Parents have started doing what Grandparents do

[Bringbackthe90s]

Was speaking to my mum the other day and she was saying how she can’t get back to sleep after waking up at around 6 am now. She said they go downstairs and put the radio on the tv and listens to hits from the 60/70’s with a cup of coffee/tea.
Sounds a nice thing to do, but I remember my Grandparents doing similar, i don’t know, I guess I’ve become very aware of their age all of a sudden…mum 69, dad, 73

I do the same I'm in my thirties. certainly no where near grand parent age. 😂

I do get what you mean, as soon as my mum retired at 66 I suddenly got a feeling of sadness over me as it reminded me she is now getting older, although she is still very active.. I hope to god I have my parents for another 20 years at least in good health but when I sit and think of them getting older I do feel sad as I am so close to them.

Sorry, that should be doing what my Grandparents *DID

Both mine and DP’s retired parents have taken to spending most of the day sitting at the kitchen table. Perfectly nice, comfortable living rooms with sofas; yet they sit in hard, straight-backed lesser-dining chairs passing commentary out of the window at the various fauna and flora goings on in the back garden. Which is exactly what my grandparents used to do.

But, they’re happy. They’re visibly older every time we see them though, which does make me sad (though they probably think the same about us!)

My mum has absolutely started to do all the things that my grandparents did - including all the things she used to moan about them doing when she was my age. She is incapable of watching a film or TV programme in company without giving a running commentary on it, for example. She also used to be excellent at choosing gifts for people, but now she gets us some really odd stuff that she would never have chosen for us when she was younger. She's also far, far less flexible and much more set in her ways. DP says the same about his mum too - suddenly she seems much older than she used to do.

My sister complains about my mum a lot and I have to constantly remind her that she is 78 years old. I think because my mum looks great and is physically a lot fitter than a lot of people her age, my sister thinks she should be exactly the same as she was when she was 50 - she has totally different expectations of my mum at 78 than she did of my grandparents when they were that age.

Absolutely. My mum complained the other day that "Everything's so fast nowadays...everyone speaks so fast" and it was a real sort of paradigm shift for me (is that the right term?!)

She's been a bit forgetful recently too and I don't know whether I'm imagining it or ignoring it 😳

We all turn into our mothers!

I am forties and have been obsessed with window boxes and hanging baskets for about a decade now! The teen me would be horrified.

my mum and I went yesterday to buy late summer plants to replace the fading ones.

she smhas hundreds of beautiful flowering plants just liked her mother did - because she now has time to tend to them.

I know my garden will look just like hers in thirty years from now - if I make it that long!

My mum is the same! even down to the phrases she now says. Exactly like my Nan used to.
“Oh I couldn’t possibly eat all THAT! I’m never very hungry anyway”
And the most relentless, when I’m telling her about how the baby has woken up literally 10 times a night for weeks:
“oh well I never sleep very well anymore these days so I’m always very tired”

love her to bits but my god.

Yep I'm witnessing the transition right now too. DM retired last year and is starting to demonstrate old people traits. It isn't my business and as long as she is happy and not bothering anyone it is fine, but it sets off my fear of her getting old and eventually losing her.

Yep, we will do the same

Me too!

I started this in my 40’s.

My parents are both 75 now. They're both healthy and active but noticeably slower now. My dad repeats himself and neither of them eat much.
We've just come back from a lovely holiday with them where my poor mum was insisting to the waitress that she wanted a starter as a main and the waitress was having none of it. They were clearly as stubborn as each other! Mum won, got her starter and declared she was full!

Sounds like me! Up at 5 or 6 every day annoying the peace

Yes! My DPILs have definitely got set in their ways more over the past few years. covid absolutely hasn’t helped.

My DP are a similar age (mid 60s) and they are so much more flexible, but then they’ve got a lot more going on. A part time business to run and lots of volunteer and social things so I can really see the contrast. DPIL are both retired and have basically sat in their house drinking tea and doing their garden for the past 2 years. Everything is a major discussion now. The traffic route, the exact meal times and every option, how busy the supermarket car park is. I love them but they drive me crazy!

Also yes to the “just a tiny portion for me please”

Rather terrifyingly I am watching Dh slowly turn into his father 😱 Dh is 55.

He is starting to;
Walk like his dad
Sit at the dining room table to read
Spend ages in the toilet just as we are about to leave the house.
Mumble like his dad 😡
Shout loudly if he even gently bumps into something 🙄

God help me 😂

I'm 40 and regularly up at 5/6am listening to the radio. It's my bit of peace before the kids get up and the only time I get to have a coffee in peace

I'm 64, so already on the track to old githood. But my memory of taking my late Mum to a holiday cottage in 2013 (when she was 77) provides my best example of the bizarreness of this phenomemon.

Mum had the customary narrow food preferences of someone her age, so one night we had (high quality) sausages for dinner. She took one with a minuscule portion of veg, etc and on being offered to take another by my partner, declared "I think one's more than enough - don't you?"

Now, when I was a child, we ALWAYS got 2 sausages. WHO thinks a single feckin' sausage is "More than enough"?

This has become a catchphrase in our house, mind!

I’m on my forties and am turning into my mum. My mum has turned into my GM. It’s inevitable.

My mum also eats the tiny portions. If we eat at her house we get fed like toddlers and are starving after.

She won't change the day of the week she food shops. 'Can't that day, that's my food shopping'.

She talks to herself constantly but that's not new, she's done that since I can remember.

Have you heard the old saying "if you want to what your bride will be like in 30 years, look at her mother. If you don't like what you see, don't do it".

My gran's handwriting got smaller and smaller until we gave up even trying to read her letters and cards, and we started cracking grain of rice jokes.

My mum, chief joker, now writes in teeny tiny hand. I don't even try to read it.

OP it's kind of emotional isn't it, realising that your parents are getting older. Yours are around the age that ime you typically start noticing it. You were probably not so well enough acquainted with/old enough to be observant about how your grandparents were when they were younger to notice the transition they went through when they were around 70 but be assured that they did. And now your parents are too. It is inevitable but at the same time this "circle of life" business catches us in the feels now and again.

I am seeing a friend morph like this. She is 57 years old but retired early about 5 years ago. She is physically fit but has adopted many old people traits. For example, she can not possibly do more than one thing in a day. She starts packing for weekends away a week in advance.