To uninvite my mother for Christmas?

[IsThisYourSanderling]

She will probably end up coming anyway, as we already invited her, but oh how I wish she wasn't.

Reasons she should come:

• We had a baby in September, it's her first grandchild and his first Christmas
• When he was 8 days old she travelled up to help us on short notice (when I realised we were completely out of our depth) and stayed for nearly three weeks, doing laundry and other less than fun tasks. It was a lifesaver.
• She'd have a shit Christmas if she can't come here.

Reasons I don't want her to come:

• She has extreme paranoia issues that make her very difficult and often miserable to be around, you have to creep around on eggshells and she'll still find something to latch onto as proof you're conspiring against her.
• Her main thing is to accuse me of betraying her, conspiring, talking behind her back to relatives I haven't seen in years, etc. She brings it up whenever we're alone and won't believe me no matter what I say or do. When she was last year I had to leave the room with my newborn attached to my breast because she'd started attacking me about my supposed contact with my grandmother and uncle (I'm not in contact with either more than a card at Christmas, not that it should matter). She proceeded to follow me to my bedroom to keep going with the accusations. It's like this every time she visits, but I didn't expect to get chased around the house while breastfeeding a three week old.
• She's a pathological liar. These vary from extreme and damaging lies I won't ever really forgive her for, to silly ridiculous lies aimed at saving face, to lies that allow her to effectively pocket the occasional tenner here and there. It's a terrible bore and if you call her out you'll always regret it.
• Her latest thing is this: I suggested my husband and I get her a railcard so she can travel up to see us more (long train journey). She replied to say it wasn't like me to make practical suggestions and that I must be being coerced (she's always been obsessed with the idea of me being brainwashed/ coerced - even though I'm now in my thirties, have a PhD, a husband and a child, I still apparently am being brainwashed and marshalled against her by influences I do t understand...). So, friendly offer of railcard = getting accused for the millionth time of being coerced. Fuck that.
• She never, ever apologises for anything ever, and so me asking for an apology has been met with silence. What will happen now is that she'll refuse to acknowledge me for a while, then send a breezy text pretending nothing has happened so as not to endanger her Christmas up here. So far she has been giving us the silent treatment since Wednesday evening, when I asked if she would apologise or if she still thinks I'm being coerced into handing out railcards. She hasn't asked about her ten week old grandson once. She hasn't looked at his Instagram page (set up so she and in laws could see pics of him regularly) because she'd have to use the library computer and is too suspicious of the librarians, who must be spying on her. Her delusions and paranoid suspicions are more important to her than her only grandchild (and much more important to her than me).
• Her expectation will be that I shut up about the coercion thing, pretend it's fine that she withheld interest in my and my son as a punishment, and go ahead with our jolly family Christmas. I don't want to. I don't like being around her. But the guilt of telling her she's no longer welcome is pretty huge, because it means her having an absolutely shit time at her mother's (she lives with her mother and they hate each other)

So yeah. WIBU to uninvite her?

Forgive typos. I tapped out this entire saga with my thumb whilst breastfeeding.

I do think you need to give yourself space to detach a bit. When I was young I thought I had a nice mummy who went a bit funny. I used to run over the situations which had ended up in her being upset and refusing to speak to me, trying to work out at what point I'd done the wrong thing and how I could do better next time. Again and again like Groundhog Day. I didn't realise shouting at me was probably her stress release and I couldn't avoid it.

Now, I want her to be ok and I'll help if I can but I'm emotionally closed off to her in terms of most things. I have a clear memory of the specific moment when I realised that she would never be there for me, she just wasn't on my side. It was like something in me broke but it was quite liberating because I gave up trying to connect with her from that moment onwards. I did worry in case something happened to me that might leave me extremely emotionally vulnerable because that was the level at which she'd look for things use as leverage to get a reaction.

Once you stop feeling emotionally vulnerable around your mum and in control of your own boundaries then I think it will get easier.

I have also found I needed to detach emotionally as much as possible

Hey OP I'm not RTFT at the moment but just wanted to say cheers about the "set yourself on fire" line - I've heard it said by other adult children of dysfunctional families, I think it sums it up beautifully.

