My mum makes fun of how I was as a child, and I find it so hurtful. 🤔

[Wisteriabloom]

For context, I was a shy child, and also struggled with sport and practical things. (I think I'm dyspraxic, as practical things still don't always come easy - I do get there though)! I'm also a fairly quiet person, more outgoing than I used to be though, and have plenty of friends & a happy marriage.

If we're at a family get-together (or just with dh & our kids), Mum will sometimes start the following -

All the other kids in the village would run into school with their friends, except Wisteria of course, she'd be the one hanging back, looking anxious!

I still have images of her at Sports Day - always last in the race!

I still remember sending Wisteria & her sister to the kids' art group (my sister was much more confident than me) - she'd come out with beautifully crafted Xmas decorations, Wisteria's looked nothing like the rest of the group, she's just NOT artistic!

I'm so glad the kids' auntie took them on the canal boat - if it had been Wisteria they'd have gone overboard, she never did have a sense of balance!

I hate being made fun of, and I often felt anxious as a child (Mum has since said one of my teachers was convinced I was just stubborn - and WOULDN'T do these things rather than COULDN'T). This couldn't be further from the truth - I remember as a 10 year old having sleepless nights, with sheer worry about the following day's PE or Art lesson. 🤔 I couldn't always understand what I was supposed to do, was made fun of (by other kids & the teacher) if I struggled and so wanted to please people. I'm too much of a 'people pleaser' as an adult, I couldn't be stubborn if I tried!

Ironically, I work now with special needs children, and am valued in my field. I may not be technically 'artistic', but am talented musically and play piano for sone of the children (as their therapy).

In a nutshell, I have a happy life and feel I've done well, and hate my mum reducing me to that anxious child, in front of people. One of my children is on the Spectrum, and I could NEVER imagine making fun of her for things she can't do, I'm proud of the things she CAN do, and the lovely child she is. I can't fathom why it makes my mum feel good to hurt me. 🙁 If I challenge her she laughs and says I'm 'over-sensitive'. Dh doesn't feel comfortable with how she sometimes treats me either. I'm 50 FGS, it's just so unnecessary! School was v different back in the 80's I realise, it was 'one way of teaching was expected to fit all'. I was fine academically, but Mum doesn't focus on my successes, I wonder why? 🤔

If she says 'You're over sensitive' try saying, 'You keep using that excuse to be unkind. Even if you think it's over-sensitivity you know I think it's unkind, so if you doing it again you are intentionally doing something that hurts me. Why would you choose to keep doing that?'

As a parent of a ND child it is lovely to read your story.

I'm taking it as a salutary lesson to be really careful of what stories I retell. This does sound like a more cut and dried case with a bit more of an edge, but I think there's still lots of potential in stories we think are cute and benign to feel differently to our DC. Much like baby photos - parents may share them with no ill-will whatsoever but they can still feel cringeworthy to those babies as teens.

I'm not saying there isn't more of an edge here. I have little contact with my mum, I do get it. But it is certainly making me think twice about stories that are, to me, simply cute or proud moments.

I could write this myself. I also have a Ds who is autistic, also believe I'm on the spectrum myself but not pursued an assessment yet!!

I was always the black sheep as a child my family are all confident, outspoken, sociable. I was not. I was 'weird' in their eyes. I was always socially and physically awkward. Never excelled in anything at school - always average at academic things and terrible at sport or anything arty or musical. Nothing has came naturally to me.

I was criticised throughout my whole childhood and still now. My mjm also makes comments about my childhood, thinking it's funny but it's actually really damaging.

As a teen I was called a lesbian by my parents as they thought I not interested in boys (so they thought, I was actually interested in both but just kept it secret 🤣). I wasn't overly intelligent but average, my parents are not overly intelligent and didn't really go to school but I was called a nerd, boffin etc by them in a negative way when I was at school.

She also does it to others. We were at a family friends funeral and there was a person there who was a bit of a tear away as a teen, out all hours etc. My mother felt the need to bring it up as everyone was grieving! Not appropriate at all!

I try and distance myself as much as possible.

