7 Stories Proving It’s Really Easy to Lose Your Children’s Trust

Family & kids
4 years ago

When raising children, we have to be very serious and responsible about what we say to them. Because even a seemingly harmless word or action can leave a big scar that won’t be forgotten, even when they grow up. This is proven by the stories of online users that recently talked about the things their parents did that cost them their trust.

We at Bright Side want all parents to read this article and understand why it is so important to listen to our children, trust them, and let them express their opinions.

***

My mom has written several books. Now, she is pretty successful and her book sales are growing. I remember how she used to stay in her room all the time because she was writing. I was missing her and I had to play by myself.

Then, I decided to read one of her books and on the very first page, it said, “Dedicated to my daughter, I’m sorry that you didn’t have a mother in your life.” It’s moving, but at this point, I don’t feel anything anymore. © Ward № 6 / vk

***

I had a diary and I wrote short stories. The topics were totally normal for a teenager: relationships with boys, first loves, and stuff like that. Maybe, they were primitive, but it was my first try. I only let my close friend read them. So, it turned out that my mom also read them and didn’t tell me. And once, she even humiliated my writing skills.

This was the moment that I realized what shame and hatred meant. © Pushkanaizzer / pikabu

***

I was 8 or 9 years old when my grandma’s gold watch went missing. She was worried — the watch was quite expensive. My uncle, aunt, and mother started interrogating me. They put me on the kitchen chair and made me look them in the eye. I explained to them that I had no idea where the watch was but they kept pressing me, making me cry, and I couldn’t prove anything to 3 adults.

They spent like 4 hours pressing me, trying different approaches, like, “Maybe, you forgot? It happens to everyone,” or “the good — bad cop routine,” and the threats and pity got totally mixed up in my mind.

Something inside me cracked... They didn’t trust me. I was telling the truth and they didn’t believe it. The crack inside got bigger and my childish carelessness and trust got shattered. In the end, I was so sick of it, scared, and stressed that I decided to lie to them just to stop the torture. I told them I gave the watch to my classmate.

My uncle drove to my friend. Of course, they didn’t know anything. The next day, I went to school angry and ashamed. I apologized to my friend but I couldn’t study that day because I was burning on the inside. I didn’t want to go back home where my own mother betrayed me because she didn’t believe me, her own son.

A week later, my grandma found the watch. Nobody apologized to me. Why should they apologize to a child? Did they do something wrong? I just stopped trusting my mother and my relatives. No big deal. © Hottabov / pikabu

***

When I was a child, I went to art school. I really loved drawing, but I wasn’t very good at it. This is why I often practiced at home, drawing something for my mom. I remember that it was very important for me, I spent several hours working on one drawing, I started over many times, but about 3-4 times a week, I made my mom a present. Every time, she smiled and put them away someplace, telling me that she kept all of them. And I believed her.

But once, I saw that she was tearing them up and throwing them away... I remember that my world shook at that moment. For the next couple of weeks, I kept crying in secret and then I dropped out of art school and stopped drawing for good.

I still don’t understand why she had to do that. I was only about 12 years old and I wasn’t terrible (I still have some drawings). Sometimes, I want to start doing something new, but I can’t... I instantly remember that moment. I’m afraid I’ll never get over it. © Ward № 6 / vk

***

I was 8 or 9 and I went to a singing class. In the group, there was a boy, he was chubby and spoiled and his name was Mike. I didn’t like him very much because he insulted girls really often and we couldn’t do anything back to him — he would just cry and run to him mommy who loved him very much and defended him fiercely. So, my mom became friends with his mom.

Once, in the evening after a concert, our mothers went for a walk with us. We came to an amusement park, and among all the cool stuff, there was a train for children — it was on rails and it went through a tunnel. And our moms got us tickets! We could ride it 2 times! It was a big deal for me then, but there was a problem: both Mike and I wanted to sit at the steering wheel. So, his mother says, “Okay, let’s do this: Mike goes now, and then it’s your turn.” We agree, we do the first ride, I leave to change places and... Mike doesn’t. He wants to go in his same seat again.

I kept telling him that he had his turn and that we agreed to switch places, but he just kept telling and his mother, she started saying something like, “He is a boy, and why do you even want to do that anyway?” I turn to my mom, expecting support, and then I hear her scream, “Either you go now and ride next to him or you don’t get to ride at all. Am I clear?!”

I couldn’t believe it. The worst part was that my mother, the closest person I had, didn’t take my side. I know it’s silly, I’m almost 22 now, but I still feel so bad that it makes me want to cry.

