To be offended by my mum's attention-seeking?

[Mendi]

My mum is a very 'woe is me' character generally. Everyone is richer/luckier/thinner than her. Their lives are brilliant where hers is terrible. This sort of thing.

We live in the same village and as my mum has my DCs after school, she interacts with one or two of the other school mums. With one in particular I'm aware she plays the big 'woe is me' card as this other mum sometimes says things to me along the lines of me not being a very good daughter to my mum.

Last Mothers' Day my mum told me that this woman (let's call her Claire) had gone round to give her a bouquet saying 'I thought I would bring you some flowers in case no one else does' Earlier that day I had been round to give my mum an expensive present which had been chosen with much thought for her. Clearly she had been whining to Claire though that she expected nothing.

This year I had my mum over for dinner on Mothers' Day and gave her another nice present (£50-worth). She had said she would rather be taken out for lunch but as I couldn't do that I decided to cook her a lovely meal instead. Which I did, despite the fact that I had a bad cold and was feeling shit. And despite the fact that I too am a mum, a single mum, and would quite like to have spent a quiet day with my own DC.

So anyway. Today I saw Claire and asked her how she was, she said fine, we had a nice weekend with Mothers' Day, what about you? I said yes, we did too and I had my mum over for a nice dinner. Claire looked a bit odd and then said that my mum had told her that she'd had to cook dinner for the whole family on Mothers'Day 'as usual'.

Now, as a rational adult I know that this is all about my mum's crazed attention-seeking and definitely not my fault. However, on a child level I am really, really pissed off. She is lying to someone we both know, making me look and sound shit, in order to get a "oh poor you, what a shame" reaction. I bust a gut trying to find a 'good enough' and 'expensive enough'present, cook a three course meal ON MOTHERS' DAY when I'd quite like a rest myself, and all my mum does is rubbish me to a mutual acquaintance (and probably several others).

AIBU?

My Mum does something like this too!

She has been very ill and is now physically very immobile and has moved to be near us so life is not quite as she would like.

Sometimes I hear her praising me to other people and then other times I have heard her saying to other people "well they are very busy, I hardly see the grandchildren at all these days" - we see her so much, I either pop in for coffee of a morning, take her out or bring her to my house at least once a week, and we always have her over for lunch one of the weekend days. Often there is something else going on and the dcs and I pop in in the evening in the week or we do something else at the weekend.

She is in a very lovely nursing home with nice staff, lots of entertainment, concerts, pat dogs, students coming into chat, Physio, hair dresser, other friends visiting, phoning, writing etc but if I ring her in the afternoon she will invariable say " I haven't spoken to anyone today, noone would notice if I dropped dead" - oh so who got you up this morning, who did you sit with at lunch, how did the physio session go, did you have a nice phone chat with x etc etc!

It does my head in and makes my dh very cross but in hindsight I think she has always been like this and is good at laying on the guilt esp on me as an only child.

Sometimes I don't see here as much as have a really busy week due to work/school commitments, punctures etc and she always turns it round to me not wanting to visit her even though there are very good reasons and it is nothing to do with not wanting to visit!

I can remember her crying for days when I decided to move into a flat with a friend and making me feel really guilty for leaving her. She has said before that she wished I didn't have such good friends as it means I don't need her as much?!

She is generally very lovely and I am picking the bad bits to illustrate the point and extend my empathy.

Your Dad is an Enabler. It's easier for him to tell himself you are in the wrong that confront the truth about the woman he has chosen to spend his life with. You'll never get him to acknowledge to you that the problem lies with her, because the emotional risk to himself is too high.

Also, if there is one thing you can do for yourself, you MUST stop feeling the need and desire to please her. For a start, you never will be able to. Not properly. Never, ever. From what you say, she sounds like a classic Narcissist. They are bottomless pits of need that they expect and demand others to fill... except they can never be filled, because what is missing is parts of normal personality and development, and no-one can give them that. The damage that creates narcissists happens before they are 2-2.5, btw, so there is little hope of them changing, even if they could see how badly and strangely and unfairly they behave.

