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Original poster

To think my mum was ridiculous about a slice of pie

457 replies

BeachPossum · 14/07/2025 11:50

My son and I made a beautiful rhubarb and strawberry pie a couple of days ago, and I shared a photo of it on our family WhatsApp (parents, siblings and partners).

Yesterday afternoon my mum dropped by unexpectedly after visiting a friend nearby. I offered her a cup of tea and a biscuit and she said 'oh no, I'll have a slice of that lovely pie'. I said 'oh sorry! It's all been eaten', to which she responded with the most exaggerated display of astonishment and surprise. She kept saying 'REALLY! A whole pie in ONE DAY?', saying it would have done her and my dad for a week, we must have had huge slices etc. She made five or six comments in total.

The first time she commented I told her my in laws had been over so between them and us we'd eaten five slices, then my husband had had another piece in the afternoon following a 55km bike ride, and then the three of us had had a piece for morning coffee that day, totalling 9 slices of a normal sized pie. Not a crazy amount. Then when she kept on going on about it I tried to brush it off and move on, before eventually snapping at her to stop talking about food and appetites in front of my young children, at which point she left in a huff. She has texted me this morning to let me know she's hurt, she was just surprised, and that she wasn't saying anything inappropriate in front of the children.

She has absolute form for this. She's one of those people who always has to have the smallest appetite in the room, loves talking about meals she's forgotten to eat, loves refusing food. I was stunned she asked for a slice of pie in the first place since ninety nine times out of a hundred she refuses anything I offer her and makes a point of telling me she's totally full after a huge breakfast of one blini and a quail's egg. She's permanently on a diet, obsessed with food but never eats any, thinks that thinness is next to godliness etc. I've learned to live with it but I'll be damned if me and my children will accept being treated as revolting gluttons for eating two slices of pie over two days.

Anyway, the dilemma. She's incredibly defensive and will go nuclear if I try and get her to take any accountability. I swallow a lot of her shit for the sake of family harmony, and I'm at peace with this because she and I now have a very superficial relationship and I let her crap wash over me. But it's going to get to the point of affecting my children and when that happens I'll have to intervene and accept the fallout. So what do I say to her now? She's expecting an apology from me for snapping and reassurance that she's a lovely mother and granny who was treated unfairly. Do I:

  1. Give her an insincere apology to get her to fuck off and leave me alone
  2. text something very neutral like 'let's not row over pie' and hope she drops it
  3. tell her she was being ridiculous and that it's part of a wider pattern of behaviour that I won't tolerate in front of my kids, and deal with whatever histrionics and drama follows
  4. other suggestions welcome
OP posts:
ElatedTealFawn · 16/07/2025 08:38

Life is too short for all this. It's sad for both of you. When things calm down, would it be possible for you to both have a calm chat about the issues in your relationship?

onedogatoddlerandababy · 16/07/2025 08:31

IPM · 14/07/2025 11:57

Gosh that's far too much arguing and typing about a bloody pie.

'REALLY! A whole pie in ONE DAY?'

"Yeah, quite a few people had some, not just us".

The end 🤷‍♂️

I expect you don’t have a mother who specialises in thinking she is better than everyone else, along with faux shock and surprise.

i told mine she could get out of my house if she was going to make pointed remarks to a 2 year old about how often they were hungry/eating

Needlenardlenoo · 16/07/2025 07:16

I can see how this is a big deal and it would be nice if it weren't.

But I guess at a very basic level - don't send pictures of food to someone with disordered eating!

An awful lot of my family relationships involve "don't mention the war"...

krnries · 16/07/2025 07:07

When people upset me or try and control me I think of the situation in terms of power and control, and all this drama around food (and everything else) is her source of power. I think if you can think how inadequate she must feel that she has to put this amount of effort into putting you down in order to make herself feel better, it might not upset you so much - and enable you to react in a less visceral way. And with people who are like a broken record about the annoying things they say - I play a kind of bingo with them - mentally taking note and giving a good eyeroll when they mention x,y and z like they always do! Wishing you a happier future xx

THisbackwithavengeance · 16/07/2025 07:05

You both overreacted. In the end, this is how your mum is, she’s got an eating disorder but it’s difficult to see how your kids will be affected.

Apologise for snapping if need be and then forget it. Life is too short.

PurpleChrayn · 16/07/2025 06:51

I’ll probably be rounded upon for being “ageist” but I’m going to say it. A lot of boomers are absolute nutcases. This is unhinged behaviour.

Fontet · 16/07/2025 06:16

I would stay quiet....no contact for a while, leave her sit and think about how her actions have affected you and your family....she clearly has an issue around food. Possibly suggest she seeks some therapy to try to overcome and help herself. Habits are formed, she may have been treated in a certain way around food whilst she was younger. Have that conversation with her....you will feel so much better for it. Good luck x

whynotmereally · 16/07/2025 06:01

The pie sounds delicious.

Given your mum is weird around food I wonder if she got a bit obsessive about having some pie and possibly planned her eating habits to have some? So it was a big deal to her.

