AIBU to want parents to accept me as I am?

[nc2015]

Namechanged.

I live close to my parents so we see eachother a lot, and they are always commenting on that I'm 'different' now but its just silly insignificant things like if we eat out they'll comment on my meal choice saying 'I thought you'd have had x, you always used to have x. Are you sure you don't want x?' if we're shopping mum'll try t o have me try on clothes other than my picks by saying 'don't you like this? you always used to like this style of top/jeans etc'. When we redecorated our house dad commeneted that mum said she was surprised we didn't use a certain colour scheme at all because 'it's what i always wanted in my bedroom'. They'll mention the name of friends i've not been in touch with since school and comment that 'I'm surprised you've not stayed in touch, you were always so close'. Mum even said something like this about a boyfriend I used to have in front of my DH! If i do do something i 'always used to', one of them will say 'oh, it's so nice to see you getting back to your old self!' or 'it's nice to have the old you back'.

Problem is this things they do the 'always used to' with are things i may have done/liked when I was a child, and naturally i don't have the same tastes as I did when i was a child. My 'old self' is in the past and i'm tired of the nigglging and pressure to show the same likes and dislikes as child me had. If i comment on their comment and say people change etc, dad will usually repeat 'but you've ALWAYS wanted/liked x', and mum says thing like 'I don't feel like i know you any more" and 'what happened to my baby?'. They seem to be geniunely disappointed that my tastes and likes/dislikes changed, even though it's irrelevant things like what i choose to have to eat

i think they're upset that I am an adult now and that i haven't really stayed like I was when I was younger, which suppose i understand, but I'd like our relationship to reflect that and be more like one between adults and not parents pretending ther 'baby' is still a child. Most of our conversations are mum asking if I rememeber when certain things from when I was a child happened and I've started placaiting her and saying yes all the time even though no i don't remember most of it, as most people don't remember day trips as a 3 year old, because she gets upset if I don't remember things. i'm an only child which prob contributes, but I have a 2yo DD they see a lot, so if it was just missing having a child around, I thought being around her might've helped, but if anything its making it worse because they're starting to push DD to be like child me too, and she's her own person not a mini me!

I really want to ask them to stop and enjoy being with me not who i was when i was a child but i don't know how to do this without offending them. AIBU to want it in the 1st place? DH thinks I should let them be and he finds the things they say funny, which I see it could be to someone whose not having the comments directed at them, but It's starting to put real strain on the relationship as i come away from spending time with them annoyed and i don't want that - we have always had a great relationship,but they're stuck in the child/teenager years and it's not working.

As I often find myself on MN saying...yes my Mum (and Dad) can be very much like this.

They have been asking me forever if I ever keep in touch with someone who was a good friend until I was about 14, but you know, we have moved on. We never fell out but just went our different ways. I made the mistake of telling them we had briefly connected through Friends ReUnited some 12 odd years ago. My Dad aways says wistfully " you were really good friends with Delrose"...er yes 35 years ago.

Then there are the ribs....whenever we got out for a meal my Mum always chooses the place (she's rather controlling over this) and one of the reasons is that she says "they do ribs here that you like" for many years I had the fucking ribs but stopped about 10-12 years ago. I still get "arn't you having the ribs, you like those dont you

My parents are exactly like this. My mum is particularly awful. She once saw her brother drink a can of coke. She was horrified because "he was never brought up to drink that". How perfectly shocking: a man of 50+ finding he wants to drink something he didn't have a child.

I eat all sorts of things that I never had growing up because they didn't like them so we never had them. Spicy food, for example, and parsnips, spinach, sweet potato, and most vegetables others than peas.

She also thinks I have a weight problem. Like I did when I was 7 because she fed me junk and didn't encourage any exercise. She still finds the concept of walking anywhere odd.

It must be very common because I get this too. I have to grin and bear it now as mum has dementia but for decades I've liked to have a beer with my curry, and if she's there she will always say "I didn't know you liked beer. You didn't used to - it must be dh's influence!"
Aaaaaaaargh! I don't need my dh to tell me what to drink!!
There are loads of other examples but the ones where she thinks I am 'copying dh' are the most exasperating.

Yet another thing to try to avoid doing when my teens are grown up - maybe I'd better take a vow of silence when they hit 20.

'There are loads of other examples but the ones where she thinks I am 'copying dh' are the most exasperating'

I get this too Kikit! Or used to, not so much since I massively cut contact with them

About 10 years ago, quite soon after DP and I got together, I was complaining to my parents about my job. They already knew that DP doesn't enjoy his job. My mother actually asked me if the reason why I didn't like my job at that time was because DP doesn't like his job! Isn't that what a 7 year old might do, change their mind to be 'in' with a cool crowd at school?!

