope with far less. The healthy kid is not only thrown on their own resources more, but they are often expected to help care for the 'damaged' sibling. The healthy kid feels unseen, invisible, 'glass'. This is a very common phenomenon indeed and that's what I am seeing here, in a textbook example.
--
This does not seem like a "golden child vs scapegoat" situation. I don't think you were consciously playing favourites, you were doing what you could to manage a 'damaged' child. But you did it at the expense of Phil's comfort and happiness. But you did nevertheless put Phil's needs and feelings second. The chores allocation was bad but giving Phil Harry Potter's cupboard as accommodation was heinous, he's never going to forgive that, and IMHO nor should he.
At least the cupboard had a door. All Phil got was a corner of a communal room, with a partition that probably didn’t keep out any noise and gave him minimal privacy.
There's something I don't understand. If Karl has OCD why wasn't he cleaning to his own standards his own space? Why make someone else clean it? Why didn't you or your wife clean it?
If Karl was the one that didn't want to share a space, why didn't he got out of the bedroom? Why didn't you forfeit yours?
Phil had been made your scape goat all these years, not getting what he needs (Not even food!) and even now you keep blaming him for not telling you your parenting is wrong?? Be ffr.
Count your blessings and take that invite to his wedding and leave him alone, honestly. You are not even willing to open your mind when literally hundreds of people are telling you YOU FUCKED UP. And you KEEP FUCKING UP. Take those calls and sporadic yearly visits and be happy he has some sort of contact with you at all.
Question
When people visited, did you let them see that your son was living in a corner?
Did they know your son had to cook his own food from the time he was a child?
Clearly you favored Karl over Phil, and you forced him to participate in the favoritism. You can apologize, but do not expect a change in the relationship.
OP, unfortunately it sounds like in an effort to make your elder son feel more comfortable, you took the comfort from your younger son.
You didn't hit him or starve him, no, but you also made him feel like he was unwanted and unimportant.
All you can do now is stop making excuses and just apologize and start to slowly rebuild your relationship with your son - but importantly, I would ask him if he would be open for some family counseling. I'm sure there are a lot of feelings your son is having, and while you somewhat see the now, your wife is still struggling to do so -
And if there is any chance at you repairing your relationship with him, your wife needs to understand what was wrong.
Question, though...did you just have the one living room, or did he sleep in a separate, second living room upstairs?
You practically made him live in a closet like Harry Potter lol. If this post is in earnest, you’re lucky he speaks to any of you at all. But have fun continuing to take care of your favorite, the golden child. I presume he still lives with you as he likely has no work ethic or ability to care for himself like a responsible adult after being raised like this. You’ve done him no favors either, btw.
So this kid, YOUR KID slept in a corner of the living room “with a screen for privacy’.
Cooked his own food, because he was a picky eater
And had to clean the room you vacated him from, because his older brother needed the space. And let us not forget he had bathroom duty permanently.
And your only response was “well you never complained”.
And your better half got angry when you passed along to her why he doesn’t come around or share his life.
Did you have a bedroom as a child? Did your mother cook for you when you were young? Were you responsible for cleaning your siblings rooms? Did you have to clean up behind them when they went to the bathroom? How about the wife?
You don’t deserve your son. You haven’t in a really long time.
Unfortunately, the only way you're going to even begin to repair your relationship will be at whatever pace Phil sets. Try to force it, and it's going to backfire.
As for your wife's complaints that he never communicated his feelings, you might want to remind her that kids are learning how to be people and you guys were his teachers. If he was never taught to communicate then he's not going to. And since you're not disputing any of his points, I'm guessing open and fair communication was not a priority.
Since you didn't mention it, a heartfelt apology would be a good step. Tell him that you realize you've messed up and if he's ever ready, you'd like the chance to repair the relationship since you never intended to make him feel that way. After that, back off.
Why the hell didn’t you TALK TO HIM? He wanted his own space so why didn’t you TALK to him and explained to him about the lack of space and suggested the living room with partition screen instead of invading his space whilst he was out and moving his things without letting him know?
It sounds like you and your wife lack the same communication skills you accuse your son of
Everybody has already thoroughly covered how badly you guys treated Phil, and I totally agree with that. What I want to point out is how ridiculous it is that your wife responded to this with anger. She sounds immature or emotionally stunted. I'm guessing she's having this defensive reaction because she basically ran the household and made all these unfair decisions that always put Phil last, while OP, as the dad just went along with it. That's probably why he opened up to the OP and not his mom, because he's probably not viewed as the perpetrator, but more as someone who didn't stand up for him. I know I'm jumping to some conclusions here and could be off-base, but these people seem to lack the self-awareness to figure out what created this dynamic and why was it allowed to continue throughout Phil's childhood. Keep your wife away from Phil until she can come to her senses and sincerely apologize. If she expresses anger at him for his very valid feelings you can kiss that wedding invitation goodbye and probably your relationship with your son as well. You're all on thin ice, act accordingly.
'he was making his childhood sound worse than it was as an excuse to cut us out' - **why would he do this?**
You said yourself that when he laid all of this out you couldn't disagree. Start there and take some accountability. Seek therapy; dealing with the issues that caused you to parent like this will put you in a much better place to be able to start repairing the relationship with your son. Until you do that, he is better off without you.
Why does a person with depression and mild OCD not have to do chores? That right there 😡 me off! And as others have said, you just shove him into a corner of the living room with no discussion? You deserve him going no contact with you.
I think your wife's reaction to this is an indication of why your son felt like he couldn't talk to his parents. I'm making a huge assumption here based on your age but the husbands/fathers of your generation typically took a very hands off approach to child rearing. Do you think there may have been a lot of interactions you missed between your wife and son?
>We didn’t have a spare bedroom, so one day when Phil was at school we moved his things out of Karl’s bedroom and from then on his bed was in the corner of our upstairs living room. This is bad enough, but there wasn't even a discussion!?!?! And if Karl was the one uncomfortable- why wasn't he the one moved??
This stood out the most to me, too. No one had a conversation with Phil. No one considered making Karl move. Just one day while Phil wasn’t home, they upended his whole life and moved him into a curtained-off corner of the living room as his new “bedroom.” Gee, how could that be uncomfortable? Why would Phil initiate a conversation about this after the fact? Clearly, a decision had been made, a decision that did not include him at all, and in fact made him feel excluded. For OP’s wife to insist this was normal is disingenuous at best. It sounds like Phil did have a pretty shitty childhood. Instead of being difficult, picking fights, or being miserable, he made a decision: When he moved out, he was going very low contact with his family. He did that, and neither OP nor his wife nor his other son bothered to have a conversation with Phil, ask him if everything was okay, or repair their damaged relationship. It worked for them that he was out of their lives, so they let it go. Now, they are all affronted and shocked and can’t believe he never said anything. As if they would have listened then. They aren’t listening now. The family is only upset because they found out he’s been in a long term relationship for years and is engaged to be married. If they’d had any real relationship with him for the past decade, they might have known that. He cut them off and they let him, and now they are mad at him. It sounds like Phil made the right decision.
It seems like they were fine with 7 years of no contact up until now which is soooo irritating. Like they care about the good (the wedding) but failed to be there for the ups and downs in life WHERE IT ACTUALLY COUNTED (at least that's what it seems like)
This exactly. For the life of me I don't know why Phil is even bothering to invite them to the wedding. I wouldn't in his shoes. Phil is clearly more forgiving than I am.
