we have just viewed this on Dr Phil in NZ.  i want to say i am a little disappointed at some peoples comments here sympathising with the mother.  but i am pleased that obviously some people have NEVER encounted someone like this in their lives, or had to live with them since birth... lucky you!!!! i had a similar if not worse mother - who stabbed me and told me at 12 i was born out of rape (untrue) but she said and did many evil things to me and my brother.  i have no feelings for her whatsoever.  i find it hard to even look at her and i am now 40.  i have stayed in a 'relationship' with her because i believe every child (i have 4) deserves a grandmother, but she has also stepped over these boundaries.  like this mother mine doesnt recall anything and cant understand why i feel like i do.  she even tells untrue stories about me even today that make me out to be an unstable person, these get back to me because its a small community.  my mother denies everything even when caught 'redhanded' in a situation.  its a very complex situation and we must remember, these girls were CHILDREN being treated like this by an ADULT.  i too was molested and when i told my mother she dismissed me to my room and never spoke of it.  i felt dirty and like i had been the naughty one.  when i confronted her about it at 27 she bumbled her excuses out and lied about what she had done about it which was NOTHING.  i truly sympathised with these girls.  its hard to forgive someone so important to your survival when you are  a dependent.  you grow up with a sense of abandonment and rely on no one and feel everyone is out to either 'get you' or no one will ever be there, trust is a huge issue in even the simplest relationships let alone marriage etc.  i suffered from a huge aggression problem in my early twenties, as did my brother.  it was a protective barrier in some ways.  my friends even today with my stories that i tell them which are recent events find it hard to believe that someone - let alone a 'mother figure' treats their children like this mother (and mine) still do.  one friend recently said 'i know you are telling the truth because you dont exaggerate in any other area of your life'.  the stories are bizzarre and hurtful and unbelieveable even when i retell them.  some friends of mine have had wonderful warm and loving upbringings and have great relationships with their mother which i find hard to relate to, just as they find it hard to relate to my experiences.  please dont judge these ladies, they were children once, suriving with what they had which was not much - ie unconditional love, unconditional support, etc.  i bet some of you wont relate to a mother chucking out their son at 15 (while he is still at school) just cos she has had enough of him and uses manipulation to get it done.  that was done to my brother, my mother crying to anyone and everyone who would listen she couldnt cope with him..... he lived in a shed in someones back yard.  she didnt care as long as he was out.  i know i wouldnt do that to any of my children.... and now she wants him in her life and when he doesnt get in touch with her when she wants she sends manipulative messages to him about how if he doesnt contact her thats it, she will cut him off completely.  sadly he still responds to her manipulation - she doesnt do it to me because i would say see ya then!  with shirley saying her mother is a sociopath - i agree.  these are people who do things to others and have no empathy/responsibility about what they do or say.... and a narcissist - absolutely.  however one thing i will say - it may turn out ok, cos the mother - even though unaccountable and in denial - she did want to work on the relationships with her daughters - something my mother wouldnt dream of doing.  i would like to say good luck to the girl girls but remember you come first now!

Bet you never left your boys alone and scared while you went on a cruise. Bet you didn't beat your boys or turn a blind eye to one of them being molested. That woman is more self-centred that a 2yr old.

I couldn't listen to that woman justifying herself after she admitted leaving 3 kids at home while she went on a cruise. "I didn't go out partying, I was working and making sure my kids stayed together"...did she call them while she was on her cruise? I can't imagine giong away and leaving my 13yr old daughter and 10yr old son along letalone a young girl left to look after two other children. Hope she had fun on that cruise because she is a narcissist, someone on that stage obviously doesn't know what a narcissist is because that was her and she's still justifying it so she is still one.

Does anyone know how I can get a copy of this particular show. Sibling Rivalry and Abuse
It would hopefully help me out - perhaps someday I might get someone in my family to watch it maybe if I can ever muster up the guts to mail it to one of them. I havent seen or spoken to any of them in more than 6 years. My situalion is almost identical to this one but a little more serious. I have 3 sisters, a mother and a grown child  who dont speak to me because my mother is in denial about what my father did to me at such a young age and before any of my sisters were even born.It never happened to any of them so they all think Im lying as well. Im the oldest by almost 8 years and my sisters are all one year apart. I was stuck babysitting for them much of my childhood. They have also turned my only child against me as well so I really have no one.  The last part of the show is what Im primarily most interested in hearing again.

Many thanks in advance to anyone who could tell me if there's any way I could get a copy of this particular show.

