As you get older, is it normal to find your mum increasingly irritating?

[makeminealeosayer]

I do mine. She is baby boomer age. She used to be very easy going, laid back, open minded. Now she is very DM in views, moans about immigrants, generally uptight and of a curtain-twitcher mentality. Anybody else found this?

ARGH! was going to start a similar thread myself tonight!! me and my mum are very close but yesterday i had to just leave before i lost it. me DH and DD (2) went to visit my dad yesterday (they are separated) he lives in a flat so DD was fluttering around and she came into the living room where we all were with an open empty bottle of pills. they were my dads sleeping tablets and she had eaten them. it wasn't closed properly and beside his bed and DD takes tablets every day so found them and decided to chomp on them. she had four of them. so panic stations getting her to the hospital and all a bit mad i was majorly freaking the absolute fuck out and we got her in and she got seen and treated. they kept her in a few hours to keep an eye on her and luckily we got there very quickly and a major crisis was averted (DD fine however i was just a mess) anyway afterwards we went to my mum i was just so upset and wanted her. anyway once i had calmed i was getting ready and my mum said to me "oh what a day with me nearly losing that money and all" (she had earlier thrown out the wrong envelope but recovered it in half an hour) i nearly fucking lost it. i couldn't believe that she was saying this to me! my daughter only had a potentially fatal overdose but you nearly lost money my mother can be the most self obsessed person in the world. when my mother has a problem no-one has a bigger problem than her, her problems are always the worst. and breathe....

Omg maigdhlin - what a total stress for you yesterday - I can't imagine how worried you must have been. I lost Ds2 (age 3) in tesco yesterday and that stressed me out enough let alone sleeping pill overdose. Glad she's ok.

My mum is great in lots of ways but majorly irritating when she hasn't got her hearing aid in and I have to repeat everything three times. She's also become a faffer, constantly going over and over things, obsessed with food shopping and 'having enough in' etc. But I realise this will probably come to us all...

I love my mother dearly but she has completely stopped listening.

Every day I call her and she just talks at me.
Today I tried to mention Christmas, our absurdly large tax bill, and DS' endless allergies...but she barely ackowledged I'd spoken and went striahgt back to her topic du jour: will DH want to continue with a power of attorney if I died . I said yes, but apparently that was not the end of the subject.

Not got time to write a long post but can't say how relieved I feel at reading some of these descriptions.
I love my Mum and know she loves me but blimey she has changed over the past few years and I recognise o lot of her idiosyncrasies in many of your posts.
I am not alone!!!

In some ways yes but she is mostly lovely.
I did say to DH when I was pregnant with DS2 and having the pregnancy from hell if she said "well you would have this 3rd baby" one more time then I was disowning her, but then she always did something lovely like all my ironing so I forgave her!
Can't wait to tell her I'm having DC4!

My mother has always been quite right wing/racist/tory in an Express sort of a way, and I find she moderates herself with me more because I stand up to her - however I can barely do an hour in her company. She talks so much - non stop and not conversation - that I actually think there's something wrong with her.

MIL has always been v tolerant, arty, leftie - she's a LOT more fearful of little things like where she's going to park when she goes somewhere new. It's come on in the past couple of years and it's such a contrast to her total ability to travel all over the world for work, deal with difficult people. She's also repetitive and prone to sending ponderous emails when drunk. I love her but can't cope with that side of her - it's like she can't see that it's horrible for someone to open their email in the morning and read....self-indulgent....not-even prose. Or that they can't see they've been invited somewhere in order to help with parking. I'm worried about her tbh.

I love my mum to death but she drives me absolutely mental as well. She has started to circle the adverts in our local paper in the men looking for women section! You deserve a nice man she says as she gets her pen out! She also makes homemade wine gets trashed and then ringsme at an ungodly hour banging on about how she loves me but I need to meet someone nice and sort my life out! grrrrrrr

YES!!! And recently after being a Labour voter all her life she has done a complete 360 and could now quite happily be a Tory MP! We seriously can't have a decent conversation without her ranting at me about how 'wrong' my views are. Grrrrrrrrrr!

She's also repetitive and prone to sending ponderous emails when drunk

Sounds very familiar but without the excuse of being drunk I have just had to do much damage control within the family after a particularly vicious email she sent - I am very very sick of it tbh. LaPrune you are not alone!

As i get older, I find everyone increasingly irritating.

Yes, deffo. I love her dearly, but definitely!

Prune my Dad is heading the same way as your MIL, afraid of everything beyond their front door. He's going to worry himself into an early grave (he's 66, still working FFS!) because he gets afraid to drive in traffic (more than one or two cars is intolerable) or go out in "adverse" weather (a bit of wind or rain). And then where will that leave my poor mother who has devoted her life to him?