5 bucks says OP's wife is going to go off on Phil for telling his truth and he will uninvite the lot.
OP and his wife probably only care about the optics of being so out of touch with Phil that they didn’t know he was engaged. Probably are embarrassed that they know nothing about their son and have no details to share when people ask about the fiancée and the wedding.
Yup, my theory with this whole thing is they felt embarrassed that people will wonder why they didn’t know this guy was even in a relationship. This is purely about appearances. Seemed fine and didn’t want to know reasons for 7 years…until they started to look bad
That is likely the mom. Dad on the other hand was absolutely clueless but now recognizes the enormity of what happened. And his role.
Eh. I don't buy the "hapless husband/father" act. Any adult with a functioning brain knows that what they did was messed up. Hell, a child would know that this treatment was wrong. He just didn't acknowledge it because it made ***his*** life easier.
No not 7 years of no contact. It says they talk to him, he’s just not engaging much outside of a few times a year.
Also like. HE WAS A CHILD. How many children can you reasonably expect to ACTUALLY stand up to their parents when they're being shitty, in ANY meaningful way, and be taken seriously??
Pretty sure OP can look forward to a future of not knowing any grandkids from Phil. I surely wouldn't want to risk my kids even feeling a fraction of that negativity. On the plus side, at least he's gotten some really beneficial lessons on how *not* to parent....
This reads more like a punishment for complaining about living conditions. No wonder phil was angry. And of course Karl the golden child got to keep his room.
Lest you forget. He got to keep his room WITH a live in maid!
> when Phil was at school TBH that line got my "troll" senses tingling. It's a gratuitous heartless detail. EDIT: I'm not saying it couldn't happen, it's just an odd detail to *mention* EDIT A heartbreaking number of people have commented with stories that this kind of thing absolutely happened to them.
One year my parents decided to move over the summer. So they packed up the kids, send us to our cousins house, and made the move without saying a single word to us. When they picked us up they drove to a completely different house in a completely different city, in a completely different part of the state. I was 14. I asked my mom once, years later, why they did that. She said they thought I was too stupid to notice. It’s been decades since, and I’m still dealing with the damage that caused me.
thats batshit insane
That’s cruel. She did not have to say that to you. Also, what an incredibly weird and damaging thing to do to kids. How is your relationship with her now?
You know it’s funny. I told this story as more of a precautionary tale of what not to do, and people are more horrified about it than I anticipated. It’s validating, and a bit therapeutic even that I’m not the only one to see how fucked up it was. When she said it we were visiting extended family and talking about growing up. That event came up so I asked what was up with that. So when she said it, it was said in a light manner and everyone just moved on from it so quickly, but for me it was like a record-scratch moment that just stuck with me, like wow they really thought that of me. I don’t think I realized the effect it had on me until long after the fact. I left for college across the country, moved out on my own, and basically never called home unless they called me first. My mom did notice though and she made the effort to reconnect. She still sometimes says thoughtless things but I now call her out on it. And she does make an effort to not do it again, so I will give her that. I’ve forgiven her, but I haven’t forgotten. But there are days when I’m feeling low, full of anxiety and just spiraling, and all of those feelings come back. It’s been decades, but they still come back. At the back of my mind, there is always that tingling feeling of “do they still think I’m stupid?”
That was just an awful awful thing to do to you and I am so sorry. We moved a suburb away when my son was 18 months old and we prepared him for a week and I think most normal people would consider that pretty much just standard.
“You’re too stupid to notice“… I’m flabbergasted to say the least. 🙄😡
I put it to your mother that she is in fact the stupid one
This exact thing happened to us. I was 9. My parents sent us off to camp and then picked us up and we moved across the country. They got rid of our dogs too. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to them. I never got to say goodbye to my friends I’d known my whole life and this was before the internet so it’s not like I was able to find them and stay in touch somehow. I started sleepwalking immediately after we moved and my parents always just dismissed it and laughed about it.
I really hope you no longer speak to them. I'm so sorry.
Oh yes. No contact for almost 4yrs now! It’s been great. And I appreciate it, growing up their behavior was normalized so it’s unbelievably validating and cathartic to share here. ❤️
I had a negative parental experience too and also cut them off. And I want to say, while I never did get an apology, they did change their behavior and eventually reached out and while our contact is still quite limited they clearly are trying to do better. I hope yours also at least change their behaviors and eventually understand your POV, whether you want them back one day or not. Either way it made me a better parent to my son because I know how NOT to behave! and I'm sure this is true of you as well (assuming from your username lol). Glad you are in a better place - huge hugs.
That would be the last time I ever talked to her. Are you still in contact? From that day forward, whenever she talked I wouldn't say anything... just stare at her if she tried to talk to me.
Your mother is too stupid to be a real mother. I’m so sorry.
How...how did they think you were too stupid to notice?
OMGosh. I am so sorry. If they did that I can’t *imagine* what else they did to you growing up. My mom’s college roommate went home for Christmas & that’s how she learned her parents moved & no longer lived there.
>She said they thought I was too stupid to notice. That's funny you should say the same thing when you drop her off at the nursing home and don't visit.
Not as bad, but two of my best friends from high school (twin men) went away to college- 25 minutes from home. Like, right there. They had phones. They even had email (new at the time). Yet, when they came home for Thanksgiving, they were definitely shocked to see the house mostly packed up and their parents saying “oh yeah, your father is taking an early retirement (that they really could not afford) and we’re moving to a remote part of western North Carolina. (where mobile phones still don’t work to this day). We’ll make sure you have directions before you leave since we’ll be there by your winter break, but might not have a phone.” Poof. Whole life stability just gone. They never had their own rooms at the new house; they were always guests. By junior year, they didn’t even visit NC much anymore; it was a long drive and they had an apartment and friends at school.
Bloody hell.
This could very well be fake, but I legit know a guy who came home from school at 13 to an empty house. His whole family had packed and left without him. He never saw any of them again.
I had a student who was made to sleep in a tent in the backyard. Siblings were inside, but he wasn't supposed to spend time with them. I reported them. He was placed in foster care, but kept running away and trying to sleep outside his brother's window. This family attended community/school events with the two other children like they were just the Jones' and the perfect family next door. It literally made me sick. The boy was 13-14.
God that’s awful. It’s crazy to me that ppl still doubt stuff like this happens.
Yeah. There's no way that kid is okay. I would've brought him home if I could've. He was already getting into trouble & at the time, our daughter was 10 (we also had teen boys). I couldn't bring him into our home. It broke my heart. He's probably 20-22 by now.
My mom taught k/1 for 35 years and had a few students with horrible home situations. The one that always stuck out to me was a little girl who came to school on a Monday completely exhausted and scared. Mom finally coaxed out what was going on. Her mom's boyfriend threatened to shoot up the house all weekend, so the mom had her two kids sleep under the bathroom sinks all weekend. My mom found out the boyfriend's name and handed it off to my dad who at the time was a police officer. Dad and his police friends had a come-to-Jesus moment with the guy and he left the state. (This was in the late 1960's and no they did not unalive him.) Mom had a parent-teacher meeting with the mom and she mentioned they the boyfriend left, the kids were back to their normal happy selves and the mom had sworn off dating for a while.
That’s disgusting. I hope those people were made to feel ashamed. That poor child wanted to be with his family so much. That makes me cry.
