AIBU to tell someone they will be dead in 15 years so relax *MNHQ ADDING CONTENT WARNING FOR TOXIC PARENTING DISCUSSION*

I wonder how much of the shock is down to you never standing up to her?

In an ideal world it's an OTT thing to say, but your relationship with her sounds far from ideal, and a breeding ground for all kinds of frustration, anger and resentment.

Forgive yourself and move on, as this is going into the catalogue of things she'll beat you with.

That is really not nice of her to put you through that during childhood and will have had lasting effects on you. I remember my daughter spilt something and I let out a big gasp and she shook and looked terrified, I didn’t mean to and gave her a big hug and told her it was okay accidents happen. You must have reached a boiling point to say that.

Well statistically you’ll be dead soon too OP so why worry about what your mum is doing or saying. Relax, it’ll be over with soon!

I have to say, I don't think you were unreasonable.
Maybe next time she'll think twice 😬
I'm surprising myself at saying that, as I'm normally quite a gentle person! But my mum can be tricky, so I know what it's like.

The logical consequence of this has tickled me, the suggestion that the mother is emotionally mature and aware of her mortality and has decided to spend the next decade focusing on what matters (the freshness of her cereal) over the less important (her relationship with her family).

Yes, very unkind. And keep out of husband and wife issues. She may be sick of asking your DF to do things he ought to be able to do without reminding.

See the many threads on here about DHs not pulling their weight and the support they get from MNrs.

I don’t really see anything wrong with OP’s comment. It’s true and some people need to hear it. The knowledge that in 50-60 years I’ll probably be dust and nothing much I do today has any consequence on anything helps me keep perspective and positivity in life generally. To put it simply, none of us are getting out of this alive.

I could imagine myself saying this too, but probably 'Alright mum we get the picture' would be better.

Does your mum suffer from anxiety? That would be my guess. Controlling the small details is how she stays feeling in control of life.

Meh. We're all going to die and I think we really need to be more open about that fact so we can discuss practicalities and plan for it.

Was it a nice thing to say - clearly not.

Is she ever going to forgive you - probably not. She'll be reminding you of this for years to come.

Can you live with yourself - yes, you can. It was a moment of frustration about someone who has over years constantly nitpicked over small issues and this time you told her to consider the bigger picture, it was basically 'don't sweat the small stuff' but in worse terminology.

Anyway my mum was having a go at my dad for not putting a food clip on the cereal box and I just told her to “give it a rest with the negativity

Why did you choose to criticise your mother and not your father?
He was the one in the wrong - the clip should have been put on the cereal.
Yet you don't support your mother in telling him to get his act together and stop leaving such tasks for other people to do.
Instead you side with him against her.

Do you think you are superior because you are above worrying about such petty things as clips on packets?
Do you think your mother is wrong to be annoyed that she is the only one in the family who takes care of such stuff, whilst you and DF have your minds on higher things?

And as for the poster saying we hold Mothers to impossibly high standards, I see this OP as a child being held to the impossibly high standard of never dropping a piece of cutlery.

If you burst into tears at work because you realised you had just sent out a report with a typo in and your boss would be angry and belittling to you, would you think it was you being held to impossibly high standards or your boss was being held to high standards in being expected to not lose his/ her shit over this?

It’s not asking impossibly high standards of parents to expect them not to instill a sense of constant fear or shame in their children. Just like it’s not holding bosses to impossibly high standards to expect them not to do this to their staff.

Yes us too.
I am also a ‘figures’ person so would be mentally working out if this was statistically true. As a person in their mid 60’s I might reply ‘ well actually I probably have 17 years left’.

I agree.

The op only retorted off the top of her head and I daresay her mother has done the same frequently, to her and to others. She didn't say she was counting the days!

HRTFT but I know exactly what you mean. Folk getting really excited about things that really don't matter. My own mother is the same and I once knew a woman who told me she'd kill her husband if he put his head on her pillows.

Absolutely no perspective.

There are a lot of people on here who have/ have had lovely mothers. The fact that you cannot understand the opposite option is a testament to your happy childhoods. That's beautiful. My mother is a psychopath. I'm 59 and I've had a lifetime of not biting back as a self protection method. I wouldn't have said what you said because it would have made my situation worse. HoweverI absolutely understand why you did Op ( and I've said much the same a thousand times over in my head)

My next door neighbour isn’t in great health and must be cracking on to 80. When I moved in she started saying how much she hated the tress in my garden as they blow leaves in ti here and the previous owner wouldn’t remove them (hoping I’d say I’ll remove the 25+ year old tress but I did t as they’re lovely!)

