11 Phrases That Immediately Tell You That Someone Wasn’t Raised Right
When a person wasn't raised right, they often choose phrases that hurt themselves or others.
MAYA LAB | Shutterstock.com While great parents support their kids in building healthy habits, fulfilling routines, and a powerful sense of self-esteem that will serve them well in adulthood, less than stellar parents can have an equally profound yet harmful effect on their children. In fact, some of the phrases people say can immediately tell you that this is a person who wasn't raised right.
Many of these phrases aren’t necessarily a reflection of their innate character, but rather of the hurdles, obstacles, and struggles they’ve navigated from a young age. While it’s possible to overcome these challenges and unlearn what they were taught by their misguided parents, acknowledging where you’re still struggling and growing is key, whether what you're working on is increasing your confidence, building better relationships, or improving your professional life.
Here are 11 phrases that immediately tell you that someone wasn’t raised right
1. ‘You owe me’
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According to neuropsychologist Julia DiGangi, many adult children grow up unsure of how to cultivate and manage their relationships in a healthy way because the relationship they had with their parents was a transactional one. Hyper-focused on using praise, rewards, and punishments to get what they want, transactional parents encourage their children only to offer affection, communication, and love to others when there’s something to offer or gain.
In adulthood, phrases like “you owe me” are clear signs that someone is grappling with the entitlement, low self-esteem, and lack of self-awareness that a transactional childhood often manifests later in life.
Like many other phrases that immediately tell you that someone wasn’t raised right, this one is a clear example of how your childhood continues to affect you in adulthood.
2. ‘That’s not my fault’
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Learning to take accountability for your mistakes starts early in life by watching parents model this behavior — genuinely apologizing, owning up to their mistakes, or even just having vulnerable conversations.
It’s important that we learn this behavior as children, not just because it positively affects our self-esteem when we can take accountability and cultivate trusting relationships, but also because without it, we stay stuck in an emotionally taxing cycle of blame-shifting, excuses, and perpetual victimhood.
According to a study published in the Journal of Business Ethics, learning accountability also sets adult children up for personal growth and success — giving them the power to wield responsibility over crafting professional success, healthy habits, and a more positive mindset as they navigate the world.
3. ‘I don’t need to be nice — it’s their job’
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There’s arguably no more unsettling and alarming sign of a person who wasn’t raised right than a phrase like this — revealing that someone is consistently rude and ungrateful towards service workers like a barista at their favorite coffee shop or a grocery store clerk.
According to psychology professor Melanie Morrison, many people who are rude to service workers subconsciously view them as a “scapegoat” for their daily stressors and anxieties. Rather than coping with their frustrations, stress, or emotional turmoil before going to the grocery store or talking to a customer service representative — a foundational skill that great parents spend a lot of time teaching their children — they let it all out on a service worker at the smallest inconvenience.
They view service workers as inherently less worthy of kindness, attention, and respect, so they feel much more empowered to use phrases like this to justify their misguided beliefs.
4. ‘You sound so crazy’
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Many of the phrases that immediately tell you that someone wasn’t raised right revolve around boundaries. Not only do these misguided adults constantly disrespect other people’s clear boundaries and expectations, but they often thrive in toxic relationships where they never have to set any for themselves.
Great parents teach their children how to set and respect boundaries, but adult children who grew up without that modeled behavior tend to tolerate and perpetuate misbehavior in their relationships.
Adult children may even adopt some of the toxic gaslighting behaviors that their parents used to overstep their boundaries early in life. By sparking self-doubt in others, urging them to question their realities, and letting down their boundaries and defensive walls, gaslighters can disrespect people without reservation — sometimes in ways that are entirely unsuspecting and subtle to the victim.
5. ‘I actually did that already’
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Many people who are fueled by external validation or attention-seeking behavior were raised poorly — needing to transactionally seek positive affection from their parents or fulfill their own needs in the wake of an absent parent. They use phrases like this to one-up other people, trying to assert themselves as the center of attention in a way that they were never able to in their childhood homes.
While these unmet needs and toxic family dynamics are the root cause of attention-seeking behavior, the low self-esteem, poor communication skills, and inherent envy that follow these children into adulthood is what fuels phrases like this.
