To still be annoyed at my mum about Christmas dinner last year?

[StillFumin]

I wish I could get over this as I’m sure I’ll be told I’m being petty and unreasonable but I just can’t seem to get over my anger!

So my mum ruins Christmas dinner every year. She either buys stuff too early so it goes out of date, burns something, undercooks something, forgets a key ingredient (like the fucking turkey one year!) or forgets to turn the oven on etc etc

After many years of “hilarious” disaster Christmas dinners we stopped going and did our own at home.

Last year she kept asking us to go there again. I kept saying no and making excuses but she made me feel guilty and I eventually caved. I did tell her though that DD was excited about Christmas dinner for the first time ever and we’d promised her “posh stuffing”, cranberry sauce, pigs in blankets etc and she couldn’t wait. My mum said that was no problem, she’d get everything.

Nearing Christmas I kept asking her “have you got the stuffing? Have you got the pigs in blankets? Do you need me to get anything … she said she had it all under control.

2 days before Christmas I rang her and ran through the list making sure she’d got everything. She said yes. I asked her if she’d defrosted the turkey - she said she was doing it “today”.

So Christmas Day arrives, we got there - DD all excited - my mum says “I’m so sorry, you’ll never believe what I’ve done … “

Already starting to burn up with fury I said “what”.

She’d forgotten to take the turkey out of the freezer. I was fuming. DD says “are we not having Christmas dinner now?” And my mum says “I’ve got sausages in, will that be ok?”

DD does not eat sausages and I don’t particularly fancy frozen Richmond sausages on Christmas Day either. DD starts getting upset at the thought of sausages.

I say “I’ve got gammon at home, I’ll drive back and get it” my mum says “oh, ok … what do you want with it? Mash?”

I say “just whatever you were doing with Christmas dinner!!” She says “but it’s all frozen - with us not having turkey I didn’t think you’d want the other stuff?”

So we have no Christmas dinner and you want to compensate with sausage and mash? I was beyond fuming and I still am!! I know in the grand scheme of things it’s a non event and over now but I’m still so angry about it!!

Long history of her doing stuff like this which adds to the annoyance.

This year I’m doing Christmas dinner and DD is again excited. I’ve invited my mum but told her I’m doing everything and want no help or interference. She keeps asking if I’m still mad at her. I’ve said no but deep down … grrrr!!!

I get it op My parents forgot we were coming to them from another country for the first xmas in 4 years and booked a holiday overseas.
Fuming does not cover it

It reminds me of someone I worked with and had to do a group presentation. She insisted it had to be done a particular way. We had to have endless discussions about it. And then she rang me the day before to say she hadn't done any of her bit, so I had to cobble something together. With her it was definitely attention seeking as she was always doing it in other ways.

It sounds much more like that than ADHD. If you had ADHD why would you be so insistent on doing it all yourself and refuse any help when someone else had offered to help. Why would you guilt someone into having it at yours. It sounds much more like some kind of mean game where she's trying to upset you OP. The only way of dealing with game players is to refuse to play the game at all. When she tries to guilt you in the future, don't argue with her OP, just stick to your own plans. When these kind of people lose their ability to guilt you, they lose most of their power.

😵😳😵‍💫.

what did you do?

How annoying for you @StillFumin and it sounds like this state of affairs has been going on for many years.

There are 2 points which come up in this thread; learned helplessness and ADHD.

Learned helplessness can be a serious debilitating condition that develops after a person (in this case, your mum) experiences a stressful situation repeatedly. As a result of this repeated stressful situation, the person really believes that there is nothing they can do to change or control the situation so they don’t even try too. Because the person then sees that they have “failed”, this impacts their self esteem, motivation, heightens feelings of failure which then lead to feelings of ineptitude and ultimately failure to achieve the goal. Trauma can also lead to learned helplessness.

Learned helplessness can be a contributory factor in depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc. It can also be a self-fulfilling prophecy - a student can study constantly but be so sure that they will fail, that they then do fail.

ADHD sufferers tend to procrastinate because their personal history has shown them that when too many things are going in at once, like in a busy, noisy classroom, means they become overstimulated and then cannot take anything else on board, making learning and remembering much harder. Because they then tend not to do as well as expected at school, in jobs, at home, perhaps in relationships, they make subconscious assumptions that they will always fail. Even if they are perfectly capable of succeeding.

Example: Imagine someone who has always lived a very busy life with work, whilst also studying, whilst also raising a family, whilst also running a busy household. They then sustain an injury which limits their mobility, meaning they’re off work, had to stop studying, can’t do much of anything really, and can’t see the point in much because well, they feel about as useful as a condom in a convent. Over time, they may start to exhibit learned helplessness. Because they keep trying to do things and failing, getting stressed so that every situation becomes a stressor and a struggle and they feel like a failure more and more.

