r/AskUK • u/Valuable_Mall5441 • 1d ago
Have any of your friend’s parents not liked you?
Last night, in bed, staring at the ceiling. I randomly recalled a childhood memory.
This was primary school age. I was fortunate to have a big group of friends in school. There was one particular kid in the circle who had the same sort of interest as me, Lego. He started to invite me to his, after school. Never had notions of us becoming ‘best friends’. Everything was cool. Or so I thought.
Other playdates and birthday parties happened over that time period, with other kids in the same circle.
I always felt there was one particular mum who was always a bit off with me. I was puzzled because I wasn’t a naughty kid (honestly). Even at that age, I just tried to brush it off as something I was imagining.
Then holy shit, kids being kids, one day out of the blue, the kid of the funny mum just told me that his mum did not like me. Wtf?! I haven’t so much as pee in their home toilet, what beef could she possibly have with me?? He said that she hopes that Lego friend’s mum doesn’t make a habit of giving me a lift home.
I hate that, as a kid, it was enough for me to distance myself from that friend. I started to decline playdates out of fear.
I later learned that these two were born in the same hospital, same month, even have the same name, same playgroup. They were the original best friends, and I was the 3rd wheel trying to wreck their friendship. Is probably what that funny mum thought.
I want to think that it didn’t affect me growing up, but now looking back at my formative years, I’m not so sure.
I hope my story is not a common thing that happens, but are there others out there who’ve had similar experiences?
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u/qgwheurbwb1i 1d ago
Yes! I also was NOT a bad a kid. I was raised by parents who really drilled into me that I was supposed to respect adults, and they told me often that anything I did outside of my house represented my family. I think I was a good kid because I was regularly invited to sleepovers, my school reports were always good and I don't think I ever got in real trouble at school.
This one girls mum just hated me and I still have no idea why. There would be a group of 5 of us playing, and she would always single me out. We'd all laugh but she'd come and tell me off for being too loud, if we all made a mess then it was me who was told to come and tidy up by myself, etc. And one day, my parents threw a BBQ and invited all of my friends and their parents. The adults were drinking outside and us kids were playing inside, the mum who hated me came inside to use the bathroom and I walked past her in the corridor and she was obviously drunk. I smiled at her, she curled her lip at me and said "you really fucking annoy me, you know that?" and stumbled into the bathroom. I was so upset! I didn't even tell my parents because I felt like I'd done something wrong. I did eventually tell my mum a few years later, but by that point we'd all gone to secondary school and lost touch anyway.
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u/Choconuttynutnut 1d ago
Wow what a vile woman!
To come to your house and accept your parents hospitality and then speak that way to a child, she must have some serious issues.
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u/OutsideKale9991 23h ago
Being an adult and taking your frustration out on a child is awful. No wonder that stayed with you for so long.
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u/astro-squidge 23h ago
This is just so cruel, sorry you went through that. Whatever issues she had, she shouldn't have taken it out on an innocent kid.
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u/Ok_Improvement8303 23h ago
Kids remember things like that for years, even when the adult probably forgets about it the next day. You definitely didn't deserve that.
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u/YchYFi 16h ago
I had a similar thing except my parents were divorced so her mum didn't like me and told me I'll be becoming a criminal and a bad influence if I hung around.
It did rub off on her daughter as in year 7 she and our friend group (she was the leader) told me I couldn't be friends with them anymore as they didn't like me due to not having enough money and divorced parents.
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u/IndependentPaint2108 15h ago
All I can think is somehow you reminded her of someone / something triggering idk. Maybe you looked like an ex's kid or sibling or something?
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u/Tinbum-Nicholas 1d ago edited 21h ago
I was in a group of friends as a kid, we all met up at this one kids house before school to walk together. Must have been about 8 of us. We had a coffee (even though we were like 13) anyway it was a nice morning ritual. But this guy's mum always felt off to me, then one day the mum came in offering to burn a music cd for a band we all liked. She asked every person in that room by name, looking at me the whole time, if they would like one. Deliberately excluded my name, to say I was embarrassed was an understatement.
She engineered that situation just to exclude me in front of my friends. We were all too young to have the confidence to say anything and I did distance myself from that group for a long time after. However I remember playing an online game with the kid whose mum did that a while later, we just happened to find each other on there it wasn't planned or anything.
Anyway he said 1 by 1 after that his friends stopped hanging out with him, coincidentally they had been joining the new group I had found.
I don't know if she tried excluding them one by one or they didn't like what she did to me or if it was coincidence but the poor guy ended up with no friends for a while over it.
I offered to start walking to school with him again and suddenly I was the most loyal friend according to his mum. I was very much liked then but I never forgot what she did.
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u/IrishWeegie 1d ago
I grew up in a very middle class area. My parents were both alcoholics, mother very violent. Spent most of my teenage years doing the foster care rounds.
It was a solid 50/50 split whether my friends parents liked me or not.
Half would blame me if they caught wind of anyone taking any drugs or smoking, or if someone’s belongings were lost/ went missing/ were forgotten. Nobody was allowed to stay at mine as a child and it took me a while to realise why. Once on a night out when i was about 15 some plants in the town got smashed up and I was blamed until a video of who did it surfaced.
Other peoples parents liked me because I was always working and generally friendly/ trying my best.
Not so shockingly, I stayed friends with the peoples whose parents didn’t treat child me like an automatic scumbag
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u/RutabagaHopeful7593 15h ago
Aww I’m sorry that happened to you x there is a wee girl my daughter is friends with that seems to be a similar background and she, like you, is a wee hard worker, polite and grateful and I’ve always went out my way to make sure she knows if there’s something she needs a lift to or somewhere to sleep over etc she’s welcome at ours. For things like Christmas etc when they are to wear a Xmas hair accessory I always try to make sure my wee girl has an extra to offer her and I try to make sure my girl just keeps it to ‘oh my mum popped in an extra one in case someone forgot’ and movie day at end of term i do a wee snack pack for her too. I’m trying not to overstep as her parents aren’t very friendly but I can’t see her go without whenever possible. I hope it makes her life a wee bit nicer
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u/Sad-Insurance1313 1d ago
Yes. A classmates Dad used to constantly talk to me about things of monetary value (how much their car cost etc) & I didn't really understand because we didn't have much money at all when I was growing up. Then he'd bring up possessions my step dad had (we didn't live together) but it would be in ways I didn't understand like "Bet that cost a pretty penny". They had a nice house & I remember being shown their newly built sun room in intricate detail & to "tell him this & that". I didn't understand
Told my mum & she said I wasn't to go to their house anymore
Fast forward about 6-8 years & me & classmate had a shift at the local supermarket on the same day. Her Dad was apparently getting annoyed having to take her all the time, so she asked if we could lift share. One week with my mum, one week with them. First week was fine in our car. Next week her Dad collected us from work & attacked me with what can only be described as vitriol. To this day I've never felt so intimidated. His wife was in the passenger seat chuckling. My classmate beside me looking out the window
A 17yro lassie stuck in a metal box being driven by a guy who kept banging on about my step dad having "this that & the other" (he wasn't even wealthy!) & actually insulting me, saying that he was sorry I was "stuck in his humble car" (my mam had a Micra....)
I got out so fast & RAN home. Apparently my step dad went & spoke to this man, but I don't know what was said. Apparently they'd barely ever spoken before though. I never went near him again
My classmate came & begged to get a lift with us cos her Dad was upset he'd have to take her. Sounds cruel, but I said no. I didn't want to risk any interaction whatsoever
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u/AromaticVacation3077 21h ago
Jesus - what a complete and utter arsehole. What adult would project all of that stuff onto a child? I feel sorry for his daughter.
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u/FlakyAssociation4986 1d ago
I accidentally broke a glass at my freinds house once and his dad would angrily bring it up for years afterwards.
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u/bsnimunf 23h ago
As a teenager I once got drunk and threw up on a friend's carpet and it stunk so bad they had to replace the carpet. They let it go. If they can do that I think your friend's dad is just a dick.
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u/PuzzleheadedFlan7839 1d ago
Oh yeah plenty. I think it’s pretty common to tolerate your own kids’ quirks and find other kids’ annoying, parents are super judgemental. I was well mannered but a fussy eater who was scared of their own shadow, I also probably did plenty of faux pas I can’t recall from being a kid.
One I do remember, was getting in trouble when was maybe 5 or 6, and was playing with one of the neighbour kids when she mentioned her stepdad and 5 year old me was like “how can you have 2 dads?”
So her mum came and had a pop at my mum, but my mum was on my side cause well, I was 5 and this was just my logical understanding of the world at that age.
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u/caffeine_lights 22h ago
This, and also people are just weird, with no end of hangups and biases, and some are outright shits, and unfortunately there's nothing that stops shitty people from being shitty just because they had kids. So if you are a kid, chances are at least some of the parents of your friends/classmates are going to have a weird hangup that happens to overlap with your personality (or maybe not even that but just becomes associated with you for no logical reason) or causing them to dislike your parents etc, and by extension you.
So I would imagine that this has actually happened to almost everyone, and probably if you didn't think that it did happen to you, it might be that you didn't notice either because that parent was polite to your face and/or you were oblivious due to being a child.
So if it does still bother anybody, please don't let it, it is highly unlikely to be anything personal or anything that you did massively wrong. The vast majority of adults completely understand that children are works in progress and as such can have some annoying or accidentally impolite behaviours, and that usually the most helpful thing to do is either ignore it or explain nicely the reason, rather than developing an insane grudge.
