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!

Wow, she's really putting up the shutters on you. Sorry you've had to experience that - it's about her jumping to protect herself from 'bad news', I guess. Fingers in ears, some story from the distant past, singing la-lal-la. Bummer

Like @Moredramathanrazzamatazz says, sometimes it's not endearingly eccentric, it's actually really 'difficult'.

My dad was like this but in incredibly endearing way.

My mum used to do everything for him. She needed to go visit her parents (a long laul flight away) so I took over (dad was elderly himself by this point). I did his laundry and delivered it back to him clean and dry. He scratched his head and asked: "How do you know how to do that?".

Then I made him dinner. He watched in shocked fascination as I made spaghetti bol sauce from scratch. He had no idea how I knew this (my mum can't cook. It all came out of jars). He sat there, gin and tonic in hand, shook his head and claimed it was "bleeding marvellous".

Dm, on the other hand, cannot understand why I like things I didn't eat/do as a child. I was only ever given peas so when faced with a new vegetable elsewhere I wouldn't eat it. Then she'd be all surprised then load my plate with peas. I started to branch out at friends' aged 9ish. She was completely bemused and still doesn't understand how, at the age of 44, I'll eat pretty any vegetable!

I was choosing bathroom tiles recently and my mother was actually offended by me not wanting dark red ones. Apparently, we live din a flat with dark red bathroom tiles in Germany when I was 10, and I really liked them. This makes me very unreasonable and slightly unstable, because I have made more than one decision about bathroom tiles in the last 40 years.

To be fair, my mother is not usually normal, reasonable or even nice.

yeah my mother as well.

I am 50 and she can't get over the fact I like avocado now or that i like butternut squash now.

She also likes to bang on about how i played truant alot at school and tells my children they have to avoid being like mummy. (I have 2 postgrad degrees. My truancy was down to the fact my year 10 teacher was sexually harassing a number of the girls in our class).

She also asks me every time we meet if I still play the flute. When I tell her that no I gave up the flute at the age of 15 she sighs and tutts and says how sad it is I can never commit to anything. (did i say i have 2 postgrads... and am a solicitor so clearly can stick to some things).

My mother irritates me.

The opposite, my mum seems to think I should eat bland nasty liver because I ate it in the 1970's - I do not care for it at all, like shoe leather ick. She thinks it's bizarre I eat pretty spicy food too,

I apparently don't eat egg yolk or the stems of broccoli.
Actually mother, I think you will find it my sister that didn't like egg yolks. Ha! (About 48 years ago)
She was right about the broccoli though. Still not a fan 😁

I am fascinated with this thread. My Dad does this and I always thought it was just him. It’s felt like holding me back in the past tbh.

My DM does this, particularly with my 4 year old DB who was quite a fussy eater as a small child but now earns a pretty high wage in London and likes to visit “posh” restaurants. I think she takes the fact that he will now eat, for example, a tarte tatin as an insult to her cooking in the 80s which in fairness was awful and likes to remind him “well you never used to like proper puddings, you only ever used to eat yoghurts!”. She clearly thinks he now has ‘notions’ above his station, rather than just that his tastes have evolved over the last 35 years…

*40 YEAR OLD DB! Not 4 year old 😂

My MIL does this to DH, I find it really funny. She's lovely by the way but she has this complete mental block about her kids being different in their 40s than they were in their teens. It's worse for his sister who is a very nice married mother of two with a great job but is still living down being a very wild teen 30 off years ago!

Your mother would be gobsmacked if she saw me eating sprouts then. 😂

My MIL is like this with my OH.

According to her he will only eat a korma because as a teen he hated spice and said he didn't understand why people eat spicy food.

20 years later he loves a curry. The spicier the better.

But oh no she doesn't believe in a million years he would order anything other than a korma.

It's really quite bizarre.

My mum always jokes about how I never get out of bed until lunchtime. Because the last time I lived with her I was 19 and used to go out clubbing all night then sleep in the next morning until my hangover went. She cannot get her head around the fact that, 15 years later with 2 young children and a job that starts at 7am, my routine might have changed a bit. Drives me crazy every time we arrange to do something at 10am and she asks whether I'll be out of bed by then 🤯.

My dad's the polar opposite - for the past 24 years since I moved out, every time we visit he calls/messages me the week before to ask me what drinks we all like. It's kind of sweet but also just a bit strange that he can't remember from one visit to the next.

@LosingTheBelly LOL - Your flute thing reminded me of DP's parents who regularly talk about how DP has no staying power because he quit the scouts (aged 7), football (aged 11), geography (aged 14 choosing GCSE options), and his first degree course (aged 18, totally inappropriate course that he had no hope of succeeding).

DP's got a doctorate, he's a professor, he owns a multi-million pound company so he's managed to stick at some important stuff.

He likes to remind them that he had to quit scouts and football at some point in life 😂

@OrangeAid good example.

As for liking prawns, and perhaps prawn sandwiches, please don't tell Roy Keane!

Don’t be silly, OP. You don’t like prawns. Stop showing off.

@NancyJoan Ah, you caught me. Sorry, I just wanted to see what it felt like to be a prawn-loving grown-up.

Back to turkey dinosaurs and alphabites for me.

I clearly remember being taken for my first chinese meal at the age of 12, too many years ago now to mention, at the long since closed Kwan Tung restaurant in Southport, Lancs. . Chicken and mushrooms and boiled rice. I thought it was disgusting. We then moved to Singapore for 5 years, after which I came back to the UK loving all oriental cuisine. As for prawns, those South China Sea ones in Singapore were like baby lobsters. Delicious, battered, with tomato and onion sauce. Happy days.

When i was planning my wedding my mum told me that I'd have to get someone to sort my back put before I could possibly wear a wedding dress 🤔I had no idea what she was talking about. Turns out she was referring to the acne i suffered with as a teen. I was 27 and had had no skin problems for a good 10 years.

And she says i have a terrible memory about everything because I couldn't remember the sofa we had when i was 7.

I've just remembered that my MIL always asks, with great concern, about DH's ears when we come back from holiday. He had an ear infection aged 7 after going swimming. No aural concerns since. He is now 55.

So my dm is convinced that I passed out giving blood once. I have never ever passed out giving blood.

I tell her, no it wasn't me, she argues and says it was, I explain that surely I would know, as if it happened I would have been there

I think that what makes me saddest about this with my mother is that it shows how she never really knew me even as a child. Yes, I liked the red tiles, but she is also utterly convinced that I love French onion soup. She told my husband this once when I was sick and could only managed liquids. He made a huge vat of it and was upset when I refused to touch it. I hate it and always have, but my (Golden child) sister made it a lot when we were teenagers and nobody was allowed to criticise anything she did. So the family narrative was that we all loved the wretched bloody soup and has remained so for 40 years.

She has also decided that I loved boarding school (I was mercilessly bullied and utterly miserable and I told her that!), that I obsessively love the colour brown (I have no opinion on any colour) and that I am really dizzy/unreliable (I am the most organized and efficient person I know, but it makes her feel better for having guilted me into working for her and then refusing to pay me).

UGH, I need kittens now! I have no kittens, but my turkey eggs have just hatched, so I'm giving myself a cleansing hour of fluff to remove the remnants of my childhood from my brain!

My MIL does this to my DH. I am really have to grit my teeth, because she insists that he is still her 'special little treasure' and, in the moment, it makes him very unattractive!

My mum thinks this about macaroni cheese.

I haven't the heart to tell her it's only her macaroni cheese I dislike, which I realised when my 1st year university flatmate made some for us! It's been 20 years now....