I don’t know if your mum has ADHD or some type of trauma informed learned helplessness and I completely understand your anger but it may be that your mum really cannot help being the way she is. That’s not to say that you should willingly turn a blind eye! Encourage her to seek help from her GP initially, so that decisions can be made about whether she needs to seek counselling or CBT, DBT, etc., to try to pinpoint why she’s exhibiting self-sabotaging behaviours that are ruining her relationship with not only you, but also your DD.

Do you think your Mum might have wilfully messed it up as a reaction to your high level of control about it beforehand? If I was hosting and a guest kept repeatedly calling me in advance to check I had everything they wanted then I don't know that I'd take too kindly to it.

That said, I couldn't get worked up about it on the day, never mind a year later.

Christmas is about being together with friends and family and sharing a joyful time. If it can be 'ruined' by sausages not having bacon wrapped round them then your focus is in the wrong place.

It seems very easy now to assign some sort of condition/disability to these things - oh she must be ND, maybe she's starting with dementia etc.

I think we've lost sight of the fact that some people are just plain stupid or selfish, thoughtless or arrogant. Some people simply want the world to revolve around them. Their acting like an insensitive and inconsiderate idiot doesn't mean they have ADHD or suchlike, it just means that they're an insensitive and inconsiderate idiot.

My mother has been like this all her life. Fairly convinced she has always had ADHD. Over the years, she has locked herself out, locked keys in a car, run out of petrol, cannot apparently operate her phone although oddly when she wants it to it works, went camping with no cooking equipment when we were little (which she thought was somehow very endearing), gets lost all the time, and never ever tidies anything up. She has gone through life having husbands who will pick up the pieces. Unfortunately the current one is now demented so it's just massively frustrating.

I've done many of those things: lost keys, locked myself out, run out of petrol, couldn't find my car in the car park, forgot things, used to be chronically late, gone to the wrong cinema to meet a friend etc. But I worked really hard to overcome it, have developed strategies etc. and used to be mortified when it affected others, I certainly wouldn't have laughed it off. And I would never insist on people coming to mine, doing it all myself and then allowing them to come round, knowing I had no food. That's not an executive function issue, it's an attention seeking issue.

Were all neurodivergent in our family. I happen to also be a perfectionist and put a lot of effort into ensuring things go to plan. My mum and sister (who both have ADHD) aren’t like this and instead try to turn the impact of their poor organisation and planning into hilarious stories. It drives me insane. I’ve found being honest about why I’m annoyed helps. I’ve also learnt that as they can’t be trusted if I want something doing properly, like Christmas dinner, I need to do it myself

How old is she? You say though she has always been like this. Do she you think has undiagnosed something?

@Stunningscreamer yeah, either way it's massively frustrating! Sorry I've not rtft so not sure if there's more to your post. My mum is kind of embarrassed sometimes, but it's like she's so used to it she just shrugs it off. The OPs mum on the other hand seems a bit deliberate.

Oh OP you are not being remotely unreasonable. Of course you’re still furious because there’s no way of having an adult conversation with her about it.
she’s fucking lucky you invited her this year.

It really doesn't matter to the OP whether the mother has ADHD or is a raging narc. The OP cannot control her mother's behaviour, only her own behaviour and her own reactions to her mother; plus, she can control how much of her mother's flakiness will affect her own daughter. She's clearly learned her lesson since after last year, when she states in the OP that she didn't want her mother to cook/host, but was guilted into it. No more guilt this year, OP is doing the cooking. She might be angry because she feels worried that her mother will find some way to sabotage the day.

The mother is an adult and can/should sort out a diagnosis if she feels that her reasons for constantly letting down her family are medical. It's not up to the OP to frog march her to the doctors. Anyone who has episodes of letting down their child along the lines of humiliating them by buying the wrong uniform, but who has chosen not to seek help or put some mechanisms in place to minimise their own disorganisation, simply does not care, Imo - or at least cares about themselves more than their child's welfare. This was not the first ruined Xmas dinner. The mother was told how much the Xmas dinner meant to her DGD last year, and yet she both insisted on hosting, insisted she would get it right, but still put no mechanisms in place to try to ensure there would be no let down as in previous years. It was the entire dinner that didn't happen, not just some pigs in blankets. That smacks of being utterly self absorbed to the point of uncaring and possibly cruel.

So basically @LivingOnAnIsland whatever way you look at it, in your eyes the op is at fault?.... and the dm is the one who's really the one who should be pondered to?

This year I’m doing Christmas dinner and DD is again excited. I’ve invited my mum but told her I’m doing everything and want no help or interference. She keeps asking if I’m still mad at her. I’ve said no but deep down … grrrr!!!

Why say no? You are so you should tell her! Call her out and tell her that it was unacceptable that she ruined yet another Christmas, particularly with all the reminders, and you can't help but wonder if some of it is attention seeking behaviour because one person can not be that unlucky or disorganised

Does she mainly do this around food?

My mum does this sort of thing with food all the time as she has various eating disorders. She makes a huge song and dance about providing very basic picnics, won't let anyone else in the kitchen, then when we're out she's always forgotten something.