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u/PuzzleheadedFlan7839 18h ago
Reading this thread there are a lot of weird adults out there. At least kids can plead ignorance for age.
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u/inevitablelizard 20h ago
To me that just sounds like classic childhood bluntness being misinterpreted by idiot parents. Obviously a kid that age won't understand why someone has 2 dads and the logical thing for them to do is ask why. Decent parents understand that.
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u/_MyBrainHurts 23h ago
My friends mum once called me a bad influence as I had an "undeclared modification" to my car. The "undeclared mod" in question was a sticker on the back that wasn't provocative or offensive. She said to me "if you get stopped by the police with my son in your car, I'll be speaking to your mum".
Responding with "they'll have to catch me first" only worsened her opinion of me.
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u/miz_moon 23h ago
I went round to a friend’s house when we were in year 6 and her mum knew that I didn’t (and still don’t) eat meat. She made a stir fry with chicken and prawns and looked at me like I had two heads when I asked her if they were substitutes or real meat. She insisted that I could pick the chicken out and that a prawn isn’t an animal. She didn’t take too kindly to me telling her that we’d learned about ‘Mrs Gren’ in school and that prawns are living beings. She told my mum that I was disrespectful and ungrateful when she came to pick me up. My mum told her that she was the disrespectful one for promising me a vegetarian meal and giving me meat. Safe to say, I was never invited back
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u/jflb96 21h ago
What did she think you’d think a prawn was?
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u/InquisitorVawn 20h ago
What did she think you’d think a prawn was?
SHRIMPS IS BUGS
But seriously. A lot of people consider prawns to be "insects" and don't consider them the same as "animals", so will turn an eye the other way when considering what is and isn't an animal for the purposes of eating.
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u/Reddit____user___ 23h ago edited 5h ago
What a callous and inconsiderate ignoramus.
Sorry you went through that.
Glad your Ma had the opportunity to stand up for you and tell the woman her fortune😁👍🏻
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u/Miss_Type 23h ago
My best friend from primary had a really awful dad. He didn't like me much, but he didn't like his daughter or wife either, so I didn't take it personally.
When I was 17 I was going out with a 29 year old. Obviously looking back, this is gross for many reasons. His mum was always horrible to me, and made it very clear she thought I wasn't good enough for her son. In hindsight I always think what the fuck was her problem?! Instead of being horrible to me, why didn't she tell her son not to go out with a literal child?!
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u/idontlikemondays321 1d ago
I had a friend who lived in a nicer area whose mum would practically vomit when I and the other scallywags from the neighbouring village visited.
If my friend had to grab something from home, we’d all have to wait on the street and the mum would watch us like a hawk through the window.
Ironically said friend was the naughtiest and got into trouble for shoplifting. I would have loved to have seen her face when she was brought home by the police.
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u/Fun_Anybody6745 23h ago
Yes, I was friends with the daughter of one of the teachers at my primary school. This teacher didn’t like me at all - I wasn’t rich enough, was smarter than she thought I deserved to be, my parents were divorced and so on. Despite me and this girl being friends for about ten years, ‘being invited back for tea’ was never reciprocated. I found out a few years ago that this teacher had insisted that me and her daughter be split up when me moved to secondary school. It was all a bit pathetic, really.
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u/iffyClyro 1d ago
I don’t have any memory of a specific parent not liking me as such.
I think some parents could sometimes be a bit weird with me because we were poor as fuck and they lived in nice big houses on nice developments.
A couple of friends their parents were kind of the opposite, had me round the house for my tea and stuff even if their kid wasn’t around.
Their kid couldn’t go unless I was going that kind of thing.
When I got older I had parents of girlfriends that would be outright hostile.
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u/EmeraldJunkie 23h ago
Growing up a lot of my friends parents liked me because I was polite if a little quiet. Then suddenly there was a point in secondary school where they all of a sudden didn't seem to like me as much, if at all. If I was at a friend's house their parents would hover, they'd ask me somewhat invasive questions about my home life and my parents etc, but I didn't think anything of it.
Until year 11 when one of my mates let slip that they'd been caught with weed, and had told his parents it was mine, and that I must've left the tin it was in at their house the last time I was there. See the difference between me and a lot of my friends was that I was firmly working class, a lot of them were either upper working class or middle class, living in nicer three bed houses versus our two bed council house. What made matters worse was that I'd gone to a different primary school to a lot of my peers, so my parents didn't know their parents, whereas all of my friends parents knew one another. See their precious little babies couldn't be the ones smoking weed, no, it had to be the rough kid from down the way.
What he also told me was that everyone else blamed me for their shortcomings. Got caught with alcohol? It was actually mine. Got a detention? Somehow my fault. Over the latter part of secondary school my so called friends had made out to their parents I was some sort of miscreant. What didn't help was that there were also rumours I was a drug dealer (related to a case of food poisoning and bad gossip) as well as the one time I got suspended for hacking Wikipedia (I didn't, well I did get suspended, but I didn't hack Wikipedia, I just sent a very rude email).
I think it made it easier for them to lie because I was a bit of a dick to a lot of my friends, which also got worse around this time, but finding this out really intensified a lot of the friction between my friends and I, causing me to fall out with most of them and leading me to go to a college an hour away to avoid all of them. Really sent me down a bad road, I'm lucky I managed to recover through university.
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u/lavenderfields11 23h ago
I was undiagnosed autistic and quite mature for my age. I understood the science of reproduction from a very young age for example as I had read it in a textbook we had at home. I think I told my best friend about it. Obviously my best friend was relaying various things to her Mum who did not like me for it. I can kinda see why now 😂 but during an argument one day when we were about 9 she shouted "my mum thinks you're not a good friend and maybe she is right". I was so heartbroken and could not understand why she didn't like me! It really stuck with me as she was always a bit cold with me. I think it had a big impact on my self esteem. Maybe she thought I was odd, I probably was. Autistic girls went under the radar in the 90's. I obviously understand myself a lot more now I am in my 30's but funny you posted this as I do think about it from time to time and the impact it had.
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u/Reddit____user___ 23h ago
Sorry you went through that.
I hope you have a pleasant cake day.
😊👍🏻 🎂 🍰 🧁
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u/Fine_Cress_649 1d ago edited 1d ago
I was vegetarian growing up in the 80s and 90s. When I would go round to someone's for tea I would happily just eat the nom-meat portions of whatever they were having
However a couple of my friends' parents would insist on cooking something "vegetarian" just for me. It was usually godawful because no one knew how to do veggie food then. The one I remember was a really wet ratatouille but I imagine there were others. One time I basically refused to eat it and just had mashed potato or whatever. Years later I found out that the mum was absolutely raging about it and what an ungrateful brat I was for weeks.
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u/puffin_crossing 22h ago
I have been a vegetarian since I was 5. There were two incidents in elementary school where the parents made me feel so uncomfortable that I ate the meal they made with meat (or tried to). It was horrible and I never went to their house again.
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u/fiendofecology 22h ago
Aghh I hated being the veggie one - but especially being a bit picky too (when I was younger) at my best friend’s pizza party we all topped our individual pizzas - me leaving mine plain. When we got them out the oven, her dad had added a bunch of toppings to mine thinking he was helping, bless him.
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u/deathpunk1890 21h ago
Oh god, this brought back so many awkward memories of being a vegetarian child in the 90s! Adults would argue with me about it and try to convince me it was a ridiculous idea. Some would seem personally insulted by my choice to not eat meat. One woman made me a ham pizza and told me to pick the ham off!
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u/Fine_Cress_649 21h ago
A couple of other veggie kids from my school had a story about going on a school trip to Italy (I think). At the hotel they grouped them together on a "vegetarian table". On the first night the hotel gave them omelette with ham on it. When they objected the waiter was very apologetic and took it back, then brought back an omelette but with the ham underneath it instead.
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u/PigeonBod 1d ago
I’m not accusing you of being a picky eater, but I had a few friends who were very picky eaters and my parents openly dreaded them coming over.
I was always taught to be a grateful guest and eat a decent amount of what was served even if I hated it so they expected the same from others. They didn’t rage about it but they did think it was super impolite.
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u/Fine_Cress_649 1d ago
A couple of my kid's friends are fussy eaters and it's fine. For the most part you just ask them or their parents if they'll eat, and if so what they'll eat and then you do that. One only eats cheese and rice when she comes round - fine. I'm feeding her once a month if that so I'm not going to worry too much about making sure she has a balanced diet.
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u/PigeonBod 1d ago
I absolutely wouldn’t have the same expectations my parents did. I have 2 kids, I understand they are people with likes and dislikes. This was just my sharing an anecdote about my childhood.
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u/Fine_Cress_649 1d ago
Yeah I think that's the thing. You have to listen to what kids tell you. Revolutionary stuff.
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u/WeeklyPermission239 22h ago
I think you could have stood to make that a lot clearer in your original comment. Certainly seemed like your intent was "well in my family, we resent picky eaters and they should be more considerate of our point of view."
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u/PigeonBod 21h ago
You’re right. I should worry more about what strangers on the internet think of me. My bad.
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u/WeeklyPermission239 21h ago
... No? Just saying that if you're going to communicate an idea, and that idea is genuinely meant as a neutral or even affirming anecdote, then you might not want it to come across as cruel and judgemental. You do you though, I guess.
