to be annoyed at my mother's constant rewriting of history??

[harpsichordcarrier]

today's gem (when talking about my sister's dire financial situation) "well of course you were very lucky, me and your dad supported you through university."

WTF???? what the flipdeflippingdoodle is the woman talking about?????

not one brass farthing did I ask for or get from them while I was studying or EVER in fact.

I was so taken aback that I just went "mmmmm" and now I am furious.

please tell me it's trivial and a long time ago and I should not be so mean to an old lady as to disturb her rose tinted spectacles.

My Mum used to do this too

'I never have a favorate, I loved you and your brother the same'

Ah yes, this would be why you once screamed at me 'Don't you go visiting your boyfriend when he has scarlet fever, you might come back and give it to your brother!!!'

My Dad does this, the other weekend at a big family meal he announced to the assembled company that I'd never given him a penny from my wages the entire time I lived at home, wtf? I stumped up every week and had no hesitation in pulling him up on it. He used to complain about his Mum having her own heavily edited version of his childhood as well

What's history for, if not to be rewritten?

My MIL does this to me - and she's only known me for a few years.

She tells my SsIL things like 'When Booboobedoo didn't have any money she didn't buy any new clothes for a year' to try and get them to follow my (completely fictional) example.

It isn't true, and I have no idea where she got it from.

She does things like this alot (which as you can imagine is great for relations with SsIL), and I just smile and point out calmly that it's not true. Then I come up with something 'bad' like the fact that I used to smoke loads of pot. I refuse to be a pawn in her Machivellian plans!

Machiavellian

barmy

You're so right CAM - and will we all drag our children downstairs by the hair, punch them in the face, throw them out of the house at the age of 11, and spit at them? Of course we will. Because we all do things like this, don't we?

Sheesh, cut the old folk some slack!

Oh dear. Time to get off this thread.

Not because you own the thread Greensleeves but because you're descending into your usual hysteria.

my mother always claimed to have done several of my continual assessment O levels

and she did. can't deny it. because she wouldn't leave me the feck alone

they became some gleeful family project - now they are the proof of my Needing Help

My mum does this regularly and I am looking forward to my turn.Ds already thinks I used to bake and do finger painting with him when he was little and thats how it will stay

That's right CAM, I'm hysterical.

Bye bye

People actually do that? Lie directly about the past in front of you?

Madness.

I have to say my parents have yet to do this. In fact there is generally amount of brutal honesty!

And just because some people do, doesn't mean everyone does or will!!!

Am sorry for you harpsi, my mother wouldn't have even finished speaking before I angrily denied such a remark!

Oh yes, my mum does that. Always to her credit, obviously.

CBarmy doesn't even start to cover it CAMy.

When I had my dd (my 2nd) and was struggling a bit, I rang my mum for a bit of support as she had the same age gap between me and my dsis. She started telling me about how she was in Malta, miles away from her family, my dad working away all the time, preparing to move back to the UK, having to build all their packing cases from planks of wood, all whilst looking after 19 month old me and newborn dsis. Basically saying I had nothing to moan about. A few months later I was looking through the family photo albums and there's a photo of my grandparents proudly holding newborn dsis."I didn't know G'pa & G'ma came to Malta" says I. "Oh, yes. They came to help us pack for the move," she says. I bit my tongue VERY hard but now take no notice of her 'I had it so much harder than you' monologues.

My mother says she has forgotton everything . I once had an argument with her about what date my birthday was .

God I thought it was just my mother! ive honestly thought I was going mad at times because her take on the past is so different to mine.

Mind you Ive had something similar with DP too. Once asked him where the radio times was, he said we didnt have one. i knew we had as Id bought it, and read some of the articles! But he kept saying we didnt to the point where I was nearly hysterical. Eventually bought a new one and asked him how I knew what was in the articles!

(Eventually found the other one under the sofa...)

My mum does this as well. Unless it's going to affect me in some way I just let it go - not much point in arguing with a nearly 80yo. But my sister would be amazed to hear what she was like when she was young, lol!!!

What a revelation this is. My father does this too - he will invent entire episodes of my childhood which to the best of my (and my mother's) recollection never occured. I had honestly put it down to neurological trauma as a result of a serious head injury in an accident before I was born, however I now see that it is a symptom of self-obsessed aprent syndrome from which he has always suffered quite accutely.

apparently my mother's chronic mental illness and anger management problem during my childhood was just NOT THAT BAD.

What pisses me off the most is not just that she invents stuff but she tries to make me stop remembering stuff she doesn't feel like remembering.

My MIL does a different version:
'your DH NEVER had tantrums as a toddler. And the twins never did either. I never had any problems with any of them after they were babies.'

Really. So you are the only woman in the universe to have given birth to three superhuman, angelic children in succession. Right.

Gosh, so much here to be apoplectic about. I would be.

I agree she's audacious. If you start reacting would you ever be able to stop?

It's like she makes a point of creating a different narrative around the very things she got wrong. Gas lighting but in such an obvious way that does it really matter.