Not excusing her behaviour though, firstly rude to ask and yes the portion disbelief /continuous mentioning must be extremely annoying/ triggering

I sympathise as I also grew up in a household where overweight = fat and lazy. It does mess with your head.

i d ignore the message and message about something completely different to change the subject (like something nice your mil has done!

Diblin93 · 16/07/2025 03:09

Option 3. Stand up for yourself.

PatB01 · 16/07/2025 02:06

BeachPossum · 14/07/2025 11:50

My son and I made a beautiful rhubarb and strawberry pie a couple of days ago, and I shared a photo of it on our family WhatsApp (parents, siblings and partners).

Yesterday afternoon my mum dropped by unexpectedly after visiting a friend nearby. I offered her a cup of tea and a biscuit and she said 'oh no, I'll have a slice of that lovely pie'. I said 'oh sorry! It's all been eaten', to which she responded with the most exaggerated display of astonishment and surprise. She kept saying 'REALLY! A whole pie in ONE DAY?', saying it would have done her and my dad for a week, we must have had huge slices etc. She made five or six comments in total.

The first time she commented I told her my in laws had been over so between them and us we'd eaten five slices, then my husband had had another piece in the afternoon following a 55km bike ride, and then the three of us had had a piece for morning coffee that day, totalling 9 slices of a normal sized pie. Not a crazy amount. Then when she kept on going on about it I tried to brush it off and move on, before eventually snapping at her to stop talking about food and appetites in front of my young children, at which point she left in a huff. She has texted me this morning to let me know she's hurt, she was just surprised, and that she wasn't saying anything inappropriate in front of the children.

She has absolute form for this. She's one of those people who always has to have the smallest appetite in the room, loves talking about meals she's forgotten to eat, loves refusing food. I was stunned she asked for a slice of pie in the first place since ninety nine times out of a hundred she refuses anything I offer her and makes a point of telling me she's totally full after a huge breakfast of one blini and a quail's egg. She's permanently on a diet, obsessed with food but never eats any, thinks that thinness is next to godliness etc. I've learned to live with it but I'll be damned if me and my children will accept being treated as revolting gluttons for eating two slices of pie over two days.

Anyway, the dilemma. She's incredibly defensive and will go nuclear if I try and get her to take any accountability. I swallow a lot of her shit for the sake of family harmony, and I'm at peace with this because she and I now have a very superficial relationship and I let her crap wash over me. But it's going to get to the point of affecting my children and when that happens I'll have to intervene and accept the fallout. So what do I say to her now? She's expecting an apology from me for snapping and reassurance that she's a lovely mother and granny who was treated unfairly. Do I:

  1. Give her an insincere apology to get her to fuck off and leave me alone
  2. text something very neutral like 'let's not row over pie' and hope she drops it
  3. tell her she was being ridiculous and that it's part of a wider pattern of behaviour that I won't tolerate in front of my kids, and deal with whatever histrionics and drama follows
  4. other suggestions welcome

I'd tell her to make one herself - you don't want to waste food since she probably won't eat it

BeddysMum · 15/07/2025 23:33

You are not being unreasonable, you said this is a toxic pattern of hers. Some big red flags here in her behaviour.

I'd actually get a good therapist in your corner to help navigate this relationship for the good of you and your children.

Boundaries need to be set, and I'll bet she won't comply quietly.

Good luck!

ResultsMayVary · 15/07/2025 23:20

BeachPossum · 14/07/2025 12:25

Some really helpful advice - thank you!

I think the consensus is either option 2 or don't text at all, then they rock and reduced contact. This is what I already do to an extent, guided by my therapist, but I think this situation and thread is showing I don't really have the balance right yet and I'm still letting her under my skin.

I think it's hard because I'll never stop wanting her to be the mum I wish she was. I feel so stupid and angry when I let her upset me or when I let her in a bit and end up hurt. My therapist always says 'you're not stupid for living in hope that your mother will love and support you unconditionally'. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't also have strong boundaries, and at the moment they need to be toughened up a bit.

My mum was similar to yours around food and in the end like you I took it to therapy (along with many of their things I found upsetting)

In the end the only thing that worked was accepting that she wouldn't change, only I could. I stopped sharing a lot of things and I just didn't react to others. In regards to the pie I might now reply 'Okay' and roll my eyes in my head.

My sister is more the mother I wished I had and vice versa.

In the end my mother did change for the better - she has reached a place of reflection and gratitude which was a lovely surprise. But obviously you can't count on that.

Cottoncandy1983 · 15/07/2025 23:14

I think you should have the right to tell her how she makes you feel. I know they are our parents and everything but they can hurt us just as much as anyone else so why do we have to put up with it?
I adore my mum but when she wants to, she can hurt me like nobody else can. She can make me feel like a worthless piece of rubbish and I'm not allowed to ask why she is doing that to me and I'm 41!!!!
I think u have the right to speak up and if it's not listened to, her loss.