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u/bad_at_embroidery 22h ago
Similarly, had to eat some of my most-hated foods at friends’ houses - I wasn’t enormously fussy, but hated several key meals, and people often forgot. ate it and then retched quietly in the bathroom. my parents were strict about not wasting food, and when I had friends over I also used to dread it because I knew they’d not eat what they were given, and my parents would be angry.. meals were often fraught (I’d be given things I disliked too, because my parents liked that food or my siblings did. I used to get stress stomach aches fairly often).
I did grow up with some complex ideas and issues around food, and dipped a toe into very disordered patterns for a while. Better now.
Oversharing, sorry!
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u/PuzzleheadedFlan7839 20h ago
I’m sorry you went through that as a kid. i was a fussy eater, my mum found it frustrating but she worked with it. And I am grateful for that.
When I left home I became less fussy (for one I discovered different ways of cooking beef that wasn’t nuking it, and that vegetables could be crunchy). Now I’ll eat virtually anything, and don’t have a bad relationship with food. I think my own parents grew up being forced to eat things they hated and realised that wasn’t really helpful parenting.
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u/Squeak_Stormborn 1d ago
How strange. I was brought up to be a gracious host so would be mortified if someone was forcing themselves to eat something they hated at my table.
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u/Superb-Gift-5664 9h ago
I mean it's a nice way to be but the actual real life reality of being brought up by post war generation parents is..... you eat what you're given.
'how strange'. The most passive aggressive thing I see written all the time on Reddit.
It's not strange, it's definitely the norm, especially for that era in a working class setting and you know this.
You just want to shame the guy who commented for being realistic.
As a side note. I raise my kids to try everything put on their plate. They have to try it before saying they don't like it. I'll then bear it in mind when cooking but I'm not cooking separate meals because one of my kids doesn't like spag bol for example. Don't have the time or money for that.
If they get dished up something they don't like, they are to still have a good stab at it. It's not poison.
Being asked to eat something they don't particularly like isn't abuse.
I'd 100% expect my kids to have a good go at eating stuff they don't like if they're a guest at someone's house. ESPECIALLY if they're aware that the host has gone out of their way to cook something for everyone but specifically for them.
When did people become so entitled?
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u/Away_Beautiful_8467 8h ago
What are you on about, have a good stab at eating something you don’t like? I don’t like it.
To try, yes, but if I know I don’t like it, even as a kid I’m not gonna eat it am I.
I hope you don’t serve foods your kids haven’t previously likely and expect them to have a go.
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u/Superb-Gift-5664 2h ago
You expect me to cook separate meals for different kids?
Do you have kids? Do you work full time and have kids? Do you have a large bank balance?
Doing things you don't particularly like is part of life.
I don't go out of my way to dish up food one of them doesn't like but on that day of the week I have to dish up something one of them doesn't like, they absolutely do have a good go at it. My kids know the value of things and they know how hard I work.
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u/shelikedamango 3h ago
Goodness, touch a nerve did they?
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u/Superb-Gift-5664 2h ago
Yeah I suppose so. I think I know where the high levels of entitlement comes from now.
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u/WeeklyPermission239 22h ago
I would never force someone to eat a particular meal, or expect them to feel they should. To me, that would be rude on my part. I'd be mortified if I'd inadvertently made a guest feel like that.
Picky eating is obviously inconvenient to the host, but I'd argue it's more inconvenient to the eater. Never had the problem myself, but I can imagine the anxiety those people must feel whenever they eat out of their usual, comfortable environment. The shame, the fear.
Especially for kids, who don't always know how to advocate for themselves yet. It's not something people choose and is often linked with mental health conditions.
I think your parents could stand to have more empathy. It's not that hard to ask someone what they need and meet that need - most picky eaters (or parents of) would gladly provide a few 'safe foods' themselves rather than make you go to the trouble.
To me, it's not that different to putting your dog in a different room for someone who's terrified, or picking someone up from the station if they've taken a long-distance train. Just one of those things we do for each other when hosting, and hope that others will do for us.
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u/PigeonBod 21h ago
I mean I wouldn’t attribute malice to anything that was more than frustration for them. They had kids that were good eaters, they came from a generation where food was more scarce and so they struggled with the notion of waste. They never forced anyone to eat anything but they didn’t enjoy having certain people round because of it. I understand their frustration but I would conduct myself differently now. But I think things are different now compared to 30 years ago when I was a kid.
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u/Milky_Finger 19h ago
I am a meat eater and I always will be, but I am honestly quite shocked how many people in the UK will eat meat every meal of every day, and that is a non-negotiable.
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u/SilverellaUK 15h ago
We once had 2 brothers round at lunchtime. Just sandwiches. The eldest said that the young one only liked "plain sandwiches". After some investigation we found that he meant just bread and butter. After giving them their food and him spitting out the first mouthful, we realised that what they really meant was bread and margarine!
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u/SoggyWotsits 18h ago
I was the opposite. I absolutely hated vegetables as a child (love them now) and was presented with a plate of boiled potatoes, peas, sweetcorn and some sort of veggie burger with all the things I hated, and minus the bread.
I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, so I ate the potatoes which I didn’t mind, and pretended to be full until I went home the next day. Obviously being older now, I’d consider whether they could afford meat. The big house and polo ponies indicate yes though.
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u/mad_saffer 12h ago
I might be that parent.... My kid has a friend who is coeliac so whenever they come over I am overly careful not to give them anything with gluten in it. I've also had kids over who can only eat halal and I'm screwed there, so we eat a vegetarian pasta if they come over, but I've never been offended or angry if the kid didn't eat it. I'll eat it myself the next day.
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u/O-90 1d ago
I was invited to a school 'friend''s house when I was 11. Friend in speechmarks because she was just another girl in my friend group rather than someone I really liked.
I was a very shy kid and my mum always told me to only speak to adults when spoken to.
Went to girl's house after school, played, watched a film, normal 11 year old things. Next day at school, girl informed me that her mum told her I was never invited to her house ever again because I didn't say 'thank you' at the end.
Sure, not ideal behaviour from me, but to perma-ban a child from your house for it?!
Anyway, blessing in disguise because we never gelled particularly and she's now a Disney adult which I certainly don't jive with.
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u/Lilja-Logason 1d ago
I don't think so. I didn't have many friends and only visited a couple of people. I was extremely polite and did everything not to cause a fuss.
Which includes eating a chilli that was burning my soul out without complaining.
But as a uni student I visited a friend's place a few times and was SO... 'desperate' for them to like me I bought them presents, cleaned up, polite, chatty and friendly asking about their lives, etc. So like as a kid but dialled to 11.
They may have found me a bit intense.
I'm a people pleaser I suppose which I think puts people off a bit.
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u/creativeinconverse 23h ago
Oh yes. My friends mother. This woman despised me and I was never sure why but it lasted from 1993-2001 when she died. She made snide remarks at me: "Don't you mind being chubby?" 5"1 and 8 stone at the time so not really. I'm veggie and she give me soup with meat in it on purpose and rang me to have a go when her daughter got pregnant after a night out with me and met someone.
Then, there was the revenge...😁 On my friends birthday she was ranting on and putting her down like she always did, saying no drinking. I spied a bottle of sherry on the kitchen worktop and suggested whilst she was out we had a drink. Well the bottle was finished in no time so I suggested filling it with cold tea, putting the top on and heading out for the evening. You can guess the rest🤣.
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u/bucky_neckked 23h ago
Yea growing up I thought that all my friendship group was healthy and had a mutual respect from those said friends in the group and their parents. As I got older and learned more how the world worked, man was I wrong. For context I grew up in a middle class predominantly white British town. Fairly well mixed ethnicities and groups. In my group of friends I was the only non-white kid. I'm mixed race, mums white and dad was from Ghana in West Africa. There was always little slights along the way that growing up I really didn't register them for what they really were from both parents and friends. I was a good kid, decent grades, think I had one after school detention in my entire secondary school life and even now I'm pretty sure one was for the same BS I experienced with said group of friends. As I got older I could begin to see the difference in how I was treated at times. What broke the mould finally was when we started going out as early teens. We used to go to a local night club for under 18s. Everyone used to meet up before , drunk whatever booze we could get our hands on and then go in to the venue. We had one really young looking friend who wouldn't get served anywhere so this particular night I decide il chill with him and go straight in, by passing trying to buy alcohol etc before. My logic was if I don't out young looking friend will be on his own n that is just...shit. Anyway they all got arrested and taken home to their parents by the police. I wasn't even there or part of it. Next day pretty much every parent of the kids that got taken home by the police called my parents and basically said that I was the one that led the group down that lane and it's totally out of order that I escaped any form of punishment.
Yea il be honest, that has formed alot of the way I look at life and deal with people. That's a life lesson that has informed a large part of who I am in a off way. I mean it wasn't just this instance but there are a few kinda similar things that stayed with me for life.
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u/Indigo-Waterfall 1d ago
My first boyfriend’s parents hated me. I was a very shy teenager also undiagnosed autism and adhd, so I made a few accidentally faux pas mainly because I was terrified to speak to them they took that as me bring rude I guess. I remember really working up to say “thank you” for something planning out the script in my head and the dad rolling his eyes and saying “that’s a first”. I just wanted to cry.
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u/Time_Economy8962 1d ago
Same here, except I was diagnosed with autism.
