Little sister.  As in "don't tell that guy I'm your mom, say I'm your older sister so that he doesn't know how old I really am,"  Usually accompanied by slicking on extra lip gloss and adjusting the push-up bra.

Laying all issues that they would deal with on their own or with other adults and lay that on a child. The child basically becomes a surrogate spouse instead of being nurtured

My mom was definitely not the 'cool' mom, there was no drinking or running around. This was the Bible Belt in the 80s. But she 'bestfriended' me and told me all kinds of stuff she shouldn't have - stuff that was way too adult for me. This was while she was separated from my dad and we were living with my grandfather. Of course, being the precocious little twerp that I was, I thought being told all this adult stuff was fine. It wasn't. 

She dropped me like a hot potato when she met my stepdad and was all mean girl about it. I remember she was once listening to a tape on the walkman he gave her (told you this was the 80s) and I just casually asked her what she was listening to. She got all prissy and "I'm not telling you...," she effing thrived on trying to set me and her boyfriend at odds competing for her attention.

I asked her what the big deal was and she was like "I just need to keep some secrets..." This from the same woman who told me all kinds of inappropriate things about her sex life with my dad, problems with my dad, etc etc. 

I ended up bursting into tears. Because all of a sudden I knew I was being dumped. I mean she could have told me 'oh some easy listening stuff' and I'd have been satisfied. I know this sounds trivial but when you have parents and children who are inappropriately enmeshed, it creates stupid crap like this. 

BM does this with her boys. When she was crashing my SO's parenting time this weekend, she was leaning all over them draping her hair over their faces, basically like you would a boyfriend, whispering secrets in their ears - "Oh my lovely..." blah, blah, blah. It was disgusting. She makes OSS bring her cups of tea in bed at the weekend like a browbeaten spouse, when he asked why his younger brother never has to do it, she threw the cup of tea across the room when he finally relented. It hurts me to see it because I know what it feels like to be on their end of it and they're too young and stupid to realise - it will take them at least another 15 years to get it, if they ever do. 

When you are living without a partner, it DOES get lonely. I know because I lived it. It gets especially lonely when you don't turn your child into your best friend, confidant, domestic partner - I know that too - because I refused to do that to my BS. I see my ex using him as company and an emotional crutch sometimes. Minor kids are not there to comfort you. They can be a comfort sometimes, but it is not their job.

This is common with parents nowadays, even ones that you wouldn't think are "crazy" BMs. Being your kid's best friend has become fashionable.  It's messed up, but it's part of the overinvolvement of parents with their kids that's running rampant.  The helicopter parenting, the micromanaging.

Our BM did this and it has definitely messed the skids up. 

I don't think she's a bad mom...she just leaned on them too much emotionally and, in doing so, passed all of her anxieties onto them. 

It's really weird. DH and I were talking the other day about how every kid has become more independent, happier, and less crippled by "anxiety" the moment they moved out of BM's house. At first, for many years, it was OSD who was just horrid and almost non-functional...and every time BM talked to us about OSD it was just unending descriptions of neuroses and problems she was sure that OSD had...all gloom and doom and how will she ever recover from the divorce??!!! and guilt, guilt, guilt...

Lo and behold. OSD moved out about 3 months after she turned 18 and has turned into a completely competent, independent, and mostly non-anxious person. In fact, she calls DH regularly to tell him about how excited and happy she is about her life and everything she's learning in her program.  

But when OSD moved out...suddenly SS who had been fine turned into the over-emotional, "anxiety-ridden" child. Then he moved out...and now it seems to be YSD's turn. 

YSD did also tell me when we went to a concert together that her mom "confided" in her some of the marital problems she had with my DH when YSD was only 8-10...she was sobbing as she told me this and she said: "I mean. I don't want to hate my dad but my mom told me some pretty messed up stuff. And I don't want to hate my mom...but I really don't think she should have told me those things at 10." 

(FYI - DH got BM pregnant when they were in college. They decided to abort, even though they were both brought up religious...and the resulting guilt and shame from that decision haunted the rest of their marriage. And, no. That is decidedly NOT the kind of thing you tell a 10-year-old.) 

I tread very lightly. I told YSD: "You're right you shouldn't have heard those things at that age...but your mom was hurting and probably wasn't thinking correctly. I guarantee if she could go back and change her decision to tell you these things, she would." 

Anyway. I do think that's true, because BM is not an evil person. She's just broken and sad and full of guilt and anxiety...and she passes that onto her children without meaning to. It's like a mental illness version of Munchausen's by Proxy. 

Parental failure.