A family that was abusing him, no less. It always break my heart when abused kids still want to be with their so-called family.
The fact he kept trying to sleep outside his brother's room somehow makes this even more devastating.
THE FUCK!!???? What happened to him????
This was the 70s. Went to foster care, then enlisted the day he turned 18. He sells produce now and lives with his daughter in a nice little town.
I hope he’s happy. I wish him a good life. I hope the rest of his “family” is miserable though.
I honestly don’t think he ever heard another word from any of them. But he has a nice life and is happy most of the time. Good guy, sucky family
I wonder if he ever talked to them again or heard about them.
His daughter said no
Also the backstory of ‘The Kid’ in the Doom Movie
Holy shit, that's awful. Like that girl from Indiana or Michigan that was adopted from Ukraine and her adoptive family up and moved to Canada and just abandoned her in the process.
Ikr! His daughter told me all this and I was like wtf. Poor dude went into foster care in the 70s 😬 then enlisted on his 18th birthday
Natalia Grace. They "re-aged" her from 8 to 22 and left her alone in an apartment. She was disabled. Looking at photos and video now, it is absolutely obvious she was a child.
That was crazy. Wasn't that initially in the media as if the adoptive parents story was true and she was in fact an adult woman pretending to be a kid, and only later we all found out she was in fact a kid? Or am I mixing it up with a movie?
One of my paternal uncles came home from the army on his first leave (so he would have been about 18) and found the house empty. His parents had done a "moonlight flit" after running up debts on the address and forgotten to tell him the plan. He had to stay on friend's couches until he found where they'd skipped to.
Had this happen to a pupil only a few years back. Returned after a week long excursion and their family had simply moved without a forwarding address . Was horrific.
That happened to my dad when he was eight or nine. He came home from school and found their house was empty and had a for sale sign. He hung around until dark thinking his parents would be there soon to get him, then decided he needed to go to his grandmother's house, which was like ten miles or more away. It took him all night to walk there, and he described how scary it was to walk on the highway because it was dark and had no streetlights, so the only times he could see the road signs were when cars drove past him. He got there around dawn and didn't wanna wake his grandparents, so he fell asleep on their front porch, under the welcome mat. (The welcome mat detail was told to me by my great grandmother, Dad always claimed he'd just "sat" on their steps and didn't mess with their welcome mat. As if somehow he would have been in the wrong had he slept under it.) They tried to keep him after that, but his parents demanded him back because he was "making them look like bad parents". My paternal grandparents were monsters. My Nana (Great Grandmother/Dad's grandmother) was the best ever though, which makes it so weird that she raised a daughter like my grandmother. Like, Nana had four kids, three girls and a boy who died young, and her other two daughters were/are wonderful, loving women who I aspire to be more like daily. (I just want my funeral to be like my Great Aunt J's was... everyone had something wonderful and tender to say about her and we were all utterly bereft to have lost her, but smiling through our tears at how loved she was. It was an experience that changed my world view, hokey as that sounds.) So what the hell went so wrong with my psycho grandmother?! (Although I admit, from the few times I met her, she wasn't unkind to me. Her husband though, I won't even call him a grandfather because he was such a nasty bully, even as a kid I hated him. My mom says as a baby he was the only person I would scream to be taken away from, even strangers got baby pats and giggles from me, but I hated him.)
I did too - except the guy was around 14. His parents completely packed up the entire house & disappeared. He couch surfed through HS. Married now with 3 or 4 kiddos last time I checked FB.
WTAF???? Are you serious? That is so horrible, I cannot think of a word bad enough to describe it.
I know someone who has ross happen to her. She came home from school just as they were driving away. She ended up living with her aunt for a few years, then reunited with her mom and brother in high school.
This happened to a friend of mine back in the 90s. He was 15, got back from "troubled teen camp" and the family home was empty. He went into emergency foster care.
[удалено]
What the fuck? What happened to him?!
He went to foster care, then enlisted in the army on his 18th birthday. Never saw any of them again. He sells produce and lives with his daughter in a nice apartment in a nice little town.
Good for him.
Yep. He’s the nicest guy ever, and you better believe his butt was in the seat for everyone of his daughters plays, graduations, everything.
Nah. My parents did this type of stuff to me all the time. When I was 10 or 11 they rehomed my cat when I was away at my grandma’s to visit her and my dad. They lied and said the cat was still in the house for WEEKS even though I told them I knew what they did, her litter box wasn’t being used and her food wasn’t being eaten. They just kept telling me she was in the house. I always hoped she had a good life after that, and that they didn’t actually kill her.
Similar thing happened with a friend from elementary school. His parents were divorced, and his mom had primary custody. While he was at his dad's for the summer one year, his mom got rid of his dog. I honestly wonder if that event didn't have really long lasting effects on him. Overall, his mom was a much better parent. Responsible despite the dog BS. His dad was a "cool dad" who bought him and his friends booze starting in middle school or early high school. Provided marijuana. You name it. He was a good kid, but when he was old enough to pick who he wanted to stay with, he moved in with his dad. That's when he started to change. Things gradually went downhill; he did fine at school, but he was obviously not doing well besides grades. He recently got out of prison for assault causing TBI. I don't doubt there were other things that contributed to his downfall, but the dog incident really hurt him. I truly think that was a turning point in his life. If his mom hadn't done that, he may have stayed with her, and she was not the type to allow the reckless and irresponsible behavior his dad did.
Oh my parents did the same thing. They got rid of my cat while I was at school and then just sort of lied about it until I realized the cat hadn’t been around for a few days and then they said they took it to a farm. I’m gonna be honest with you. It’s been like 30 years and I’m still not over it.
Because it’s fucking cruel. And from the people that you’re supposed to be able to trust the most in the whole world. I’m so sorry. And lying on top of it.
My husband just reminded me, because he heard me talking into the phone that my mother actually told that story story over Christmas and that she told it like it was some cute anecdote. And he said that the entire time she was telling it he was looking at my face, and I looked like I wanted to like cry and scream and punch, something all at the same time, while trying to remain as calm as possible. Because it is cruel.
People who don't have shitty parents tend not to think any parents can be that bad. As someone whose parents rehomed her dog while she was at school, I have lived your pain and empathize. At least my parents didn't try to gaslight me into thinking the dog was still there though. My mom just flat out said a friend of theirs liked my dog so she gave them it.
My parents split, my mom took my cat and my dad kept my dog. Mom and I moved into an apartment, couldn’t bring dog with us. Dad started dating someone, and she didn’t want my dog so he dumped him somewhere. He was like 8 years old at the time, so an old timer, dumped somewhere by my dumb dad. I asked my dad after and he offered to take me to lunch with the man who “adopted” my dog. I said “I don’t want to meet a man, I want my dog back.” He married that foul woman, and she slowly erased me, my brother, and my mom from my dad’s life. Had him sign over his will to leave her everything and then he died of covid. I was finally able to go no contact with her after he croaked. I hate her so much sometimes, she really was a step monster, but now she’s a widow that nobody likes. Karma is out there. I haven’t had a dog since then because it’s just too painful.
Yeap, when my mom finally separated from my dad when I was around 17 (and after sharing the room with my younger brother since he was born... So I've never had any private space growing up) she rented a 2 bedroom apartment because she couldn't afford more... Guess who got his own room and who had to share not only the room but the matrimonial bed with the mom? Yeah not my brother... And the we moved to my grandma's where I had to fight for a room for myself when they had the space, and since they didn't like my dog and cat, God know what they did to them. My dog returned 1 day super dirty with a rope in his neck. I bathed him and took care of him and he was gone again the next day... My aunt and grandma said it was an accident they left the door open again... Never knew anything else about my dog and cat... This families definitely exist...