(by a picnic, I basically mean some bread and a filling that we then have to assemble sitting on a rock, not just, say, forgetting the mustard)

She's very paranoid about illness too, so decided not to cook Christmas Dinner one year at the last minute (did a big spread of random items, which took no less prep). Another year she was snotting and streaming, and I said, don't be silly, I'll cook... But she insisted on doing it.

The thing is, I KNOW that she can do it all properly, because the one person she'll prioritise is my husband.

It is very much a control thing, and a messed up eating thing. She doesn't understand the value of food to other people, but she does know that it's a focus of importance, and she latches onto that by controlling the whole show.

Is your Father still on the scene? If not, when he was around, did he do everything for your Mum?

This sounds to me like someone who has had everything done for her in the past and is now incapable of doing things for herself, or alternatively, doesn't want to have to do things for herself.

I don't think she had any intention of cooking the dinner. I mean, ok, the turkey wasn't defrosted, but most of the other 'frozen' stuff can be cooked from frozen can't it? It's only the turkey that has to be defrosted. So you could still have had all the trimmings.

I think she offered to do the dinner but then became overwhelmed with, or couldn't be bothered with, actually cooking it.

Don't let this fester, let it go. Just never agree to go to her's for Christmas dinner again.

The OP will have been walking on egg shells her whole life, I imagine. Tell the truth and her mother will dissolve into tears and guilt tripping, accusations of OP being too critical, a drama llama etc etc. I bet she's worrying that if she tells her mother the truth now, it will be thrown in her face on Christmas Day in one way or another.

You have my sympathies, that would wind me right up too. Intact my own DM properly winds me up for the same reasons, but admittedly she's not as inept as yours sounds! I think my mum is a massive procrastinator, and I know I have a tendency to procrastinate too, so I have strategies to overcome it. Even though I sort of know the reason, I still get very annoyed at my mum and snap at her sometimes.

I haven’t read the full thread OP but you’ve described a member of my family. Quite glamorous when she was young and cast herself in the role of ditsy blonde. “Oh ha ha ha ha I’m so silly, but I’m gorgeous too - does it make me more gorgeous being so funny and helpless?” I have lost count of the number of occasions that have gone tits up.

Her sabotage of choice is lateness. Late for graduation lunch (as in missed the coffee at the end, staff itching to clear away) late for my wedding night Do (10.30pm) every year for years supposedly boycotting Christmas until someone begs her to turn up, etc. There’s other stuff as well but the lateness is the most relevant here.
They never ever take responsibility or admit to being in the wrong.
It will be never come good. She’s doing it deliberately if not 100% consciously.

My Mum almost certainly has ADHD and it has helped me understand more about her thought processes but it doesn't make me any less pissed off when she lets me down. It's very difficult to live with but I fundamentally understand why she just can't .

I know armchair diagnosis really pisses posters off on Mumsnet but the fact is women are under diagnosed and your mum sounds like a bloody liability

Yanbu to be upset. Not only is she forgetful she's also thoughtless and I understand how hurtful that is when her behaviour lets your own daughter down.

That would annoy me to be fair but life is too short to not move on.

A common part of cluster-B type personality disorders is the propensity to ruin every special event, in order to create drama & draw focus onto oneself.

See all the DA threads here in Relationships where a besieged OP has yet another birthday deliberately spoiled by a sulking, non-present buying, drunken antic-performing or otherwise punishing H.

Obviously not looking to pretend to know what's going on with your mum OP, but you mind find some coping mechanisms by following that train of thought further.
flyingmonkeysdenied.com/2015/11/06/why-narcissistic-people-love-to-ruin-birthdays-and-holidays/
themindsjournal.com/why-narcissistic-people-love-to-ruin-birthdays-and-holidays/
www.verywellmind.com/understanding-the-covert-narcissist-4584587

& no - you are NOT being petty.
This is deliberate sabotage - it's a long drawn out pattern of behaviour, designed to frustrate you & in some weird way make her feel like she has the upper hand. She obviously never intended to cook xmas dinner last year, the clue is in the still-frozen veg & trimmings, let alone the "forgotten" turkey. What a ridiculous, selfish child she is - & to let your DD down too is just horrible of her.

I take it you're not falling for her tricks this year? 😂

I agree with previous posters that it sounds like she has a specific learning difference like ADD or Dyspraxia. However, it doesn’t mean it’s not annoying or that she couldn’t do more to help herself.

She keeps asking if I’m still mad at her. I’ve said no but deep down … grrrr!!!

This ^^ is just so bizarre.

Why are you saying no, you’re not still mad? You are still mad, and rightly so.

Are you scared of her, or something? I don’t mean that in an accusatory way. But I don’t understand why you’re not just telling her the simple truth.

Which is that you’re still seething about it a year later.

Why would she ever even attempt to stop being the way she is, if she thinks it’s perfectly OK with you?