On the thing of your mum staying when your son was born, did you have the thing where everyone goes "do you have help? Is your mum coming?" I got that the whole time and it made it a whole lot worse. It felt like such a weak line to take, you know, one minute I'm in tears with the HV saying I don't know how anyone can manage 4 week old twins alone, next she's asking me where my mother is and I'm like "oh we don't really get on." I felt like I must be exaggerating either the mum problem or the baby problem, that in fact I was the problem. When actually I'm the opposite of a bloody problem. I parents my scary mother for 35 years, till my kids arrived and not only could I not physically manage it any more, I could also for the first time really see how fucked up it had all been.

Yes, there's definitely a connection between level of interest displayed by the parent in question and perceived level of neediness/helplessness displayed by one of her children. My mother revels in a crisis or a drama...she LOVES to feel needed. DSis was in hospital this year and asked me to go and help with her children, and DM is still outraged that it wasn't she who was asked. She enjoys looking after ill people ( as long as it's an illness she can understand and as long as the patient suffers silently rather than grumpily). She loves to think she's being helpful and essential. DP and I went through a period of being incredibly hard up and she was forever trying to throw money at us, even though we didn' ask. We are much more comfortable now, but still she refers to us as being grindingly poor and in need of money.

But she just cannot cope with a normal day to day relationship with you know, just normal mother/daughter chats without lurching from one emotional upheaval over some perceived slight or another. It's the very opposite of a restful relationship, but still sounds nowhere near what you're experiencing, OP

Sukey - how I wish I didn't know exactly what you mean.

It's like being held hostage to her chosen crisis of the moment. And of course it can change moment by moment.
Every car journey by a family member resulted in tears and threats to call the police....

But it does fade as she weakens

"I won't SLEEP until you're in! You hear me? Not one wink! So don't be late, because I can't relax. You'll be preventing me sleeping if you're out enjoying yourself".

But never interested in the kind of evening you've had.

Sound familiar?

OP,
For what its worth my mum was very similar, but not as bad (she would never have destroyed my post for example) , and it has been interesting to read everyone's experiences. She was mostly not the same with her grandchildren, although some of the irrationality crept through. I did have to restrict contact for my own sanity (which involved NC at one point for a few months until she called me up as if nothing had happened!) but we reached a comfortable place where she could visit for the day (she preferred not to have to tidy her house for us to visit) but overnight stays were generally fraught, so were very limited. This meant that she came to some of the DC performances etc which meant a lot to them too.

She passed away unexpectedly recently and I am comforted that we managed to reach an equilibrium where she was involved in her grandchildren lives without having too much influence.

OP you are undoubtedly at a weak point having to deal with a newborn. My recommendation would be to explain that you are really too tired and stressed to have visitors to stay, but if she would like to visit for a few hours in the daytime on Christmas that would be lovely. Then keep invitations for the foreseeable future to short, controlled periods.

I am sorry you are going through this.

"I won't SLEEP until you're in! You hear me? Not one wink! So don't be late, because I can't relax. You'll be preventing me sleeping if you're out enjoying yourself".

But never interested in the kind of evening you've had.

Sound familiar?"

yes.
Calls to the police
Tears
Drama
My father quiet then raging
Me taking it all in...

It's quite hard to talk about. I have never been in this kind of conversation.

Where was mumsnet when I was 16?

Tanks for the thread OP
I like the equilibrium advice above...

I agree. My mum lives about a hundred miles away and we can just about manage there and back in a day.

Your mothers eye and Sukey sound a lot like how her mother is with her- tears, threats, drama, revelling in crises. My grandmother is a toxic narcissist. Calls to the police wouldn't happen in my own case as my mother would doubtless be way too suspicious of them, but she did once call my university lecturer saying she thought I'd been kidnapped when a stayed out one night in first year. I moved out soon after. She was very acute back then and was convinced I was about to be abducted by our local council, who watched us through the tv...

The short visit thing isn't possible btw as she lives 500 miles away. It is always very difficult to get her to leave again once she's here. She expects to be allowed to stay for a month at a time and the bad atmosphere doesn't bother her as its even worse where she lives. This Christmas will be / was going to be a concerted effort to get her to stay for less than a week. She becomes unbearable towards the end of each visit with comments about how we 'want her out' etc. She has done a dawn flit on occasion, leaving without warning or goodbyes, rather than give us the 'satisfaction' of driving her to the train station.

