I can’t bring myself to buy a ‘world’s best mum’ Mother’s Day card

[Bumblebeeforever]

I just wondered if anyone is in the same boat, every year I go to buy a Mother’s Day card and find myself unable to pick up anything that says ‘greatest mum’ or ‘best mum’, I usually just end up with a Happy Mothers Day one, although it seems silly, my mums fine, she’s hasn’t done anything wrong, she wasn’t abusive or horrible, and there are much worse mums out there, but I just can’t bring myself to send a card saying she’s the greatest when it feels like a lie. She’s quite selfish and was very controlling when I was younger and made some choices that now as a parent myself I look back on and don’t understand. She’d be very hurt if she knew I felt this way.

Neither were we. My mum detested ‘schmaltz’ of any kind but she was a good mum (in a very 60/70s way). I’m more gushy when it comes to my own children though as they grew up with lots of hugs and I love you’s. My mum loved getting cards but she liked them unfussy.

She’d slag me off to all and sundry, and make out to them that I was the world’s worst daughter. People ask me why I still bother with her. When I was a lot younger it was because I was trying to make her love me. I gave up on that about 30 years ago. I think being honest I pity her, and by being good to her I’m maybe taking the moral high ground which is a bit screwed up but it makes me feel like I’m the better person, if that makes sense.

I’m a ‘boomer’ and I had/have no problem at all apologising to my kids. (Neither did I ever say ‘because I said so’). I agree with the pp who said every new generation thinks they invented a better way to parent. The key is to take on the good aspects of your own parents’ parenting and eschew the more negative aspects.

Fathers' Day cards tend to be jokier than Mothers' Day cards which are more gushing and sentimental.

I saw a Fathers' Day card once that said 'the only thing that ruined Fathers' Day for Dad was the fact that he had kids'. A Mothers' Day equivalent would seem appropriate for some of the less than adequate mums referred to in this thread.

Reading some of these posts as a Mother, i certainly wouldnt want a card that is so begrudged by so many of the above posters, why bother... just tell her she aint worth it, do you think she cant tell how you feel by the cards that are sent ?

Let her! You’re not that scared little girl anymore

break the cycle. Send a HMD card if you like, and if she says anything, say that you won’t send a card at all if she’s going to be ungrateful.

be your own matriarch! You’ve earned it

I’m 60, have 2 grown up DDs and always apologised to them if I got something wrong. Your generation is not the first to do it and you thinking that it is, is based on your experience, don’t extrapolate that to everyone of your parents age.

I don’t think I’ve seen someone miss the point so spectacularly in quite a long time

So you have no sympathy for women telling you they’ve been emotionally and/or physically abused by their mothers and are scared stiff of the consequences if they don’t send a card?

Awww… hit a nerve somewhere have we? 🤣

there is a world of difference between the experience some of us had from our mothers/parents and how we now see how we treat our own children

it comes as such a huge shock when we look at our own kids and realise that we couldn’t ever be as cruel/distant/neglectful.

its not about being perfect, its just a matter of loving and caring for our children, being kind and considerate.

its easier to be kind to our children than it is to be as cruel, calculating and vicious as our parents have been to some of us. Unless of course if you’re naturally a cruel, vicious and nasty person… then I understand that it’s a huge effort to be nice.

and yes, im NC with my parents. No cards or anything for either of them.

I've gone none contact with mine and it's been three months since any contact. I go through periods of guilt and so I'm wondering if I should get her a card and post it. During 40+ years, I've never not given a card and present but she's made some shitty choices and put men first so I'm putting myself first. It's hard though.

You’re I right, it was a sweeping statement and obviously doesn’t apply to everyone. It’s just the examples I’ve been exposed to I suppose. I don’t have much experience with people of my parents age and older parenting that way. It was very much do as I say not as I do. It’s only something I’ve noticed now I have DC of my own.

LizzieSiddal,
I have every empathy with abused daughters, im one of them, but i cant be that hypercritical now as a grown up,

To be fair to previous generations, my 83 year old mother has apologised to me for some of her more egregious mothering, and I have long since forgiven her because the years mellow everything and she has done some great mothering too.

I‘m glad I found this thread, it makes me feel less alone. I get on well with my mum but she has always been emotionally absent. Now I‘m an adult and live abroad. When I see her (once a year) she tries to hug me but it feels awkward, because she never showed affection before. I can’t send her a world‘s best mum card, and it makes me feel sad.

My dad only texts me when he’s drunk, he doesn’t get a Farther‘s Day card and I try to ignore it.

My stepdad has been in my life since I was 6 and has done a lot for us but was also quite abusive. So he gets a generic card too.

I‘d be more than happy if the whole mother’s/father‘s day thing was scrapped. It causes so much unnecessary heartache each year.

Thanks for posting this -
every year I struggle to buy a card, I always buy a card but I struggle to pick one as the wording does not work -
my mums not a bad person but she was not a good mum when I was young -
I’ve always had to be self sufficient- I could never rely on either parent for anything other than the very basics -
I don’t want them to feel bad about it, but it does make me think hard when picking a Mother’s Day card that I know and she knows wouldn’t fit - I just pick a blank picture one !!

Snap with the birthday thing. It’s a couple of weeks difference this year but some years it’s been close and giving my mum a card and present on my birthday just negates my birthday entirely.

Haha I thought I was just a bitch until I read this because I’m absolutely the same… I just buy silly ones instead, I think this year I got a Trump one.

I can’t lie to her and claim she’s great or the best. She started fostering a couple of years back and I also couldn’t bring myself to lie to the social worker and say she’d been a good mum to me so I refused to say anything…

I thought I was the only one who did this. Most neutral card, fewest words possible.

I think your reading comprehension is poor. Can you quote the posts where people say they are perfect. Better yes. I am a far better mother than mine , I don’t say inappropriate sexual stuff to my child or have sex in the same room as her, I don’t use her as a surrogate husband and I didn’t leave her alone in unsecured hotel rooms age 11 allowing a man to break in and sexually assault her.

It’s wild isn’t it once you realise. I feel such an idiot. I’ve pushed back a bit and my dad is dead now so age doesn’t need me to whinge to or take him to hospital appointments. Consequently she’s dropped me really . We are like fairly awkward acquaintances now.

I don’t think k that poster has the emotional intelligence for that to be honest. It’s a bit rough Eastenders I think - she’s your mum/but family bollocks . The very stuff that keeps the abuse and dysfunction going.

My mother was an awful parent. She also disappeared to do her own thing when I was aged 11 - 14. She was emotionally abusive and very controlling.

We are not close, but she thinks we are. Usually I find a neutral card but I can't bring myself to do it this year.

I'm going to 'forget' mother's day.

Put a message in the card saying.
“Any opinions expressed in this card are not necessarily those of the sender. “
😉😁

I guess the existence of "world's greatest" cards suggests that all other mothers should be ranked accordingly.
We need card producers to come up with a range, or perhaps a tick-box option, from 'shite' through 'meh' and all the way to the top.
My own mum (died many years ago) would've been 'brilliant at the start, but we could have done without the alcoholic years'