02/20/2026
The “victim parent” act is one of the biggest red flags there is.
Not because parents never struggle. Not because parenting is easy. But because when the adult in the room is constantly positioning themselves as the injured party in their relationship with a child, something is deeply wrong with the power dynamic. A child can hurt your feelings. A child can be difficult. A child can act out. That’s normal. What isn’t normal is an adult framing a child’s needs, boundaries, or reactions as abuse.
Because you can’t be the victim in a situation where you hold the authority, the resources, the social credibility and the final say. You hold the keys. You set the rules. You decide the consequences. You control access to safety, comfort, affection, money, freedom, privacy. That isn’t an equal playing field. So when a parent says, “My child is doing this to me,” what they’re often really saying is, "My child is not complying with the role I assigned them."
And in families like ours, “not complying” could mean anything. It could mean having a different opinion. It could mean crying. It could mean needing comfort at the wrong time. It could mean being a teenager, developing a spine, wanting privacy, saying no, asking why, pulling away. Normal development gets treated like rebellion. Independence gets treated like disrespect. A boundary gets treated like an attack.
The victim narrative is how accountability gets dodged. If she’s the victim, then you’re the problem. If she’s the victim, then her behaviour becomes “reaction”. Her rage becomes “hurt”. Her punishment becomes “discipline”. Her control becomes “concern”. It’s the easiest way to justify anything she does, because now she’s not the one with power who abused it. She’s the poor mother who’s “trying her best” under the cruelty of her difficult child.
That’s also why it’s so destabilising for you. Because it flips reality on its head. You start questioning yourself for reacting to mistreatment. You start analysing your tone instead of their behaviour. You start trying to be calmer, kinder, smaller, more understanding, because you’re being told you’re the aggressor. You end up managing her emotions again, trying to soothe her victimhood, trying to prove you’re not the monster she’s painting you as.
And any time you push back, it gets labelled oppression.
A child resisting control is not oppression. A child protecting themselves is not abuse. A child trying to reclaim their own autonomy is not “hurting their parent”. It’s the natural response to being controlled. When you assert power and a child fights back, that doesn’t make you the victim. It makes you the adult who couldn’t tolerate a child becoming a person.
So when you hear a parent talking like they’re in a war with their child, pay attention. When they speak about their child like an enemy, pay attention. When they frame boundaries as betrayal, pay attention. Because that’s not parenting. That’s possession.
And if you were raised under that narrative, it makes sense why you’re still untangling guilt now. You were trained to believe your self-protection was cruelty.
It wasn’t.
