To think this is worrying to hear from a mother?

[Brittno]

When I was 12 I had forgotten my dinner money and the secretary’s office in school used to lend money out.

I told my mother the evening after school that I’d forgotten my dinner money and had to borrow from the secretary and she replied, dramatically, without giving me eye contact :

“what will they think if the home, the best home in Leicester? “

We didn’t live in Leicester but a similar sized city

does it sound as though she’s a bit narc? She said it in a bitter tone of voice

Hope you're in therapy for this, OP 😂

Stop reading the Daily Mail then.

It sounds like a catch phrase from an old radio show to me.

This. I think people go out of their way to create issues for themselves

You're still stewing about a throwaway comment from when you were 12? How old are you now?

It sounds more like the comment of a slightly stressed, harassed mother, annoyed that now she's got something else to sort out - paying back the school.

It’s not just the typo op but without the context, none of your first post made sense. It might have been better to also explain this in your original post
“she thought the fact I went to school minus dinner money would reflect negatively on the home”

Because it’s confused a lot of people. Nobody knew what you were talking about. But yes it’s hard to advise just from one comment. I think unless she made lots of similar comments throughout your life then I’d just move on from it.

I don’t… my point was about that’s what their type of readers tend to think. I never indicated I read it….

Forgetting once is not a big deal, I doubt school secretaries judge on that - maybe they judge parents of kids that don't have dinner money regularly, but I'd imagine that's the tip of the iceberg for concerns.

In isolation it doesn't sound bad... what's the background OP?

Google thinks it’s a quote from a film called The Most Important Thing. Sounds like she was being flippant.

I say similar to my kids - “look at the state of your hair/shoes/shirt/blazer - you can’t go to school like that, we’ll be put on a list…” its a joke, as your mothers comment sounds to me.
Unless of course there are many other comments but its a bit of a non event to have remembered from 12yrs old.

It was a joke ffs

I disagree with stopping from reading ANY material. Even stuff you don't agree with. Or, ESPECIALLY stuff you don't agree with.
You shouldn't feel morally superior because you DON'T read something.

Narc is bandied about. What she said was unempathetic to you as her child, self-absorbed and snobbish. V Hyacinth.

A much better response would have been to praise you for your resourcefulness in finding a solution and saying she’d support you in paying straight away to avoid you being worried about being asked.

But one incident shouldn’t be used to judge any mother. None of us are perfect. Far from it. I daresay lots of parents have spoken in a bitter tone on the odd occasion when something their kids don’t know about is wearing them down.

I'm sure you weren't the only kid to forget your lunch money!? It's hardly embarrassing!

There would many other examples if your DM was a narc.

I dont think this constitutes her being a “narc” she may have low self esteem or anxiety issues.

Or she's just one of those people on the vast spectrum of normality.
I don't think it's obligatory to have some sort of diagnosis or "issues".

Sounds like she was being sarcastic, probably went over a 12 year old's head.

Like, 'what will the neighbours think', when you don't care at all!

I suspect there will be soon.
Certainly PPs are providing useful examples extrapolated from that one sentence.

@Brittno You said yourself that you'd forgotten the money. I assume you usually forget things so your mum wasn't moved that you did as usual. Instead, she made a sarcastic deadpan joke about how this forgetfulness would reflect on her? "The best home in Leicester" part seems like an inside joke?

You need to come back and give us the full picture if you want people to make sense of what you're asking. Forget the "narc" label for now though.

Doesn’t sound narcissistic at all to me. You were a financially comfortable family and she didn’t want you going around telling everyone that you didn’t have lunch money implying that your family couldn’t afford it, when in fact you’d just forgotten it? That sounds perfectly fine to me. It sounds like you should have remembered your lunch money.

My 12 year old often doesn’t want to take her packed lunch. We don’t like to always give her money because she will spend £10 per lunch on junk and buying hot chocolates for all her friends. 🙄 But apparently, some days she tells the lunch ladies that her parents can’t afford to put money on her account and they feel sorry for her and give her food. 😩

We literally live in a £1 million house and are very well off. I don’t actually give a shit if people think we’re poor, but it’s horrible behaviour because there are lots of children in her school who legitimately cannot afford lunch. It’s absolutely not okay to go begging for free lunch just because you don’t like the one you’ve got, especially if that might mean there isn’t enough for others who really do need it.

That’s not quite the same as your situation, but whatever issues your mum might have, if you truly did grow up in privilege, that comes with some responsibility, like paying for your own lunches, and in this instance, I can see why she might have been annoyed with you and trying to make a point.

The problem is kids are on the internet making up words such as "narc". and egging each other on to go "NC". Like when previous generations of kids thought of running away, but this time they have the whole internet encouraging them to do so.

So when you were 12, YOU forgot to take your dinner money to school and this is somehow another example of poor parenting by your mum?

Have you ever taken responsibility for your mistakes or is it always someone else’s fault?

Time to grow up OP!

Huh?

I think you have the wrong end of the stick. She's upset reading the DM? Don't read it.
That's just my advice to her. No biggie.

Probably a phrase with significance to her - we still talk about the 'elite of the parish' a reference to something a stuck up neighbour said 45 years ago. If that's the worst she did you're lucky!