Now this was a very sad and tragic show and my heart went out to all of the women.  The way that Shirley was talking to her mother was very disrespectful and I hope when she watched the show she was disappointed in herself for her behavior.  True enough her mother may wasn't mother of the year, but she's still her mother.  It will take time to mend their relationships, but they both have to want that and they must commit to doing that too.  I hate that the other sisters didn't get much attention because of the mother and Shirley bickering among each other.  I think the mother and the daughters need some counseling to get over their past with each other and to help mend new and better relationships with each other.  I wish them all the best and hopefully things will turn around for all of them.

100% Nothing the mother did warranted that kind of  treatment & disrespect.

God help the child Shirley is raising and she can only pray that she doesn't reap what she has sown.

I noticed that Tamara's thoughts were not acknowledged during the interview. I also noticed when she did speak to Dr. Phil there was a hint tension in her voice. Her hurt is the most important to me because she is me. I believe she is very resentful of her sisters because she has taken care of them all of their lives and then they grow still needing validation or justification from their mother. I feel that Tamara resents her mother fenputting her in that position, but has had to be the caretaker for so long that she just wants to squash it. The tension I heard in her reply to Dr. Phil I believe came from a place of always being attached to what her sister s feel, as well as her mother. Her voice, it seems, is always drowned out. And when she does speak she is automatically defensive based on everyone else's emotions. I wish she could come back separately and Talk about her experience from a Sibling as Parent point of view. I believe her words would get through to her mother more if for nothing more than the fact that she can relate to not knowing how to care for her sisters, hat having to anyway. 

I could not relate at all to the mother of this show in anyway, being a mother myself.  She showed in her actions in the past that she put herself first instead of her kids, and now she is still doing the same.  The youngest daughter is so caught up in what was done it is ruling what she is doing now and she needs to get over that part of it.  The violence from both is just wrong and needs to stop.  But I can understand where the daughters are coming from.

I can't believed what I just seen in this episode, I can also see the pain inside this mother's heart and she wants a relationship with her daughters and it will take some time, is not that easy to get those treausure moments back after so much pain, sometime us (kids) we want answers of WHY our parents act they way they did sometime in life and my answer probably is; those parents were also hurt themselfs/single and been young parents doing it all and confused with so many kids that they didn't know how to go about it, specially with different personalities and as a parent you just loose it because things don't go your way....... I can really relate to the whole show because my mom was very abusive toward me "physically, emotionally and mentally", when I was also sexually abused by my stepdad (rest in peace) for six years in a role she found out but never did anything about it. also I got to an age that I was not going to let her be anymore abusive and I turned on her when I was probably 17 years old and I wanted to just kill her but it never happened, I grew up been a tramatised child and angree at the world because around that time I hate it my mom so much that I wanted her dead.  It's been 16 years now and in 2001 she came to my life when my oldest son was 4 years old and all we did was cry and apologize to each other and since then she has changed a lot but I don't know if she even aknowledge the pain she has caused all of her childrens, I Love my mom to death now even though we have our distance.  When I was pregnant with my first child (now going to be 16 years old) I went to parenting classes to help me be a good parent specially been a single parent at the time and the teacher ask us "will you ever race your child the way you were race" and I said "NO" I really knew better and so far I have been a very succesfull mother but now I have a four year old son and I see a lot of me in him such as the way I used to talk and snap at my mother and so on and to tell you the truth I had told my husband that I will probably will need some couseling so I can lear to deal with that because I can really relate now on how my mother was feeling when she was rasing me but my first child he is so quite and a very good kid, he won't talk back to me or role his eyes at me or nothing in that matter now, the four year old he is a very good child and very thoughful of other people's feeling and very polite but sometimes he thinks I'm playing with him and tries to tell me what to do and very demanding and snapy at times.....sometimes I'm having a bad day and I want to tell him where to go and I think about my mom and how she dealt with us but I can't use that as a good example to help me in life so I had alway mange my own and try to be more understanding and deal with it my self in a good way so, I alwaly thank GOD for helping me be patience, calm, loving and forgiving to go through with life because things could of turn the wrong way such as these ladies in this show......in life you have to forgive in order to go on in life because you never know how your kids may become in life and then life will repeat again in a way you really don't want to and you never know how your health may be at that time and how your kids may treat you, remember at the end of our day the only one who will judge us is the one above, find peace in life and you will feel brand new "I guarantee you" LOVE :-)

Actually, I was glad that I put the show on DVR,  because I could NOT believe how Shirley snapped and snarled at her Mom....AND===She should have been jailed for trying to throw a credenza onto her Mom..
Also, why didn't he speak with the Sister that was next to the Mom???..