To be upset that my mother is not in the 'if you can't say anything nice, keep your mouth shut' camp?

[OLGADEEPOLGA]

My mother never seems to realise how things she says can really hurt. I can remember numerous times I have thought she is going to say something nice or complimentary and then my heart drops as she says something horrible.

A few recent examples - I bought her a bunch of flowers to be delivered to her house, she called me after they had arrived and said 'I got the flowers and they were awful ' - they were from John Lewis as an aside and v expensive. Why couldn't she say thank you , the flowers were lovely? Apparently the colours were not to her liking.

Next example during lockdown my hair has grown and I've not been able to get to the hairdresser, I sent her a photo of me and she replied 'I like your hair shorter' - that's it, nothing else. She also text me yesterday to ask if my hair colour was natural on my whatsapp profile pic, I replied yes it is. She replied 'I prefer it lighter' . I've never dyed my hair lighter at all so basically she doesn't like my natural hair colour?!

Why would someone always do things like this? She always comments on slight gains in weight too as if she is some perfect supermodel without any flaws.

If this was you, would it get you down? And I KNOW there are bigger things in life to worry about but I just can never imagine myself speaking that way to my daughter so apologies if this seems a silly pathetic concern, I just would like to know if it's normal.

I have a similar problem though my DM is more subtle with hers, it mostly revolves around my parenting and cleaning. So for example she seems to think any spare time should be spent cleaning and if she calls me in the morning for a chat and asks what I'm up to for the day if I say I haven't got many plans she'll say oh you can spend the day cleaning then, which to me is her saying you need to clean your house!? My house is by no means dirty and is cleaned regularly. If I say no I'll be doing something else she thinks I've gone mad. Whenever she visits she cleans my house too, without me asking, I have a brother and when she visits him she doesn't do the same so I dont understand why she does it to me.
If I ever visit her she makes a note to point out if my DD is dirty (what 16 month old hasn't got food/dirt etc on herself by mid afternoon?) and every single time she'll check her nappy to see if it needs changing (It is changed regularly 🙄) she'll say I dressed her too hot/cold or make a point of telling me what she would have dressed her in.
I know it sounds petty but these are things she'll say every single time I see her which is several times a week, she doeent understand how worthless it makes me feel at times, at least I know I want to be nothing like her when my children are older!

My mum does this a lot too, proper negative Nancy as well - “ooh isn’t it a lovely day mum!” She will reply “it’s gonna rain soon”
“I think the holiday cottage will be lovely” she replies “you don’t know that, just be prepared that it might be awful” 🤣

Mines the same, she can be very cruel.

I have recently had to start wearing wigs, and the worst is she will look me up and down and then not say anything! Even if you don’t like it, just say it looks nice! It makes me so paranoid!

My mum (71) has been like this all my life - she's what I like to refer to as a "Negative Nelly"

Always the pessimist, she finds the down side in EVERY situation

She will comment on random people's (usually women's) appearances, i.e. "look at the size of her, I wouldn't let you go out dressed like that, her clothes need to be 2 sizes bigger" and so on

DD and I nipped round to visit her during lockdown, and the first words out of her mouth were "oh, you've put the weight back on haven't you?" which was accompanied by a sad face and faux concern... I called her out on it this time though, as yes I HAVE PUT THE FUCKING WEIGHT BACK ON BECAUSE LOCKDOWN HAS BEEN STRESSFULL FOR ME (beloved dog died at the beginning and I found him dead in the living room, redeployed at work, DD refusing to do ANY school work) she was all taken aback and asked me not to raise my voice as the neighbours would hear her being a bitch

All this was said within earshot of DD too

She has always been this way, and will no doubt never change

You just have to ignore the comments and negativity and kill them with kindness