To still be seething she made a cake

[TheCakeConspiracy]

We threw a small party a few weeks ago for DS's birthday. My mother had offered to make a cake. This was very kind of her, however it's our child's birthday and we really wanted to provide the cake. Explained this to her and asked if she could make something else instead.

Skip to party day, she turns up with the 'something else' AND a cake! Ultimately the centre piece of a birthday party.

AIBU to still be quietly raging about this?

Yes - get over it, she was just trying to be nice and it's only a cake

No - she didn't listen to you, didn't care what you wanted and tried to take over a little bit

wingsandstrings 👍👍👍.

Right, well I would take my mum refusing to make me a coffee a million times over some of the stuff I actually have had to deal with over the years, but

Sorry, something went wrong there.

I guess when you've dealt with enough major aggressions, or even normal sized ones, micro aggressions seem, well, micro.

@MargotBamborough it's not a bloody competition

Jesus so you think because you've had it worse no one's allowed to complain about shitty controlling parents?

And you've missed the point spectacularly. It's showing that controlling and undermining behaviour can and does look like just trivial shit which is why it doesn't get picked up on.

Errmm I don't believe I ever said toxic. Overstepping - yes

Well I wouldn't think a four year old would have considered a cake topped with fruit to be a birthday cake and so it wouldn't have undermined your own cake. It's been my dgs's 4th birthday this weekend, he's had three birthday cakes because what counts for dgs is the ceremony of being sang to and blowing out the candles.
So he had a supermarket cake that went to pre school where he shared it there. He had a dinosaur cake that I made at his family party that I hosted the following day and then he had a Lightning Mcqueen cake professionally made for his birthday party with his friends.
Dd sees it a positive that he has an extended family that loves him and so has never been possessive about her role tbh and dgs laps up all the extra attention lavished upon him.

@hihiredandsqueak three different occasions and groups though

But nothing the OP has described here is actually controlling. Annoying, yes. Controlling, no.

And as she herself has just pointed out, she hasn't actually described her mother as toxic. That has come from the fevered imaginations of the many posters on this thread who actually ARE projecting their own relationships onto this situation.

@MargotBamborough
I seriously think you should seek counselling. When you live your life lacking empathy for everyone else because you assume your life was worse.

My MIL makes cakes for a living. I always said I wanted to make mg own kids cakes as it’s really important to me. Every year she’d ask what theme cake they wanted and every year I’d say thanks but I’m making it myself. Yet every year until my first was 5 she’d turn up to her party with a massive birthday style cake. I’m the end I’d say oh that looks great thankyou, I’ve done her cake but they’ll enjoy that later and then leave it in the kitchen rather than make it part of the buffet.

I'd have sung to and shared main cake offered the other to anyone who wanted it

@jannier this is want happened.

It's just left me annoyed she didn't listen to my wishes (yes yet again, but not going further into it) by just making cupcakes. I will say again, it was very kind of her to have wanted to help.

This.

I was just trying to think of a more delicate way of asking where the hell your empathy was. @Theblacksheepandme says it better than me.

Dd1's mother in law made their wedding cake which was amazing - each tier was a different vegetable eg courgette, beetroot, carrot and she also made a fruit tier for my mum who's very traditional. Then she surprised them with an amazing cheese wedding cake (all cheeses from the groom's home county).

Ridiculous.

Don't be absurd. Seek counselling because I don't agree that someone bringing a cake to a party when they've been asked not to is toxic?

How on earth do you make it through a regular day? And more importantly, how do you distinguish between the big stuff and the small stuff if you make such a big deal about the small stuff?

My mum does stuff that annoys me all the time but I make an effort not to bug her about all of it and only about stuff that actually matters.

Having boundaries is important but you need to be selective about it. You can't have boundaries about everything, otherwise that's not having boundaries, that's just being controlling, and no one will know where your real boundaries actually are.

If my mum brought a cake to a party when I'd asked her not to, or annoyed me by making a big song and dance about my son starting to crawl (and she has in fact done very similar stuff to both these things and a whole shit ton of other stuff on about the same level of annoying), I would keep my annoyance to myself.

Why?

Because when I tell her not to post that I've had my new baby on Facebook, or that my son must always be rear facing in his car seat even if it does spin the other way, or that she needs to cut grapes in half before feeding them to a one year old, or that my six month old must always be put to sleep on her back, I want her to listen and do what I bloody tell her to do, not just do her own thing because it was different in her day and we all survived to adulthood.

And I know that there is a much greater likelihood of her listening to those instructions if I am not also giving her instructions about trivial stuff like cake.

@MargotBamborough
I will leave you with a quote from Mark Twain.

@MargotBamborough Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.'

Please don't.

That's not even one of Mark Twain's better quotes.

Annoyed at the time? Yes, but not massively. To be still be “seething” and it’s “a few weeks” later, that’s just ridiculous.

Wow. Someone needs a time out.