There is no guidebook when it comes to parenting. There are many different parenting styles. We assume that most parents mean well, but sometimes they mess up and they mess up big. Sometimes parents say things that are so toxic their children will never ever forget what they said, and these toxic comments forever influence their opinion of their parents and themselves.

BuzzFeed readers shared a multitude of comments about toxic things their parents said.. Scroll down to discover 13 toxic things that parents told their children. Hopefully your parents never said anything like this to you, and if you’re a parent, hopefully you never said anything like this to your own children.

1. Report Card

   senexbarbatus wrote:

   First semester of senior year, I got a nearly perfect report card. 5 As and a B+. The best I’d ever done, by far. My mom’s response? “Maybe next semester you can get all As.” That was the point when I realized nothing I did would ever actually be good enough for her.

2. Just Like the Person You Hate

   me_me_me shared:

   My mom and her sister have never ever gotten along, this was well known my whole life (they haven’t spoken in nearly a decade). Yet, she ALWAYS would say “you sound just like my sister!” or “you’re just like your aunt!”….the one you hate? Beauty.

3. Never Thin Enough

   okaykassi explained:

   it’s the constant “oh, look how skinny you were when you were __ years old…” like no. you told me my entire life that I was fat. you can’t tell me that while you were telling me then that I needed to lose weight, that you now think I was skinny then. I was never skinny enough for her.

4. That’s Not True

   mhilts44 wrote:

   This was about 20 years ago in high school and I can still hear my mom’s response clear as day in my head…After finally getting up the courage to tell my mom I was severely depressed and what I was going through, she replied “No you’re not. You’re not depressed, you’re happy…” Please never invalidated a child’s feelings or tell them they’re wrong!

5. Kind of Morbid

   jellycatcat added:

   If my siblings and I ever held anything against our mom, she would say something along the lines of “someday I’m gonna be dead and then how will you feel at my funeral?” Pretty shitty thing to say to your kids.

6. Dating

   samantham46531ff01 shared:

   I, as many young women do, struggled with having self respect when it came to dating. I dated a lot of guys who treated me horribly and made me feel awful about myself. My parents would constantly tell me I was an “idiot” when it came to guys, which just made me feel like not only was I being treated badly by guys, but it was also somehow my own fault. Please do not do this to your kids.

7. Body Image

   alexkimb22 wrote:

   My mom always criticized my weight no matter what I looked like. In high school, she would say I was too skinny and then I gained weight and was at a healthy weight at 22 and she would point out how my clothes looked on me and that stuff was tighter. At the end of my first pregnancy, she said I looked huge. I believe it’s because she’s unhappy with her own body but that’s no reason to project it onto me. I’ve struggled with my own image for years now because of her comments.

8. Clumsy

   fraugruenblau explained:

   I was a clumsy kid. Everytime I fell my mother said: “I hope that really hurt.” She tried to make me more careful with her words, but actually it just lead to me never trying to run or have fun in her presence, in fear of falling and being mocked.

9. Remembered Since Age 4

   kellyk43b817ab6 shared:

   I wish you’d never been born. I was 4. 4.

10. Don’t Compare

    katies482ced1c2 added:

    Comparing me to my friends. I was also told I was ‘the laziest girl in the world’ although I helped with the housework after school because ‘I was a girl’.

11. Threatening Suicide

    izzie14 shared:

    Whenever I pointed out that my parents did or said something that hurt me my dad would roll his eyes and my mom would always say something to the effect of “if I’m such a bad parent then maybe I should kill myself”.

12. Weight Gain

    jcweiner317 explained:

    Even worse, when I was 15 I was put on a medication that caused me to gain weight. For an entire year whenever I walked into a room, my dad would sing all the words he knew to “baby got back” so I would know that he thought my ass was huge and I was fat. For a 15 year old girl, that can be very damaging for her self image. It’s been 18 years since he did it, and I still resent it.

13. Quite Toxic

    prekeles wrote:

    honestly one of the worst things my dad has ever said to me was “you are the problem in this family, you were an accident and my biggest mistake”. that says a lot, he has told me to kill myself multiple times (while he is watching for some reason) and said a lot of horrible shit but that sticks with me. i really do feel like a burden, a problem and a mistake.