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 She either buys stuff too early so it goes out of date, burns something, undercooks something, forgets a key ingredient (like the fucking turkey one year!)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!!!

Exactly my point too FatEaredFuck

Although I am in agreement that generally the MN brigade think everyone must be ND! In this instance, and as someone who knows a bit about ADHD, it does resonate. But I totally agree that the main problem for OP isn’t whether or not mum is ND, but her complete lack of understanding, self awareness, empathy or, it seems, any regard at all for the upset she has caused her DD consistently throughout her whole life. How very upsetting. I don’t blame you, OP, that’s infuriating and really sad.

Quite a few PP "sound angry" on this thread don't they @Ifeelsuchafool?

If only they'd stop being so challenging, it would make other PP's lives so much easier. Because obviously it's FAR more important to "have a life" than to take the time & attention demanded to understand a pattern of seriously abusive childraising & comment appropriately in response.

Dismissing women's anger as a method of closing your ears to their valid reasons for it is one of the oldest tricks in the patriarchal playbook. I suspect you don't even have the 'excuse' of being male, so cheers for that solidarity.

Ordering women to suppress their righteous anger to ensure YOUR comfort instead of finding out that's it's actually directed at PP who are - no matter how unwittingly - acting as apologists for a highly dysfunctional child abuser, makes you look like you care more about putting up a defensive barrier than owning the fact that you've just had a daft "cancel the cheque" moment.
Seriously - It's genuinely so much easier to own that than to keep doubling down to defend it. We all make errors, I've made some feckin' howlers in my time here. It's not a biggie, you're allowed to 'own it & move on'.

Or was it "raised and (rightly?!) dismissed by other than OP?
This is not quite the 'gotcha' moment you think it is ...
If you think PP comments are so invalid that you have to rush to defend the asininity of assuming that your total ignorance of the subject matter made more sense than PP's informed responses, it's wiser not to stick your head over that parapet, because it's gonna provoke replies that you might not feel able to deal with.

Maybe you'd rather not say a simple, relatively painless "oh oops sorry" than take enough time (you HAVE A LIFE! after all, so never mind what's hurting on other people's) to consider other people's comfort in the teeth of a horribly serious & pervasive subject - the appalling levels of emotional child abuse that are still being perpetrated in our modern world, despite all the effort & education & campaigning of the angry women doing their best to ameliorate it.

You clearly have an anger problem as does OP.
You clearly have a "dismiss anything that's personally uncomfortable instead of dealing with it like a grown up" problem, as do a worryingly large number of PP.
If this thread didn't make you angry, there's something awry with your empathy levels. Or maybe you're just too busy "having a life" to understand that your mum being a bit annoying has got absolutely fuck-all in common with a mum who coldly & deliberately sabotages her own child's emotional security & psychological wellbeing to get her sick kicks from feasting off the pain she causes.

You can write me off as just another woman with an "anger problem" if that's how you need to deal with it.
Or you can educate yourself (RTFT might be a real eye opener & genuine point of connection & understanding for you).
Because the more women who understand the dynamics & blight of what dysfunctional adults perpetrate on kids, the better. I hope you join us rather than keep dismissing us, so here's a thought:
Supposing it's possible to have valid reasons for anger* AND For God's sake be merry, have another sherry! ?* The two aren't mutually exclusive. The former is a force for good in our world when deployed correctly, & the latter is great fun.
So here's one for you as I truthfully hope that you & yours are safe, well, & happy. Have a good christmas.

She sounds absolutely infuriating, OP, but she's the only mother you've got.

Do Christmas your way, invite her to join you to do things your way, grit your teeth when she is annoying, rely on her for nothing, don't ever go to hers for Christmas or any other occasion where it's important that she doesn't fuck things up.

And for what it's worth, I think it's actually very normal to still be sad about the rocking horse thing. Your mum knew what she was doing and I think it's cruel to get a child's hopes up like that, fail to deliver, and then pretend that you're the victim.

Honestly this would drive me insane. If it was a one off that’s different but from your comments it’s clearly not.

God, this ADHD stuff is infuriating. You can't just select certain things in people's behaviour while ignoring the rest and say "it sounds like ADHD". Guaranteed, if you look, you will find at least one ADHD trait in every person, but it doesn't mean every person has ADHD. You can't just ignore the absolute cuntiness behaviours displayed by the OP's DM and say she might have ADHD because she does some things that ADHD people do. It's offensive. It's saying people with ADHD/ND can't help being assholes. I even saw some people suggesting she might have "mild autism"...wtf.