From interruptions to attention-seeking behavior and consistently overstepping boundaries, it’s clear that one of the traits of someone who wasn’t raised right is their need for control in their relationships, over other people in conversations, and even with their own internal emotions.
6. ‘You don’t understand’
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Without their parents' modeling healthy communication styles and habits, a phrase that immediately tell you that someone wasn’t raised right is this one, which shows a person doesn’t know how to find mutual understanding with others, debate respectfully, or even argue their own opinion effectively. Rather than have open conversations and work through conflicts, they isolate themselves, aggressively shout and verbally overpower another person, or lie.
According to The National Child Traumatic Stress Network, many adult children from tumultuous backgrounds struggle to verbalize, acknowledge, and regulate their own emotions — making communication in the present moment incredibly difficult. In arguments, their emotions feel all-consuming, so they’re constantly trying to push them away or cope with them by growing angry or aggressive.
Adult children with great parents take the time to acknowledge and address their emotions — and oftentimes, they have the communication skills to talk through them with other people in the moment, rather than isolating and trying to cope with them behind closed doors.
7. ‘That’s not my problem’
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One of the core values and tenets of the best parenting styles is empathy — teaching kids to consider others, lead with compassion, and occasionally put their needs on the back burner to help others struggling. Whether it’s service workers, a stranger on the street, or their partner at home, people who grew up well always have a general consideration for others.
While research published in PLOS One found that certain traumatic childhood experiences can lower a person’s threshold for empathy and give them more space to understand other perspectives, many adult children are stuck in fight-or-flight — still concerned with protecting their well-being and needs in the face of absent support of navigation.
Rather than open themselves up to helping others, putting their own needs aside, they feel an innate pressure to control — avoiding situations where they’re encouraged to empathize with others for the sake of their own all-encompassing control.
8. ‘That’s not fair’
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Considering many people who learned entitlement, greed, or control very early in life are more willing to assume everything should always go their way, it’s not surprising that this is one of the phrases that immediately tells you that someone wasn’t raised right.
Not only do they throw emotional temper tantrums when they don’t get their way, but they may not even view themselves as the person in control of their success. Rather than take accountability or commit to controlling their responses when life changes happen unexpectedly, they blame others for the unpredictability of life — feigning ignorance and a misguided sense of victimhood.
9. ‘I don’t know how to do that’
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While owning up to situations and experiences you’re unsure of is a trait of someone with great parents who is able to throw themselves into new things and embrace challenges as an adult, people who weren’t raised right often wield this incompetence in unhelpful and manipulative ways.
This phrase is an example of “weaponized incompetence” at home, where people and partners use their ignorance or lack of motivation to encourage others to do things for them. For example, they may use this phrase — suggesting their partner is better at doing something like the dishes — to avoid doing it themselves.
10. ‘You’re so stupid’
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While it might seem obvious with a comment like this, many phrases immediately tell you that someone wasn’t raised right revolve around subtle name-calling behaviors and condescending language. Rather than uplift a baseline of respect and empathy for everyone around them, people like this find ways to pick at others — making themselves feel better by encouraging others to feel more insecure.
Considering that name-calling and other rude behaviors like unnecessary criticism are forms of poor emotional intelligence — something people raised poorly never had the chance to learn — it’s not surprising that petty and snarky comments in adulthood can be signs of a person’s negative childhood experience.
11. ‘I’m sorry’ (over and over and over again)
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Seth J. Gillihan, Ph.D., explained that many people raised by a highly critical or toxic parent adopt more insecure and anxiety-driven mentalities later in life. Not only do they feel the need to over-apologize even when they’re not wrong, but they also tend to people-please in order to make others feel more comfortable or to avoid conflict or rejection.
While it’s certainly not their fault they feel driven to explain themselves or put other people’s needs ahead of their own, it’s an important behavior to acknowledge, especially for adult children who want to heal from their childhood and gain an advantage to form healthier, more stable, and fulfilling relationships later in life.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a staff writer with a bachelor’s degree in social relations & policy and gender studies who focuses on psychology, relationships, self-help, and human interest stories.