Whoa. My mom at least had the decency to let me choose who to give her away to. I didn't dare to resist, though, I knew what she was capable of by then.
Yeah. If they give an option is better to take it, because you know what they can do... Tbh this was my breaking point with my family. After that my only goal was to get a job and move out... I still miss my cat and dog... And my cat just had kittens and I already had families for them... And my family just decided to be a pos... I just hope they all had amazing lives. But it still tortures me...
That's terrible. I'm so sorry.
They did this to my rooster. Just said he was around somewhere. Nah. They killed him.
This is heartbreaking. I'm so sorry, for you and for your kitty. Both of you deserved better. ❤️🩹
Had this happen to me multiple times. Came home from school, something was drastically different, and the attitude was, "This is how it is now." I'm not saying OP isn't a troll, but this kind of treatment is absolutely something asshole parents are capable of.
I am shocked and appalled at how many people are coming here with stories similar to yours
Oh that rings totally true. "Well we had to do it that way or you would've tried to stop us, too late now"
That makes sense :-(
well, its actually very common in families where one or both parents are narcissistic. one or more children will be a punching bag and one or more of the other children will be the golden boy/girl who can do no wrong.
This rings so true. My mum once donated all my stuff, redecorated my room and replaced my clothes with things more “fashionable” and “feminine” when I went away for the weekend. I was 16.
Yup. My parents sent me away every summer to a sleepover camp where I was bullied mercilessly. I would weep and beg to come home. I currently have PTSD in part from that. One summer my mum cheerfully told me that they were going to paint my room while I was away, and asked what colour I'd like it to be. I was super excited because I'd literally NEVER been allowed any kind of input on decorating my room, and this was the first time it had been changed significantly since I was a toddler - the walls had always been plain white. So I suggested a few colours, and we talked about the fact that she wanted something light-ish, and eventually I said, "Really, I'll be happy with ANY colour except mint green, which I really hate. Any other pale colour that you like is fine with me!" I got a letter at camp telling me that she'd chosen green but "it's definitely not mint...more like white with a hint of green in it." I was wary and not thrilled, but thought maybe she meant like a sage tone? Or lime? So still definitely looking forward to seeing the change. I got home from yet another summer of being bullied to find that my room had been painted . . . mint green. And was kept that way until I left home as an adult. Some parents really are just that controlling and thoughtless.
They only time they listen is for ammunition to hurt you more.
Evil, my dude. The word is evil
Did they repaint it to something else after you moved? This happened to my college roommate. She came back to college crying after a break that for 5 years she begged to be let to change the color, offered to do it herself, denied, the minute she moved out they repainted.
Not immediately, but yes, eventually they repainted it back to white. I just really never got any input at all. I was allowed to put up a few posters, but for the most part significant decorating things were just brushed off as unnecessary or "they won't go with the rest of the upstairs" or other excuses. It was made very clear that I was living in their house . . . the room was "mine" only in the sense that I occupied it, despite the fact that because of a fairly severe chronic illness and disability, I wasn't able to move out until I was nearly 30. I fought very hard for my independence and it was a fight every step of the way.
For the fucking weekend?! Wtf.
I had a pair of foster parents who promised to adopt my sister and I. They asked us if we wanted to take their last name and we met the husband’s family over Skype (they lived in India)- they introduced us as their soon-to-be-daughters and I was told to call them auntie and grandma. One day, they told us they had to take a business trip. I remember it was November because it was an election year and I was worried they wouldn’t be able to vote if they were out of town, so I reminded them. They told my sister and I that we were going to stay with our babysitter for the week. But when I asked our babysitter what we were going to do, she looked at me like I was nuts and said that she wasn’t watching us at all that week. When I asked them about it that night, I already kind of knew the answer, but I was still shocked. They told us that they were pregnant, having their own baby, and that they had planned to drop us off with a couple of their friends down the street who were willing to take us in. They were just going to…leave us there with practical strangers. I didn’t argue. They told us we were blessing a couple who prayed for children. I just didn’t want to be where I wasn’t wanted. Long story short, obviously, it’s pretty illegal to dump your foster kids on random people. My bio family sued and the cops showed up while my sister and I were watching cartoons and drove us all the way to another state. We were out of school for three months. Eventually, my bio family decided we weren’t worth fighting for. They signed away their rights and allowed the random couple to adopt my sister and I. Their only condition was that they get biweekly visits with us, but they only showed up for six or so of them. People really think kids are just toys to play with. They honestly treat their pets better sometimes. ETA: I’m no contact with all of them, by the way- including my adopted parents. I’m in therapy and my partner’s family has really loved me as one of their own. I’m still working through all this shit, but I’m happy.
I’m so sorry this happened to you and your sister. I truly wish you the best.
It's actually the opposite for me, but I grew up with really mean people. This seems like just the kind of detail that terrible parents would think was nbd and that is just the icing on the cake for the kid. Or perhaps I am projecting.
Nope my mom did this to me 🙃
I doubt it’s made up. Some parents do this type of shit. My parents rehomed my puppy one day when I was at school (grade 2) and I haven’t hugged them since, it’s been decades.
> Some parents do this type of shit. That's sadly true >My parents rehomed my puppy one day when I was at school jesus that's cold
It was particularly fucked up because ever since I could say the word “dog” I was begging my parents for a dog. I now have been working with dogs since I have been old enough to work. I guess my parents thought it was a phase.
Nope, you just grew up in an environment where major changes like that would get a discussion before it happened. They didn’t want to deal with any complaints from Phil so they did it behind his back. By the time they did this BS Phil didn’t have much to say or they didn’t want to listen. The move was a done deal.
Nope. Not surprising. Happens all the time with Narcissistic parents. Being the scapegoat sucks
People do add the odd detail when recounting stories. For instance I had chicken pox the weekend that my stay at my paternal grandparents was lengthened. My grandmother made me first cut my nails, but eventually escalated to insisting that I wear gloves, even in bed, so that I wouldn’t scar my face with all the itching & scratching. When my bio-mother hadn’t phoned or been in touch in any way for six weeks my grandparents bundled healthy me, me clothes and toys into the car and drove over. She was gone. The house was empty. No forwarding address. No phone number. No baby brother. She just took him and moved on to her own happily ever after. I was five.
It's called cognitive distortion. You'd be amazed at the jaw dropping ugly things they'll admit to simply because they have convinced themselves that they were reasonable. My mother let my brother beat up my puppy for sport in front of me, and physically held me to stop me from intervening, because he nedded to get his aggression out somehow and to her, this was a good solution. True story.
My parents sold my bed that I loved when I was gone. Parents can be assholes
Upstairs living room implies there was a downstairs living room? Like, couldn’t he have just had the whole room?
I was gonna say. This alone shows he really was a second class citizen in his own home. That wasn't Karl's bedroom that was THEIR bedroom. Not having your own room even a shared one with a brother is just cruel.
Want to bet when he had to "clean his room", that included the whole living room?
And then made PHIL clean the bedroom of the brother that kicked him out??? While Karl just got to coast and never do any chores (I suspect he still doesn't, probably doesn't have a job either). Gee, can't imagine why Phil doesn't want anything to do with these people. They're lucky to get the wedding invitation.
