Can you imagine in your wildest dreams that I like prawns at age 37, even though I hated them as a child? My mother can not.

[OrangeAid]

My mom is an odd-bod.

It seems beyond her comprehension that people change as they get older, particularly as they move from children to adults.

Last night I told her I was having prawn curry for tea. She was genuinely shocked to the core that I eat prawns because I never used to like them.

I've always liked prawns, says I.
Nope, she says. And then recounts a story from when I was nine years old and I tried a prawn and didn't like it.

A while back, my dog was sick from both ends at the same time in the kitchen. I was telling my mom about the military operation to clean up and she was, again, really shocked that I did it because I was so squeamish when I was younger. I was lost for words. I mean aside from the fact there's no other option (I'm not just going to leave the kitchen covered in dog vomit and shit), I'm not the same person that I was when I was twelve.

Anyone else's mom or dad like this? She's otherwise a perfectly normal human being!

My kids have this problem with their dad. We split 10 years ago and he treats them like the same age as when we split. We laugh at his shock that teenagers might build their own flat pack or that they are able to get up and go to work or school without me overseeing them like in their primary school days.

My mum thinks I'm scared of butterflies because I felt unwell when we visited a butterfly house when I was 11. It was hot and also 29 years ago.

Omg yes, my mum is exactly like this. Insists I can’t tell my left from my right because I couldn’t at 8 years old. Insists I don’t know how to make pancakes because I asked her how it was done aged 12. Shocked my older sister went to a BBQ cooking class as she didn't like red meat as a tweenager. As you say, otherwise perfectly normal, just can’t move with the times!

My mum is like this about loads of things. It’s like her mind locks on something and won’t let go. She did it with personality traits too. ‘Oh you’re shy,’ going on and on about shy year after the event.

My parents not so much but other family members - yes! When I was a young teen I was getting bullied at school for being nerdy so I went through a bit of a phase of pretending I didn't like/get maths to try to get them off my back. On that basis my aunt will still gleefully tell people that I can't 'do fractions'. I have fully embraced my nerdiness and have a science PhD and all, but no, I definitely can't cope with fractions

Oh yes. I am terrible with money according to my mum as I lost a pound coin when I was ten.

I get it the other way too I had to stop myself gasping at my 25 year old son eating salad at the weekend.

You have to remember your dm was so involved in your life when you were little planning meals and shopping around you. Then when you move out and have your own life they still have those memories. It's hard to adjust.

My mum too.

It’s like she hasn’t SEEN me for 23 years. I wish she would, because I like who I’ve become. It makes me feel oddly sad to be reminded of the dreamy child and hugely awkward, struggling teenager I was every single time I see her. My dad is the complete opposite - never reminisces, keeps up with current affairs, looks to the future.

My dad. Our family went abroad when I was 14 and I apparently spent a lot of time inside, sulking (because I was 14, very unhappy, and had got sunburnt the first few days). 20 years later and apparently foreign holidays are still wasted on me and I don't like them 😕I do though.

I threw a tantrum when I was 6 because I didn't want to get the bus and asked my auntie to call a taxi instead. I am 38 and still notoriously a spoiled brat who thinks I'm too good for a bus and takes taxies everywhere I go 🙄 this is according to the same aunt who hasn't stepped foot on public transport herself in the intervening 30+ years.

I also get body shop mango body butter and associated products quite frequently from my mum because it's my 'favourite', I haven't used it since I was about 14 but nothing will convince her otherwise.

I'm glad I'm not alone in this experience!!

@hexsnidgett Yeah, I get you about being so involved and then not so involved

Even my SDCs have picked up on it!

My mum will call me a “daft” “wally” “bimbo” “ditsy”, which my SDCs are 🤨 about, because that’s not the adult they know.

I don't think my mum even acknowledges that any of us have an older self. She is utterly stuck in the past and just tells the same stories about when we were little and what we were like and did. She doesn't project that onto our present selves because our present selves are just irrelevant to her really.