My parents do this! It’s so hurtful and you have my sympathies. Every family get together is entirely a love in on my brothers.. I barely get a mention other than how crap I am. I never learnt to drive as they told me so many times how crap I’d be at it that I never even really tried.

@billy1966

OP,

Your mother is awful.

Really unkind.

That you have someone so unkind around your children is sad.

I would suggest that the next time she mentions you and your childhood, you say in a clear voice.

"You are right mum, I had a really miserable childhood growing up, I was so unhappy all those years living at home".

Let it hang there.

She is making statements about your childhood, you can do that too.

Every time she mentions you as a child, immediately come back with how miserable your childhood was.

She sounds awful, and dim.
But even someone as dense as your mother may not like hearing that.

My friend was the butt of the jokes at family gatherings and she brought her now husband home for the first time after they had been together at least 2 years.

At the table she was being teased again and gritting her teeth.
Her boyfriend was asked his opinion by her mother of all the stories he was now hearing and he said straight out "I can understand why she doesn't come home often"! There was a stunned, awkward, uncomfortable silence.

There wasn't so much as a peep out of any of them and if anyone started one BOTH her parents stepped in.

Her parents were very embarrassed.

She is married as long as I am and she always tells that story as when she really knew he was the man for her.

What a pity your husband hasn't made his discomfort known to your mother.

You sound like a lovely woman.

He sounds like a good person.

Shame on your Mum - she’s very mean!
Be brave and tell her off I front of whoever - she sounds RUDE!!!!
You sound lovely x

Okay she sounds very insensitive and you have had lots of useful advice here. But you do say you hate being made fun of as if that is just how it is for you. It isn't. Work on that. Baring in mind that the only thing you can really change is you not others, changing how you feel about being made fun of is going to be your quickest win. Lots of people don't hate being made fun of. Resilient people don't care about it at all.

Start replying that if she'd been a better mother she'd have been able to help you as a child and not just laugh at you now.

I'd ask her why she didn't get you some help.

You're not on your own Wisteria my mum does it to me as well!
If I complain I can't take a joke and get reminded that I have always been miserable!

I went chubby as a teenager and she still goes on about that now that I have put weight on recently. ("god dad, remember when your arse was THIS BIG, you looked a right state in jeans when you were next to Karen and Jennifer) I want to say that I am 57 soon, menopausal and hacked off with tons of stuff that I don't need my weight issues dragging up. If I did that she would just remind me that my sister is slim ( she is but she shouldn't be dragged into it)
Oh and I get reminded that my handwriting is awful. ( which it is tbf) and also my school photos are an embarrassment because I look like I'm giving side eye in one photo.
The list is bloomin' endless!

Moms really know how to push our buttons when they want to!

She won't change, so I'd honestly distance myself if it was giving me this much anxiety. Or because I'm petty I'd laugh along with whatever horrible comment about sports day and say "gosh yes mum, must have been sooo hard for you, having a kid like me! How did you cope?" with a big grin.

Though I wouldn't ask your husband what she says about you when he's over at hers. That's not nice for him.

To be honest she probably puts you down to others all the time (sorry). Try to realise that it reflects more badly on her than it does on you. I find it very very odd if a parent talks about their child negatively (unless they're an actual criminal!) - it's a strange thing to do.

Maybe you should say something like.....no bloody wonder I was shy and unconfident, you're still embarrassing me in public now and I'm (age) !

It sounds like she's a very underdeveloped adult, that she has to hold onto the times she was superior to a child 40 years ago for her own comfort and reassurance.

You've had lots of great ideas here OP. What a shitty mother you have. We all think you're marvellous. Stay strong and pull her up every time.

Why not show her this thread? It may not only make it clear how she has hurt you but would also make it hard for her to read through all the posts and STILL maintain you are over sensitive.

@MrsPsmalls
Lots of people don't hate being made fun of. Resilient people don't care about it at all.

You’d have called me resilient as a child and twenty-something then. I thought digs like this we’re just my quirky family showing it’s love. I thought it was our special family sense of humour.