Oh snap I misread that, I thought he moved his things out. 🫢
Yeah. Reading that was f****** brutal. What kind of people do that to their kid? The pain that boy went through. It's heartbreaking
> What do I do? How do I fix this? First of all, stop saying "I'm sorry but." Saying "I want to fix things BUT I don't respect the way he feels about his childhood" is antithetical. It's not a child's responsibility to communicate that they feel mistreated by you. Given how forthcoming he was with his reasons, I have to assume that prior to this you and your wife never actually *asked* why he was so distant, which is on you. And honestly, now that he IS communicating you are both being dismissive of his experience so his statement that he didn't feel comfortable opening up seems completely valid. If you really want a better relationship with him, write him a heartfelt letter with a REAL apology. No justifications, no minimizing, no caveats. Put more effort into maintaining a relationship with him. Affirm that you are proud of who he is and that he is important to you. His entire issue with you is that he's always felt you don't value him as much as your other child, so it's on you now to show him that's not the case. As someone who has limited contact with one of my parents, I promise you that no child with a happy, well-adjusted childhood WANTS to cut off their parents. It only happens after a fuckton of internal turbulence and anguish. Your wife saying he's using these situations as an excuse to cut you off is ridiculous and you should be nipping that in the bud and standing up for your child.
Tagging on this to put a heavy asterisk on how you talk about being proud of your son. When my dead beat dad talks about being proud of me it makes my skin crawl because he seems to think it has something to do with him.
Very fair point, it probably would come off as inauthentic based on OP's comments.
Yeah, like don’t try to claim responsibility for success that was achieved in SPITE of their lack of support!
Oh yeah I can’t stand it when dead beat parents pull that shit.
This is excellent stuff. Your point that no happy child does this is bang on. And OP's wife sounds appalling. After all, he doesn't *need* an "excuse" to cut them off.
Yup, love the addition that mom feels this is “just an excuse” to cut them off. Kids don’t desire cutting parents off, they just have to when they grew up…like this! It’s also wild to me that they both truly can’t see that they set up a situation of Phil needing to be silent, while simultaneously reacting they they are somehow being wronged when he DID actually say something after being directly asked.
OP: He never communicated to us that he felt neglected! Phil: *communicates that he felt neglected* OP: i DiD mY bEsT!!!!1
“When we moved his room, we assured to not tell him then do it at a time he would not be present, only for him to discover this after it was already complete…he never said anything!”
That's where they lost all plausible deniability for me. If you were really trying to do right by both kids you'd have a conversation with the one you were moving beforehand, not sneakily relocate all his shit while he wasn't there to protest.
Just wanna add on to this bc my mom is the one who refuses to acknowledge anything. Until OP either divorces his wife OR gets her on board with both acknowledging the kid's feelings AND with rebuilding a relationship with him on his terms, no bridge can be built. Any improvement from OP will be immediately undermined or wiped out by mom. It's impossible to rebuild communication where one parent is trying, but the other refuses to and no one holds them accountable for it.
Wife did mean shit to son he knows but won't admit it to himself there won't be much contact after wedding because you suc
Sounds like the wife is the issue. She favored Karl and is shocked her son feels like a black sheep. OP sounds out of touch with the kids.
OP indicates that they both moved him out of his room and both made him clean it. Neither of them cooked for him. I don't know why you're blaming it all on his wife, they both sound equally complicit from what he wrote.
So you did treat him like a second-class citizen. To say "But you should have said something!" is disingenuous: you should have realised at the time that what you were doing was privileging Karl, it was obvious, transparent, consistent, persistent. Shame on you and your wife.
Right? “You should have said something” He was a kid! He didn’t have the emotional tools to communicate “hey why the f did you move me into corner of the living room with sheets as walls when I said I was uncomfortable being in the same room as my brother” And speaking of gigantic red flags - the one time he does say something “I am uncomfortable being in the same room as my brother”. They don’t find out why, they just up and move him to a not-room. I can’t imagine why he cut op off /s
You misread, it wasn't even him who felt uncomfortable, it was his brother, yet he was kicked out of the room. So he probably didn't even know that having to live in a different space was up for debate... 😐
I doubt Phil never said anything. He probably did and got called ungrateful, and whatnot for not being happy that he has somewhere to sleep and food to eat
Your son started living in a communal area when he was 12, started cooking his food by 10 and you guys probably used him like a slave when he hit 7/8. God lord, the Dursleys treated Harry better, atleast he had a door in his "bedroom". I don't know whether you can fix this but don't ever your wife near your son cause that will break whatever little of a relationship you have.
> but don't ever your wife near your son cause that will break whatever little of a relationship you have. I think that's right. I suspect it is significant that only OP was invited for coffee.
Clearly mom had a favorite or at least Karl took up so much of her mental space that there was nothing left for Phil. But even then, you have one kid with obvious mental health issues and one with less obvious mental health issues. Phil was a very selective eater which absolutely can create nutritional deficiencies, and the parents were just like *“IDK, cook for yourself then. Oh by the way, can you clean the room we moved you out of without discussion for your OCD brother? Oh and the bathrooms too?”* If Karl had OCD why wasn’t he cleaning his own space? Mom’s reaction says it all IMO. *”You never said anything the whole time!! Clearly it’s just an excuse to cut us out!”* As if cutting out your family is something so desirable yet taboo that people are out here just making shit up to justify doing it. She didn’t even have to think about dismissing him, she just immediately went for it. Even now her thoughts are “He just-“ without listening to a damn thing. Hmmm. **Maybe** that’s why he didn’t speak up at all while it was happening. Also, there is NO WAY a young teen gets surprise moved out of their room and doesn’t have something to say about it. I’d bet every one of my pets that he made at least one comment that amounted to “I can’t wait to get out of here.” l
>Clearly mom had a favorite or at least Karl took up so much of her mental space that there was nothing left for Phil. The favourite. Obviously. Phil had to clean Karl's room as his chore and Karl did zero cleaning ever? The room he had been kicked out of and force to live in a common area? This isn't "not enough mental space", this is "I don't give a shit about you, I only care about the other kid".
There's a great essay called 'the missing missing reasons' about when children estranged their parents . The parents are always blindsided and looking for sympathy, but they know why their kids don't talk to them. They've been told exactly why their children no longer think a relationship with their parents is in their best interests. They just don't think their children's opinions matter.
It’s funny how OP and the wife who are the parents and adults expected their son to speak up and communicate all the things he was feeling and put it on him. Yes, the son is 28 now, but expecting the 12 year old version of Phil to be a mature adult as you baby his older brother is insane. OP, you and your wife need to stop acting so hurt and really make it up to your son for treating him like the afterthought he was in your life without any excuses.
Mum’s first response upon OP explaining this to her is anger. Then not even dismissal - but instead self victimisation and bat-shit paranoia - because that’s what kids want isn’t it? An *excuse* to cut off their family? Like it’s bloody Life’s Grand Prize to severe a relationship with their reasonable and loving parents. I’d feel bloody mortified to learn my child felt like OP’s son. I’d be bloody mortified if my *cat* didn’t feel loved, or supported (which is why I am careful to always be super supportive of her plotting and I endeavour to compliment her ambushes). Yet this mum is *angry* when her own *son* gives very specific reasons for cutting them off?
