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?

Absolutely @ginasevern but I ring them in depth at least every other day. When I'm in the middle of my working day and just need to ask her something quick I just dont have time for it and frankly it upsets my dad because he gets annoyed that he can't hear. It's pointless to do it every single time unfortunately.

Neither of my parents are alive now.
But having read all these comments I can honestly say that neither of them were like this at all! And for that I am truly grateful.
Mum was like my best friend, the best advisor and we laughed all the time.
My dad and I had the same sense of humour and bounced off each other.
I miss them both every single day, so yes @ConnieHeart here I am. I've fulfilled your prophecy. Sorry to kill the vibe of "parental gripes", but we didn't all have parents like this! 🙄

Regurgitating family fallouts and snide comments from family decades ago, just fucking move on I don't want to hear about this negative boring unimportant shit.
That felt good 😂

I was a messy teenager who never tidied up after myself. But now as a grown ass woman, I am incredibly house proud and keep a really clean, tidy, spotless home. But it’s like she can’t let go of what I was like as a teenager (20 years ago) and whenever she comes round to my home she makes comments based on NOTHING like:
”Shall I empty your hoover? I bet you never empty it.”
”Do you need me to go upstairs and clean the windows? I bet you never do that.”
”Shall I do the washing up after dinner? I can give your hob a good clean too as I bet you don’t do it.”
But like she’s never looked at the hoover…never been upstairs and looked at the cleanliness of the windows…not been in the kitchen to look at the hob. It’s all just made up/presumed stuff, and really grates me as MY HOUSE IS SO CLEAN!!!! It’s not like she points something out that’s ACTUALLY dirty and offers to clean it, she’s just making up issues.

This is my mum too! She also remembers people's full names and tells me I definitely do remember them....

"You know Sheila, Sheila Jones, yes you do, married to Dave, you went to her daughter's birthday party at the swimming centre when you were 5, she lived in those new houses but she's moved now, well she has just joined a new exercise class and there's a lady there who......."

I love her but my god it's annoying 😂

Talking about being vegan. I am supportive as I have been for the past 15 years but she can’t tell me she’s buying milk or butter from the shop without specifying that it’s vegan butter or vegan milk. I KNOW YOUR VEGAN. I asked her once if I could give my toddler honey for a sore throat (she’s a wizard with natural remidies) and she told me she can’t talk about honey because she’s vegan. I love her dearly but also can’t tolerate the veganism 😅

I do hope that they're all on Gransnet whining about the things their adult kids do that drive them up the wall.

Oh, most of the above…lots if mosns, which I try to address and solve ( no piont), doesn't listen, interrupts with something irrelevant, lies if she is caught out, etc etc

My DF has just died. This is the most time I've spent with DM ( I work full time and live an hour away).

I've realised that she defers to men. She deferred to my dad all of her life, now that he isn't around, to my brother ( younger than me) and if he isn't there even my partner.
It is so difficult, as a professional, independent female, to have my views discounted, the practical support I'm giving, ignored, my suggestions overuled.

I feel invisible.

My mam is racist. She knows she’s racist and I think she’s even a bit embarrassed about it but she can’t seem to stop herself, she just instinctively distrusts anyone who isn’t white. I don’t know where she got it from because my grandparents weren’t like that.

Also my mum 🤣🤣

She was always prouder of her friends DCs than she was of my achievements. Put me down a lot, never listened to any advice I gave her, preferring to listen to the exact same advice given to her by someone else. Never ever told me she loved me (I know she did, it just would have been nice to hear it sometimes). Thought she was above everyone else and considered herself "posh". Never ever stood up for me, and mortified that I had DC "out of wedlock". I have worked out that she inherited all of these traits from her mother. I'm also wise enough to make sure that I NEVER treat my DC the same way. My DF on the other hand - I miss every single day

God that felt good

God that's annoying, hate it when they treat you like a teenager/child when you have a job, kids, house, life experience etc

Omg this is my dm too! In my head I get so frustrated thinking "just get to the point/spit it out woman"!!

My dad did this, infuriating!

He’d also read road signs out. There you’d be saying ‘wow so at work, we’ve interviewed and -‘
Dad (in a meaningful tone) ‘Nottingham - seven miles.’

whhhy

My Mum has been so quiet and shy her whole life she never fulfilled her potential. Working a skilled but very low paid job when she could easily have been an accountant etc. Probably a lifelong social anxiety as my Dad always seemed to be the one to take us to the the dentist or doctor as kids.

My Dad, could talk all day, never pause for breathe about the most random topic, he drives my Mum mad 🤣.

They are both great though!