I wish I had never even taken that ride. © Ofigela / pikabu

***

I was around 12 years old. At the time, I played a lot of video games, I was really into them. Sometimes, on holidays, I would play at night and then sleep until 2 p.m. My mom tried to get me interested in something else, but she just couldn’t.

And then, she had a motivational plan to make a bet with me. I had to give up the computer for 3 months (in the summer) and she would give me $300 (for anything I wanted). I agreed. I was strong, and I spent 3 months playing outside, making my plans for the $300 in my pocket.

I think you’ve already figured out that my mother didn’t give me any money. No, it wasn’t that she didn’t have it. It was, “We’ve spent a lot on you this summer already: we got you a jacket, shoes, and a new table. Why do you even need this money? It is too much!”

When I said, “Mom, we made a deal!” She said that I was ungrateful.

This was the moment I stopped trusting her. © PaulBoimer / pikabu

***

At the beginning of the 2000s, when I was about 8-10 years old, I really wanted a LEGO toy. As a good child, I started saving up for the toy, putting aside a part of my pocket money. I hid the money in a very secure place (or so I thought). But before the first day of school, my safe place was empty.

It turned out that my mother took the money and used it to buy some things for me that I needed to go to school. And she wasn’t going to apologize or return the money.

This was the moment when my trust for my parents was totally lost. © Manyamirok / pikabu

Do you remember anything your parents did that insulted you? Or did they fully trust you?

Preview photo credit Hottabov / pikabu

Comments

Get notifications

Very sad stories of kids losing the trust of their mothers. I wonder how they feel....... Once the scar is formed in their hearts, it seldom gets cured. Their childhood and teenage are destroyed. I feel pity for them ?☹️?

2
-
Reply

In my case, it wasn't my parents, but my homeroom teacher. It was her who taught us to be honest and sincere, and is was ALSO her who punish students for being so. I was just in first year of elementary school back then, and I saw an interesting book on the teacher's table and wanted to read it, so I attempted to take it and put it back after reading. Then, when she saw that the book was gone, she asked the class who took it. And, as she taught, I was being honest and raise my hand, and what? She took me to the school's storehouse and said that I would stay in there until the school day ends, to punish me.

And that was just the first part of the story. I was bullied by two boys. In lunchtime, when I went wash my hands, they came and splash water on me and make the uniform wet all over. Then, what did she do? She trusted those guys, who said I was the one being guity, and said she would talk to my parents about my behaviour.

Just because I couldn't read as fast as my classmates, or wasn't good at doing maths as them, and she treated me like that. Sometimes, I still don't want to face her when we coincidentally meet each other.

2
-
Reply

In this opinion, I basically grew up with no parent support or love. And all I felt was anger, fear and disgust. Now, I feel nothing, and imagine my parents working and leaving me in the room by myself.

-
-
Reply

for me it was my Dad... he promised me that he will let me go to my choice of college if i got good scores.. i took a gap in my studies because i trusted him. But when i got excellant scores he said no. he flatly refused of any promise and instead of celebrating my good scores he yelled at me with rude words spoiling my day. i lost all hope thanks to him. But i knew he would do this. Trust me i never had one good birthday before marriage. no good memories.

Good thing is - i have a very good, loving and caring husband. thats the only silver lining in my life.

1
-
Reply

I have conflict wt my mother most of time until today. How much she appreciate everybody around me except me. It does hurts. But after having my own child..all this stories is nothing to me..we all make mistake..once we have children. We will know..there are something we are not realise of doing it wrong..so forgive them. Remember good thing..that i believe many more to be remembered...why hurt urself thinking something that will hurt you in the end..

2
-
Reply

This makes me sad because some parents do this and act like it never happened. And then don't know why their kids have d*pressi*n and trust issues 10 years later.

1
-
Reply

No just didn't want to be insensitive to people that have it.

-
-
Reply

When i was about 10 I really wanted a bunny and I didn’t like to read. My mother made a deal with me that if I read a certain number of books she would buy me a bunny. I read the books and kept up my end of the bargain. I never got my bunny. There were a lot of other issues which caused the decline of our relationship, but that’s one example I can pinpoint.