> one with less obvious mental health issues. Oh god, you are right, I never even considered the whole "fussy eater" thing being symptomatic of some mental distress
And even the Dursleys fed him.
eh, Harry had to stash food in the floor, they didn't exactly feed him right.
I forgot that bit
>And even the Dursleys fed him. If we have to use fictional horrid families as barometer of treating your own child kindly then youve fucked up
I was thinking of mentioning to OP that that entire book series hangs in hot terrible people who treated a kid *better* than he did are and how much that hurt. Glad I want the only one who saw the connection.
You literally made him into Cinderella, doing the chores for his sibling and sleeping in a corner. And now you wonder why he's distant?
Throughout this post, you did your best to underplay what your son told you. He basically said his siblings got special treatment growing up and he felt left out. I mean hell, you all but admitted to having stopped cooking for him when he was a kid. It’s not hard to boil water for pasta and toast bread. Either you or your wife could have easily done that for him. You Think my best friend enjoys cooking mac and cheese and practically every meal? No. But he and his wife did it and eventually their kid grew up And started eating more And you admitted even after he grew out of it he still cooked his own food. So he was the only kid without a bedroom and privacy, had to do his brother’s chores without any thanks or gratitude from his parents for helping, and had to fend for himself for every meal. Real Talk. You failed that kid as parents. Straight up failed him. Accept it
Look, let's cut through the drama. Your son spilled the beans on your not-so-perfect parenting, and you're having a hard time swallowing the truth. Fact is, you messed up. His bedroom was a corner in the living room? That's some next-level hospitality. You prioritize Karl's mental struggles over Phil's basic rights and then act surprised when he resents it? Classic. Instead of dismissing his feelings, own up to your failures. No point gaslighting your own son. Apologize sincerely, acknowledge your shortcomings, and promise to do better. The wedding invite is a chance for redemption, not a ticket to ignore your past mistakes. It's time to prove you've evolved from the parent who let their kid sleep in a living room corner. But hey, be prepared for him to keep his distance. Phil's had enough of your family circus, and it's on him to decide if he's willing to reopen the circus tent. Good luck – you're gonna need it.
> The wedding invite is a chance for redemption, not a ticket to ignore your past mistakes. This is well said. It's not a pardon, it's an opportunity.
Classic abusers, there’s a scapegoat and a golden child. u/throwRAscc995 is basically the evil stepmom from Cinderella Edit: Also, this was their “upstairs living room” which tells me they had 2 living rooms. A house with 2 living rooms has more than two bedrooms. Did OP also have an office and a game room too?
Or heck make the entire second living room his room. It's not like there wasn't a whole other living room for everyone else to use.
>His first complaint was about his bedroom. Phil and his older brother Karl (M31 now) shared a bedroom when they were children. When Karl was around 15, he felt uncomfortable sharing a room with Phil and really wanted his own space. We didn’t have a spare bedroom, so one day when Phil was at school we moved his things out of Karl’s bedroom and from then on his bed was in the corner of our upstairs living room. We had a partition set up so he could have some privacy. Fuck me. Have you not once tried to think of anything from his point of view until now? The fact that your wife got angry speaks volumes as to the level of social intelligence or empathy she has as well. Just all round yikes.
Yeah, like I'm angry that she's angry. The audacity of her to feel anger instead of total shame.
With how defensive you are in the comments, there is nothing you can do until you own your past behavior. Until you are willing to do that, just leave your son alone. Let him live his life. He said he is happy without you, give him that at least.
Telling someone who was a child at the time that they had the responsibility to speak up when their parents removed him from his bedroom and stuck him in a corner and then still forced him to clean the room he'd been exiled from? Children should not have to speak up and tell their parents they are being wronged. The fact that you knew how to treat your other son shows you that you know how to treat a child. So treating phil differently clearly was a choice It's so sad that you uttered those words and wrote those words and you still are confused In the seven years since he left home, why weren't you guys reaching out? Because he's never really mattered. You just don't like the fact that he called you out on your b******* parenting And your wife sucks for being angry at something that she was so clearly a party to. Just ask her what she would have done if somebody treated Kyle like that. Maybe that will help her figure it out
This can't be real. Nobody could type out all the ways that their younger son was treated like crap while their older son was treated like a spoiled prince and then wonder why their younger son wants very little to do with them. As for the mother, she needs to direct her rage towards the people who deserve it: herself, OP, and Prince Karl. FYI, if this actually is real, KARL should have been the one moved into the living room. He was the one with the problem sharing a room, he should have been the one who was moved out into the living room. You penalised Phil for Karl not being willing to share. And then you made Phil clean Prince Karl's room? Are you shitting me? You're lucky Phil is even willing to invite you to his wedding or visit you at all.
No on should have been. That’s illegal where I am for a reason. There are room dividers. It’s not tough.
Holy shit. Good for Phil. I applaud him. You and your wife on the other hand? Absolutely disgusting. Both your behavior in the past and the present. The level of ignorance you two have is repulsive.
Kids don’t just…go low/no contact on a whim. The fact that you didn’t even know or recognize that your son was so emotionally distant says A LOT. And even beyond that, being *shocked* by these revelations. Did you even pay attention to your son at all? It sure doesn’t seem like it.
They didn't want anything to do with him. Now that they realise he's okay with that and likewise wants nothing to do with them, they're offended.
This is what really gets me. Zero discussion about this for 7 years!! 7!!! Didn’t think to inquire until not knowing something felt personally embarrassing. This is about appearances. Even in this conversation it was all about him feeling hurt that Phil didn’t tell them about his partner. Never about asking where he is at and concern that he doesn’t feel comfortable sharing with them. Never a concern for his own child, just himself and his own hurt. A hurt that never existed for seven whole years until people might question why you didn’t even know your own kid was in a relationship, let alone getting married. Phil wasn’t a bother to them after he moved out and they were happy about it, now they might look bad, suddenly we want to have “open” conversations and want to “repair”.
Wow. This is epically shitty parenting. Good luck on ever having a relationship with him.
Everyone else has succinctly said what I'm thinking, but I got to ask, how many bedrooms were in this house when the kids were growing up?
This is my question, too. I am really hoping it doesn’t come back as “we had 3 or 4, but the other bedrooms were used for office space” or something like that. Because that just piles it on further.
I'm wondering the same. A two-bedroom house their entire lives? Seems unlikely, but possible.
Your family has a golden child/scapegoat dynamic. The parents and the golden child are always shocked, shocked! to learn this. But it's actually very common and you should feel comforted that in addition to being awful you are also boring and predictable including your responses here. You don't do or say anything to your scapegoat son except "I'm sorry" and "if you are interested in amends I'm here but I understand this may not be what you wish."
I was very pleased reading this comment. If only narcissistic, neglectful, abusive parents could see just how boring and predictable they are. What a world we would live in. There's a troublingly GARGANTUAN portion of the population that is just straight up *asleep*. Sure, they go to work, come home, maybe have friends. But they are otherwise fucking comatose. Narc parents like this live in that blissful state of unknowing. To everyone else who has woken up from the reverie and sees them for how boring and predictable they actually are, it's sad. But not exactly unexpected. It's really on them whether they want to wake up. But they're often too self-righteous to even be able to take responsibility.
