What's one thing that drives you mad about your mum or dad?

[custarddoughnuts]

I obviously love her to bits, but it really just does my head in the amount of time she spends talking on the phone.
A conversation that only needs to be five minutes long takes her more than 20, she doesn't get tired of talking it seems.
I often have to walk into another room LOL.
So what does yours do?

She has a memory like Rainman and it's much more grating than it sounds.

Constantly 'do you remember when we went to X restaurant in 2002, you were wearing that red dress and you had the seabass and it was £18.95?'.

All the bloody time no matter how often she's told that nobody else is interested in reliving the minutiae of unimportant things that happened years ago.

Oh and if we're sat around a table as a group and she's not interested in what my Stepdad is saying to my DH for example, she'll just start a new conversation with me [usually about the finger details of something we did years ago] over the top, despite that I was listening to the ongoing one.

I could probably go on...

She speaks on speaker phone in public. Drives me mad!

My mum has a way of telling you something that’s wrong and expecting you to fix it for her. My dad is a compulsive liar.
Despite those things I do love them dearly and really enjoy spending time with them!
They have been divorced nearly as long as I’ve been alive.

Refusal to give advice. She'd rather let us make a mess of things and learn by our mistakes instead of letting us side step life's problems a bit. As a result I've made so many mistakes I've never really got anywhere.

That she insists on us all speaking to my dad every time we ring her. Don't get me wrong I love my dad and I'm happy to speak to him as a rule. But he is deaf as a post, he can't hear people on the phones at all and he has pretty advanced dementia. Phone calls are meaningless to him yet she insists on us telling him what we have just told her, only he can't hear or understand it. Fine if I have time for a long chat but when I've just called her very quickly in the middle of the day to sod if she wants some milk or something it's beyond annoying.

@CheeseWisely your mum sounds like my daughter. Agree it can be maddening!

For me personally it’s my mum’s utter conviction that her opinion is correct, contrary to any and all evidence suggesting otherwise. And refusal to apologise. And considering her advice tantamount to a edict from a higher power, not following said advice is a mortal offence.

We are close but she is a personality to be managed rather than merely gotten along with. It does become trying.

My sister is terrible for this too - l end up biting her head off.

But op - sometimes l want a quick chat on the phone to my mum but she has other ideas and half an hour later l have to make up an excuse to go cos she is talking about stuff that is irrelevant.

I feel better that it's a common trait

It also manifests as 'do you remember such and such that lived down the street [that we moved away from when I was 3] with the German Shepard called Bonnie and the blue Vauxhall Nova?'

When I say no of course not, I was 2, she just ploughs on with telling me whatever mundane news it is she's heard about them

My mum is the same - stories so long about people I don't even know that you forget why she starting telling you about it in the first place!! She's also seriously judgemental and has an opinion on EVERYTHING, including things she knows absolutely nothing about.
My dad is going deaf but refuses to acknowledge this or do anything about it. Actually, having just written the paragraph above I'm starting to realise why..... 😅

Telling me the complicated plots of tv programmes I’m not the slightest bit interested in. And she’ll often interrupt my saying something important to do it. It’s infuriating.

My mum is forever collecting junk from freecycle. Everytime I go to my parents house it's full of more and more clutter. Drives me mad!

My dad bless him, is forever telling the same stories and jokes I've heard 100 times over since I was a kid. Worse still, my husband also re tells the same dad jokes over and over. There is no escape 🙉

I'm sorry to trip up the light-hearted atmosphere up thread, but my mum is the most negative person I have ever met; she is never happier than when she or someone else is miserable, always sees the worst possible outcome in everything. It takes so much energy just staying buoyant when dealing with her that I rarely tell her anything of any consequence these days.

For example, when I finally managed to have a baby after ten years of fertility struggles and heartache, she cheerfully told me that I probably wouldn't cope as I was such a "career woman"...everyone else in the extended family was bouncing up and down with excitement, but she just had to try and bring me down.

As a consequence I am the exact opposite, determinedly sunny-natured and optimistic...a proper Pollyanna my friends call me!

The phone one annoys me too. It actually stops me from phoning her because it can't just be a quick exchange of information. She also lets the phone ring for ages and gets annoyed if it's not answered.
The worst was when her phone plan gave free calls to a nominated number if less than an hour. She took that as a challenge and would ring and talk at you for 59 minutes, then suddenly go Ok bye and slam the phone down.

I now dread the phone ringing.

He calls me when it could be sorted by text

Questions.

So many questions.

Questions for the sake of questions.

Questions she already asked.

Questions she knows the answers to.

If I really can't face the questioning I send my husband to deal with her or go through my dad instead.

My Mum - she's dead now but....

Switching off her mobile phone unless she needed to use it and then wandering off without a word when on a day out somewhere like London. Half the day wasted trying to find her.
Never standing up for us or just telling my Dad to just Fuck. Off.

My Dad - it's always about him even when it's someone else that's dying. Total narcissist. What drives me the maddest is that my siblings are fully in the FOG and still falling for the batshittery.
His total inflexibility, his insistence on bullshit like never using the tumble drier because of the cost [he has plenty of cash] and hanging towels on a line in December so that they go away damp and smell musty and damp out of the airing cupboard. Making my sisters run around unreasonably to save said pennies when they have their own lives and needs. Money that will only go to the tax man so what's the point.

My dad often answers the phone first, so we have a chat about our news and then he says he will pass me on to my mum so I can tell her everything myself.

My mum will have spent that conversation sitting beside my dad listening in and saying "tell her this..." and "ask her about that..." so she has already heard everything and had an opinion on it, but now wishes to have her own conversation too.

Also their increasingly right wing opinions that are no longer quietly racist but quite openly racist (I do object to these opinions, I don't let it slide).

And their offers of looking after the kids during school holidays, which gets forgotten about when they book their own holidays during the school holidays for the specific dates we have agreed with them that they will babysit. Mum will say "oh, I hadn't realised that when I agreed those dates with you that you actually meant those dates. Sorry."

I don't have the best of relationships with my mother, but considering things are cordial right now...
Agree on the making me repeat the whole story to my dad, "I think you better tell your Daddy." So the phone gets passed over and my dad says "hmmm" and passes it straight back to my mother. Zero need.

My mum is going slightly dotty and keeps calling me to ask my opinion about whether she should eat various out of date food stuffs. The latest one was a melon that she initially said was very ripe. On further questioning, it was SIX weeks since she bought it.

@SemperIdem I think you might be my long lost sister 🤣🤣 my Mum is exactly like yours!! It's draining isn't it!

Mum likes to always think she knows best. I know she has our best interests at heart but she still thinks I'm an asthmatic like I was when I was little - which was pretty awful. She doesn't believe people can actually outgrow things, or at least live a pretty normal life.
So much as a sniffle and she demands I go to the doc to demand steroids as "that's the only thing that works to me!". She is flabbergasted that for about 10 years I didn't have an inhaler...!

The last two phone calls she's commented that I sound wheezy . Drives me a little bit potty.

Apart from that, she's not too bad!

She stares at her phone, scrolling away and completely ignoring anything you have to say.

I absolutely understand this thread, even recognise some of it but I would give anything to have one more phone call with my Mom

My parents talk in stereo like parrots, one repeats my line to the other and then that one says the line again. It’s doing my head in now.

This made me laugh, my mum is similar 🤣