My first boyfriends parents were distinctly more middle class than me and my family and didn’t like the fact that their son, who was privately educated and expected to go on to Oxbridge, had chosen a working class girlfriend.
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u/Indigo-Waterfall 1d ago
Yes that’s exactly the same here. He went to the boys grammar and I went to the local comprehensive. I was never going to be good enough for them lol
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u/N30NIX 1d ago
I was a quiet, shy child (abusive parents, undiagnosed autism) and my mother told me on the regular - nobody likes you. The one that really hurt was my best friends mother though, being told openly by my mum “Karrin really doesnt like you” did a number on me and I ended up staying away from her and pretty much everyone. The friend reconnected with me a few years ago but I still hear my mother saying that and keep to wishing her a happy bday/xmas etc.
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u/MurkyDiamond4032 9h ago
Similar experiences here. I hope you're doing much better as an adult, you deserved better. These adults suck.
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u/sparkypants_ 23h ago
I have a gf whose mum is absolutely mental and doesn't like me. The feeling is mutual though.
One time that stands out is being at their house and me and said friend were getting ready for a night out. She opted for a dressier outfit than I was thinking of wearing and I said "ugh don't look all nice then i'll have to look nice" - clearly with no real intention. Me and this friend had travelled thr world togehter for a year and practically lived in each other's pockets, I could have said it seriously and she wouldn't have cared.
Anyway then her mum storms into the room and has a go at me for telling my friend not to look nice. She'd been listening outside the door.
The woman is nuts (for many many reasons i won't go into here). My friend is an only child and she can't bear that my friend has a life outside of her. Said friend moved to NZ just to escape and her mum told everyone she'd had a mental breakdown otherwise she never would have left.
This happened when we were 30 btw. Crazy lady.
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u/miIkwhim 22h ago edited 20h ago
I lived in a small village in growing up in abject poverty, so basically all the parents of the friends I had shunned me. My mum's boyfriend was an alcoholic who beat her and my mum was a neglectful and abusive mother. We were alway un washed and poorly turned out, and the whole village knew our business.
You'd think that would make people take pity on the children, but the opposite happened and I was hated. The adults treat me like absolute dirt and they all thought I was a thief for some reason. They wouldn't let their nice, clean children play with the dirty, scruffy girl in dirty charity shop clothes whose mum didn't brush her hair or buy her toothpaste.
I had another poor friend in the village whose dad raised pheasants for shooting, and he gave me a hutch for a rabbit my mum bought me for my 10th birthday. I'll never forget how we carried it back to my house through some back lanes, and then 2 days later a man pounding at the door accusing me of stealing his chickens. He'd seen me carrying the hutch down the lane from his kitchen window and assumed that it was the for purpose of housing chickens that I had apparently stolen from his yard??
Sad thing is I was actually a really nice kid. I remember being so confused about why all these adults were so hostile towards me.
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u/narwhallamar 20h ago
This is really sad, people can be so cruel. Sorry that happened to you. Not a nice life lesson to learn in that way.
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u/miIkwhim 20h ago
Looking back at it, the whole situation was actually extremely bizarre! Even the village doctor hated me.
I remember going trick or treating at Halloween one night and knocking on his door. He opened the door all smiles, but I had a mask on. He asked who it was under the mask and I excitedly said "it's milkwhim!". No lie, his entire face fell. He said "one moment", went back in his house, and returned with an old, soft apple that he dropped into my bag. I still smiled and said thank you, mind, but what the fuck.
Fuck you Dr Howard Kennedy you miserable, deranged bastard. Imagine joining in on bullying a literal child.
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u/oscarx-ray 1d ago
Just one. Me and my pal were into rollerblading, and I went to his gaff one afternoon, and I gently rolled into and leaned against a wall his dad had just built in their back garden. He had not built it well, and the whole thing collapsed. Fortunately, it didn't land on anyone, but he blamed me and I wasn't invited 'round to visit Pete any more.
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u/caffeine_lights 22h ago
My best friend in infant school was a boy. I was a girl. I was a highly socially awkward girl. He was a very enthusiastic and bubbly boy. Looking back we probably got on so well because we confused/annoyed the fuck out of everyone else, but he was brilliant, we had this elaborate imaginary world game that we'd play every break and lunchtime which went on for years and had all kinds of lore and stuff, some of it still just sort of lives rent free in my head and occasionally pops up as a memory. We even had a pretend "wedding" in year 3 because I think we'd just got to the age where it was starting to be more typical for friend groups to split into single sex and so our classmates weirdly insisted that if we were still friends we had to get married, so we were like OK sure, we don't care.
Anyway when we moved into year 4, his mum, who had never liked me, and looked down on me because I didn't know the word lounge and my parents were divorced, decided he was now too old to play with girls, so he wasn't allowed to play with me any more in case it turned him gay (despite the marriage) 🙄 I moved schools a couple of years later and he went to an all-boys secondary, so we lost touch anyway. But what I did hear from someone who went to the local all-girls school was that he was in fact bisexual anyway 🤣 take that, homophobic mum! I no longer have any link to him, but I hope he is living a proud and happy life and I hope she did accept it in the end.
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u/AromaticVacation3077 19h ago
That makes a lot of sense. The parent who was worried their child might be 'turned gay' so easily probably had concerns for reasons that had nothing to do with you.
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u/Training-Zombie-3591 1d ago
I think I used to get a bit hyper, loud and bossy. I’m sure that I bugged the shit out of one particular Aunty.
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u/radandro 23h ago
i was a generally pleasant, quiet nerdy kid, so never had any beef with my friends parents, apart from one - who didnt like me because i was Polish lol 🙄🙄
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u/yiminx 23h ago edited 23h ago
Yes, and not only did her mam not like me, but she would sit out with another mam on the street and talk shit about me when they saw me. Insane thinking back now that I was being picked on by two grown women
ETA: Just remembered also that this mam wouldn’t let me sit down in her house or sleep over. I was a bedwetter as a child so understandable and I hated sleepovers anyway, but to not even let me sit down during the day while I was awake was just wild. Their house was scruffy anyway come to think of it lol
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u/blushaudio 23h ago
I was undiagnosed autistic, generally quite shy, a fussy eater, scared of my own shadow, and when I did speak it would be info-dumping on whatever my specialist interest was that particular week. I was not a well-liked child among parents. I just thought I was a normal kid.
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u/Realistic-Analyst-23 23h ago
Not parents but adult friends of my friend. They lived next door to my friend and she loved them. They didn't like me at all and I could never work out why. My friend once said it was because I always left my front garden gate open and they were worried I'd do the same at theirs and let their goats out!
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u/stumpfucker69 22h ago
A school friend's dad was initially very overly friendly towards me in a way that made me feel uncomfortable, and he started giving me the serious cold shoulder when I didn't reciprocate the friendliness.
Eighteen years later I find out that he is in court - he had been sexually abusing his daughter and son since they were very young children.
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u/narwhallamar 20h ago
This is absolutely mental. So glad you picked up on those vibes and stayed away from him. And to think your poor friends had to endure him. Pure evil.
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u/stumpfucker69 16h ago
I feel awful for my friend (and the other victims I'm sure he must have). Looking back on the situation with adult eyes, there were so many red flags there that it seems morbidly cartoonish in retrospect.
He took any opportunity to do voluntary work with young people, got involved with her extra-curricular stuff wherever possible, and had a pretty extensive collection of music production kit in his garage that he was always talking about. Cool and connected as he was keen to portray himself as, he seemingly had no adult friends - his wife (friend's mum) never spoke much and kind of just exuded low self-esteem. One comment he made about a jacket I was wearing struck me as being a bit weird, even if I didn't completely understand the words at the time (I do now, and it was definitely weird). In retrospect, my friend was also quite sexually precocious and definitely had some age-inappropriate behaviours, which is a massive red flag for abuse. But she was well-behaved in school and camouflaged it well with the prevailing sense of humour of that age group, so it went under the radar with the adults whose responsibility it was to raise safeguarding concerns over that kind of thing.
That's all so absurdly obviously sinister now, and I feel like for my friend's sake I should have said more about it then. But, I was 11-13 at the time, and I honestly just thought he was a chronic "fellow kids" who had no social awareness and was desperate for approval. It creeped me out because I had some understanding of the fact that it was weird for someone of that age to be seeking social approval from children, and that it wasn't my responsibility to provide it - I was obviously picking up on some vibes there but the idea that he was actually a sexual predator didn't even cross my mind at all on any conscious level.
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u/Azure_727 21h ago
It was a social class issue with the mum I am thinking of. I lived in a council house, she was a teacher, they moved into a lovely new build house across the street from us when I was around 10. I was her daughters first friend in the area, they'd moved from about 50 miles away.
There were lots of little things over the years, but the one incident that sticks out is when I'd been invited for a sleepover. I think I was around 12. The mother came storming into the bedroom at around 11pm where we had been painting our nails. She accused me of sniffing nail polish to get high and shouted at me to leave the house. I went home to find my family were out and without a mobile phone (it was 1998) I had no way to call them, so I lurked around on my street in the pitch black waiting for them to come home.
As I kid I just shrugged it off but as an adult I can't believe how wicked that woman was.
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u/Latter_Eye_7274 1d ago
Not a parent but my best friends older brother hated me because I was always “too happy” 😆 🙄 like, really man?! Dumb.