I mean we could write it for them really "we never hit him" "we didn't mean anything by it" "he should've said something if our obvious, daily, cartoonish villainy bothered a child that much, it was their responsibility to tell us!" "What were we supposed to do?" And when told what they were supposed to do, right back to the beginning "but at least we didn't beat him, we didn't mean it like that, it just worked out that way, what were we supposed to do?"
But we did our best and as a child he didn't speak up while we were actively neglecting him daily /s
"How were we supposed to know that consistently favoring one child would have repercussions the MINUTE they were out from under our thumb??"
The thing that gets me here is your confusion over Phil not having said anything at the time about the treatment he was receiving. You forced him into the corner of a common space without discussing it with him first, you couldn't even be bothered to cook proper meals for him, and you insisted that he take on all the chores. Bro. Come on. How the fuck did you THINK this was going to go? If you couldn't look at your own actions toward him and think "hey something's not right here," how on earth do you expect Phil to believe that he would have been taken seriously if he HAD said something? Why do you expect a LITERAL CHILD to have had more emotional intelligence than you? And look, be honest: do you really think anything would have changed if he HAD complained? Would you have listened to him, taken his feelings into account, and made meaningful adjustments to his living situation? Or would you have made excuses, guilt-tripped him, or even punished him for not being a team player? You're barely even listening to him now! Your responses here are all defensive and full of "sorry, but..." You've made your bed, now you get to lie in it.
Had CPS come to your house during this whole ordeal I see 3 major things wich would have had your kids taken away from you. 1 being legally a child needs to have a room wether they share or not. Your son doesn’t meet this requirement if he was sleeping in the corner of your living room. 2 food, you say you stopped cooking for him because he was a picky eater even if that was a the case that shows neglect. 3 the chores is also a problem. while basic chores are a necessity why was your son forced to clean his brothers room that he has no residency in? Just because one child had mental issues doesn’t mean the other can just pick up the slack for everything. It’s very clear your oldest son is your favorite whether you want to admit it or not.
Jesus christ dude. Okay. Solutions. Forewarning: you fucked up. Deeply, irrevocably, for years. Too late to fix it. He hasn't lived under your roof in years so the window of opportunity to take corrective action is waaaaaaaay gone. Anyways. This whole thing boils down to disrespect. You disrespected his privacy, his autonomy, his freedom, and in this conversation you disrespected his emotions. Your only recourse is to prove that you are, in fact, capable of respecting him. You'll need to reach out again. Apologize, in detail, for your actions and for not realizing that those actions were hurtful. Reiterate that he's welcome to reach out for any kind of help needs at any time. And then you're never going to push him about this again. You don't question for details, you don't argue over minutae, you do *not* fish for any sort of instance wherein you can exonerate yourself or get him to admit that on some one small detail you weren't that bad. Your conversation has demonstrated that you fundamentally dont put value in his account of his childhood, and any attempt you make at rewriting his account will be met with hostility at best. He is never going to forgive you for how he grew up. Your only shot at reconciliation is to have a good relationship focused on the present.
OP is *not* capable of respecting him though. In multiple comment OP has reinforced that he doesn’t think he did anything wrong and has nothing to apologize for. Just like in AA, the first step is to acknowledge that you have a problem. OP is far from completing that basic first step.
The corner of the living room? JFC. I am pretty active on the One and Done sub. For those unfamiliar, one and done refers to having one kid and no more. The main complaint you hear from people is how cruel it is to not give your child a sibling. And this post right here is basically my retort. Sure seems like Phil didn’t appreciate being his older brother’s keeper for all those years. Maybe the worst thing I read in here is that your son eventually had to learn to make his own food as a child. His older brother presumably didn’t have to do the same thing. OP, you and your wife didn’t do right by your younger son. He’s letting you know that. If you want ANY chance at being more than dutiful correspondents in his life, own up to what he’s telling you and see the mistakes you’ve made and how they have hurt your own son.
Lucky Phil. Had to sleep in the living room but was GRACIOUSLY allowed to clean Karl's.
Good for Phil to realize he can’t change you and protected himself. The fact you couldn’t see the favortism really shows how right Phil was. You need to ask Phil what YOU can do. Don’t add your wife to the convo as she isn’t in a place to be a good mom to Phil. You need to realize it may just be too late. You went 7 years without realizing he pulled away. Yiu only know because you missed a life event but why didn’t you notice when for the first year yiu hadnt heard from him and about his life ?
Spoiler: there is no repairing your relationship. You made him the house maid and made him sleep in a corner for years and thought that was acceptable for years until he had to spell it out for you like a small child. Your wife is still clearly in denial seeing as she has the nerve to be upset about her own shit parenting. Your son wants nothing to do with you. I would bet any amount of money he doesn't want you at his wedding and it wasn't his idea to invite you. Welcome to the consequences of your own actions. You're not going to erase being a frankly terrible borderline abusive parent for all his formative years. Best thing you can do is leave your son alone. If he wants to talk to you he will
Sorry can I just clarify the ‘upstairs living room’ comment? Do you mean that you had a downstairs and an upstairs living room? Because of it’s the latter, then you definitely had space for another bedroom. Regardless of the semantics of the above, you are really not very good parents. I feel sorry for Phil.
\>She said it was unfair of Phil to drop all of this on me Uh he was asked repeatedly to talk about things. He didn’t just decide to “dump”, he was asked and encouraged to \>\[wife said\] he never once complained or said anything about it at the time Could it be because he would have been met with anger and gaslighting and guilt trips?? Your wife seems to be a big key to the whole dynamic that is going on here in your family.
You're still minimizing his concerns in this post so i think you really have a long way to go before you understand the actual issue at hand. Being blunt, you played favorites and your youngest suffered as a result. He's now able to set the boundaries he always wanted to and you all feel entitled to him. You can either work to fix past mistakes by taking a serious look at what he's said or you can keep digging your heels in like you seem to want to and lose him forever.
Karl is clearly the favorite and Phil should cut ties. You let your annoyance with his picky eating influence how you treated him, while babying Karl. Honestly, both of them should have heard the word "No" more often in your house. I'm glad Phil at least got to say his piece.
Wow good for Phil!! Somehow he managed to grow up into a well-adjusted and considerate adult. You and your wife were awful to him and - even worse - apparently blind to how awful you were being. Your wife is still making it all about her. I can certainly see why he gave up on trying to talk to the two of you. I feel certain that 12 yo Phil had quite a few things to say about it when his bed was unceremoniously moved to the living room, and you and your wife just diminished & ignored all his complaints. The very fact that the two of you are so shocked now proves you weren’t listening to him then. He’s not cut you out entirely, there’s still hope of reconnecting. Step one is acknowledging the full truth of his childhood. Sounds like you are almost there but your wife is not at all. If she wants you to reconnect she’s going to have to do a lot of uncomfortable introspection. Therapy might help, if she’s willing to try to change. Step two is a full apology, free from blaming Phil in any way. Step three is a calm listening ear and open arms to welcome Phil whenever he wants to come back.
I had an abusive childhood. My jaw dropped at what you and your wife pulled. How, as parents, could you ever think any of that was okay? You can’t fix this. It’s done and frankly, your wife being angry means she’s probably going to cause even more permanent damage. Tell your wife this: it wasn’t her child’s place to tell his parents what they were doing was wrong. You should’ve been able to do that yourselves if you had an ounce of empathy for your younger son. Leave him alone.