My Dad is a bigot. He always was, but now he's turning in to an angry bigot. Thinks the world should be like it was when he was a lad in the 1950s. Hates 'woke' culture. Likely racist and definitely homophobic.

I actually idiolized him growing up and he was a highly respected hard working member of our community. But, not anymore. He's changed and so have I. I live on the other side of the world and visits home are becoming increasingly difficult and tense. My Mum on the other hand - heart of gold.

Well you haven't said anything that I mentioned in my post. It's great that your mum was your best friend. Mine was too, some of the time but I generally preferred my dad 😊

Mine died age 48 when I was 18. I miss her but I don't miss everything about her. It's perfectly OK to say these things

I adore my parents - but my mum is one of those who always has something else she must do, as you're trying to talk to her.

My Dad is a chatterbox and can talk for hours about something as daft as a pebble in a puddle. He's also a sod for always, ALWAYS looking on the negative side of everything and he always has to be right and even when he's proved wrong, he will invent an entire diatribe of why he was right - he definitely tries to "blind you with science" but we tell him he's blinding us with bollocks (we do have a very good, joky relationship where we banter like this so it's never intended or taken nastily.

He also humiliated me in a supermarket last year - a woman kept passing us in the aisles and she was wearing an absolutely gorgeous perfume and I'd commented on it to my dad and when I saw her again, I decided to compliment her on her perfume and ask what it was and my elderly dad (who is harmless and looks likes Santa but has no idea about women's things) bellowed "Oh I know what it is. It's Impulse isn't it?" (trust my Dad to choose one of the cheapest perfumed things you can buy and she was actually wearing a designer perfume) - her face froze and her mouth went full-on "cat's arse" and she stalked off.

Poor dad didn't know what he'd done, even when I took him to the Impluse body sprays and said he'd basically told her she was wearing cheap scent ......... I like Impulse and the Charlie perfumes as much as I like the more expensive ones, so he might have thought she was a bit like me and my sister lol

Yes! My mother was just like that. Always shoving pieces of paper in front of me (bills, bank statements, etc) asking me to show them to xxxxx (my OH) to ask what he thinks. For God's sake! I've been an accountant over 40 years and run my own accountancy business. I know infinitely more about financial paperwork than my OH. But she just refused to listen to anything I say to her re finances, wills, etc. When he was alive, it was always her husband. When husband died, it was either of her sons in law or either of her brothers. She just can't accept that my sister and I have any financial knowledge (or any knowledge at all really). All stems from a lifetime of being the "Little Woman" dutifully doing what the males in her family have told her, starting with her father, then husband, then brothers/sons in law. I think it's a generational thing. Thank heavens things have changed.

No ability to have a conversation beyond her health and the health of various people she knows (that you don't). It feels like she has made her world so small that this is the only type of topic in her wheelhouse.

This was my mum. In her head I think I stayed at about the age of twelve. I was, apparently 'always so disorganised, never knew where anything was or what was for dinner.'

I was a single mum to five kids. I was ORGANISED to the nth degree, just to get them all to school on time. And no, I didn't know what was for dinner because we didn't eat five dishes on rotation, plottable by the day of the week, because my kids preferred to eat different foods.

But no. I'm sure my mum was surprised on a weekly basis that I paid all the bills, looked after the children and went to work without everything descending into total chaos.

I can relate, my mum does this most of the time and also thinks conversation is just actually asking the question, not actually waiting for an answer, well she may let you get about 5 words out before she talks over you.

Mine doesn't know that I am a different age to her. So will remember things from earlier years that I can't as she is 30 years older than me but talks to me like I should know. She also has said, if I die before you, which I know could happen but it's a really odd thing to say to your child.

Mine is that as she's got older, my mother can not eat out (and this can be anything from a slice of cake to a full meal) without making some bespoke request (can the chef peel her prawns as she doesn't like doing it), asking for more of something (for free!) or sending something back for being too hot, too cold, underdone, overdone, too plain, too salty, smells funny etc... EVERY time!

Can I have a MIL one, she will often reference some show or musician from the 60's and ask if we remember watching that or seeing X live or whatever.
We have to keep reminding her no we weren't born then.
She doesn't mean have you heard of it either she means contemporary knowledge of it like she did at 16 or whatever.
Was is that all about! Otherwise with it and lovely company.

Mine hate each other but don't want to get divorced because that would be "a failure" Every time we see them they bicker and snap at each other. Mum is miserable about everything, and dad has a martyr complex.

Everything is about them and they are quite bigoted and down on everything. My teenager calls them out on it, the same as I do. They don't like that one bit.

Their current gripe is losing the winter fuel payment, not because they need it, because it's just so unfair, they've worked all their lives so they are entitled to it. The government never gave them anything blah blah.