Ok. It’s about my mum. Might help to get it off my chest.
Context - I have one dc whom she sees once a year (distance) and when she does she gives him money. A generous amount. She has never spent much money on me - the family was poor when I was a child, I was the youngest. As a grown-up I have been supporting my parents financially for a long time until they got their pensions.
The thing is she doesn’t seem to give yhe money to dc because she loves her grandson (or me), but because she sees him as an heir and an investment to the future of the family… I am not sure.
My mil happens to give about the same amount of money once a year to my dc too. My mum always asks what she’s given and compares and I used to tell her because she just wouldn’t leave it until she knows. Until one time my mil gave less and my dh overheard mum talk to dad about it saying mil doesn’t give us much as us or similar - whatever she said dh found offensive. Dh was angry with me for telling her (understandably), saying it’s not her business. So I stopped telling mum and told her why. She gets so cross about it with me. Saying she wants us to confide and have a strong relationship as a mother and daughter… I tell her she doesn’t need to know and it shouldn’t matter to her. She also interrogates dc, whom I told to say ‘I don’t know’ every time. (Mum now thinks my dc doesn’t understand money and is telling me to teach him!) She is obsessed. She’s just asked me on the phone again even though I’ve told her I’m not discussing that with her. She insisted - I reminded her what happened before. And then she was soo upset. Crying. Blaming me for causing her stress, being disrespectful, making her ill. I told her it’s not a competition and she shouldn’t give any money if she sees it at such. Not sure how much of my words she actually understands (she has a hearing aid), but she is behaving like I’m torturing her and I’m the worst person in the world.
Finding it so hard to deal with that!