Many movies and TV shows offer the illusion that most families are happy, with parents who are loving, patient, and kind towards their kids. In reality, a startling number of people grow up with parents who are horrible or abusive to them, including expressing jealousy towards them on a regular basis. This can manifest in passive-aggressive comments, manipulation, or downright insults towards the young people they’re supposed to love and protect. The phrases below are some of the most common and cruel things that parents say to their kids when they’re secretly jealous of them.
1. “Enjoy it while you can: it won’t last.”
A lot of parents who feel bitter or angry about how their own lives have played out will say something like this to their own kids when it comes to things that have made them happy. Whether it’s popularity, attractiveness, success, or opportunity, the parent will make it abundantly clear that they once experienced the same fleeting joy, only to find themselves old, out of shape, unhealthy, and saddled with an ungrateful kid who thinks they’re better than their parents.
The jealous parent will undermine anything that brings their child happiness or fulfillment, to the point that their kid will stop telling them anything good that’s happening in their life. After all, their parent will simply rain on their parade, so why bother sharing it?
2. “Don’t go getting a big head about it.”
Parents who feel jealous about their children’s achievements often downplay them in order to soothe their own egos, according to Psychology Today. If their kids share something great they’ve earned because they’re excited and want their parents’ approval and support, the parents will instead change the subject, tell them that the thing they’re proud of doesn’t really matter, or redirect the focus onto their own good news instead.
The type of parents who feel jealous or threatened by their children’s achievements will often try to challenge or one-up their kids in order to maintain their feeling of dominance and superiority. A father whose son makes quarterback on the football team might call his son out for a “friendly match” to see if he can take him on physically.
3. “Must be nice to be lazy and do absolutely nothing all the time.”
We get it: “adulting” is exhausting and relentless, and many adults feel like they can’t catch a break, but that doesn’t mean that younger people don’t feel stretched thinly, either. Parents who feel envious about their children’s relatively stress-free lives often call them lazy or useless if they sleep for more than seven hours, or aren’t filling every moment of their lives with homework or chores.
Young people’s bodies and minds are still developing, and they need a lot of sleep for that to happen most effectively. Furthermore, they’re often overwhelmed by school work, social expectations, and homework as well. Unfortunately, parents who are jealous that their kids have more free time than they do often seek to sabotage this free time with extra chores. By doing so, they try to ensure that their kids will be as miserable and exhausted as they are.
Case in point: I remember coming home from high school one day, exhausted from both ballet class and track and field, only to be immediately ordered out the door to walk the dogs. While I was out, my mother took everything I owned out of my closet and dresser and piled it on my bed, saying that I wasn’t allowed to rest until I had cleaned up “my mess” to her satisfaction. Why did this happen? I had won an award for a short story I’d written, and according to my jealous mother, that meant I had too much free time on my hands.
4. “Your boyfriend/girlfriend is only with you for practice until they find someone better.”
This is a phrase that a parent might use when they feel bitter about their own miserable or failing marriage, particularly if it has ended in divorce or separation. It’s especially likely to happen if their spouse or partner left them for someone else.
Instead of being encouraging and supportive of their child’s relationship, they’ll downplay it as insignificant or bound to fail. If their child is healthy and attractive, they’ll seek a way to put them down to feel better about themselves, and then excuse this cruelty as trying to be “helpful” and prepare their child for the inevitable heartbreak that they’re bound to experience.
5. “You’re not smart/pretty/strong/capable enough to do that.”
Parents who never had the chance to do something that meant a lot to them in their youth will often feel jealous if their kids have the opportunity to do so. As a result, many of them try to destroy their children’s confidence so they either don’t pursue the thing that they wanted, or fail at it miserably.
Then, they can step in and be the reassuring voice of reason and support. They might tell their kid that it’s okay to not go away as an exchange student, because it really is safer at home, and they’d just get ill or homesick if they did. Or it’s good that they failed at the thing they really wanted to do, because it’s important to understand their limitations.
This is a common tactic used by narcissistic parents, designed to undermine self-esteem and keep the child small and tractable, so they don’t run the risk of outshining their parents, or making them even more jealous than they already are.
6. “Wow, you really lucked out, didn’t you?”
This is something that some parents say when they feel envious of something their child has achieved. Essentially, they’re downplaying whatever effort their child put into their work and implying that they received accolades due to luck instead. Furthermore, whatever it was that they achieved isn’t worth much of anything.
If the kid won an award for athletic excellence, then it was just because the other kids were a bit slower or lazier than they were. Was it an academic achievement? Well, then they probably sucked up to the teacher for better grades, which won’t matter at all once they get older and have to deal with life in the “real world”. The parents imply that nothing their children have worked hard for matters, and that nobody else will be impressed by it either.
7. “Too bad you didn’t inherit X from me.”
I’ve mostly seen this behavior in mothers who are envious of their young daughters’ youth and vitality, but it can happen with competitive fathers as well. If anyone compliments their offspring, or their kids feel confident about how they look, the parents will feel the need to “take them down a peg” by fault-finding and pointing out their child’s supposed flaws while simultaneously boosting their own self-confidence.
For example, if their teenage daughter is getting ready for prom and is beaming happily in the mirror, her mother might comment that it’s a shame she has such a small chest and doesn’t fill her dress out properly. Similarly, if the kid is looking forward to going away to college, their parent might imply that if they’d inherited their intellect, they might have gotten into a better school, thus dampening the kid’s joy at the upcoming experience.
8. “I wish I had aborted you when I had the chance.”
This is one of the most awful things a parent could say to their child. Unfortunately, according to a significant number of Reddit posts, it happens more often than you can imagine. According to the people who have posted the cruel things they heard growing up, they had parents who either resented their existence or blamed them for everything that had gone wrong in their lives.
For example, one young woman who was told that she was pretty by a lady at the grocery store was later told by her mother that she had “ruined her body and stolen her beauty”. Similar stories mention how their parents blame every miserable thing in their lives on their children’s existence, and maintain that they would have been happier if their kid had never been born… seemingly forgetting that they’re the ones who chose to have those children to begin with.
Final thoughts…
Everyone gets stressed on occasion, but saying horrible things to one’s children on a regular basis is an incredibly cruel and heartless thing to do. Of course, parents are human and may feel irrationally jealous if their children surpass their own achievements or attain things in life that they always wanted for themselves. But it’s important to unpack and process those emotions instead of unleashing them on their offspring. Young people look to their parents for support and guidance: when they encounter jealousy and cruelty instead, they learn that their parents are really their enemies, rather than their friends.