I had / have achieved what I thought was almost complete emotional detachment from her in my early twenties when she disappeared from a visit to my London flat to live rough on the streets and I suddenly didn't have a mother anymore. I think it's having my FS that has made me emotionally vulnerable again. I'm angry and upset with her on his behalf in a way I'd stopped being on my own.

My DS, that is

Hope you slept some OP

It's not nice telling these stories about someone we still care for.....

OP, has your mum ever been able to answer questions about what went on in her own childhood? I find it very helpful to piece together answers from mum's life story. It helps me to be in that compassionate strong place and to be less ashamed/angry less of the time.

Mum's fear from early childhood was of losing her own mother. She, my dad and my uncle are universally positive about my dgm but I do know she had depression which of course in the 40s/50s she had to hide.

By the way I know that "penultimate day" hell....

I'm sorry I haven't read all the replies and I know this wasn't the aim of your post but I felt such overwhelming relief reading your post. Iv had very similar with my mum and sometimes it can feel very isolating, like you're the only one with a parent like that. My mum has told some horrendous lies but she is also sweet, caring and generous. I have 3 dc now and I do wonder if she will tell lies about them one day. I dread it. She loves the kids so much and they love her, it would just be horrible.
Her "episodes" are much less frequent than your mothers though.
The conspiring against her really hit home with me, my mum refused help because she said we all just wanted someone to blame

OP, would it be possible for you to visit your DHs family for Xmas day? That way if she decides to turn up unannounced then there's nobody in.

I don't think you're being unreasonable at all to uninvite, the most important thing in your life has to be your DS now. He is your priority. He doesn't need to be exposed to this kind of toxic environment and uncertainty of whether grandma loves him this week or not.

DS will pick up on emotions if you're feeling stressed and emotional. I would not sacrifice my first family Xmas with new baby just to please her. This is a situation of her own making.

Thanks all.,She left a voicemail today saying her phone is broken (very predictable- everything is always broken when I send messages she doesn't want to hear), but that she got my message about alternative plans for Christmas and understands if we want to go overseas to be with DH's family. So I wrote a series of texts saying the alternative plans are not to go overseas, but are a response to her increasingly unpredictable behaviour, which needs addressing. I said the good and kind person she is is currently losing a battle with the paranoid person who tampers with my mail and is at a point where she accuses me all the time, out of nowhere, for any reason. I said I can't and won't deal with it anymore because I now have a child to think about, that she can't expect to keep behaving this way while still being welcomed into my home and life, but that if she stopped, accepted there is some sort of problem (which I said didn't have to involve accepting my interpretation of paranoid personality disorder - it just has to mean acknowledging there is a problem of some kind that is damaging our relationship) and got help, even just some counselling, then we could function as s family and she could continue to be part of our lives. I emphasised the good person I know is there, and also that the choice is now hers. This thread gave me a lot of insight and the necessary objectivity to frame it all properly in a series of messages to get, so thank you. I highly, highly doubt I'll get a good response or even any response, but it's a step forward for me at least.

to everyone who has related to this thread. I hope it has been as helpful to you reading through it as it has been to me.

And keep sharing, everyone, if it helps

I have spent all day worrying that my Dm may be lying in a heap at the bottom of her stairs. I should have spent today thinking good vibes in my son's direction as he has an interview that has the potential to change his life. She knows this and asked me when I phoned her last week to keep me posted re his travel/arrival etc. I texted her this am as promised and so far no response. She does this when she wants to play games. Usually my texts get an instant response of "message received, many thanks," which I assume she has saved in drafts so she doesn't have to put too much effort in. Today should be about Ds, not about a self-centred woman who always puts herself first. Sorry about the rant, I can cope with things re me, but I feel so upset that she can't acknowledge her DGc's achievement.

OP, I like that your messages talked about valuing the "good" her. I share your misgivings about what can be achieved but perhaps it is as much about articulating your own boundaries? Which need to be reestablished in this post natal period.

I suppose there is more chance of her acknowledging your boundaries if you know and feel them.

"She does this when she wants to play games."

:(

Hope the interview went well.