When you look at the OP's mother as a whole, there is nothing ADHD/ASD/ND about her.

I wasn't talking about you, @KettrickenSmiled, even though this seems to have become your thread now rather than the OP's. I was specifically talking about the many people on the thread, and on the site in general, who do seem to be stuck in an unproductive, unnuanced place of anger. No blame attaching to that, but it's not a good place to stay, and not - long-term, as I said - good advice for the OP, imo.

I didn't imagine you were talking about me - the post was carefully worded to make sure I didn't blast some PP (not you!) for making revoltingly dismissive & ignorant remarks, but instead reflect a general, not a personal, response to your much more interesting comment.

You seem to have misunderstood the thrust of a well-intentioned post. Perhaps if you have time to re-read it you'll see how careful it was to be NOT a response about you, NOT a commentary about myself, but a philosophical reflection about the nature of anger, & how humans can harness it for good as well as ill.

If you felt it was a dig at you - that was certainly not my intent, but you seem a little 'stung' so here is an unreserved apology: if I caused you even a slight & momentary pain - I am sorry.

even though this seems to have become your thread now rather than the OP's.
I won't apologise for posting prolifically on a subject that is very close to my heart & work with IRL though. So I'll happily chalk that little dig up to natural human feelings - maybe even anger! - & wish you well.

I enjoyed the intelligence & nuance of your longer response just now, & actually no - I'm not surprised to read you have survived parental NPD. Hence my previous remark in the post you're discussing - your experience may be quite different @AllNightDiner!

TL;DR: YANBU - my mum can be a similar PITA, although yours, with the rocking horse, is much, much worse.

I think there are going to be polarised responses, because I think you've either experienced this or you haven't, and if you haven't, it's hard to understand how utterly wearing it is to have somebody do this to you - raise your hopes because they're adamant they've got it sorted, and then kind of shit on you, and make it your fault for being unreasonable. And it kind of IS your fault, in a way, for being sucked back in when you KNOW what they're like. The triumph of hope over experience. It's beyond crap.

My mum does something similar - she'll insist on doing something 'to help', and then do it wrong and get upset if you point out that she hasn't really helped at all. It's minor things - for example, you ask her to buy Doritos and salsa to bring to a party and she'll bring you ready salted crisps and ketchup because they're almost the same - and if it was a one-off, it'd be fine, but it isn't, it's what she does every single time. There's always an excuse ('There wasn't anyone in the shop to ask') and you are always the bad guy for calling her out on it. It's part of a pattern and it's shit because you look like the unreasonable one when you know that she will always find a way to misinterpret or forget requests, without fail. It feels so utterly disrespectful, like she thinks that she knows better than I do what I want or really need. Worst of all, I know that the need to be 'helpful' is really about being 'included', because she's deeply insecure, so I feel sorry for her, even while I also know that she resents any sort of demand being put on her because she is the most burdened, put-upon person in the world.

To this end, I treat her like I do my three year old. Sure, she can have a job. She can buy something that I already have plenty of, so that nobody misses out. Or she can 'help' with tidying the house, when I did it yesterday so she only needs to put the breakfast bowls in the dishwasher. But it involves a lot of grey rock 'No, it's fine - just bring/do x' when she's pushing for a Big Job, which can be really tiring.

OP I get where you're coming from, as every SINGLE year it seems like my mum does something (or various things) to ruin my daughter's birthday (for me, not my daughter). I know its not MY birthday but I don't want to feel upset / angry on my daughter's birthday but she does it every fucking year. Worst one that still makes me angry is she invented the fact that we'd told her my daughter was having a party one year and even invented a date and time and then had a proper nasty argument with me about my brother and sister in law changing their shifts, travelling up etc. to be told no party THERE WAS NO FUCKING PARTY. I honestly don't know if they do it on purpose or if they are just honest mistakes, but honestly it now makes me dread it every year and kind of ruin it for me before its even happened as I know there will be something.

She keeps asking if I’m still mad at her. I’ve said no but deep down … grrrr!!! hopefully your mum will keep this in mind and think before doing something like that again.

OP, I used to work in a nursing home that had a resident like this. Can't think what the diagnosis was exactly, she had capacity but would do the strangest things to garner attention even it meant upsetting people. Your mother definitely has something going on in the same vein.