@DarkSpark I love Body Shop mango body butter 😅

Reminds me that my mom bought me some CKOne a few years ago for Christmas because I liked it as a teenager. I was totally unprepared for how much the smell transported me back in time. It smelled like the night I lost my virginity in a grotty caravan after several snake bites 😬 I did not tell my mom that!

My mum watched me cut up a pear and said "wow, I didn't realise you could do that" 😂

My adult son is staying with me at the moment between rentals and I'm having to try really hard not to keep doing this to him ...

The worst one was when he was going out and I absent-mindedly said to him, 'don't forget to be careful when you cross the main road'. He just laughed at me. His girlfriend probably has me in the 'eccentric veering towards insane' category, but I'll settle for that because I really like her very much.

DH has this with (otherwise lovely) PIL - still surprised every time he eats a mushroom or anything in a tomato sauce. He's nearly 40.

He also once left a jacket on the train. When he was 17. This is still HILARIOUS. MIL recently left a bag of toiletries on holidays and I thought DH showed remarkable restraint by not drawing parallels

My MIL is eccentric veering towards insane, and I love her very much.

That's reassuring to know!

Oh yes. My mother recently watched me eating a salad and wailed “but you don’t like cole slaw”. Well, clearly I do now!

Yes your Mum is an odd-bod, it is normal and common for tastes to change not just between childhood and adulthood but within either.

The Dad described by the next poster who can't understand his children have matured and changed is also odd indeed (and it is poor parenting in this respect). It can be hard to keep up with the minutiae of their changing skills and likes and dislikes if you don't live with them, but not to that extent!

I do wonder how these sort of folk, with their very fixed ideas and weird assumptions (and there seem to be rather a lot of them about) manage to function in the world, to be honest.

It works in reverse here; my adult son visits and assumes I'll still be cooking meals, clearing up, changing bedding, washing towels...

Oh yes, I have to be reminded every time the clocks go forward or back because I forgot once when I was a student and had a massive hangover. "You know what you're like, you always forget!"

I also had a bit of a "thing" about moths when I was younger, couldn't be in the same room as one, but I worked at getting over it and I've been fine with them for years. My mother still won't even say the word "moth" to me in case it sets me off.

My MIL is eccentric veering towards insane, and I love her very much.

This is the approach we are taking with several family members

And I do suspect sometimes that this might be the attitude that my adult children are taking with me!

Sometimes what the OP and PPs describe can be part of other difficult or controlling behaviours that have always been there, though, which is harder to deal with, and my sympathy goes to them.

Yep my mum too. It's mainly annoying but was upsetting when I couldn't have kids in my 30s- mum couldn't understand I might want to talk about it because I didn't want any when I was 16..

I've always been a faddy eater according to my mother.

Actually, she was a shit cook, thought seasoning was something 'the foreigners' did and who decided that the medical advice not to give me milk or gluten was a load of nonsense, with the inevitable result that I spent my childhood in pain, feeling shit with horrendous headaches, bloating and stomach issues and regularly given stuff that just tasted like crap.

Considering the things I 'turned my nose up at' were almost entirely wheat and/or milk based (pasta, cereals, cakes, biscuits, pies, pizza, fish fingers, breaded ham/chicken, cheap burgers and sausages, milkshakes, ice cream, custard, cream) and I'd absolutely demolish vegetables, meat that wasn't cooked to rubber, anything with salt, spices or herbs, eggs, salty & vinegary things like cockles and winkles, peanuts, pistachios and the strongest hard cheese I was ever allowed near (it's much lower in lactose than cheap, rubbery mild stuff) and loved coffee, maybe that should have been a clue that she should have listened to the paediatricians, rather than leaving me to either eat or go without with only toast as an option if I was still hungry.

But hey, it's far easier to claim that I've always faddy than actually provide food that didn't make me ill.