Growing up with a toxic parent can have far-reaching consequences for a child’s psyche, even after becoming an adult.

When your childhood was messed up by a toxic parent and you didn’t even realize it.

Most parents genuinely try their best to provide their children with a healthy upbringing, but many times these people can make mistakes. Parenting is a challenging task and is mostly based on intuition and instincts.

Unfortunately, some parents go beyond the occasional mistake and veer into the toxic category.

Regardless of whether a parent is toxic or not, there are several behaviors on the part of the parents that leave a significant psychological and emotional scar on the child. This always impairs the general mental health of a child as they reach adulthood.

If you faced any of the following situations as a child, chances are at least one or both of your parents were toxic.

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13 Signs you grew up with a toxic parent

1. They fail to provide you with assurance and security.
   Some people believe that showering selfless love is an important way to ensure that their children become self-reliant and able to care for themselves in the future.

If you are the recipient of this approach to parenting regularly, you may have been deceived into believing that this is the behavior you deserve or the treatment meant to improve your condition.

If you are now seemingly falling apart over any perceived failure or rejection, this most likely stems from a toxic parent’s inability to provide you with the necessary amount of safety, contentment, and assurance when you were young.

Tough love may work sometimes, but it cannot be the only approach parents take if they want their child to have an overall healthy future.

2. They are overly critical.
   Parents should sometimes be involved in evaluating their children with comments about their actions.

Without this component, we may never learn how to do many things in the right way, such as daily routines such as washing clothes, cooking food for ourselves, ironing clothes, organizing our items, and so on.

A toxic parent takes this to an extreme by being overly critical of everything their child does. Even the most insignificant mistakes on the part of children will lead to serious consequences.

These criticisms can have distinct faces – some through toxic verbal abuse in the form of insults, blunt and harsh facial expressions, and careless body language.

This technique will only backfire because some children will eventually make serious mistakes and some children will end up feeling unhappy about themselves, slipping into self-loathing.

Parents can make the mistake of thinking that they are doing this to ensure that their children do not make costly mistakes.

Unfortunately, what this behavior does is cause the child to develop a harmful inner conflict that can be borderline crippling through adulthood.

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3. They demand your attention.
   Toxic parents often turn their children into parental surrogates and themselves to take out their frustrations by demanding their attention at all times.

This can be seen as a parent-child bond, but in reality, it is a parasitic relationship that requires a lot of the child’s time and energy when they should be focusing on learning other skills.

Although it can be difficult at times, realistic parents will allow their children enough room to grow without requiring constant interactions from them to suit their own needs.

4. They make toxic “jokes” about you.
   All parents occasionally pick on their children, but when so-called jokes become hateful satire intended to insult or demean their children, it can be a huge problem.

You don’t need to accept this kind of behavior just because your dad always joked about something like your height or weight.

Ultimately, this is an undermining tactic that will make you feel bad about yourself. If a parent has a legitimate concern that needs to be addressed with their child, they should be honest and nonjudgmental rather than sarcastic.

5. They push you to justify the terrible behavior.
   Did you grow up believing your father was physically or emotionally abusing you because you deserved it?

If the answer is yes, you still have to justify bad behavior from others at your own expense.

Toxic parents can twist every situation and the facts in their favor, and this leaves kids with two options: accept that their parent is wrong or feel powerless and absorb all the blame.

In most cases, children, even those who are now adults, choose the latter. They believe that some characteristics or actions on their part must have motivated their parents to become very angry.

This mindset only hinders their self-image and development self-esteem. They assume they deserve the worst behavior from their parents.

6. They don’t allow you to express negative emotions.
   Parents who fail to nurture their children’s emotional needs and make light of their negative feelings are setting up a future where the child will never be able to be assertive about their needs.

There is nothing wrong with helping your children focus on the positive side of a situation. However, being completely indifferent to a child’s negative feelings and emotional needs can lead them to suppress these valid emotional expressions, only to bring them out in distorted ways.

This will only create an adult who is not adept at emotional regulation and dealing with negativity in their life.

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7. They scare even their grown children.
   Respect must be earned. Fear does not buy respect. Children who feel loved, supported, and connected are more likely to be happy as adults.

Although the implementation of a regimen of some sort is necessary, toxic parents use extremely violent actions and words that permanently damage the human psyche. Sometimes this scars the child forever and instills fear in the child.

Children do not have to be afraid of their parents to respect them. Every time their parents call, they don’t need to sweat for fear of getting crushed.

8. They always put their feelings first.
   Parents should not feel that they are exercising the ultimate power of the family and only their needs and feelings should be prioritized.

But this outdated way of thinking will not promote positive relationships between parents and their children.

Although parents need to make the final decision on everything from dinner to vacation plans, it’s essential to consider the feelings of every family member — including the kids. Children’s opinions, ideas, and values are no less respected than parents’ opinions.

On the other hand, toxic parents will constantly force children to suppress their feelings to please their parents.

9. They were involved in choosing your goals.
   Did one of your parents become so interested in everything you were doing that they took over or even duplicated you?

This may sound like the actions of someone genuinely interested in their child’s life. But what it often does is make it difficult for a child to achieve their goals.

For example, if you have to sell 50 boxes of cookies at the same time that your mother decides to make cookies and pass them out to the neighbors, it will be very difficult to meet your sales goal.

This behavior can derail you for the rest of your life if you allow your parents to keep screwing it up.

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10. They use guilt and money to control you.
    Every child has experienced a guilt trip from their parents at one time or another, especially during an argument. But toxic individuals resort to this tactic regularly.

Even as an adult, your father may still control you by providing for him in ways that may not be easy for you to return. If you fail to do what they expect, they will then try to make you feel guilty about it for “everything they did for you”.

Healthy parents know that children don’t owe them a specific response for money or gifts, especially when those items weren’t asked for in the first place.

11. They give you the silent treatment.
    It can be difficult to communicate when one is frustrated and angry, but removing a child from the silent treatment is extremely harmful and immature.

Getting rid of this passive-aggressive treatment gets in the way of any kind of relationship. It makes the recipient feel pressured to fix the situation, even when they haven’t done anything wrong.

If a parent is too angry to have a rational conversation, they should excuse themselves before they are ready to have a direct conversation to make it clear.

12. They ignore healthy boundaries.
    In some situations, it may be necessary for parents to do some snooping to keep them protected. However, everyone should be able to set clear, healthy boundaries for themselves, especially teens.

Toxic parents cross these lines at every turn, not only losing their children’s trust but also straining the positive relationship between them.

For example, a toxic parent will open their child’s door without knocking first and will use their children’s items without their knowledge. Parents certainly have the right to berate their children but not to the point of creating a toxic relationship with them.

This sets a pattern that makes it difficult for their children to properly recognize and understand boundaries later in life.

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13. They make you responsible for their happiness.
    This is one of the worst traits of a toxic parent.

If one of your parents directly or indirectly holds you responsible for the unhappiness and conflict in his/her life, he/she is setting unrealistic expectations for your role in his/her life.

No child should be held responsible for the happiness of their parents.

Also, parents should never expect their children to give up on their dreams and goals just to make them satisfied. Being forced into this situation will make it difficult for adult children to understand that we are all responsible for our happiness.

Cutting ties with the toxic people in your life can seem impossible, especially if one of them is a parent. But dealing with a toxic parent is important if you want to be happy in life.

Unless you look into it seriously, it will be much more difficult to undo the emotional and mental damage done to a child by a toxic parent.

On the plus side, any toxic parent who recognizes themselves within the 13 points in this article can turn to a trained counselor for help breaking their negative behavior patterns.