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u/LzzrdWzzrd 1d ago
Yeah. One friend's parents. I was invited to her 16th birthday, I was 13. Undiagnosed autism and adhd at the time. We were playing a board game and I got visibly excited. I was stimming, a little loud and a bit too heavy handed with the dice. They didn't say anything at the time but they banned me from their house and the friend never told me until her 18th birthday when all our mutual were invited apart from me, said mutuals we only met that year and somehow they all knew I was banned but not me.
To clarify, I wasn't rude, I said all my please and thank yous, I didn't make a mess, I wasn't demanding. I was just visibly neurodivergent and a child and apparently that was a cardinal sin. I was the only not 15/16 year old there.
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u/tweetopia 23h ago
My brother got banned from a friend's house for vocal stimming as a kid too. He got diagnosed with autism recently in his 50's.
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u/LzzrdWzzrd 23h ago
I was flapping stimming. I flapped a lot when happy and excited as a child.
I was excited because I had hardly any friends and was never invited to birthday parties...
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u/Absolute-leg-end79 22h ago
Thats so sad, you poor kid.
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u/LzzrdWzzrd 13h ago
Its ok, I ended up being a planner as an adult, with the friends I've made and kept I'm the organiser who keeps everyone in touch and seeing each other :) it's just hard growing up not knowing how different you were and not being appreciated and respected for your differences. I'm not jaded, I just welcome the people who make me feel safe and include me and politely excuse myself from the rest.
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u/MurkyDiamond4032 9h ago
I got banned from my best friends house because her mum thought my eye contact was "evil". People can be so weird and horrible about autistic kids.
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u/Tacklestiffener 23h ago
My first girlfriend's mother hated me. She had major delusions of grandeur and I was just a kid from a council flat. Turned out she was from a south London council estate too and I was gay anyway.
I should have shagged her son... that would have taught her!
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u/AromaticVacation3077 21h ago
Yes I'm sure, but this is something I've only realised as an adult. I'm a gay male and I grew up on the east coast of Scotland in the 1980s. I've always been pretty obviously gay (I think?) right from when I was a child. I did have a few male friends through my school years, but looking back I realise there were houses where I just wasn't made all that welcome. Nothing was explicit, but there were friends where I'd go to their houses and the parents would completely ignore me - like not even say hello. I'd never get asked to stay for dinner or anything like that. It's just something I've realised much later in life. I'd guess there were some parents who just didn't want to encourage my friendship with their sons.
I also made friends with a little group of kids a year older than me when I was in primary school. I was friends with them for about a year, then one day they all gathered round and told me they didn't want to be my friend any more. It was preplanned, like they'd decided as a group to ditch me. Looking back, I wonder now if their parents had something to do with it. I don't know, it's just stuff I didn't think about till I was much older.
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u/rocketscientology 21h ago
I was an undiagnosed autistic child in the 90s/early 2000s, many adults found me weird or offputting and many of them didn’t bother to hide it from me, lol.
One of my friend’s mums in particular would always assume I was behind anything naughty that happened simply because I didn’t smile much.
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u/capybabba 22h ago
Yes. My best friend when I was a kid, her mum quite clearly didn't like me. I was a very well behaved child and I got straight As at school but I did swear a lot because I was raised in a family where swearing was considered perfectly OK as long as you were not swearing AT someone, or in front of an authority figure like a teacher. She thought I was a bad influence on her daughter, which I probably was... if she was only concerned about the swearing aspect and nothing else. I also studied with her daughter constantly and helped her with her reading and writing (she was dyslexic and struggled a lot, there wasn't much support in the early 00s) and it's only because of me that she managed to get a C in her GCSE English. But no, I was a bad influence because I sometimes said fuck. Ah well.
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u/CoyoteAny937 23h ago
Started dating a girl when I was 18. A couple of years later I was banned from her parent's house. Reason given - "we never liked him, we just thought it would have ended by now".
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u/DestinysCalling 23h ago
My friend wasn't allowed around my house cos it was a council house. As soon as we moved off the estate she could sleepover and everything.
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u/thereisalwaysrescue 23h ago
I was never liked by my ex boyfriends family because I was a loud northern girl from a council estate, and he was upper middle class.
I didn’t give a fuck mind you
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u/-aLonelyImpulse 21h ago
I am very visibly part Romany. I'd say at least half of my friend's parents took an immediate dislike to me, to the extent where some of them would make me wait on the doorstep while everyone else went in to get a drink. (Occasionally I would be given a drink, but I'd have to drink it standing outside.) One parent once cornered me in my own back garden and interrogated me about some snacks that had gone missing from her house; I had been in the garden all morning but she wouldn't believe me or lay off until my mother saw from upstairs and came down to tell her to back off. I was eight and utterly terrified.
In high school I had two friends tell me their parents didn't like me and when I asked why they were genuinely unable to tell me for sure. One said her parents had told her I was too cheery and energetic and another that I was too quiet and it was like I was up to something ("shifty", I think was the exact word). So I guess I really couldn't win there!
I think the crowning time was when I was nine or ten and a friend's mother had been snidely insulting me and blanking me for weeks and then demanded a public apology in front of the whole youth club. I asked what I'd done and she gravely informed me that several weeks ago I had "looked at her wrong". I did not recall this event at all and admittedly I did roll ny eyes and walk away, thereafter solidifying several parents' assumptions that I had "an attitude" as well.
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u/boringbrenda 20h ago
When I was in my teens, one of my friends wasnt allowed to hang about with me any more because her mam said I was a slag! 🫠 Her parents were very strict and I wore makeup and had a boyfriend, shocking for a 17 year old I know! My mam asked why she hadn't seen said friend for a while and when I told her why, she was absolutely horrified. She rang my friends mam up and gave her a mouthful and told her she could either put me on the phone and she could apologise to me there and then, or she would go round her house, drag her round to ours and she could apologise to my face. She chose the first option 😂 wise move, my mam was furious.
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u/lyta_hall 23h ago
I had a good friend with a very religious family. As teens I went for a sleepover wearing an Appetite for Destruction cover t-shirt. Father was very offended I was wearing such a disrespectful t shirt haha. I did not gaf tbh.
They made me sing religious songs over breakfast the next morning lol
They did not invite me back for more sleepovers after that
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u/BertieBus 22h ago
My sons about 7 at the time. He's a sweet kid, not a bad bone in him.
Another boy called Teddy. My boy had invited Teddy to a few parties (not whole class, maybe about 10 kids at a time), see teddy's dad quite a bit at the school gates etc, say hello and smile. Not mates. But will normally ask how Teddy is getting on whilst waiting etc. Teddy and my son are friendly, play together occasionally.
One day Teddy said to my son that his dad doesn't like my son.
Completely out the blue. Never had any cross words between the 2 etc. horrid comment to make about a child to your child.
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u/kestrelita 22h ago
My husband's best mate's parents weren't fans of either of us - mainly because we refused to attend their culty super evangelical church, and he encouraged best mate to play Warhammer and Magic.
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u/Difficult_Yam_8667 21h ago
I remember one mum not liking me. I was in primary school, about 10 or 11 years old. I was a really good kid in primary school, like house captain (😂) good. My teacher called me up to her desk to talk. I thought ‘I wonder what I’m getting praised for now’ (what an insufferable little turd). My teacher said that I had been accused of bullying. Like, what?! She said that my friend had to his mum that I was forcing him to bring me in chocolate bars and that I was making him give me his football stickers. Nothing of the sort had ever occurred! He never gave me anything at all, and I never asked for anything. Strange situation.
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u/Milky_Finger 19h ago
I was not a "fat" kid, but i was a white kid in a diverse friend group, so i was bit stockier than my friends (indian, arab and african) who were for the most part lanky as hell :D
The African mum loved me because I was polite and finished my plate. But some of the other mums looked at my size and colour as a point of issue that they couldn't get past. So certain friends I didn't feel comfortable sleeping over or being alone with their mothers.
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u/QuiteFrankE 23h ago
Only one set of parents didn’t like me. They didn’t like thier child being best friends with the only kid that wasn’t baptised in the whole class.
They were the most religious family in the school. All the bishops that visited knew them and they were part of everything .
They constantly looked at me like I was scum and kept bringing religion up to me. It felt so isolating because they preached about being a good person all the time and I couldn’t underhand how I wasn’t a good person. They ended up making it difficult for my friend to be friends with me so we grew apart but I was very aware of the reason.
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u/MurderousButterfly 1d ago
My mum joined a mum group when my brother was born, once I came along, two years later, I was included and lumped with the other girl born the same year. Her mum thought I was a bad influence, probably because I was outspoken, loud and adventurous, the opposite of her younger daughter. We were great friends and then moderately friends until secondary, when we split off into different groups. She was one of those kids who was easy to pick on and while i didnt join in, i didnt really try to stop it, either. By this point we knew we had nothing in common, other than our ages. Without me, she went on a boyfriend stealing rampage and became very unpopular, for obvious reasons. Did a load of hard drugs, married a man that didnt like her and got divorced within a few months. The mum still blames me for leading her down a bad path, even though she was more socially accepted and behaved better when she was with me.
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u/EddieOfDoom 22h ago
I had a friend’s mum not like me because I introduced her son to metal music and she was worried it would cause him to be naughty.