I believe there is a biological reason why people get more conservative as they get older, but let's hope that by the time we get into our sixties/seventies, science has developed a pill to cure that!

I do agree. Personally in my situation I think it is down to spending too much time together (I am on maternity leave with no.2 and crave company and need help too), and also having lost my dad I get all of her 'unfiltered' IYKWIM?

More generally speaking, I think many people do tend to get more narrow-minded and self-absorbed as they get older - not so many new experiences, not so many new and different friends or colleagues, spending more time on their own or just with their partner, and they have more to lose so become more protective of their world. And also people do become less idealistic as they grow older, hence the move away from being left wing. Also as their world becomes smaller they also become more anxious about things which they used to do without thinking.

IMO a big factor is also the 'bus stop moaners' once they have their bus passes (we used to joke about these when I was a child, but it is now just a different generation doing the moaning - always very right wing views).

I know there are plenty of exceptions to that, I am probably just stereotyping.

I feel better reading this thread. I am close to my mum and I love her dearly BUT she drives me crazy at times. Like others have said it's got worse as I've got older - I don't know if I'm getting rattier or if she's changing or if I just notice things more. She's got very rigid views on things, again most seem to have come from the DM which she's buying more and more. One of her 'things' is women of a 'certain age' wearing trousers or even worse jeans. I don't even bother to disagree any more-I don't have the energy and I'll hear it all again within a week.

Actually, I agree with Ouryve, I am increasingly grumpy as well. I don't want to be. I'm not right wing but I do think some people are utterly feckless and dim. I never used to feel this way. SIGH grumpy old lady genes.

Well if it's increasing age that makes people less tolerant, then could that explain your finding it harder to tolerate her

My parents seem to have 'joined forces' over the years & I find them increasingly hard to get on with. If I voice an opinion that is different from one of them, I am obviously wrong & just saying it to be awkward.

It feels more & more like they see me as a troublesome teen who should just do as they say.

My mum has also turned into a really 'grumpy old woman'. She was always prone to gossip (there are so many things I know that people have said, 'but don't tell your mum' cos it would be spread), but now it's carping - just grumpy gossip, nothing good to say about anyone.

I just think that as their lives have settled into older age, their sphere of experience, as well as their opinions, have narrowed.

I still love them, but conversations with them are actually quite draining as I have to consciously think all the time to avoid just arguing.

I hope you all save this thread and read it again in 20 years time.

That'll be you, that will...

Yes yes Wordfactory. My mum is great and I couldn't manage without her but I do wish she'd listen. I tell her stuff that's really really important to me and she just changes the subject without even a cursory "yes dear", despite her expectation that we all sit and listen to her endless tales about people that we don't know and whether it was Thursday...no...Wednesday...or was it Tuesday?...no it was definitely Thursday...etc etc, repeat to fade.

And why, when they've been out for a meal, do my parents feel the need to tell me exactly what they and their fellow diners ate for each course?

What really makes me is that she moans even more about my gran doing exactly the same thing.

What I love about my mother is the way she always looks pleased to see me. She has the loveliest smile and the gentlest nature. I really do not know how she has continued to love grumpy thankless me all these years.
What irritates me about my mother is that she is very organised and on the ball about money and is always reminding me what to do about money so in order to feel independent I have to not keep her fully in the picture which is very hard as she is such a good listener I tell her most things.
Recently she has become anxious and panicky and worried she might forget things so she writes endless lists. This breaks my heart and I would do anything to protect her from being anxious and worried.
Sometimes I wish we could have just one conversation when she didn't feel she had to remind me to do something and it upsets me that she has never accepted I am capable of remembering.
But I am- and I will always remember her.

Oh God yes. My mother is a baby boomer too. She has started to talk really, really loudly for some bizarre reason, and she repeats herself all the time. Even if you tell her that she has already told you something she just carries on and tells you again. She has also taken to fretting and sighing and muttering and huffing and puffing a great deal to herself, as everything she does seems to involve super-human powers of concentration.

Hahaha Feralgirl my mum does that with food as well! I get a run-down on who ordered what every time. And if she has cooked something new she has to phone me and tell me - all the ingredients, and how she did it. Drives me and my sister nuts.

feralgirl whether it was Thursday...no...Wednesday...or was it Tuesday?...no it was definitely Thursday...etc etc, repeat to fade.... oh yes!!! and you just want to shout 'It Does Not Matter which day this non event happened!!!^ but you don't, you mmmm and ah ha throughout and fein some interest

As I got into my late 30's and 40's I found it increasingly difficult to feel 'on the same wavelength' as my parents, I humour them and it feels as if they humour me.
I cant say they drive me mad because I dont really expect to see eye to eye with them