Completely agree.

All these selfish arseholes that cause grief and upset around them being given an out🙄

The OP latter posts re the uniform and rocking horse are nothing but absolutely nasty and attaching labels like adhd or autism are deeply offensive.

She's a nasty piece of work and the OP badly needs therapy to unpick that.

In the interim, she needs to keep this woman the hell away from her daughter and Christmas.

Not only would I be still be pissed at her deliberately ruining the day I would be mortified that I allowed my child be impacted by this woman and her fxxked up behaviour.

There's someone who is a mother to a child on one of my daughter's sports teams like this =- every time she's late, has forgotten a key bit of equipment, will pull out last minute due to someone being ill / forgetting that she's already agreed to something else. It's so tiring being on a team with her child, and I feel sorry for them too, as it must be so embarrassing for them. She's always doing the 'oh what am I like' thing, and 'I'm so scatty'. There's now a 2nd mother who almost seems to compete with her for how disorganised she can be.

Honestly considering changing clubs to avoid, as there have been times it's meant the team can't compete.

Sorry for your loss Amy. Totally agree with your point. It’s as if every time someone posts about their kids being annoying or worrying them, someone from the fertility or baby loss boards coming over and saying ‘at least you’ve got kids’, which doesn’t happen because it would be unreasonable.

Not scared, not a big brain imo , just more time to waste than I have , for my sanity I decided not to engage

Oh! - but I do have time to waste atm so ...

Telling someone "you are not in charge" IS engagement.
It's also inadvertently hilarious, if you enjoy irony.

The bossiness behind it was childishly endearing, as if you think there needs to be a nominated Person In Charge. Most grown ups don't conduct their lives looking for that outside of paid employment, let alone anonymous forums, so I responded to the rudeness as I wondered what on earth could be motivating it.

Sorry you feel a thread about longstanding child abuse is a waste of time.
I'll let you crack on now, as you have sanity to preserve & probably quite a lot of things to be in charge of.

Christmas dinner was always chaos at my mums with her inviting everyone and his dog and then refusing any help and usually nobody getting fed until 7pm. We stopped going years ago. Honestly I’d just say you’ll do dinner and she can come to you.

Completely agree. It is infuriating.

Even if it is "for attention" that's normally a sign of a deeper psychological issue. Maybe some deep conversations outside of the Christmas period could help to get some insights into your mum's "real issues" or family therapy if you can afford it.

It's not up to OP to support her mother's emotional issues though, especially after a lifetime of being damaged by them.

She sounds like she may have an undiagnosed spectrum disorder. It is possible for females to mask the condition & especially in older people when it wasn't even thought about years ago. Maybe she means & tries to do things correct but struggles.... A bit like a dyslexic covering up their dyslexic.
I don't understand why you would still be angry it was a mistake & it sounds like your mom makes lots of mistakes. It doesn't sound intentional.

However I do think you sound really harsh........ when your mom is not with you these memories will be what you have.

Eurgh, I’d be furious too and I definitely wouldn’t let her ruin Christmas again with her strange antics.

If you can't be bothered to read the thread at least read the OP's posts

@HitMeWithAHotNoteAndWatchMeBounce - I am with you!

For those about to post:

1. it’s obviously about more than one Christmas dinner.
2. OP had suggested her mum came to hers in the past and has insisted this year.
3. OP’s mother may have ADHD/autism/ADD - it doesn’t excuse her behaviour
4. OP doesn’t have to be grateful for her mother because yours has passed away and you miss her.
5. At least click the see all post next to OPs first post to read them all
6. Yes, ADHD has been mentioned
7. I promise it really has
8. It doesn’t excuse her mother’s nasty behaviour towards OP.

Does she do the whole 'well i guess i'm just a rubbish mum, then' routine? Anything that can possibly be construed at criticism towards my mum and i get that. It's very effective - it's not an apology or an acceptance or admission and it guilts you perfectly. Any attempt to continue and explain is just talked over with pout and sarcasm 'nothing is ever good enough...so sorry for your rotten childhood' etc. Trained me well to never criticise, comment or complain but if anyone has any tips or experience of that, be interested to hear.

I definitely think, as previous posters have said, that you should tell her you're still annoyed. It sounds like she's had a free pass for many years for this ridiculous behaviour and she needs to know that it's childish and extremely wearing. Not cute and acceptable. Especially when it affected your DD too.