CarelessUdder · 15/07/2025 23:07

This could be written about my mum. She is exactly like this. Has a big ish lunch out and then ‘won’t need dinner later’. Perhaps is a generational thing as she was brought up under rationing and eating a lot seems to be a real crime to her.

If she’s too defensive to hear what you’re saying I’d go with humour. Text her saying ‘we made another pie if you wanna come and have some. Hurry up though, it’ll be gone in an hour’.

And with your kids, do the same. Just tease her about living on air and not needing to eat like normal people?!

I don’t know. My mum drives me mad with her toxic food attitudes but the only thing that has ever worked is laughing about it. Any direct approach is disastrous.

Onceisenoughta · 15/07/2025 22:56

I'd make another one, invite her over and offer her some - make her eat it in front of you 😂 If she refuses to eat it for any reason you then say 'so what was all the fuss about' - call her bluff.

HappiestWhenGardening · 15/07/2025 22:19

She sounds awful. You need to put up some good boundaries with her I think otherwise she will keep being dreadful. You don’t need this in your life.

BugEyedBear · 15/07/2025 22:15

BeachPossum · 14/07/2025 12:07

Oh there is a long history and backstory too - she's the reason I have weekly therapy and has been a source of untold hurt and confusion in my life. I do genuinely believe she loves me, but her behaviour is and always has been very damaging to me.

Which is not to say she doesn't also have an eating disorder - I believe she does. And she has trauma from her own childhood which contributes to her being the way she is. I have made very gentle overtures to her about therapy and she was as angry as I've ever seen her at the suggestion, but she really would benefit I think.

I have a deep, dark fantasy that one day she and I will have a reckoning where we both say all the words we bite back and get the hurt out into the light to be sorted out and then instead of having this superficial, painful, spiky relationship where I'm always biting my tongue and yet still letting her down, we can become real, true friends who just love each other in an uncomplicated way. I just don't know how it could ever happen, though.

Show quote history

So sorry that you don't have the relationship that you want with your DM. Does she know how you feel? Is there any possibility of the two of you going to a therapy session together?

FFSFF · 15/07/2025 21:57

Yikes. I don't understand tolerating this type of behaviour. I have told people to fuck off for less. You don't need to apologise as you've done nothing wrong, and doing it to keep the peace will not keep the peace if what you've said is anything to go by. I'd just ignore her as much as possible, and if she keeps it up go LC or NC. Your kiddos don't need this type of negativity in their lives anyway.

Oldwmn · 15/07/2025 21:53

Jacobs4 · 14/07/2025 11:58

I guess it depends if you love her and how old she is, and how you want to honour your connection and support her in her golden years. So there’s all that context to consider.

You're attaching rather a rosy glow to someone who is, to put it mildly, very odd indeed.

657904I · 15/07/2025 21:53

BeachPossum · 14/07/2025 12:34

Yes I'm sure this is a factor - she is incredibly jealous of my in laws and obsessed over any time they get which she doesn't.

It doesn't help that I absolutely love my in laws, and in many ways my MIL is the mother I wish I'd had. We're very close. I really try to avoid ever bringing them up around my mum but sometimes it happens and she picks up on it every time.

Show quote history

Maybe she got it in her head that you guys made the pie in preparation of her visit, so she was put out that the in laws got there first. Hence the faux shock that the pie was gone, she went to attack mode as her feelings were hurt. Attack mode = commenting on food consumed or insinuating people are fat or feral.

657904I · 15/07/2025 21:46

Tbh OP, you could have done things differently. You already know what she’s like and that she has form for this, yet you took the bait.

I think, for once and for all, you need to decide whether you detach from her comments or whether you put it all out in the open and tell her what your problem is. Your current middling method clearly isn’t working, because you are seething right now.

WiddlinDiddlin · 15/07/2025 21:18

EvangelicalAboutButteredToast · 15/07/2025 19:10

The solution to this was putting a slice of pie in a Tupperware box for her to eat later. The solution is to remake the pie and give her a slice to take away with her so she can eat a crumb a day for a month. Sorted.

How?

OP makes it quite clear if you read all her posts, had there been any pie, her Mother wouldn't have fucking wanted it, would likely have blarted on about how pie at that time of day was unnecessary and she couldn't possibly, no one needs pie, how gluttonous.

She did not want pie. She wanted another stick to beat OP with.

But even if she had - what was OP to do, go back in time and save a slice of pie?

SparklesGlitter · 15/07/2025 21:09

Petitchat · 15/07/2025 20:34

With cream or custard?
😉

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I’m jumping in…hot crumble/pie with cold cream or ice-cream, or cold pie/crumble with hot custard. Challenges the teeth but totally worth it 🤩

SparklesGlitter · 15/07/2025 21:07

Could you get your son to make another then have it sent round and say it has to last a week or it’s not a real pie? Or something like that? God I hate when people make eating a crown of thorns to guilt everyone else into going without. (Although I have my own weight issues so I probably see it too sensitively) It’s just a pie.

pineapplesundae · 15/07/2025 20:51

#2 Your mom does not need to be babied.