A couple of years later, I gave up meat. I got asked at every meal - 'is DP a vegetarian too?' He is the biggest meat fan on the planet, thought I was mad, and quelle surprise, it was actually completely my own decision. It really showed me what they thought of me

My parents regularly make a face when I drink any alcohol because "we are not big drinkers in this house". Apparently, opening a bottle of wine one Friday each month and drinking over the next few days is alcoholism.

I wonder where that puts their nightly g 'n' t.

I also wasn't allowed to go to my grandfather's funeral as it was "not for children; funerals are for the older generation". I was 22 when he died.

Can you not come out with something like I was 5 then I also played with barbie dolls or I was 15 then I also thought Duran Duran were awesome and wanted to marry Simon le Bon my tastes have matured since then..

My parents do this too. They are now in their mid-70s abd time stood still for them when they were 50. So I'm 10 with silly notions, my sister is a wayward 15 year old who can't be trusted and our brother is the responsible mature one who excels at school. Actually I'm in my mid 30s, married with 2 children, my sister is 40, works hard and lives a pretty sedate life - and my brother is an unenemployed bum who dropped out of his PhD 20 years ago, hasn't had a real job since but has a hugely inflated sense of his own brilliance thanks to their misplaced admiration of him for his whole life.

When I had my first DC they came to see me and had a huge falling out with me, shouting at me in my house about some minor infraction that my mother was sulking about. I honestly think it short-circuited their brains to see me as a grown woman who had become a mother. They just couldn't come to terms with me not being a child myself. Since then I've kept my distance from them emotionally because it's so clear they don't have a clue who I am anymore and don't care to find out.

Is anyone else's parents who are like this not well educated? My parents both left school at 16 and are very narrow minded generally so I do wonder if this kind of mindset is caused by an inability to learn new things and adapt to change. I envy people whose parents know them and love them for who they are!

'Is anyone else's parents who are like this not well educated?'

Had never thought about this before. My parents, who are like this, are both university educated. They have travelled quite a bit, go to the theatre, concerts etc but are incredibly small minded and conformist, obsessed with what everyone thinks of them, think everyone who doesn't behave like they do is weird. This most definitely, 100% includes me

My MIL left school at 16, and at the not-old-at-all age of 68, is as grumpy and crotchety and narrow minded and stuck in her ways as its possible to be. I think small minded people are small minded no matter what their life experiences!

I think it's often a case of just living in the past (especially like my mum in her 80s), even younger 'oldies' maybe in their late 60s/early 70s may see our childhood as happier times so that's where they want to stay. I really hope I will be able to maintain an interest in the here and now as I get older but who knows?

My parents do this to a certain extent. It makes me feel very sorry for them because I think they feel scared at the world changing and are clinging to old memories. I think it's linked to subtle memory changes as you age - short term memory becomes a bit more unreliable while long term memory often strengthens and old memories pop up unexpectedly. It must be so confusing to see the child you knew so well and remember so clearly being this different person. I don't have a good relationship with my parents but I'm over this aspect of things - I sort of get it now I have my own kids. It's infuriating but I understand where it comes from. They are fearful, inhibited people, I pity them.

My experience chimes with that, CailinDana, though I have a reasonable- because-we-live-in-another-country relationship with mine. Fearful and timorous is a good description of mine, and my mother in particularly has a marked bias towards the shy, self-deprecating 'yes girl' type, which was how she brought up her daughters, but which in no way describes my adult self.

The other problem is that the version of me she would prefer me to have remained never really existed.

That's probably true Lotta. I have often felt sorry for my parents that they never had a chance to be educated and felt they wete hard done by in life.

In my own fantasy version of reality, they would have had the chance to be educated and would be more tolerant, accepting Parents as a result. Probably just fueled by the fact that friends who do have a good relationship with their parents tend to have more educated families. In reality, they're just small-minded and most likely would be no matter what!

I do feel a bit sympathetic to the 'what happened to my baby' mindset though. Can you not, looking at your own kids? Mine are only 5 and 3, and already I do that some days! Little one is going to be starting kindergarten soon and that's an end to him being all mine and mine alone.

We bring them into the world, watch them grow up, and then if you/ they wander off to the other side of the country and only see them once in a blue moon, you / they will become almost a stranger. They may actually be trying to re-establish an emotional connection with you.

The stresses and strains of modern non-social, non-familial, non-community, only-driven-by-economics life can be felt at all ages.

MIL occasionally remarks on DW's love of curry with "you never liked that as a girl". She doesn't say the same of hot water and flush toilets, both of which were similarly unobtainable in those days.