How do you achieve balance?

I'm in middle age and still running every single decision from the tiny day-to-day ones up to major life choices through the filter of what will be acceptable to her. Interesting - I think I realise what the rebellious period in the teens is about. If you make the most of that, you break the expectation that you're a "good girl" and will do what your parents expect. You're a grown up. What was your mother doing when she was your age? I have a vague recollection of saying to one of my parents "I can decide for myself. When you were my age you were married with a 4 year old daughter".

Stop telling her about tiny day to day decisions. Practice doing things that you'd like to do that she wouldn't approve of (but won't get the chance to disapprove because you won't bother to tell her). Most people, from teenagehood upwards, give their parents a very edited view of their lives.

Mum5net I see what you mean. Yes, you want your children to want to please you, so you can guide them into a good set of values. But that comes with a responsibility to use that desire to please for their benefit, not for your own.

Why don’t you go rogue with an opposite day and every single bad ass decision you take will enrage and annoy and help you break free

Break even🤭

Please op try and change your thinking for your children’s sake and your own. Beak the pattern.

If you have been conditioned to please your DM from a young age it’s often not until you have children yourself that you discover that you were badly short changed growing up. What's the alternative? If children don't want to please their parents, they reach an age where they can't be controlled physically but don't have the maturity not to go badly off the rails. Most of our good behaviour comes ultimately from wanting to please our parents, or wanting to fit in with our peers.
Maybe I could have been more specific. In my own childhood, my DM didn't want me or my siblings to do extra curricular activities, so no sport after school, no Duke of Edinburgh, no sleep overs. We learned from a young age it was best not to ask because my mum could not leave the house and she felt pressured if we didn't come home immediately school ended. (We were needed to do the shopping.) In my entire school life, my mum never walked me to or from school which was unusual because she did not work. So my siblings and I were 'conditioned' to please her and not rock her social anxiety boat. Needless to say, I am on this board regularly 50 years later as her problems worsened...

OP's comment about having to look after DGparents made me instantly think her DM had neatly body swerved the situation, knowing OP had been 'conditioned' to take over. However, this could be far off the mark ...

If you have been conditioned to please your DM from a young age it’s often not until you have children yourself that you discover that you were badly short changed growing up. What's the alternative? If children don't want to please their parents, they reach an age where they can't be controlled physically but don't have the maturity not to go badly off the rails. Most of our good behaviour comes ultimately from wanting to please our parents, or wanting to fit in with our peers.

If you have been conditioned to please your DM from a young age it’s often not until you have children yourself that you discover that you were badly short changed growing up.
Power to you.

@Mothermisery How are you today? Have you managed a few of those tiny steps?

OP did your parents look after their parents? It's important to think what help your parents gave your grandparents and what affect that had on their lives. Either your parents were run ragged by your grandparents or they enjoyed their lives and made their own decisions. If they were run ragged you want to avoid the same mistakes and if they weren't you want what they had. As regards permission to do something, your children and their happiness and childhood is the only permission you need. Your job is to do what's best for them and your own family. Dont have your own children looking back and saying they couldnt do this or that as their mother was too busy looking after gran. They won't appreciate it if you let their childhood be affected. My youngest is 30 and I've blinked and it's happened. It goes by in a flash and I will never get their childhood back. Just keep saying NO. What would you tell a friend? Do that. Take a day at a time and agree to nothing.

I really for you.

I'm an only child, extended family too far away/elderly/doing their own lives to be of any help, particularly over the last year with Covid etc.

My mum lived with her own mum until she was nearly 40 and never forgave herself for moving away with my dad and me for the last 6 years of nan's life so she has certain expectations and I find her emotional needs extremely difficult to deal with. The physical care my dad needed (and I have tackled the whole remit in the last year ) has been a walk in the park by comparison.

What helped me was the realisation that if an elderly person has next of kin and one or both of them has capacity, it is very difficult to exercise any control over their situation, even if it is for the greater good (eg my dad went into a home initially last August but mum insisted on bringing him home and still talks about doing the same this time around).