Anyway she lost her DH quite suddenly about 5 years ago. And as pleasant as she is she still has digs about the trees and I often think, statistically you’re unlikely to have that much longer to live and I wonder why she still makes a fuss about something so irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. It doesn’t block her sun light or anything.

In this case it’s the ‘other side’ which is built entirely on the imaginings of posters.

What replies on this thread actually show is how empathy works. People empathize with those they can imagine being. On a site of mothers, it appears many are automatically empathizing with what they imagine as the stress or anxiety of the mother ( this is imagined. They have no idea why the mother behaved like this. She might just be a bully who likes the sense of superiority and power she gets by belittling and exerting control. None of us know).

What I object to in posts siding with the mother, is the assumption that’s it’s ok for Mothers to use their kids as their whipping boys ( or girls) if their own lives are stressful or difficult. It’s really worrying that so many posters seem to think it is. And this is not a case of Mother going through a particular acute stress and overreacting and later apologizing. This is a set, unchanging, behaviour of shaming and belittling over small, inconsequential normal occurrences.

I’ve been through catastrophic trauma when my kids were little which stripped me of every resource I had, material, psychological and social. It was when I realised the impact my low emotional resilience was having on my kids that I realised it was far from ok for me to take out my distress on them, and that I needed to do better and not ‘indulge’ my trauma and distress on them. I worked really, really hard to turn things around with my kids and really make sure we had a secure bond.

Because it’s not ok use them to relieve yourself of your own ugly feelings of stress and temper or frustration or worthlessness. They are people in their own right and your job as a parent is to see them as people, not as recipients of your stress.

It’s not ok for bosses to take out their stress and anxieties on their staff and it’s not ok for parents to do that to their kids. Both are bullying. I’m somewhat appalled that so many posters are defending Mothers reducing their children to weeping in fear because they dropped a spoon. This is not ok.

I don think you were wrong with the essence of what you were getting across, but the actual words are a bit jarring.

I’ve just remembered my DM saying very cheerfully while we were crossing a road in Aberdeen (after she’d been having a good old moan about something)
‘Never mind, soon be dead!’

Aeons ago - I was in my teens, she went on to 97. 😂

Nothing in the OP suggests that the OP would glad when her dm was dead! She was asking her dm to let go of her negativity because one day, the ceral box will be totally insignificant

I completely agree with you. My son was born with a life limiting illness and his life expectancy at birth was 32 so death has always been a big part of our discussions while he was growing up and it really put things into perspective and we all realised early on that some things are not worth getting stressed out over. Anyway my son ended up dying in an accident at age 22 in 2022 and I can honestly say that I was so thankful that nothing was ever left unsaid between us because not many people get to have that, obviously I wish he was still here but I'm so lucky that I got to be his mum and I knew it was for a limited time right from the start so we made the most of it every day. Now it's just me and my 14 year old daughter (my partner died in feb of this year so that has been shit too) people are horrified at the way me and my daughter joke about death lol but it's gonna happen and nobody knows when

I think you need to find a better way of communicating to her how you feel about the way she treated you growing up and to hopefully both work towards improving your relationship.

There is no guarantee she will be there in 15 years. How will you feel about what you said if she were to go unexpectedly in the next year or so?

Agree with this. It wasn’t about the cereal it was about being so negative all the time which actually does affect our health. Sometimes people need to be told as they get stuck in a loop. Albeit this loop has been going a while so the likelihood of change is small but at least youve tried. (Altho couldn’t softened delivery perhaps!)

Very well said

It's draining living with someone relentlessly negative and critical. Fortunately for me it's DS rather than experiencing a parent who shapes your world view and behaviour, and being DS it's easier to challenge him about it. He's an autistic perfectionist and the world is frustratingly imperfect, but that doesn't mean that the rest of us have to be ground down by constant Victor Meldrewesque critique.

We're all mortal and we don't live as long as Methuselah. It's important context in life. Yes, I have lost a parent, young and suddenly, and the life-lesson I took from that was live fully while you can.

To be the kind of critical parent that has the effect of making a child cry because they dropped a spoon can be deeply damaging and it's no wonder that OP has eventually cracked with a spontaneous retort.