Actually feeling like that is a sort of dissociation from the perfectly reasonable response of being hurt by people doing or saying hurtful things. It may be healthy dissociation to avoid an unnecessary conflict in the moment but it’s not healthy to constantly resign yourself to reinflictions of old wounds built on over time by new ones without at least thinking about ways to express your hurt.

Once hurt is expressed, it is a mark of love and respect for the ones doing the hurt to try to avoid their hurtful behaviour.

Wisteria, it sounds as though you have told your DM her stories hurt. Have you told her you find it telling that she wants to hurt you further by choosing to repeat them? If you’ve done both of those things then I’d go ‘broken record’ on her (if you can act fast enough in the moment) by holding up a hand and saying firmly ‘enough’. No more than that, she knows what you mean. The next steps after that might be more decisive in terms of leaving each time, or eventually not visiting in the first place. I hope you don’t have to get there.

My mother does a version of this. In her case, it’s because she has zero self-esteem and thinks that intense self-deprecation is the way to make people like her, and as she has never grasped that her adult children aren’t her, she thinks that making fun of them publicly is likeable self-deprecating behaviour. Alas for her, we all turned out to be high achievers, so she’s left with ‘hilarious’ stories of childhood failures. She was horrified when I got an Oxford scholarship in case it looked as if she was ‘getting above herself’.

My mother used to do this too, throughout my childhood as well. I think she was scapegoating me and it was part of a wider divide and conquer action with my sibling. I remember one day one of my neighbours pulled me aside and said ' Your mother's not a nice person, Bean' - I was very taken aback but the woman was right.

Back chat her or go NC this can wear you down I had this for a couple of years when I came back from London went NC in the end I’d had enough of the sly digs etc.

Her comments say more about her than they do about you.

If you’re feeling brave enough, you could ask her if it was hard having a child with special needs back then and talk about how there is much more compassion and consideration nowadays. That nowadays people don’t judge your parenting in the same way.

Keep it in the poor you narrative so she doesn’t get defensive and you might just get through.

We have a long way to go before parents of ND dc and their dc are treated as they should be, but we have come an awful long way in a couple of decades.

(That’s not excusing her being horrible though)

@FebruaryRainandSleet

I'd give her the Paddington stare and say, 'I blame the parents.'

This! Or just 'I blame the mother'!

Thank you again, everybody. 🤗 I do feel my occasional anxiety stems from always feeling criticised growing up. Thing is, nobody would have guessed she could be like this. We were housed, fed & clothed probably better tham most kids at our school, but it was the emotional side of parenting she lacked. She was always full of praise for my younger sister, everything came easy to her, which as I know from experience, is just how it is with some siblings.

One time I really stood up to her and she went silent on me. And according to my dad spent the whole weekend crying, telling people I was bullying HER! It wasn't about me that time what she did was criticize my daughter's outfit in front of her friend. They were off out somewhere (about age 12). It was an outfit dd had chosen and liked, but my mum so clearly preferred her friend's. Dd looked uncomfortable, and there were other family at ours just before they went out.

I saw red, and phoned my mum that evening, said bullying isn't on, especially to a 12 year old in front of her friend. I was fuming, stood up for dd but apparently was classed as a bully. 🙁 Next time Mum came she brought a nice treat for dd with her and said 'See? I'm not such a bad grandma!' It didn't work with me, it hadn't taken away Mum's behaviour the previous weekend, at all!!

My mum does this too complete with tinkly laugh. Not about my childhood (which was awful and we all left home as soon as we could, so I don't think she wants to open that can of worms) but about my early adulthood/mum years. It's total bollocks and we all just blank her. Anyone who knows me knows it's just exaggerated nonsense to big herself up.

I know she's an old, frail, unhappy woman who has always been socially awkward but it does get to me sometimes. But on the plus side remembering how nasty she can be helps me resist when she is applying moral blackmail to make me do more for her. I remind her she has £££ in the bank and if she needs help about the house I am happy to arrange a cleaner/carer.

I was quite difficult at home. My mum tells stories about me, even going back to naughty things I did when I was two 🙄

I’ve started saying
‘What did you do to help me?’
Or
‘Poor me, my parents didn’t know how to help me!’

She’s being cruel! Why would she want to keep repeating this! I would be putting her in her place!