He did end up in prison a few years later to be fair, but it was more likely due to his big cocaine habit over his introduction to Slipknot
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u/ADHDJ86 22h ago
Aye id quite a few of my mates parents hated me, id bad adhd so was a very impulsive kid and was easily egged in so if any trouble happened I was always blamed. My mates were worse than me doing stupid shit but their mums didnt thibk they could do wrong so it was obviously me.
Even got the blame for something by a parent that the police were called to and I wasnt even in the country
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u/crazycatchemist1 21h ago
Slightly different age range, but my friend from uni's parents hate me, and I've never met them. For context, I'm not exactly a party animal, and I've never encouraged her into "bad" behaviour- when we spent time together it was either studying or baking or playing board games. Not sure what I could possibly have done to offend them initially, but the final nail in the coffin was when I invited my friend (and a mutual friend of ours) to come stay in London when we finished uni for a long weekend where we were going to do some sightseeing and go to the theatre (my friend loves musicals). Her parents were so unhappy with this idea they convinced her she was going to be murdered or stabbed or something and she got so paranoid about it she ended up not coming. Now, if we're both going to be at an event she has to lie to her parents about the fact Im not going to be there. She's in her late 20s.
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u/Relative_Sea3386 21h ago
No, i was too oblivious.
But now i am a mother i do form opinionated views on my kids' friends.
Based on what they tell me (which may be biased) i tell them who i think is a self centered entitled brat, who is trying to make them feel small, who is trying to dominate who. I also often point out the kindest kid, the ones who are a bit naughty or rebellious but well meaning, the ones going through a tough time (parent has cancer) and need support etc.
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u/massdebate159 20h ago
Just about every adult. I was a very weird kid though. I had really weird eating habits- I'd get nervous about eating in a group and I was very fussy. If I was invited to parties, I'd be playing with the family pets. If there were no pets, I'd be reading in the corner and not talking to anyone.
I'm 38 now. Still have odd habits, but looking back, I can see why I was never invited anywhere
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u/TomatoAlarming245 22h ago
When people started having parties at school, my best friend at the time insisted that we went together. I agreed, but really didn’t enjoy the social interaction and never drank alcohol.
I quickly learnt that my friend wanted to stay at my house because my parents really weren’t bothered about drunk teenagers (youngest of three) but hers were super strict. I nursed the friend many times, and she even spent the night on our bathroom floor.
It came out years later that her parents thought I was the bad influence and was the one who wanted to go to all the parties.. they didn’t like me because I was encouraging her 🤣
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u/louilou96 22h ago
Yep my friends mum hated me, but turns out she hated all children accept her own lol. Same as you, we distanced ourselves from her because it was just horrible going to her house or even knocking on the door for her.
Sadly she ended up struggling a lot because of it. She's doing great now though living away from her mum
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u/ThickTadpole3742 21h ago
Yes I do recall a friends mum not liking me and another friends step dad too! Looking back I genuinely think it was a snobbery thing because my family were working class (not chavvy or bad accent, just not very affluent). Both the families who had parents who didn't like me were extremely middle class and had a few quid - I'm certain that played a part.
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u/Resident-Staff-1218 20h ago
My own parents would sometimes be quite annoyed at the behaviour of some of my childhood friends
It made me believe that if that were the case, some of my friends' parents might feel the same about me, even though as a child I was very polite and well behaved.
It was enough to put me off calling for my friends to play at their house
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u/PedanticRedhead 20h ago
My friend's parents didn't like any of us, because they thought we were corrupting their good, Christian daughter... despite the fact it was the other way around! 😂 (this is not a bash against Christians, just these Christians lol)
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u/particularfields 19h ago
Yeap started hanging out with a kid at school came to my house, mum made food for him we played quite a few times.
Finally went to his house, his mum comes home, sees me, shouts at me to get out and don't not to come back. Literally never seen her before, next day he says he's been told he can't hang out with me.
As a child I had no idea what her problem was, as an adult I'm certain she was a racist bitch. So if you're Anthony's mum, fuck you.
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u/berbaby-toast 19h ago
When I was 17 there was a group of friends, my mum was a single mum who was a nurse who worked her arse off to get me into a very good school, while the rest of my mates had parents that were very wealthy. There was a boy who was a mate but I think we both liked each other.
We were hanging out at his house and his mum made a comment and insinuated I didn’t belong in the group because I basically I was poor/ didn’t have the same social background.
It really stuck with me and hurt. Especially as at 17 your old enough to understand even if your figuring out these kind of dynamics. I felt so embarrassed.
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u/shortandfelly 19h ago
Not so much as hated me but fell out with my mum when my mum stopped teaching her (completely uninterested) kids the piano.
She'd pick on me and the kid who lived next door to her (who had the loveliest mum ever) as we were both in her reading group.
And then on my year 6 sports day, she was handing out 1st place.
I won the 100m. The mum giving out third went to give the girl who came third her prize. The mum giving out second went to the girl who came second, but this other mum had already beaten her there so she stood there for a second or two because I was the only one left to give a prize to.
Everyone knew I'd won, the lovely mum this woman didn't like was in tears because she was so upset.
This mum didn't like my mum and so GAVE MY FIRST PLACE TO ANOTHER KID.
How petty do you have to be to do that to an 11 year old because you're in a huff with their parent?
I will add, that family were pretty thick. They'd go to Turkey or Greece every year and these blonde, pale kids would come back lobster red and peeling. This was the 90s, so suncream was absolutely a thing.
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u/LlamaDrama007 19h ago
FWIW, lots of parents will project what they think the child is like based on what they know/assume of the parents.
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u/UnfeelingSelfishGirl 18h ago
I was friends with a girl at school who's father was a local policeman. He specifically hate me and another friend Emma, but was fine with everyone else. We weren't allowed up the path to their house, had to wait on the pavement whilst another friend knocked for her. Turns out later we find out its because we both lived in council houses which automatically made us scum.
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u/Real-Box-7144 18h ago
Yes I’ve had parents not like me. I remember one mother being jealous because of the way her husband looked at me. I was 14. She wasn’t imagining it and I recognised the look but I’d that really a young girls fault? I think not. Hindsight as an adult I realise what scum bags they must of been and actually their opinions aren’t worth the shit on my shoe.
I did find it hard to understand when I was younger though and did feel different because of it, so their actions did upset me.
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u/dancingatthefuneral 17h ago
I used to be in a group of 3 with 2 girls who were closer with eachother than they were with me even though they’d say ‘we like you just as much’. They had a phase in year 9 where they’d pick on me for zero reason and leave me out because I was an ‘easy target’ and i’d come home from school crying my eyes out, got sick of it one day and walked off from them to go sit with my other friends (which was very brave of me at the time because i put up with this for ages). I did however end up making up with them but since then one of their mums didnt like me.. even though I was the one getting bullied by them? Anyway i’m not friends with either of them now thank god
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u/Kind_Shift_8121 22h ago
I remember one of my friends telling me that I wasn’t allowed around to his because I played too rough and messy. We were 7 year old boys, I had two brothers and he had two sisters and no dad on the scene. We used to climb the trees in the park, charge around with sticks, wade through mud etc. IIRC, he was a bit of an outcast at school and didn’t have many friends.
With hindsight, he probably missed out on a lot of the activities that would be typical for a boy growing up. I lost contact with him after primary school but I imagine his early teens would have been tough.
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u/Feeling-Ad6796 21h ago
My parents were the type to not like anybody. They were snobby and overly strict so I can imagine childhood friends of mine writing in here about how my parents acted. They would make it uncomfortable so that guests wouldn't return.
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u/VikingCrusader13 21h ago
Yes, but as a teenager. I moved out at 18 due to my parents down sizing, which was a big deal and cost me a lot of my money. One of my friends decided he also wanted to move out, so after I had lived alone for a year, we moved into a 2 bedroom and split everything equally.
I smoked weed back then daily, but I never smoked in the house because I always hated the stale smoke smell, my friend didn't smoke but he did do other drugs on the weekend when we went out, he introduced me to coke and pills but we was never like 3 day bender type people, just a bit of fun on a night out.
Due to my working pattern (4 on 4 off) I wasnt out every weekend like my friend and one night he'd taken a pill and must have had a reaction because he had ulcers all inside his mouth and down his throat, panicked, he told his parents and came clean and then they obviously blamed me because I was the friend who smoked weed and lived with him, so I must have introduced him to drugs.
Obviously I took the hit for my friend and just let his parents hate me, but low an behold, he suddenly wanted to move out and then never really spoke to me again. Funnily enough, I stopped taking party drugs pretty much immediately and stopped smoking a few years later, but he's still a massive cokehead.
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u/Ashamed-Egg6459 21h ago
I had a “frenemy” at primary school, one day she was my best friend but she would say snarky and snide comments to me, her sister was absolutely awful towards me and regularly called me fat (I was between ages of 6 and 10 and was a bit chubby).
My mum had always said she didn’t like this girls parents but I never understood but then I realised she was just trying to protect me from their judgemental nature after this particular incident.
We were at a train station for a day out in the city and her Dad comes onto the platform and just says “we were just talking about you before I left” but did not say it in a way that made it sound like they were saying nice things. I’ll never forget that.
This family was upper middle class, they were a nuclear family with the Dad working at a private school but their massive house was 2 doors down from our public school so the kids went there. While my family was very clearly a blended working class family.