In situations such as this the only power you have is over your own fate and you have to let them make a decision and wait for the cards to fall where they may.

My mental health has been severely impacted over the last year and I will not put my DD through the potential repercussions of that. If my mum brings my dad home again, I will walk away if I have to, as much as I love them both, purely out of self-preservation.

Have you looked into getting some counselling for yourself to untangle your responses to the expectations placed upon you? I found transactional analysis particularly interesting.

I need permission to make decisions to the advantage of myself
Mother, I hereby give you permission to make decisions which are to your advantage.
You only get one life, it's yours, now grab it by the throat and run

Op, please read all the replies and take on board the hard won wisdom on board.
So many names on here have been on this elderly board for many years.
We know this stuff. Please learn from our mistakes.
Carers uk, age uk or appropriate disability charity can offer support.
Also look up FOG- fear, obligation and guilt.
What really matters is creating, maintaining and defending your boundaries- get really clear about what they are. With help from a counsellor if neccesary.
What can only you do.

I would find a reason to move away from the area.
They have no way of enforcing their wishes upon you, that's why they're so insistent ....they know their only chance is if they can can manipulate you into being at their beck and call, remember you have no legal duty towards them

Of course you have a choice. You may not be strong enough to make it but you absolutely have one. That's why there's millions of elderly people in care homes or living with paid carers supporting them. As they should. It's what we 'scrimp and save ' for all our lives isn't it??!

Your parent is the uncaring one, expecting you to put them first and neglect your own life. Indefinitely. Don't repeat the cycle. Be a better parent to your own DC and put them and yourself first.

You've the best of your life left to live. Others have had the best of theirs and are responsible for themselves.

Just to add to the support you have already have, you have to seize the time you have now for yourself and your children. You can't put your hopes and aspirations on hold - children are only children for such a short time, and who knows what the future holds for you and your own health? I have had a few years of having my free time taken up with caring responsibilities for an elderly relative, as well as my (lovely) DM's terminal illness, and wanting to spend time with her. It was made bearable by thinking there would be plenty of time later for the things I wanted to do. And then - global pandemic, two years of opportunities lost, and now my DH is seriously ill and some of those future plans for travel and adventure won't be able to happen anymore. I don't regret the time I spent with my mum but I do, a little, regret all the time I spent supporting my other relative to stay in her home. Don't let your own life pass you by.

OP it is so, so important that you put boundaries in place sooner rather than later, and no sensible person with an ounce of compassion would blame you for doing so.

I've been caring for my parents since last April when my dad was declared 'end of life'. He is still going and went into a nursing home last month. I was initially juggling a job and a teenager but am currently on unpaid sabbatical as it was the only way I could cope with their emotional and physical demands.

Now dad is being cared for, I'm trying to gently disentangle myself from mum before I return to work.

Do you have any siblings or other family to share the load? Otherwise social services and local practice nurse would be a good place to start. Also Carers UK.

It is incredibly difficult when they are mentally with it enough to manipulate you whilst be extraordinarily stubborn themselves, so much better to (re) start as you mean to go on.

I'm all they've got
And whose fault is that? Surely they are responsible for building their own social network? But once again that would take time and effort and theyd have to be polite and reasonable to people, much easier to just put pressure on you and make you feel guilty!

Orange children = our own children

parents bring us up then we look after them in their time of need
Well they would say that wouldn't they!
I say parents bring us up and we pay that forward when we bring up orange children we cannot pay it back and pay it forward
Your parents would have had a good decade or so to prepare for their own later years why have they not moved into to suitable accommodation etc?
Probably because that would require too much thinking and planning and it's much easier to spend the time working on you to make you feel guilty and beholden to them!
Caring for a baby that you've chosen to have and over which you have complete control is nothing like caring for an elderly adult over whose life you have had no control, their health problems and issues will have been mostly caused by their own choices, why should you have to pick up the pieces?