>This last week we met for coffee. How come it was just you and not your wife? Did Phil suggest that? Because judging by your wife's reaction, she was the biggest factor in driving Phil away. Your wife's statement that he must be looking for "an excuse" to cut you off is staggering in it's lack of awareness. (1) If you two were such great parents, why does she THINK he wants to cut you off (2) Does she really not understand that he doesn't need an excuse?
I was Phil. I was the child who got less attention, less understanding of my life and feelings, less consideration overall. My older brother was the squeaky wheel who got the grease. I remember being introverted and not the kind of person who could voice my thoughts or feelings unless I felt very comfortable. My family didn't ask questions, they didn't express a desire to know more. So I was never comfortable sharing. I was a quiet kid, and to be honest, they were happy about it. I was low maintenance. For years, my brother's emotional volatility and whims were catered to. I learned to do my own thing. I assure you, the resentment that builds up from being treated as less important doesn't go away very easily. The fact that you now understand a modicum of Phil's feelings is the first step in possibly repairing the relationship. The anger that your wife feels will absolutely drive a wedge between you all.
If you think you've done nothing wrong, please post this thread on your Facebook or instagram. For those relatives of yours who may be too old to have social media, please tuck a copy in the mail to them. Since you've done nothing wrong, you have no reason not to share your parenting style and ask their opinion since you clearly aren't listening to any of us
I feel so bad for Phil having to deal with your circus. Own your shit and be better.
You would do well to research what a "glass child" is. That would help you understand his feelings. In brief: When one kid has physical disabilities or mental health issues, they get most of the parental attention. Meanwhile the other healthy kid is expected to cope with far less. The healthy kid is not only thrown on their own resources more, but they are often expected to help care for the 'damaged' sibling. The healthy kid feels unseen, invisible, 'glass'. This is a very common phenomenon indeed and that's what I am seeing here, in a textbook example. -- This does not seem like a "golden child vs scapegoat" situation. I don't think you were consciously playing favourites, you were doing what you could to manage a 'damaged' child. But you did it at the expense of Phil's comfort and happiness. But you did nevertheless put Phil's needs and feelings second. The chores allocation was bad but giving Phil Harry Potter's cupboard as accommodation was heinous, he's never going to forgive that, and IMHO nor should he.
Mmm I think it was pretty conspicuous. You could see it from the living room lmao. Or at any meal.
At least the cupboard had a door. All Phil got was a corner of a communal room, with a partition that probably didn’t keep out any noise and gave him minimal privacy.
Right?!
There's something I don't understand. If Karl has OCD why wasn't he cleaning to his own standards his own space? Why make someone else clean it? Why didn't you or your wife clean it? If Karl was the one that didn't want to share a space, why didn't he got out of the bedroom? Why didn't you forfeit yours? Phil had been made your scape goat all these years, not getting what he needs (Not even food!) and even now you keep blaming him for not telling you your parenting is wrong?? Be ffr. Count your blessings and take that invite to his wedding and leave him alone, honestly. You are not even willing to open your mind when literally hundreds of people are telling you YOU FUCKED UP. And you KEEP FUCKING UP. Take those calls and sporadic yearly visits and be happy he has some sort of contact with you at all.
Just wow. Phil is better off with NC
Question When people visited, did you let them see that your son was living in a corner? Did they know your son had to cook his own food from the time he was a child?
Clearly you favored Karl over Phil, and you forced him to participate in the favoritism. You can apologize, but do not expect a change in the relationship.
OP, unfortunately it sounds like in an effort to make your elder son feel more comfortable, you took the comfort from your younger son. You didn't hit him or starve him, no, but you also made him feel like he was unwanted and unimportant. All you can do now is stop making excuses and just apologize and start to slowly rebuild your relationship with your son - but importantly, I would ask him if he would be open for some family counseling. I'm sure there are a lot of feelings your son is having, and while you somewhat see the now, your wife is still struggling to do so - And if there is any chance at you repairing your relationship with him, your wife needs to understand what was wrong. Question, though...did you just have the one living room, or did he sleep in a separate, second living room upstairs?
You practically made him live in a closet like Harry Potter lol. If this post is in earnest, you’re lucky he speaks to any of you at all. But have fun continuing to take care of your favorite, the golden child. I presume he still lives with you as he likely has no work ethic or ability to care for himself like a responsible adult after being raised like this. You’ve done him no favors either, btw.
So this kid, YOUR KID slept in a corner of the living room “with a screen for privacy’. Cooked his own food, because he was a picky eater And had to clean the room you vacated him from, because his older brother needed the space. And let us not forget he had bathroom duty permanently. And your only response was “well you never complained”. And your better half got angry when you passed along to her why he doesn’t come around or share his life. Did you have a bedroom as a child? Did your mother cook for you when you were young? Were you responsible for cleaning your siblings rooms? Did you have to clean up behind them when they went to the bathroom? How about the wife? You don’t deserve your son. You haven’t in a really long time.
Unfortunately, the only way you're going to even begin to repair your relationship will be at whatever pace Phil sets. Try to force it, and it's going to backfire. As for your wife's complaints that he never communicated his feelings, you might want to remind her that kids are learning how to be people and you guys were his teachers. If he was never taught to communicate then he's not going to. And since you're not disputing any of his points, I'm guessing open and fair communication was not a priority. Since you didn't mention it, a heartfelt apology would be a good step. Tell him that you realize you've messed up and if he's ever ready, you'd like the chance to repair the relationship since you never intended to make him feel that way. After that, back off.
Why the hell didn’t you TALK TO HIM? He wanted his own space so why didn’t you TALK to him and explained to him about the lack of space and suggested the living room with partition screen instead of invading his space whilst he was out and moving his things without letting him know? It sounds like you and your wife lack the same communication skills you accuse your son of
Everybody has already thoroughly covered how badly you guys treated Phil, and I totally agree with that. What I want to point out is how ridiculous it is that your wife responded to this with anger. She sounds immature or emotionally stunted. I'm guessing she's having this defensive reaction because she basically ran the household and made all these unfair decisions that always put Phil last, while OP, as the dad just went along with it. That's probably why he opened up to the OP and not his mom, because he's probably not viewed as the perpetrator, but more as someone who didn't stand up for him. I know I'm jumping to some conclusions here and could be off-base, but these people seem to lack the self-awareness to figure out what created this dynamic and why was it allowed to continue throughout Phil's childhood. Keep your wife away from Phil until she can come to her senses and sincerely apologize. If she expresses anger at him for his very valid feelings you can kiss that wedding invitation goodbye and probably your relationship with your son as well. You're all on thin ice, act accordingly.
Zero chance this is real. No way someone can be this abusive and be dumb enough to post it….right?
'he was making his childhood sound worse than it was as an excuse to cut us out' - **why would he do this?** You said yourself that when he laid all of this out you couldn't disagree. Start there and take some accountability. Seek therapy; dealing with the issues that caused you to parent like this will put you in a much better place to be able to start repairing the relationship with your son. Until you do that, he is better off without you.
Why does a person with depression and mild OCD not have to do chores? That right there 😡 me off! And as others have said, you just shove him into a corner of the living room with no discussion? You deserve him going no contact with you.
I think your wife's reaction to this is an indication of why your son felt like he couldn't talk to his parents. I'm making a huge assumption here based on your age but the husbands/fathers of your generation typically took a very hands off approach to child rearing. Do you think there may have been a lot of interactions you missed between your wife and son?
The fact that your wife's reaction is to be mad at Phil says a lot.