To wonder why my mum acts like this?

[Sokuto]

For as long as I can remember my mum asks or repeats questions that she knows the answer to. An example, before Christmas I mentioned we might be having a Boxing Day party and invited her. She politely declined. The next day she asked me who else was going do I explained that we were not doing it anymore as we had too much on. Next time I spoke to her she asked if I was still having the party. I said "no, we have too much on". A few days later she asked if we were still doing the party. I repeated "no it's not happening now, it was only an idea to begin with, never set in stone". The next time I spoke to her "so are you looking forward to the party?". I again told her it wasn't happening.
Christmas Eve I rang her, she said "are you still doing the party?" !!!!! I said "no! Remember I said it wasn't happening?".
Christmas Day "have you for your party tomorrow then?". I simply said "no" and she knew!! She didn't even question my response!!

After Christmas - "did you have your Boxing Day party?"

She does this all the time. It's not that she's forgotten, she just gets fascinated by something and constantly asks questions even when she knows the answer. It's so frustrating.

Another one - I mentioned I was going shopping in the afternoon. She then asked me 4 times within an hour if I was going shopping.

She also gets fascinated by non events such as the bus driver accidentally dropping some change. Anyone else would forget about it soon after it happened but my mum goes on and on about it, makes a huge (what she considers) comincal story about it which she retells over and over again and she'll remember it for years.

It's very frustrating and makes it so difficult to talk to her and she's just fascinated about stupid things and won't discuss anything else without reverting back to her current topic of obsession.

As I've got older I've wondered if it's a mental health problem or some kind of personality disorder? She's also narcissistic so very difficult to get on with. She gets absolutely obsessed with one shop and gets so defensive over it. It used to be Morrisons, she'd shop there and would refuse to shop anywhere else, would question other people's decisions not to shop there and would get irritated by anyone not singing Morrisons praises and would start pressuring and arguining about why others don't shop there. It's since changed to Aldi and recently she went on and on at me about why I don't shop there saying she "always will" and doesn't care what anyone else thinks etc! I tried telling her that most people don't hold a loyalty to one particular company so it's not a big deal but it makes her so argumentative and difficult. Feeling frustrated that I can't just have a normal conversation with her.

Repeatedly asking questions that you know the answer to can be an ASC thing. It's comforting apparently.

And perhaps it's not narcissistic but just anxiety playing out when she worries about herself?

Likewise, becoming obsessed with a certain topic, like the boiler man.

Anyway, it all sounds harmless enough. Perhaps run with it? You might read the business pages with more interest when it's Lidl month so you can chip in about how well they're performing?!

There is apparently an excellent book by an adult woman with autism, the name if which escapes me, but if no one replies with it, I will ask DH and post the title later. Might be helpful for you.

Some of the other examples by other posters sound narcissistic but the OPs Mum not so much. I think it's a neurodevelopmental issue. Incredibly frustrating but you just have to find a way to manage it.

She sounds very similar to my 5 year old with ASD. He will repeat queations like this constantly, almost as if he is looking for reassaurance that nothing in his world has changed.

My grandmother was like this, she’d repeat stories of non events for years, she’d also get obsessed with items of clothing. If she saw me or my mother wearing anything new, even just an ordinary pair of jeans, we’d be interrogated about it, then it would become a subject for discussion for weeks or even months. Where we’d worn it, what others thought of it, had we washed it, had we shrunk it in the wash. In her case it was definitely lack of much else going on in her life, although I don’t know why she fixated on clothes so much.

My dn (4) is like this. The way to stop them is to repeat the question back.

I suspect my dn has additional needs but their parents dont want to explore this.

Sounds very much like mild ASC (as they now call ASD...). None of it sounds malicious. I would say in your dm's case, the self-centredness sounds a lot more like it is anxiety-induced than narcissistic.

sounds like my mother too, she is mildly narsassistic and has this martyr complex.
She will go on and on about how much a weekly bus ticket costs (£17) and refuse to buy one some weeks but then will spend more than £17 a week when she wants to go out but will limit her days out.
Even though I’ve explained that £17 is a much better deal when there’s no restrictions on how many times she can use it.
She repeats the last 3 words of everything I’ve said most times and will also ‘tell me twice so she knows I’ve heard her’ about any boring subject she wants to discuss.
‘No 56 have cut their bushes down, No 56 have cut their bushes down’

Although I was thankful of this constant repeating 2 years ago as it helped me identify that she had had a stroke (she wasn’t speaking the same)

I know that it is different if it is children doing this repeating, but I wonder if it is a female response to the oppressive Patriarchal society endured by women of previous generations. I always wondered if my mum was building up these non events as a way of trying to be more powerful in the world. I can't think of any man I ever met being as bad with the repeating as my mum was.