-
-
Reply

There is a thing like forgiving. My son has cheated so many times. When I pray for wisdom, the concept of unconditional love comes to mind. I have given him so many chances to prove he can be trustworthy. Nobody is perfect. Surely as a parent i have made mistakes and every parent does. To keep grudges about 1 event is damaging you more than anyone else. Forgiveness, good communication and second and umpteenth chances are wiser than hatred inside our heart

-
-
Reply

I’ll never forget when I started thinking about my weight. I was in 3rd grade, and it was summer break. We had just gotten a brand new computer, and I loved to play games on it, especially the learning games.
One morning my mom came in the room with my older (skinny, beautiful) sister. I was wearing shorts and I remember my mom said, “this is making you fat. Normal kids don’t have legs that size” and she demonstrated by showing that two hands could barely fit around my thigh. I’m also adopted, short, brown hair brown eyes while my family is tall, blonde and green or blue eyes. I’ve never felt more alone, isolated and different from the family. Every year my mom would give me a new ‘diet’ to try for my birthday or Christmas. Now I’m 33 and still overweight, but I’m starting to realize how unstable my self esteem is. My mom now claims that although that was young for her to talk about my weight, she was just worried about my health.

-
-
Reply

For me it’s my entire family... mostly my dad.. this happened for years but the most prominent one i remember is when i was in 10th grade and just found out my best friend had died (his abusive parents finally ended his life) and i was devistated and couldn’t process it for the whole day. When i got home that day I was ready to shut down and be alone in my room to process and grieve. I walk down stairs and i don’t remember exactly what happened in between but, i’m assuming my dad asked to speak to me. Keep in mind i’m still at a loss and emotionless. I’m shutting down and not wanting to speak or interact with anyone at this point. My dad tries to get me to talk but i refuse and try to walk away. My dad however, has different plans and forces me to stay in place standing for hours until i tell him what’s going on. i’m freaking devistated and only crying and growing numb. After and hour, my dad is yelling at me and basically telling me to unlock my phone like it will hold some magic truth (i deleted the texts cause i was sent a picture of the body as proff and i needed to erase it at that moment). When i finally snapped and yelled at my dad what happened he acted like he was the victim of this whole thing and didn’t care one but his daughter just lost a friend to murder ( i covered as suicide then) and freaking didn’t even comfort me or apologize for forcing me and yelling things at me like i hold the power by being silent when i’m literally breaking down. yeah i received no comfort that day for my loss and my trust for my parents and family has only worsened and been worse i’m pretty sure my dads actions of restraint when i no leave a conversation i don’t want to be in or his words that insult could be bordered to mental abuse for years. All i know is i’m now 22 and i don’t have faith trust or love for my family after years of them pinning blame on me for mentally being unstable and don’t even get me started on their opinion on my mental health and meds. let’s just say My dad after one article thinks he’s a know it all on mental health and abuse and that these solutions will work for me... yeah great family right!

-
-
Reply

Sometimes as kids we don't understand why parents do the things that they do. Like the kid whose mom bought him clothing with the money she promised him. Dude, you NEED clothing, I am sure your mom was just trying to do the best she could. She was probably listening to some research expert who said that video games were bad for your kid's brain & health.
Parenting is hard & most time parents have a challenging upbringing themselves. They may be struggling with paying the bills, job & relationship stress, illness & other issues. Sometimes there may even be mental illness issues that your parent is dealing with that you don't know about. Also they may not have been as educated as the younger, internet generation is. The access to any type of info via Google did not exist when a lot of us were younger. I think you all need to forgive your parents & get some counseling to deal with these trust issues, because they will affect all the other relationships in your life. Try to remember that you parents were just trying to do their best. Best regards to everyone in this thread.

-
-
Reply

I used to love art so much, to the point where from the 4th grade onwards I knew I wanted to be a character conceptual art designer. I know kids go through phases and dreams but I held onto that desire and that particular dream the hardest.

When the end of highschool was drawing closer my parents and I had butted heads many, many times over it. Mum was extremely against the idea and we weren't close for a variety of reasons, I was far closer to my dad and while not outright supporting me as that would have clashed with mum's rock solid stance, he wasn't as discouraging about my dream as mum was. He always seemed to have my back in many regards and my love of art wasn't something he knocked, since he had a hodge podge job life after his business partner dogged him and stole his half of the business legally.

One day, he exploded out of nowhere.

Dad had a friend who was and still is an amazing cartoonist/all rounder art genius. The man is seriously talented and dedicated, has been doing his art as his work for many, many years. However, he is unfortunately a "starving artist" because his wife is super materialistic and sees her credit card as an extension of her own hand. His 2 spoilt kids are just as bad, if not worse, so even though he makes his living from his art, the money is devoured by his family on frivolous spending sprees. My dad decided after a particularly difficult fight about my dreams for the future that after mum had ripped me a new one and all but threatened disowning me, he followed me out the house and bellowed in my face that my art was NOTHING compared to his friend's level of skill, that I could NEVER amount to even half the artist his friend is and demanded to know how in hell I thought I could make it if his friend couldn't.

