AIBU to snap after my mum kept calling a bike a trike?

I can imagine my (similar) mum calling a balance bike a trike or something because she didn't approve of it. In her day you had a bicycle with stabilisers, then took them off. She would have declared that a balance bike is "not a bike" because it doesn't have pedals and therefore it was pointless rubbish and a rip off. Thereafter she would give it a stupid/incorrect name to indirectly press her point.

Sadly you hadn't rtft

Example of something my mother does - she lived in a nordic country, for some time in her twenties for work and in the language there a J is pronounced as a Y.

She would deliberately mispronounce words and names here saying a j as a y. For example, as a child, when I liked teenage mutant ninja turtles she would pronounce in Ninya. It was really annoying.And as soon as she got that it wound me up, she did it even more. I would correct her, and she would correct me back and say it's ninya. I'd show her the actual cartoon with a catchy theme she'd still say it was ninya.

That's just one example, but she said it was so many other things.

Then, one of my best friends from university was in exchange student from a nordic country named Johanna, pronounced Yohanna. My mum always called her Joanna - pronouncing it the english way. I said a j is a y and you of all people should know that and she just smiled at me and said, no, it's joanna.

Don't know why she did it.She's just an annoying wind up merchant but it's not worth screaming, shouting and swearing over just ignore. I get the extreme frustration with it, but I think it's the argument they want.And I genuinely don't know what my mother gets out of doing this. It would be to have zero value add to anyone's lives.

I do have some sympathy because my mother does this. With certain words or certain things.No matter how many times you tell her or correct her as to what it really is, she reverts back to saying the wrong thing in the next conversation as if you'd never spoken at all.

It's infuriating. It's awful impossible to have a normal conversation about certain issues.Because she just doesn't listen, doesn't remember or is doing it deliberately and I don't know what it is.

Think you are wrong to scream, shout and swear at your mother in her own home though.

That aside I don't really why anyone care so much about a child being bought a bike. Does anyone really care about that?Just buy it.

This made me stop. So awful for you. I hope you have made yourself a happy life away from her.

Sorry, duplicate post.

Growing up, a friend of mine had a mum who would do this. If you told her something, she would then say “Oh right, you’re doing XYZ” where XYZ was something worse than what you’d told her. I ran into her once and introduced her to my boyfriend and she made a point of calling him my ex’s name. My Mum ran into her and told her I was (then) going to start my graduate job at the end of August and she said “Ohhhhh - so she’s not working” and told people I hadn’t managed to get a job out of university. There were a bunch of other things like this.

If it had just been one thing then I would have not thought much of it and put it down to her being from another country. But after a lot of them, it started to look like malice.

I didn’t give much of a shit - I didn’t need to see her much. But it was hard on my friend and she doesn’t see much of her now. She would definitely have called her granddaughter’s bike a trike.

Not if (as the OP says) the child has been using a balance bike for a while.

If the child uses the balance bike a lot, and has pedled any kind of ride on (anywhere - at a friend's house or a playgroup or some schools have rideon pedal toys for the reception children, or nurseries with suitable outdoor space do) she may well just get on a two wheel bike without stabilisers and ride.

None of my kids had stabilisers - they weren't common in the country we lived in when they were little. Pretty much all the local kids went from balance bike to regular two wheel bike without stabilisers.

To refer to it as behaviour is just nuts.

I wish I had your problems.

Sounds like her way of taking an interest in you and your children.
Fine to find it frustrating, but your response and behaviour are appalling!

Was she calling it a micro tree or something? 🤣

Yes, this sort of behaviour would rile me too, and it’s often clear from someone’s general attitude whether they’re doing something on purpose or not. To do it so often and so consistently does seem purposeful, and the karate/judo example sounds particularly patronising and dismissive. It sounds very disrespectful to me.

Yeah, my MiL did this with a previous job of mine and it really upset me. I was a customer service team leader and then I moved into buying with the title Merchandiser. 5 years later I was still overheating her telling my husband's other relatives at weddings etc. that I was a CS team leader. 5! It's not about the information but I still don't know if she didn't care enough to remember, thought "team leader" sounded better or didn't know what a Merchandiser was so was lying to avoiding having to explain.

Or it could be the result of years of repeated comments like this gradually wearing the OP down until they’ve finally reached their limit. The mother knows that referring to it as a “trike” instead of a “bike” upsets the OP, yet she continues to do it. In isolation it might seem insignificant, but in the context of years of similar behaviour, it can feel very different. How you interpret the situation will largely depend on your own perspective and experiences.

My Mum does this too. It's like she gets something in her head and just wont physically hear updated information. It is infuriating, and like your mum shes been doing this for decades so I think it's more of a personailty trait than cognitive decline.

In fact thinking about it I probably do it.
My son works in fashion and I still misprounce the names of designers.
It's not deliberate I just seem to have got certain mispronunciations stuck in my head.

My son doesn't imagine I'm disrespecting his work, he just thinks I'm a bit useless and sometimes corrects me.

The fact you think this is a conspiracy to undermine you probably says more about you imagining you're the centre of everyone's universe and less about your mum disassociating words.

That would drive me nuts too. Not sure I'd scream about it but I'd want to.

I think this is so common, because it is a common phenomenon to get stuck using a substitute incorrect word and then be unable to disassociate it from the correct version. People's brains short circuit to the word in their mind they use for something above the correct term.

Yes it's a failure to learn when corrected but very common, especially in low stake environments e.g. they wouldn't do it at work.

My mum did it a lot. We treated as a cute grandma quirks and knew what she was talking about when she made errors. We even adopted some of them as family terms.

I also have a friend who does this a lot. She mixes up her children and grandchildrens names all the time, which is annoying because you can't tell who she's talking about. But I think she's done it so much now it's automatic.

Swearing at your mum is more concerning than calling a bike a trike.

In her mind a trike is probably the word for a young child's bike.

You sound like someone at the end of their tether and this is totally not about a bike/trike. I get it. But you won't change your mum. Only thing you can do is change your reaction.

Grey rock her. Calmly correct her when it matters, pick your battles. I am currently dealing with the fact that my mum is convinced, despite several conversations, that my DD is starting high school this year. She isn't, she's too young. When I've corrected her, she says "are you sure?". I'm desperate to shout and swear in response to this ridiculous gaslighting question, instead I just raise my eyebrow and say "yes I am certain". I don't let her see how pissed off I'm getting. I'm ultimately becoming a very boring person to her.

Maybe just stop seeing your mum so much if this is the level of your relationship. Or divert her attention when something like this happens. I just never told my mother anything of any consequence.

Yep. Sometimes I say the wrong word for things... I know it aggravates the fuck out of people but I have ADHD/ASD... if the word is enmeshed in her brain then she's not doing it on purpose.
My mum does the same... I strongly suspect she has ADHD also looking back but I'm not about to tell her that at 80.. it fucked my mind getting diagnosed at 50.

Not to be a pedant but a first bike normally would involve stabilisers.

Are you getting your DD a quad?

Nasty OP. No need to speak to your mum like that.

I based my response on the original post which states 'for years'. My mother also did it 'for years'.....8 in fact.

This just sounds like the straw that broke the camel’s back, OP. You have a history of your mum taking the piss and you snapped. Keep doing it until she reins it in.

Imagine shouting screaming and swearing at your mum because she said trike not bike. I think you could do with some therapy.