To think my mum was ridiculous about a slice of pie

[BeachPossum]

My son and I made a beautiful rhubarb and strawberry pie a couple of days ago, and I shared a photo of it on our family WhatsApp (parents, siblings and partners).

Yesterday afternoon my mum dropped by unexpectedly after visiting a friend nearby. I offered her a cup of tea and a biscuit and she said 'oh no, I'll have a slice of that lovely pie'. I said 'oh sorry! It's all been eaten', to which she responded with the most exaggerated display of astonishment and surprise. She kept saying 'REALLY! A whole pie in ONE DAY?', saying it would have done her and my dad for a week, we must have had huge slices etc. She made five or six comments in total.

The first time she commented I told her my in laws had been over so between them and us we'd eaten five slices, then my husband had had another piece in the afternoon following a 55km bike ride, and then the three of us had had a piece for morning coffee that day, totalling 9 slices of a normal sized pie. Not a crazy amount. Then when she kept on going on about it I tried to brush it off and move on, before eventually snapping at her to stop talking about food and appetites in front of my young children, at which point she left in a huff. She has texted me this morning to let me know she's hurt, she was just surprised, and that she wasn't saying anything inappropriate in front of the children.

She has absolute form for this. She's one of those people who always has to have the smallest appetite in the room, loves talking about meals she's forgotten to eat, loves refusing food. I was stunned she asked for a slice of pie in the first place since ninety nine times out of a hundred she refuses anything I offer her and makes a point of telling me she's totally full after a huge breakfast of one blini and a quail's egg. She's permanently on a diet, obsessed with food but never eats any, thinks that thinness is next to godliness etc. I've learned to live with it but I'll be damned if me and my children will accept being treated as revolting gluttons for eating two slices of pie over two days.

Anyway, the dilemma. She's incredibly defensive and will go nuclear if I try and get her to take any accountability. I swallow a lot of her shit for the sake of family harmony, and I'm at peace with this because she and I now have a very superficial relationship and I let her crap wash over me. But it's going to get to the point of affecting my children and when that happens I'll have to intervene and accept the fallout. So what do I say to her now? She's expecting an apology from me for snapping and reassurance that she's a lovely mother and granny who was treated unfairly. Do I:

1. Give her an insincere apology to get her to fuck off and leave me alone
2. text something very neutral like 'let's not row over pie' and hope she drops it
3. tell her she was being ridiculous and that it's part of a wider pattern of behaviour that I won't tolerate in front of my kids, and deal with whatever histrionics and drama follows
4. other suggestions welcome

I would stay quiet....no contact for a while, leave her sit and think about how her actions have affected you and your family....she clearly has an issue around food. Possibly suggest she seeks some therapy to try to overcome and help herself. Habits are formed, she may have been treated in a certain way around food whilst she was younger. Have that conversation with her....you will feel so much better for it. Good luck x

I’ll probably be rounded upon for being “ageist” but I’m going to say it. A lot of boomers are absolute nutcases. This is unhinged behaviour.

You both overreacted. In the end, this is how your mum is, she’s got an eating disorder but it’s difficult to see how your kids will be affected.

Apologise for snapping if need be and then forget it. Life is too short.

When people upset me or try and control me I think of the situation in terms of power and control, and all this drama around food (and everything else) is her source of power. I think if you can think how inadequate she must feel that she has to put this amount of effort into putting you down in order to make herself feel better, it might not upset you so much - and enable you to react in a less visceral way. And with people who are like a broken record about the annoying things they say - I play a kind of bingo with them - mentally taking note and giving a good eyeroll when they mention x,y and z like they always do! Wishing you a happier future xx

I can see how this is a big deal and it would be nice if it weren't.

But I guess at a very basic level - don't send pictures of food to someone with disordered eating!

An awful lot of my family relationships involve "don't mention the war"...

I expect you don’t have a mother who specialises in thinking she is better than everyone else, along with faux shock and surprise.

i told mine she could get out of my house if she was going to make pointed remarks to a 2 year old about how often they were hungry/eating

Life is too short for all this. It's sad for both of you. When things calm down, would it be possible for you to both have a calm chat about the issues in your relationship?

4 Tell her you don’t want your children to grow up worrying about their appetites or food intake, without accusing her or calling her ridiculous. She’ll probably push it, and then you can say words to the effect that “you did, actually, although you probably didn’t mean to. Let’s move on”. Makes the point, but avoids the drama.

I think the only thing you can control here OP is your reaction to her words. It sounds like she’s triggering an insecurity in you so I think it’s that you need to tackle rather than her. She won’t change and she definitely won’t change because you tell her she needs to. We can only ever work on ourselves. If you have a healthy, happy relationship with food in your house your kids won’t be impacted by her occasional oddball comment, they’ll see it for what it is. You can remove the power of her words with how you react to them.

Absolutely agree. My mother was the same (well, both parents) and I had to eventually cut off contact with them because I could see how damaging it was to my children. Their other grandparents were incredible but I only reconnected with my parents once my children we teenagers and could understand better and had been brought up in a healthy household. My parents behaved just as badly but my teenagers gave it back them! They said that they understood why I had kept them out of their lives and were thankful! We stopped almost all contact after that with them and although it was sad to do so it was absolutely the right decision for our family. I am afraid that people don't change and it took a lot for me to shake off their bad parenting and grow up to be a healthy adult. I didn't want to inflict anything on my kids. Yes, it is a lot to limit your relationship over a piece of pie incident but I think you already it is more than just this. So let her know you are not going to put up with her behaviour anymore and stick to her guns. You never know, she may change but be prepared for if she doesn't.

