To feel a bit sad when my mum rewrites history? Anyone else have this?

[dontletthemugglesgetyoudownn]

I'm feeling sad tonight, not sure why. I saw my family this weekend and we were swapping the old stories etc, then one of my sisters mentions my nephew lost his pe kit and she was annoyed by it, and my mum immediately jumps in with

'Oh yea we had that all of year 7 and onwards with dont, lost her pe kit regularly, lost £10 for the bus, got the wrong bus repeatedly, lost things constantly' everyone laughed at how forgetful I was etc

Yes I did all of those things and a lot more, I once forgot to get the bus home on parents evening and waited for my parents to finish but they left whilst I was wandering round the school and they had to come back to the school to get me. It's not neglectful because I didn't tell them I was still at school and my phone was dead.

However!! I wish she would remind my family of the context! I had undiagnosed adhd and dyspraxia, my dad was having chemo and we were driving 2 hours to see him every night in hospital I was doing my homework on the floor of the hospital room or in the back of the car, I was tired and my siblings were older, then he died and we were moving across the country but I only had 2 weeks between him passing away and starting year 8..

When we moved house I started in a smaller school and flourished, got my diagnoses and got the help I needed. I'm now an ODP and I can take patients myself in icu, I've have 2 masters. But yet when I'm with my family I'm relegated to that bumbling child when I was 11!

Grr!!!

Some hard stories on here 💐 for you all
Sounds common my parents did it to, forgot the control over school options, going out battles, favouritism golden balls brother was hotly contested by them 😲

It’s hard cos your shared past is denied, rewritten and your spoiling the party if you remember otherwise 😵‍💫

When I was aged about 9-11, I used to go through this whole OCD routine, touching things in a certain order repeatedly before I could go to sleep. My mum definitely knew about it. When I asked her last year why she didn’t take me to the doctors, she denied all knowledge of it. She also accuses me of harsh parenting, forgetting that she used smacking as standard (including once for accidentally swearing - idling listing things that rhymed with mugger…)

She moved from SE England to Wales to get away from her mother. I’ve moved 12 time zones away from her. Possibly my own DD will need to go into orbit if I don’t break the cycle.

My mum was also the perfect parent. She likes to criticise parents 'these days' for their kids diets and activities. I cheerfully remind her that my play piece at school used to be iced gems and I lived on a diet of pasta with grated cheese and toast for years. We were never encouraged to do sports really.

What annoys me most is that she completely forgets how differently she has treated my brother and I. When I was 18 I worked full time and attended college on a day release from work, they paid for the diploma. I was offered a better paid job not long after graduating so I had to pay the cost of the course back. I didn't have the £1500 so my mum paid it and I paid her back £100 a month for 15 months. I didn't go to my graduation as I couldn't afford a nice outfit and hiring of a gown.

My mum has since supported my brother through various college courses etc, funded trips to Australia and South Africa, bought him a house that he pays minimal rent on.

I once raised that she made me pay back the money for my college course and she completely denied it.

OP I am autistic which like most girls wasn't diagnosed until adulthood. I was hospitalized for anorexia - which is now understood as intricately linked to autism. Back then it was bad behaviour because I wanted to be pretty or something (I have never seen a fashion show in my life and cannot imagine anything more boring). I have major sensory intolerances to a lot of food and rely highly on routine and structure. I also have a significant visual processing disorder, which is still interpreted by my family as being lazy/not listening to instructions/not looking where I'm going/being clumsy on purpose/daydreaming. To be frank, I recall my childhood as fairly miserable and deeply traumatic, until I got into Cambridge and escaped. There is absolutely no point in trying to communicate this. My family has rewritten history. I was close to my father but he died when I was eight. I don't actually blame my mother for this by the way. I think she has fairly significant mental health problems and is unable to admit her failings because doing so would actually shatter her self esteem. So I go with it. I'm fine. I have a PhD and successful career in research, several books to my name, and that's where I get my validation from. I think to my family I will always be the difficult and odd child. That's okay. When my mother dies I want to know that I was as kind to her as I could possibly be, because I believe she has done her best and helped me when she could. I'm at peace with it.

My mhm is exactly like this. She likes to remind me and everyone of what I was like as a kid/teen. I was similar to you op. She laughs when she says it but I'm sure she's doing it to be nasty. Makes me cringe every time. I believe I could have dyspraxia,both my dc have it and I struggled with a lot of things as a kid and still now but it's almost like my mums taking the piss sometimes.