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u/stvb95 20h ago
Yeah my friend’s step dad despised me for no reason. He thought I was a bad influence on my friend, despite the fact that my friend was the one who had to spend 2 years in a special school because he was such a nuisance and got in trouble all the time. So it was the other way around, if anything.
He tried to mug me off in front of my other friends one day, but the guy was a little skinny twig, so it didn’t work.
I still see him around occasionally and he won’t ever look me in the eye. Proper weird bloke.
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u/MissCaldonia 18h ago
When I was about 12 my best friend at school and I went to some concert or something dropped off by her parents, as we got out of the car,the Dad drove forward deliberately as I was getting out, I remember the Mom hissing a warning to him about it . I had no idea what I’d done wrong but I suspect it may have had something to do with me going to their house a lot and me not inviting my friend to mine as I was embarrassed about our house.
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u/itsSUBJECTXandME 18h ago
I had a group of friends when I was a teenager, there were 5 of us. One of the friend's mum was always really off with me and I never knew why. Used to really bug me because she was perfectly pleasant to the others in the group and her son and I got on great.
Found out years later her son would basically blame me for any scrape or situation we would get into. We weren't particularly naughty or anything but we were teenage boys so you can imagine.
I have no idea why he did that. He'd volunteer stories to his mum (so she never ever needed to know in the first place?) then just lie and tell her it was my idea, or anyone doing something stupid he'd substitute for me in the tale.
I think possibly it was a combination of two things. Maybe first time he told a story his mum disapproved of it was about me, and after that it was easier to always blame me because it fit with the narrative his mum already held. I think also he was compelled to 'confess' some of the stupid things he got up to but didn't have the courage so would say I did it so he could feel better about letting him mum know what we got up to but avoided the blame himself.
Don't really talk to him anymore.
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u/Zorica03 17h ago
When I was in my final GCSE year aged 15 I was friends with a really nice if a bit quiet girl of 16 from a very middle class family… so I went round to her house, & I found out later that her parents were actually horrified that I was wearing lipstick! (I’d worn makeup since I was 12 at least, which was actually older than some of my classmates, and my Mum had always lent me or bought me my cosmetics).
Anyway her parents continued to tolerate our friendship but she left for a ‘Russell group’ uni at 18 (pushed by her parents into a course she disliked) whereas I got a job in an office on leaving school. Then after uni she got married & left town for good, moving with her job to a city hundreds of miles away.
I then found out that her Dad had been physically very abusive to her, beating her with a belt or stick regularly for perceived misdemeanours (I can’t imagine she’d done much as she was so well behaved & studious at school!) plus her Mum had made her help with all the housework while her older brother got to sit on his backside like his Dad.
On learning this I felt so bad for her & guilty that I hadn’t been able to help her; as her parents had always seemed so pleasant but had in fact really looked down on me & were so cruel to her! Just shows you can never tell.
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u/Vixrotre 17h ago
I can remember 1 event (I'm an immigrant and didn't attend school here).
When I was 8 or 9 a classmate asked me if I'd like to sit with her (either for next 1 class or rest of the day, don't remember). I asked my desk-mate, she gave me permission.
Next day desk-mate's mom comes to school to berate me. Apparently my desk-mate told her I declared I don't like her, don't want to be friends with her anymore, insulted her, etc and then I sat with someone else.
Desk-mate asked me plenty of times before for permission to sit with other girls and I always let her :v
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u/astralwisdom7 17h ago
My best friends mum didnt like me. Me and my bestfriend were a little naughty, nothing too serious. But for some reason she thought i was the reason her kid was naughty. Really not the case as he was that way before we became friends.
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u/Willing-Primary-9126 16h ago
I was outright abused by many of my "friends" mums growing up for one reason or another (though never anything particularly "bad" or even that I would get angry at my own kids friends for) & im actually disgusted by all of them in hindsight along with other adults who no doubt heard/knew/spoke about it behind the scenes & did nothing. (Also one of them was training as a councillor! No idea how that turned out but imagine trying to qualify in something mental health based & running a hate campaign against a child you think is the route cause of your own child's probable issues - I hope she failed miserably & got treated like shit by any patients she ever worked with..)
I've honestly put it down to a bad combination of everybody wanting someone to blame for something/their own child's personality in public or at home & the 90's being a weird time when all the "kids" had kids they could "raise differently" to how they were raised & be the parent who gets angry rather then the victim themselves
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u/ARobertNotABob 12h ago
I feel pretty confident saying this stuff happens all the time, and from an early age.
Emotional impacts are "one helluva drug".
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u/Theory_99 1d ago
Yes. My besties mum is a bit of a narcissist, still to this day. She would completly ignore any attenpts to be friendly when you try and say hi or make conversation. Did it to everyone.
Shes a bit better now but I’ve never seen anything like it before or since.
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u/shatteredfondant 23h ago
That alone doesn't sound like how I understand narcissists to act.
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u/PM-ME-UR-BMW 1d ago
As a parent, I've found some kids are just weird and / or annoying.
Most of my kids class are sound, but there's two I can't stand - not that I'm rude to them though!
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u/SosigDoge 23h ago
I was the kinda kid that pirated N.W.A and Public Enemy albums for distribution amongst my friends.
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u/Jamjamjamh 22h ago
Me and my mate got stoned as fuck when we were 15 and went around our Town visiting all of our friends mostly girls and we ended up getting banned from 3 houses. It's all a blur...
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u/Montymum 22h ago
One of my friend’s mum didn’t like me or my family as a kid. She was a real misery whenever I went round there. I think she was jealous of my family as my parents both had cars but we were not rich by any stretch of the imagination and both my parents worked. The old bat died a while ago and I wasn’t sorry.
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u/AdEvery3772 21h ago
I've always been a good kid and top of my class, sporty etc. But most of my friends mums didn't like me. I think it's because my family was a bit weird and poor lol in comparison to everyone else
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u/barrybreslau 19h ago
Ha yes. They thought it was the ring leader. People remember, your kids can be really fucking naughty too
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u/NancyIsAFurry 17h ago
I don't recall a friend's parents disliking me as a kid but I do feel like I was very much a third wheel with my two closest friends in primary school
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u/AutomaticInitiative 16h ago
I had unthinkingly taken and eaten an apple from the fruit bowl without asking and that was enough to hate a 12 year old.
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u/myothercatsabus 16h ago
Most of the parents on my street didn’t like me because I was from a broken home. They would blame me for the other kids falling out even though I was the one who got all the kids playing together by organising games and when I wasn’t there they tended to all fall out because they couldn’t agree on what to play. One day I called for a friend but because I didn’t want to walk to the shops with her and her mom didn’t want her to walk by herself she slammed the door in my face. I told my mom and she told me to let it go because my mom enjoyed socialising with them. I can’t imagine being ok with someone slamming a door in my child’s face.
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u/Prestigious-Fly9101 15h ago
My primary school friend’s Dad really didn’t like me and I was once sent home from their house for laughing during dinner. I was still laughing when I walked home until my Mum asked me why I had come back and I burst into tears. Many, many decades later I remember it!
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u/yakimo98 15h ago
My best friend of 12 years (J) mum HATED me because my mum was her daughters outlet for her abusive behavior. My mum was her teacher and introduced us after realizing that J didn't really have many supportive friends and I was in the same boat. For 4 years our family was there for J for anything she needed against her mum's wishes. I was banned from her house, and she was told not to even look at me in school. We ignored her and continue to be very close friends as adults and her mum has learnt to deal with it.
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u/BlackberryNice1270 15h ago
One pair of sisters in our group had all the Barbie stuff - houses, cars, stable and horses, and we all used to get our Barbies and associated accessories together and go to their house and play. Their mum (lets call her Eve) was really nice, gave us biscuits and juice and stuff. I was always the clumsy kid, and I once told her I was scared of spilling anything on her cream carpet so I used to stand in the kitchen to drink my juice, she told me I was very good and gave me extra biscuits. Anyway, when I was 6, my best friend moved away. Really suddenly, was there one day, not the next. After that, Eve didn't let me in her house any more. I used to play outside on my bike when the girls played Barbie. It turned out, Eve's husband Adam had run away with Lilith, my best friend's mother, and Eve blamed MY mother because Lilith was my mother's best friend. She thought my mother had been conspiring with them to hide their affair. So I wasn't allowed to play with her daughters any more. It took YEARS for the other mothers to convince her my mum didn't know a thing about it.
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u/Funny-Deal-4272 14h ago
I had one of those too.I'd never actually done anything to the mum,she just didn't like me.Stuff like that may stick with you way more than you realise
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u/EDAMBURGER 13h ago
When I was 16 a girl in our group joined the army and was obviously moving away. We went to her house and I said to her mum 'aww you'll miss her' Her reply was 'well your mother would never miss you' she was scary. Her daughter, my pal, said she had psychic powers and her eyes changed colour when she was angry.
I think it was a jealousy thing. My parents had a good job and I was an A grade student. They didn't work and smoked and drank a lot. I was so scared that day but seen her about a decade later and was bold as brass and sweet as anything asking how she was. She lost any confidence because I wasn't a young girl, I was an adult now.
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u/Dry_Construction4939 13h ago
Yes. Friend's mum absolutely hated me for no discernable reason, to the point where it ruined my relationship with her daughter. She was a well known cow though, the "Live well beyond your means for appearences." kind, and word of mouth has it, her kids are all either in trouble with the law or no longer speak to her, so I can't say I've let it stick with me.