This sounds like my relationship with my mother. She never changed. Sure, she had her own issues, but she was very controlling and I sympathise with you, OP. However, I never had children, so I can't advise you there. My instinct is that you put them first and let them form a relationship with grandma when they are old enough, and secure enough, not to be influenced by her.

You sound v thoughtful and a very good mum. I'd go for 'let's not row' and move on, if you still want to see her.

It's interesting how much of a thing this can be with older people. My mother (not a boomer - born pre-war) was similarly obsessive. I had a tendency to put on weight, so she would quite ostentatiously give me smaller portions and tut if I took cake at teatime. Her reactions if anything pushed me into wanting to eat more. She had a tendency to get hold of us on our own as children and harangue us, in my case about my weight, to an extent that was just ridiculous - I remember once she claimed my father was worried about me going into his office in case the stairs wouldn't take my vast weight - I was all of 9 stone! If she saw someone large when out and about she couldn't resist commenting loudly about how fat they were, with a sort of relish in her voice. I did once tell her that the reason I wouldn't go on any diet at home was that I knew she would make a massive production out of it with loud comments to the rest of the family, and she was quite taken aback. I think she was pretty surprised that I got and stayed married, she'd written me off as the fatty that no man would ever look at.

When she got older it became ridiculous, she couldn't have a meal served to her without claiming that it was far too much, she couldn't possibly eat that. When she was in hospital for a longish spell I used to time my visits for mealtimes because the nurses had no time to try to persuade her to eat, so she would have eaten nothing if I wasn't there to jolly her along. She became skeletally thin and unable to walk and had to go into a care home, where they did try to persuade her more but I suspect still weren't very successful. With hindsight, it was all quite sad - I think it started out as a way to validate herself and became an unhealthy obsession. It certainly didn't make her any happier.

Stagger round with the most humongous fruit pie ever seen to humanity, with a big smile on your face.
Or, 2.
You’ve done your best by a difficult mother, and it would be in your interests and the interests of your kids to keep your contact with her to a minimum, I would think.

Number 2.
Make another pie, don't mention it and eat it all.

Yes mine is silent generation rather than baby boomer. It was currency being thin and keeping a clean house when one was otherwise quite powerless so left school at 15 etc.

mine At 83 proudly told me a couple of weeks ago that she’d got down to seven stone four. She’s doing that because she thinks it’s healthier , I’m not convinced at her age it is. She was five foot two had shrunk a bit with old age but still thatchers s low weight.

This is a bit harsh on you :) but perhaps you need to practice responding immediately. You have been trained by her for years to not rock the boat. At some point you know you will have to but it's impossible. On the first "did you eat all that pie in two days" perhaps the response is well not just us mum but yes it's all gone on the next you just say something like "i don't want to talk about the pie mum." Now she may want to talk about the pie but you don't so you keep saying I don't like talking about food in front of the children. Alternatively you say I'm sorry I assumed you wouldn't want pie, I can save you some next time? Also don't send her pictures of food, it's an issue for her and for you so just don't.

Also so sorry this is your life. It's hard when our parents didn't provide the love and safety we so desperately wanted and still need.

Years ago I had two female friends, one of whom went to stay with the other one's family for the weekend. She came back and told me that after dinner the mother got chocolates out of a bix, cut them in half and have everyone half a chocolate. That was ut. Half a chocolate after dinner. Some people are sadly very mentally disordered around food and use it as a kind if metaphor for their sense of agency in life I think. It's really sad.

My mum is 94 and has shrunk to below five foot. I don’t think she’s actually been dieting as such, but at her last GP check up she’d lost a few pounds in weight and the GP said to try not to let her lose more (she was down to 8 st from about 8 st 4lb) as it’s better for very old people to keep their weight up! I’ve been feeding her nice creamy puddings and tea cakes slathered with butter since then saying “doctor’s orders”!

She is feeling hurt and left out and a bit jealous of your in-laws. Maybe all the time so this is probably not so much about the piece of pie but maybe she feels left out generally and thinks you spend more time with the in-laws than her and maybe like them more. I would have saved a piece for her and sent a pic online and said “your piece Mom. Come on over”. I would say “Aw sorry you were hurt there was not a piece left for you, I was thinking of saving some for you but it got all eaten up! I think you generally do not feel all that warmly towards her and this is what bugs here maybe so it comes out in small things. I maybe getting it wrong so please accept my apology if this the not the case. I think saying let’s not fall out over a piece of pie maybe justified though.

Number 3 all the way. If you do anything else it’ll just enable her appalling behaviour.

What’s to imagine? You know what an apple pie or a cherry pie looks like, right? We’ll just “imagine” that with strawberries and rhubarb instead of apples and cherries.

@BettyCrockerClinic - that reminds me of a joke:

I’d like you to imagine one of those big, glass demijohns - the ones used for wine making, with the wide body and narrow neck. Inside the demijohn is a duck - a full size, adult, living duck.

How do you get the duck out of the demijohn without hurting or killing the duck, and without breaking or damaging the demijohn?
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Well - you imagined the duck into the bottle - so you just imagine it back out again.

Sorry.

Oh no mine is deliberate , there would be no feeding her up she’d be disgusted. She eats the same meals every single day. Not unhealthy ones just as my husband says bloody joyless. When she comes for Sunday lunch or Christmas dinner she won’t have a Yorkshire pudding or pigs in blankets, if one is put on her plate she won’t eat until she’s got someone else to take it.

you paint a nice picture of you and your mum x