13 people on the exact moment they realised their parents were bad at parenting.

Content warning: This article discusses child abuse and trauma.

It's only once people have grown up that they reflect on their childhood and how it shaped who they are today. 

For some, this will bring up happy memories from a love-filled home and for others it can shine a light on some very painful trauma.

In a online forum, people bravely shared their stories about the exact moment they realised their parents were bad at parenting and the stories are truly heartbreaking. 

Watch: Parenting 101. Post continues below.

Dave.

"Probably when I was 11. I came home from school and couldn't enter the house because all the doors were locked. I knocked loudly and could get no response. My female parents' car (some people call them mothers) was there, so I knew she was home. Finally, after about 45 minutes, she opened the front door and coldly asked me what I wanted. I was confused but responded that I was home from school. I'll never ever forget her response and how it affected my entire life forward: 'You don't live here anymore, your clothes are boxed and in the garage'."

Mariette.

"When I was about 14, I realised my mum's method of child rearing was toxic and abnormal. It just struck me as she stomped up the stairs she was having a sort of tantrum. She would hit us, rage at us, followed by days of the silent treatment. My Dad would be nowhere to be seen. My sister and I were supposed to be copies of our mother, extensions of her. She had a rigid way of doing things and we were her soldiers. I almost didn't pass nursing school because I was afraid to make decisions on my own for fear of making a mistake."

Carol.

"When I was 13 after they had gotten divorced. My mum fell into a deep depression while my dad left me to rot there. He didn't want to take a 13-year-old girl because he was uncomfortable with periods. For no other reason. He didn't even like the idea of hearing me use tampons…to go swimming. Because of my mother's depression, she didn't pay the bills in the house and let the electricity get turned off. Not because she couldn't pay, but she wouldn't. I've stopped asking what she did with the money because I'll legitimately never know. But yes, my 8th grade year was spent in the dark, and using buckets to fill water into my bathtub to take a bath because we had well water and it needs electricity to pump the water to the upstairs floors…which is where the tub was. By the time it was full, the water was cold."

Lisa.

"It wasn't until I had children of my own that I was sure. After my brother and I left home, our parents had moved into a nicer house with a huge in-ground pool. It didn't have any fence around it and every time I took my first child to visit them I was terrified she would drown. I asked my mom if we could put up a gate at the top of the stairs on her back porch to prevent a child from accidentally getting into the pool. She told me she didn't want some 'ugly gate' attached to her house. I eventually found a removable child gate and got her permission to install it and leave it in the coat closet between visits. It felt like the weirdest thing that she had no interest in her grandchildren's safety."

Docere.

"I was in 4th grade. Our mom was picking us up from school that day, for a rare change. As I walked up, I saw the boot tied shut and numbness washed over me. I then listened to my mother brag about how many beautiful planters, hanging baskets, and flowers she had bought. She had new clothes while we were hand-me-downs, we constantly had almost no groceries halfway through the week when she ran out of money while she would buy lunch regularly at work, and she had just spent her entire tax return on plants. She made enough money to easily support us, if only she had been capable of thinking about anything beyond her own instant gratification."

Marie.

"I think the point where I realised my Dad was a bad parent was around six years old. I was playing outside at his house with a kite, and I got a string burn. And instead of helping a crying six-year-old, he looked at my hand and laughed like it was nothing. He made fun of me. The neighbours felt sorry for me and gave me a band aid with Neosporin. His next-door neighbours were better parents for me than he was."

Joaquin.

"The moment it all truly hit me though was when I was sitting in the living room watching TV with everyone and I just started sobbing. I don't know what set me off, I was suicidally depressed at the time. My mum told me to stop making a scene. Didn't ask what was wrong, nothing, just told me to shut up. So I cried quieter."

Brenna.

"There were several instances growing up in which my mum made selfish, childish, and/or foolish choices. I was sick a lot as a kid with strep throat, ear infections, and undiagnosed asthma and allergies. So when I learned about the effects of secondhand smoke in my fifth-grade health class, I wanted to tell my mum because she must not know how bad it was for me to be around her pack-a-day habit. So I mustered up my courage and asked her to please stop smoking, because that was contributing to me being sick all the time. Her response? 'Well, that's for all the bad stuff you've done to me.'"

Alexandra.

"When I was bullied every day at school and neither parent thought to change my school or do anything about it, even when I could have got a scholarship."

Christy.

"I remember my mother first telling me when I was around four years old that 'she hated kids and that she never wanted kids.'"

Sherry.

"[I was] about four when I overheard my grandmother tell my grandfather that if they didn't raise me, it would be a disaster… thankfully, they did."

Kylie.

"I was only nine and I wanted to do my hair into a ponytail. It ended up looking like a unicorn horn and I was upset. I ran into my father's room and told him how upset I was. He took a picture and I thought nothing of it. A day later my sister asked me if my father did my hair. I said no, and she showed me a facebook post that said '#1 dad of the year, doing my daughter's hair.' I cried a lot because he cared so much about what other people thought of him that he didn't care about his own kids and he only cared about social media seeing him as a good dad."

Anonymous.

"I knew my mum was a bad parent when she made me walk to creche [daycare] when I was four years old because she was late for work and she said I was old enough to walk on my own in the morning. She threatened to beat me if I didn't go that day, so it was a damned-if-you-and-damned-if-you-don't type of thing."

Feature Image: Getty.

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