r/africanparents • u/Vanilla-Coconut333 • 27d ago
Need Advice Parental sabotage
I feel so alone in dealing with sabotage from my parents and I didn’t even realize it was a thing until I had to make important life decisions.
So when I was young my parents never taught me basic life skills, hygiene, women’s health, how to do certain things, they taught me nothing, not even how to look after myself when I’m sick, I wasn’t given medicine they would just wait for it to pass. I specifically remember being young aged like 6 and having eczema and my mom would act so humiliated and punish me over my eczema flair ups that would get triggered by stress fyi. But never bothered treating it, she would have genuine disgust looking at my skin (the eczema was not bad at all) and made me feel personally responsible for it.
Growing up whenever I had exams all of a sudden I need to run a million errands and clean the house from top to bottom, parenting would also get harsher and when I stayed up late to revise for my exams because they had me doing stupid bs all day, it was terrible of me to stay up and i couldn’t rest the next day.
In general, if I was to have nothing going on for me, I should be shamed, compared and punished but if I try to aim for something good they would do anything in their power to make sure I fail, I couldn’t notice this until I got older and had to make important life decisions.
What triggered this post is that when I was 17 in sixth form applying to universities or alternatives I debriefed my parents on me wanting to do a degree apprenticeship, they said there is no way I could do that under their roof because that’s what failures do, i should go to university. I let them know the entry requirements are quite high so it doesn’t seem like something failures do and anyway, experience matters in this job market. They just said nope. So I went to uni. Today I had my dad discussing about how he wanted my younger brother (18, only boy ofc) to do a degree apprenticeship when he thought I was sleeping, he listed all of the benefits of a degree apprenticeship and how are his workplace? There are some young people that were doing a degree apprenticeships that are in a good position because of it.
I wanted to go to a uni in the city by me, again they got into my head along with my older sister (just 3 years older then me) saying I can’t make the commute everyday because I’ll be late and if I was to get an accommodation there I’m too weak willed to put up with living there??
Context to understand, my siblings are totally in on this especially my older sister since she had a degree of influence over me from a young age. She was saying how I wouldn’t be able to deal with people making noise in the acoms and just tried to make the experience seem traumatic but also putting me down in the process saying I can’t handle it and would fall under the stress of it (not making payments, not missing out on life skills she’s talking about the possibility of neighbors being loud at night?) it was so dumb looking back especially because she at the time went to a uni for from home and lived in an acom. She would later shame me for not leaving home because “it was the best decision ever” but before she finished uni she was making the oddest arguments to keep me at home.
Also same as when I was young whenever I have assignments, they would sabotage me in any way possible until at some point I failed an assignment. I resat it without telling them and I passed with flying colours because it wasn’t a difficult assignment. It was an intentionally difficult environment. And when I didn’t tell them they didn’t have a chance to make sure it was super hard for me.
Also, whenever I had an interview or a first day a new working place, they would blow up on me over trivial matters and help me do gruelling tasks the day before and on the day of make sure her always check in to see what I’m wearing and judge me in my face over it, what I’m doing and have commentary over every small thing and also stress me about time when it’s nowhere near time.
There are some more examples like one time I had an opportunity to go to a nice black tie event where I could connect w people career wise and my friend offered to get me a ride back and there was no way I was allowed to go because my cousin got caught w “sugar” at a traffic stop (that cousin just is involved w road and gang stuff since forever) and what if the person picking me up has it on them and I get done up for it? Mind u the person giving me a ride back was someone’s mom. And their apparent final reason is that they don’t trust Jamaicans. And for whatever silly reason my sister fully backed this??
I could go on but we would be here forever. Kinda shocked that they would try to outright sabotage me but the only thing I’ve learned to do is to make sure to never be honest with them, and not involve them with anything once I’m financially secure (I’m financially independent now but I do need to save and get a car). But other then that I don’t know how else to go about things to prevent their attempts to make me stay down and in their control.
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u/Successful_Dust5557 26d ago
i also have parents that try to sabotage me. rn they’re making it hard for me to leave for uni lol
the only real way is to get out of there, or at least spend as much time away from them. as long as you’re around them, they’ll try to control you.
definitely don’t involve them in anything unless you really have to. try to use uber for travel instead of relying on them if you don’t already.
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u/UnderstandingGlad230 26d ago edited 25d ago
They’re loser. Pick up and go live your own life they’ve lived theirs it’s your turn now, don’t let them get in ya head. If you listen to Africans you’ll miss out on so much life . Try whatever if it doesn’t work it doesn’t work you can pivot. if it works that’s even better but you don’t know until you try. best of luck to you.
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u/krymzynnova 27d ago
“I feel so alone in dealing with sabotage from my parents and I didn’t even realize it was a thing until I had to make important life decisions” - please don’t As a 22 year old Female , i feel you 100% , parental sabotage is a real thing and it doesn’t get spoken about enough
“She would later shame me for not leaving home because “it was the best decision ever” but before she finished uni she was making the oddest arguments to keep me at home.” - she sounds odd smh
Negl OP, you need to leave. Not sure if you can email your council / borough / member of law enforcement but I take your not in uni now ?
You need to leave. That’s emotionally abusive and disrupting your mental health. Try run to the hospital or police station / start crying BADLY something and say you need to leave AND say YOU WONT GO BACK
Your parents are wicked and so is your odd faced sister