I lost it and responded that maybe his friend wouldn't be struggling so bad if he had a more money concious family, because it sure wasn't lack of skill or work ethics that was to blame. Dad didn't speak to me for almost a month, mum signed me up for a university over 2 hours away that I didn't want to go to and into a course I wasn't interested in AND required prerequisite courses...which I wasn't signed up for. Tossed into the deep end and unable to keep up with the curriculum I couldn't even ask for their help because I was still being subjected to the silent treatment from mum when it pertained to any subject even remotely close to my dream or careerers in general.

Dad, to his credit, seemed to be a little down about the whole thing and I started trying to rebuild trust, but his half hearted attempts to make it up to me via advice on freelance work just pissed me off and led to further distrust when I realised he was reporting everything back to mum anyway. I knew that to be the case when, at a family dinner out, she decided it was "hilarious" that I still held such a stupid dream from childhood and couldn't believe how much of a "dramaqueen" I had been over it just to continue the rebellious behaviour by attempting a side business while working full-time.

I never trusted my parents fully again and now I can't open up to the conversation as an adult because in my early 20's/late teens mum got cancer and died. There's a LOT of trauma and angst that will never be put to rest regarding our mother/daughter relationship, the art gripe was only the tip of the iceberg sadly. I can only imagine how my brother is coping, since he and mum also fought over his future too, but in his case he made a deal to leave highschool for an apprenticeship and if in 12 months he decided to return to finish highschool he could. The 12 months rolled by and his boss in the trade was abusive as all hell so he decided to finish school. Mum threw a heavy duty motorbike helmet at the back of his head and then followed it up with a knife to the shoulder... Yeah, there's no going back from that kind of upbringing regarding trust.

-
-
Reply

My parents helped my brother buy a bike, it got stolen so they bought him another one. When he got older they helped him and my older brother get motorcycles. Well the boys never paid the m back fully, so when I came up and wanted a bicycle to throw a newspaper route, they told me no. That the boys did not pay them back so they are not going to do that again. I was mad, I saved up my money for a VERY LONG time and finally got that bike. I never asked them for another thing the rest of my life. I was done with them.

-
-
Reply

When I was eleven my mom sat me down and told me that the person that I thought was my dad wasn’t really my dad at all. It is quite a hard story to explain and I understand why she did what she did but I have had trust issues my entire life because of this. It really is life shattering for you to realize that the two people that you trust the most have been lying to you your entire life.

1
-
Reply

When I was 13-14 (I think) my mum got a desktop computer from her work. Between Limewire and working out browser settings even if she had bothered to moderate usage or worked out how to put parental controls on I likely would still have crypto-horndogged my way into desensitizing myself to it. Then one fateful day my eyes met with a copy of Zoo in the newsagents on the way home from school and I was elated to realise I was entirely captivated by this woman's.......incredible hazel-dark brown gradient eyes. I was so happy I simply had to make sure it wasn't a one-off.
Cut to next day when Mum takes us to her favourite bar to meet her friends and the first thing she does is loudly ask about why 'Page 3' came up in her browser history to snickering and smirks all round. I shrank in my seat realising the only way I could defend myself here was to point out she'd failed so badly for so long that I'd come full circle and only fucked up by liking a model for the most innocent reason I'd ever looked at a nude. Wasn't the first time I stopped trusting her nor the last. One day I'll learn

1
-
Reply

What these parents did was amateur in comparison to my parents, only thing I could connect to was when the girl said in first story “I don’t feel anything now” It is true.

2
-
Reply

I have a history of depression and self-harming.
Mainly trauma caused by my parents, but also just a chemical imbalance in my brain.
One time, maybe 14 years old, I was being yelled at and basically degraded by my mother for something I didn’t even do. And at the time, my first thought was,” I want to control the pain” because if I’m causing physical pain, I don’t feel the mental pain in that moment. Well I was taking a bath and my mom comes bursting through the door and sees the 🩸 coming from my hips. And she starts screaming at me about how I’m being “unfair” to her and “ungrateful” and I’m “narcissistic”
When I started crying about the things she was saying, she told me to stop playing victim, then proceeded to start crying herself, still screaming at me and calling me names.
Since then, I’ve been on and off of different medications and I’m a little over 6 months self-harm free. But that was one of the many incidents that caused me to not want to be around my mom.

1
-
Reply

Same thing happened to me when I was 11 or maybe 12.

But the thing was a small box filled with fairy light strings which we use on any happy moment like marriage.

And those lights were never found back because my younger uncle stole them before lying to everyone about me that I stole those lights.
And he never told the truth to anybody.

So I can feel your pain really deeply.

The parents must be taught about how to find if their child is guilty or not.

How to trust their children.

How to protect their children.

-
-
Reply

Related Reads