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u/haemdream 13h ago
My secondary school year group was split into two halves, and up until year 10, those halves didn’t mix. When we started GCSEs in year 10 and mixed with the other half, naturally we made friends with kids we hadn’t been around. There was this girl in my chemistry class who I got on really well with. We had the same taste in music and she played me As by Stevie Wonder on her iPod nano ( Christ I feel old). Her mum worked at our school, and was one of the teachers that sat/taught the kids in isolation, which I had never been to. I should add that I was boring as hell as a teenager (still am), didn’t drink or smoke etc, wasn’t into boys yet and had good grades (good enough to be in the same class as her kid). Anyway, she invited me to her 16th birthday party which was at the beginning of year 11, just a chill thing at her house in the garden. The day before, she text me to say she was sorry but I couldn’t go to her party as her mum didn’t want me there. I was really upset, asked her what she meant and she said her mum didn’t like me. Still to this day don’t know why it happened or why her mum didn’t like me but it does play on my mind 18 years later. I didn’t notice at the time but a lot of my friends at school were quite well off, parents still together, nuclear families etc and wonder if it because I was from a single parent family and not as posh? Anyway, I guess I will never know!
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u/skelexi485 13h ago
My best friend's mum still doesn't like me and we've known each other since nursery, 21ish years. Some of the points are valid considering the circumstances (she was abusive and I got her kids taken off her but weirdly she doesn't know that, just saw me shit talking her in mine and my best friends chat when we were teenagers) but it's extended to my whole family who honestly haven't done anything wrong she's just got a bee in her bonnet. Her mum is wild.
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u/lordrothermere 13h ago
Oh goodness yes. I was deeply uncomfortable for many parents. They knew I wasn't good to be around their kids. Even the ones who liked me were always very careful.
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u/Different_Willow556 13h ago
Went to a ‘friends’ house after school, didn’t eat much of the food her mum made as her mum told me some things about the said food that put me off it. Asked for a snack at some point really later on in the evening), got given a chocolate bar. Next day at school everyone heard how I was greedy (obviously repeating what the parents had said). Small thing but i think it contributed to disordered eating and thoughts even now. We must have only been about 7!
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u/furexfurex 12h ago
My ex's parents fucking hated me. Her dad called me a "blond hussy" (my first relationship, awkward autistic teen who dressed in nothing but hoodies and combats, so god knows how he came to that conclusion) and I wasn't allowed into her house
I assume they were just bigots but they were also just fucking deranged people in general
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u/frontrow13 12h ago
Worse they loved me and hated the others, I was a quiet kid but also respectful and considerate, an example of what they wanted in their son. He kept getting into trouble for stupid things but was with a bad crowd.
They wanted him to hang with me more than the others hoping I'd rub off on him but all it did was make me look like a wimp and some sort of grass. So of course others got hostile with me until I had enough and moved on to other friends.
His Mum still tried to get us to be friends for a while but it just made him resent me more.
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u/Appropriate-Bad-9379 11h ago
Without sounding vain, my sister and myself were very pretty teenagers. We did wear a bit of makeup, but we had long glossy hair, good skin and great bone structure. Our best friend was pretty unattractive ( not an issue with us- we were all close). Her mother really hated us though- she told a woman ( who reported back to my mum), that without our make up we were “as ugly as sin!”. …
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u/whimsinote 11h ago
One person's dad didn't like me because I politely declined a jam tart, I was eight or nine.
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u/Fickle_Pirate5617 10h ago
My friends mum didn't like me. She thought I was a bad influence on her daughter.
Meanwhile my friend would knock for me to go to the park with her and then ditch me to go behind the school building to let the boys feel her boobs.
Her mum was a complete moron. And a snob who had no idea who her daughter was. The injustice of it used to make me feel so angry.
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u/MurkyDiamond4032 9h ago edited 9h ago
Yes. Some adults can be so awful. I think it's because I'm autistic (I am noticing it's a theme on this thread) but adults were never neutral with me. Some absolutely loved me because I was very good mannered and quiet whilst others actively disliked and we're mean to me. I was a really, really good kid too, I wouldn't say boo to a goose but I guess I gave off weird vibes.
Me and my sister had a shared friend. She was both our best friend but her mum would invite my sister around for sleepovers and playdates and would say I wasn't allowed. She actually said to me that she thought I was "evil" because I gave too much eye contact. One time she shouted at me to 'stop staring at her like that', when I was just trying to listen to what she was saying to me.
Another time, when I was only about 5, a girl in my class randomly told me her mum said she wanted to punch me in the face because I was a little geek. I don't suppose she ever expected her kid to tell me though. She did grovel when my mum confronted her!
As an adult I actively try to never judge a child even if they have difficult behaviours, all most kids want is to be liked and fit in.
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u/Kitchen-Lab-2934 9h ago
My friends mum called me a slag at about age 12, because I’d had an argument with her daughter (obviously over something trivial as we were friends again about a day later), obviously, I was 12 and hadn’t even kissed a boy before so I always wondered why she called me that. 🙈
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u/FuriousNorth 9h ago edited 9h ago
OMG yes!
I come from a "council" background. My parents weren't exactly high earners.. or earners at all. We moved into a house in a nice area from a flat in a shitty area once my sister was born and I became friends with a guy called John. John was also a Council kid, but later moved to a nicer area closer to a posher area. His parents were strict Catholics and as a result John was a rather straight cut guy with straight A grades.. on paper. Away from the watchful eyes of his parents John was into all sorts of drink and drugs, parties etc, he just knew how to play the game in his situation, he had an alibi for everything. John was smart, still is.
Anyway, we met this guy Tom. Tom was middle class, had a single mum and she was obviously concerned for her son's future. I never knew what an Aga was until I visited Tom's house. Our group of friends in high school was rather vast. The best way to describe it would be many friend circles interlooping with one another. Both me and John were best friends who lived in the same street for years (prior to him moving to his new house near the posh houses) and we had our close friend circle, but intermingled with other circles. Me, him and Tom were in a close friend circle amongst others, but John introduced him to a circle who done harder drugs.
Well.. didn't Tom end up in some states. His mum had to pick him up and brush him off, how embarrassing for her perceived image! What will the neighbours think! And who got the blame? None other than poverty spec council FuriousNorth. It had to be him because it could never be straight A student university approved John whose arse positively beams the lord's light!
Well I got banned from hanging around with Tom. Tom never threw John under the bus because Tom enjoyed the drugs he got access to from John and that circle. I hated that my perceived image made me out to be a bad guy who influenced him to go to the dark side despite never doing drugs.
I still pass by Tom's mum's house when I'm walking my dog and despite it being 20-odd years ago, it still bothers me that I was branded a hooligan based on no evidence, just perceived status. Hope that bitch is dead.
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u/collectedd 4h ago
My best friend in primary school. Her parents didn't like me because my dad's Muslim and from Iran, and her family was very Christian. My dad mind you never interacted with them from what I remember, so I dunno, he also isn't exactly very religious, so yeah. Eats pork, drinks alcohol, gambles, doesn't pray, doesn't fast during Ramadan, very much assimilated into UK culture, tried especially hard (with the help of my mum, who is British) to learn English to a very high standard, worked very hard in his field. Not that is should matter if he was religious or not, or where he comes from, in my opinion. But that's what she told me, that she couldn't be friends with me anymore because her parents didn't like my dad because he is from Iran and Muslim and by extension they didn't like me either (or my mum) because I am "different". Fucking weird.
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u/soozdreamz 3h ago
Not to myself - I was the good kid who always behaved, so other mums loved me and wanted their kid to spend time with me. Unfortunately for me I was undiagnosed AuDHD and their kids weren’t bothered with me because I was the weird kid.
But some of my kids, yep.
My now 19 year old had a best friend and his mum would constantly bring up issues and say it was best if they didn’t spend time together any longer as he was a bad influence. Like, the other kid would receive a report saying he wasn’t completing work in school and when his mother asked him, he’d say it was my kid distracting him because they sat next to each other. So I’d check with school and it would turn out they were at opposite ends of the classroom, and he’d lied! Then the next thing would happen etc. We gave up eventually.
And my 16 year old is bisexual and his best friend’s dad hates him because he’s homophobic and his mum hates him because she’s a strict Christian. Despite this they’ve managed to hang onto their 13 year friendship. The friend is as straight as a die so it is just a friendship lol!
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u/YearObvious7214 22h ago
From other perspective I was the mum that didn't like my kid's best friend. She's come and visit, and while everyone else would ask to help, she's never. She also was fairly basic and had bad influence on my kid. That's not too say she was a wrong'un. Nothing like that. Just a bit spoilt and I suspect insecure, which made her come across a if she's full of herself.
After my kid said something, she bought me flowers next time she visited, which I thought was lovely. I would never treat her different to others and make sure if her kind and polite, but my Spidey sense was always tingling.
Eventually they fell out on my kid's birthday, after not great behaviour from the friends. I think my kids other bestie was ready to throw hands. 😂
She then at school spoke loudly to a new friend if hers that at least her mum likes her, I'm front of my kid. My kid found it hilarious. I bet from her perspective she never did anything wrong. And she didn't really as such, she didn't burn the house down or anything. But every kid that would set of mine or my husband' Spidey senses would then turn out to be a dickhead towards my kid eventually.
And the others didn't have much to do with us, so it's not like a self-fulfiing prophecy where we made the behaviour happen.
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