If I was to talk about her past, she would bite my head off.

It's not just me. She has a close friend and her close friends daughter was a handful as a teen. My mum and her friend had to go out and find her most nights where she was at older men's houses getting drunk amongst other things, skipping school etc. Friends daughter is now nearly 40 and doing well in life, really turned her life around. But at a funeral the other day my mum was a bit tipsy and kept reminding her friends daughter what she was like as a teen and telling said woman's boyfriend all about it. Friends daughter looked mortified, she's really turned her life around. I really wanted to tell my mum to stfu but she would bite my head off. I was mortified for her.

My mother does this too- it is infuriating.

Over big things that hurt me- being bullied at school ( how she handled the situation brilliantly- she did nothing) to issues surrounding my father's illness and death.
She collects heirlooms- buys stuff from charity shops, keeps them a few years then fabricates stories around them.
Recently is was a soap dish in the shape of a lily leaf with a little frog perched on the side. She started showing this to people and telling the story abut how it belonged to her aunt and remembers using in when she was a girl of 6 or 7 ( which would have been 1939).
It is clearly made of plastic and when I turned it over it is printed " Margate 1973 on the back.
She does it with loads off stuff- I had really bad morning sickness ( I didn't), I was really ill with my covid jab ( I wasn't).
She isnt suffering dementia as far as I can tell, she remembers real stuff easily, but feels the need to add in a whole load of other fictional events or rewrite stories.
However she is quite toxic in other ways and I stopped looking from any validadtion from my mother decades ago.
These days I just nod and ignore. It usually makes no difference to me if someone is told I had bad morning sickness and I didn't.

I just leave her in her fantasy world.

Slightly different but I find it fascinating what my adult children remember about something that happened compared to how I remember it. There is a difference in view point sometimes although hopefully I'm not at the stage where I'm misremembering yet!

My dad likes to talk about how he used to love getting us all ready for bed, the bath and pyjamas and story routine. Except he never did it, he was never home, and once I was old enough to do the younger children my mother didn't do it either.
My mother tells people how proud she is of my middle sister, who was the only one of us to live by herself after uni and get a job. But...
My mother moved back to her home country when I was 18 and my oldest brother 16, and left us behind, and I was in my first year at uni- I have lived by myself and had a job ever since! Never mind still living at home, we weren't even in the same country!

My mum always banged on about her 24 hour labour with me

My first baby took 36 hours

Apparently now. My birth took a 48 hour labour

Which I find really dismissive and horrible actually. Don’t understand the competitive nonsense and think she’s a total narcissist

Yabu, I’m afraid
Yes, it’s a mother’s place to share ‘funny’ stories which in your case, actually happened. It’s not really her place to share her adult child’s medical history and difficulties. If they’re your family, then I assume they all know these anyway.

That’s what families do- I enjoy swapping funny stories with mine anyway. I laugh at myself easily though and would happily bring up a funny one about me if I can remember. I tell them to my own children

I don't want to use the age card thing but my son is only 13 and I'm only 41 but I've already found myself telling stories and then realising the reality was a little different. Sometimes whatever happens was uncomfortable/embarrassing/ horrible and you rewrite it a little, sometimes you forget, sometimes it just comes out like that. It may not be right but you might find yourself telling things differently about different occasions in the future

I empathise with this a lot.
My mum does similar, but she chooses to say how she stayed single over the 14 years that she raised us after my dad left, and conveniently forgets to remember how she was dating my teacher, she dated her own cousin, and a string of around 14 other men that all entered our house and stayed for varying lengths of time.
I can’t stand to hear her say how she put us first for years and didn’t introduce random men.
It’s so very strange.
I wonder why they do this.

My mum and dad both do this. They think I have a 'role' in my family and are determined to put me back in my place every time I see them. I think both of my parents are completely blind to what I do everyday and my real life. I've always been portrayed by them as naughty and difficult. I'd say they were borderline neglectful and my mum was controlling. I didn't agree with her (like my golden child brother did) so I was difficult.

My now ex ils have a close relationship with adult ds. They regale him with stories of his childhood.
In fact we lived 3 streets away until he was 4 and they never bothered with him until we got divorced and exh dumped them with 3 x dc eow.
Of 3dc only 1 see them.
I bite my tongue.

I don't know if there's a perfect outcome. My father freely admits faults, but I don't want to hear it all the time. My mother criticises others parenting, telling me how children learn from parents blah blah blah, and it's so hypocritical, but what does that make me? I don't want her to suffer all her life.