They also make the people closest to them feel desperate to please them. Their emptiness and neediness can be like another, ghost member of the family, it can be that palpable. And of course, children want to please their parents, and to be enough to make them happy. But you couldn't and won't ever be able to please her properly or be enough for her. And that is nothing to do with you, it's all about problems she has.

You need to stand up to her, and stop responding to her crap and stop getting sucked into all these damaging patterns (easier said than done, I know). You're not going to make her happy by pandering to her, so make yorself happy by having dignity and integrity in your dealings with her and demanding respect from her and being prepared to play hardball if it's not forthcoming.

Time to think about making yourself happy, not her.

Ha thanks Raspberry.

We should flick the Vs at all horrible mothers.

It never ceases to amaze me when I read these Mum threads how many posts I sit saying "yep my Mum does that" and I never realised much before.

As, I think Rasberry posted nothing is as good as 'someone else got for their mu'..* My Mum has always had a best friend whose daughter is soooo wonderful. The last few years it has been a person who is so close to their Mum, I have all the stories about them snuggling up on the sofa, how the girl phones from around the world asking for her 'Mummy Hugs' she is missing etc with the implication.. why dont YOU do this

I think you should challenge when she lies says something..I had the 'Mummy Hugs' thing rammed down my throat for years until one day I walked into her garden where she had a load of workmates for my Dads birthday, I had just travelled for two hours quite pregnant to be told about the latest Mummy Hugs phone call before I could sit down. My Mum said " Oh YOU would never ask for Mummy Hugs would you, as you have never been very cuddly"

I just replied "Well what I have never had I've never missed" my Mum was furious and it there was a bit of silence. It did make me feel momentarily better though I could tell sympathy was with My Mum as I was the cruel hearted daughter as I reckon that was the picture she had painted

I've never heard about Mummy Hugs since

Thanks all for the helpful advice. I obviously need to manage my own responses rather than try to manage my mum. I just feel so guilty all the time! If I have anything nice, I feel guilty that she hasn't got it. Like when a friend gave me a very generous present recently as a thank you for helping her with something, I felt as though I should hide it from my mum. When I went on holiday last year I felt guilty that she wasn't coming with us, as she kept saying things like "Really the granny should go on holiday too. I haven't had a holiday for years!" (She had).

She is passive aggressive and you have been raised to feel responsible for her every whim and mood.

Read up on assertiveness, get your gp to refer you for some cbt, reclaim your life!

You can't make her happy unless she chooses to be. You can make your own life happier and I suspect that the boundaries you enforce will prompt your Mother to behave a bit better towards you.

Really the granny should go on holiday too. I haven't had a holiday for years!" (She had) she's very bitter, isn't she.

Don't let her guilt trip you any longer, you're a mum to your dc's and they are your responsibility, not her.

One more thing I've thought of. The year after my daughter was born, my grandma booked her main holiday for a couple of weeks later than usual so that she could be here for her first birthday celebration. It meant that she was away for my mother's birthday.

Well we did not hear the end of that. My grandma has never been away for my mother's birthday and this was her 56th birthday. In all those years, my mother has had her mother there on her birthday, we've always gone out for a meal to celebrate my mother's birthday, etc, etc.

I had my mother in tears on the phone complaining that there was no one in the family who loved her, no one who wanted her (and grandma going on holiday and not being there for her birthday was her [only] proof).

The big kick in the teeth is that my birthday usually falls in the Easter holidays and my mother has not been in the country for my birthday since I left home at 18 because she always goes abroad during the Easter holidays. More than that, she has always missed all but the first of my daughter's birthdays because it falls at a time when she likes to go on her summer holiday.

FWIW, it doesn't bother me in the slightest, it's just a bit irksome that she doesn't hold herself to the same impossible standards to which she holds others!

You're right, you can't manage her. There is nothing you can do that will change her or make her see things from your POV. Nothing at all.

I've had a really shit 6 months and the only thing that has made it bearable is not having her in my life. Which is a really sad thing to say, but it's true.

Whilst I'm not suggesting you do the same, I don't think you can really appreciate just how damaging it is to you and your happiness/wellbeing until you've removed it from your life. So set those boundaries, change your responses and good luck!