Just a thought.

The reason that ASC children repeat questions over and over is because it’s pleasurable to them: they like hearing the question and answer.

It does sound as if this is what’s happening with your DM. Very frustrating for you I imagine!

It doesn't sound like she's just boring and self-obsessed, it sounds like the wiring in her brain is't letting subjects go, if you see what I mean. I agree with everyone there could be a neurodevelopmental issue, it's unlikely to be dementia if it hasn't got worse and has been present for decades, possibly brain injury or impairment which has resulted in this, it isn't just self-focused behaviour in the selfish sense, she sounds like she cannot step out of these repetitive questions and the repeating of meaningless stories (some of the stuff on here, whilst exceptionally annoying, is more of the martyrish 'no-one understands/cares for me' type I think).

I'm sorry, it must make it hard to have a relationshp with your mum when you are met with this barrage of essentially irrelevant stuff when you try to interact.

I always wondered if my mum was building up these non events as a way of trying to be more powerful in the world.

I think it can also be that some people let, or are forced to let, their world become very small, and at that point the scale of everything shifts for them, so non events become events. I love my parents and they're mostly still great, interesting people, but I've been astonished at how much this has happened to them in the less than five years since they both retired. Really minor things - like supermarket shops - now seem big to them, and my dad, for instance, can talk for days about needing to do a fairly small, routine task. When they both lived really busy lives things just happened, now everything has to be planned miles in advance. When dad starts in on the 'and I thought, should I go to Sainsbury's? But then I thought no, because that roundabout can be busy. But I wasn't sure about going to Tesco either, because last time I went they didn't have apricots...' I do sometimes want to say 'For god's sake, you used to head a department of 100s of people! You can make a decision!'. But I just think the scale of his world has really changed. Interestingly, they're now much more like my in-laws (FIL hasn't worked for 20 years and MIL not for 35) - I had thought they were completely different personalities, but now it turns out it was much more to do with circumstance.

I find when my ds (who has asd) does this I respond in various ways to get him to tell me the answer.

So "I don't know" "what do you think?" "It's at 10" (knowings it's 11 and he knows it's 11 and I've told him it's 11!) He'll then say "but you said ...." to which I reply "so why ask" or "if you ask me a question I can answer how I want - so the answer may change if you ask it 10 times!"

He hates change so that one is usually enough to silence him

MIL is like this but without the narcissism. She’s very sweet and well meaning but asks meaningless questions, does the telling of the same story over and over, and fixation in trivial details.

It does strain our relationship. I can’t help but get frustrated sometimes.

Both my mum and MIL do this. I find that doing stuff helps rather than sitting talking. E.g. getting them to help with dishwasher, washing, doing the garden when they visit. Sorting my bookcase. (It gives them something else to rabbit on about later).

My mother does this. It has got worse since she stopped working because the stories have a smaller and less interesting range.

Majestic

You’re right I think. What I said about mother repeating herself, in part at least, is for narcissistic reasons. Ops mother sounds more neuro developmental.

I noticed my mil doing this over Xmas and I’ve also noticed recently she is quite addicted to a few games she plays on her iPad . She doesn’t work . On Xmas eve we visited for lunch and she asked my dd some questions about school ( which wasn’t very Christmassy ) then we saw her after Boxing Day and she asked the same school questions then we saw her New Year’s Day and got asked the same school questions so we laughed about it but mil got quite distressed and didn’t know why we were laughing and so we had to answer them all over again .

Embekk as it sounds new for your mil that could be o set of dementia as thats how my mil presented. Please explain this to your dc as this is only the start and they need to understand.
Op it sounds like asd with your dm. In school l would find dc with asd would ask me the same question even though they know the answer. So eg if l told them we were painting later and put up the time line for the day every 10 mins they would go..are we painting now or are we painting today...and on it would go. I found this quite common with asd children. I think with your dm if you look at her as someone with special needs who must have found life stressful she may be easier to cope with and you may feel compassion for her.