These always veer between annoying but harmless to downright sinister.

Carol Ann Duffy’s We Remember Your Childhood Well addresses this, if anyone fancies a read of it.

Oh I am sorry you have this experience OP. I think it’s something parents often use as a defence mechanism when they realise they haven’t done a great job, or haven’t been able to protect their kids against pain (your Dad dying in your case.) It’s often not conscious. It can turn into scapegoating or even bullying to make themselves feel better - hopefully it isn’t in your case.

As a Pp said, some degree of this is common in families, but for many people it is hurtful, especially if their childhood contained a lot of pain like yours.

As you are finding this hurtful, it would be good to find a calm but firm way of pushing back. Eg ‘ sure mum, but after that I was diagnosed w X, once I had the diagnoses and a small school, it all changed.’ ‘Oh no you were always like this’. ‘ well, no, because after that I got a degree and two masters - you aren’t remembering the full picture mum’

What you probably need are a few stock responses that you repeat very neutrally when this comes up. It will make people feel uncomfortable, but it can help break a family pattern.

If you think pain from childhood is getting in your way you might want to see a therapist. It might not be, but worth considering.

You must be very proud of how well you’ve done!

My Mum does this a lot too OP. Talks about things I used to do when I was a teen as of they were naughty teenage things when actually we were going through an appalling situation with my incredibly abusive father (firstly living with abuse then flight from abuse with stalking).

The thing I have realised as I got older, which I hope you realise too is that she was also going through that trauma. I can't imagine how it was for her. It used to make me angry when I was younger but now I play along.

Your mum suffered the trauma of losing your dad too. She isn't perfect but it sounds like it all turned out okay in the end. Give her a break maybe?

It’s a kind of gaslighting really, a power trip in a way?

I think it’s horrible

My DM does this too. She’s a narcissist and her long-winded retellings usually involve some misdemeanour on my part that just didn’t happen or something amazingly clever that we did that didn’t happen either. I usually just zone out when she starts, it’s so bizarre, as if she doesn’t realise we were actually there too 🤷🏻‍♀️

Is all imperfect human behaviour narcissism now? Can't it just be people misunderstanding how something relatively harmless makes some people feel shitty? I know narc mothers exist (my grandma is text book) and maybe ops mum is one but from the limited information we have I am not seeing anything even bordering on narcissism.

What happened to just getting a fucking grip and letting stuff go?

My family joke about how I didn’t do any work at school. I wasn’t lazy I was severely bullied with issues at home and suicidal . As a teen I was devastated with my results but as an adult im bloody proud and if they try and gas light me now I push back.

@MarchXX

Yes, its bizarre. My example below is trivial compared to yours, OP, I'm so sorry you had such a bad time but glad you rose above it and flourished. What can you do? Rise above it again, I'm afraid. She won't change .

When I was growing up in the 60s we had a dog. In those days we didn't walk the dog, we let it out to run about the streets and he came home when he'd finished his adventures, scratching on the front door to be let in. That was completely normal to me.

Today, mum (now well into her 80s) denies any such thing ever happened! But it bloody did!

The thing is memories are very tricky things, they are more strongly affected by how we felt at the time than what actually happened

DS upset me the other day by claiming they his dad and I left him to struggle with a very hurt leg when he was younger . His explanation is that he kept telling us his leg hurt and we ignored him for months! I have a vague recollection than he fell while ice skating once and had a bruise and occasionally complained of pain for a few days but seemed to be walking fine and then it seemed to pass..

The truth is probably somewhere in between me being a completely negligent parent ignoring an almost broken leg ( as DS put it) and my recollection of a minor childhood bump that got better within a week

I did apologise to DS for not having paid better attention to his needs at the time but I genuinely do not recall it the way he does.

It does grate OP, particularly if you have kids- everything good my son does is bc he is ‘so like your sister’

I’m always reminded of that will & grace scene where she gets her ‘mum shield’ out when visiting
It helps to tell someone else the real version so I don’t feel I’m going mad!

@bumblingbovine49

You know what I thought my change in attitude towards my mums memory gaps regarding my teen years happened as I matured but reading that I realise it was when my kids were old enough to challenge my memories of events.

I've handled it like you have (acknowledging what they are saying even though I don't remember it the same way).

There is mixed bag on this thread some stories that are awful and indicate abusive parents some that are just maybe the latter group will think differently when their kids are older.