Does anyone else have parents who drive them mad?

[50sandFabulous]

Gah. I do my Dad's Asda shop on-line, twice a week. He's 84 and not on-line. He always calls me the day before he wants to place the order, just to check that I can take the order the next day (which I always can, as I WFH). I told him yesterday, that I would call him today, once I have a gap in my schedule to do it. Cue him calling from 8.55am, and calling and calling and calling, and leaving voicemails, to remind me that his list is ready. Same thing happens every single time! Drives me nuts! I will call you when I'm ready!!

Yes. Not age-related in my case. I suspect my father (now 83) has undiagnosed autism and incredibly rigid thinking, and my mother is a lifelong catastrophiser and people pleaser who has absolutely no idea how angry she is.

@50sandFabulous can you show him how to send you a picture of the list. That should stop the calling.

That sounds very difficult!! My Mum was super organised, but since her passing we've realised she did everything and Dad is clueless!!

Yes surely this can all be done by text message or email? Doesn’t need to be a call - in fact a call is harder as then presumably you have to write it down?

This is a great idea, but he can't even work a mobile any more. He won't put his hearing aids in either, and can't hear anything, so I end up screaming on the phone. He also slurs a lot, so it's really hard to hear what he wants. 😆

I get your frustration and my mum had a habit of calling just as we sat down for dinner (she still thought it was cheaper after 6pm so she’d call a couple of minutes past). No matter how often I told her you could set your watch to it. I’m sure the time will come when our own children will say the same about us.
Having said that she passed away 3 years ago and I’d do anything to have those phone calls again.

He can't e-mail, he can't text. We bought him a big button mobile phone for the elderly - can't do it. But he can make calls from a landline, presumably because he's had a landline since he was young (muscle memory?)

Ah yes, my Dad is a bit like that too! I've said to him a million times, that I work in the morning, and that lunchtime is better for phone calls, but the number of times he calls at 8pm for me to take his list!! Er, no, we are watching a film now, and I've told you a million times when to call! Sorry about your Mum, I miss mine too. 😓

Create a standard go-to list each week and just ask if there’s anything extra to add.

@50sandFabulousWe had this with my DM. My dsis was arsy about it and only ordered for DM once a fortnight. To save delivery costs apparently. Keeping food fresh was a nightmare. However old folk get into a routine and phone when it suits them. They are often oblivious to what you might be doing. I tended to phone when it suited me.

My mum drives me mad. She doesn't understand that conversations are meant to be 2 way. If i tell her something she will just enter in to an endless monologue about herself. If i tell her that i am poorly she will drone on about how she is in pain because she has stubbed her toe.

Yes, MIL was a nightmare like this. Everything had to be done now, not helped by her getting up at 5am so 8am was half way through the morning for her!

All I can suggest is to get assertive, more of you being like the parent than the adult child.

Be clear "Dad, I will phone you at 10am for your Asda order, I am too busy working before that, I'll get in trouble at work otherwise". Then, switch voicemail off on your phone and don't answer.

If he is a bit forgetful, put a note next to his phone.

The refusing to wear hearing aids is driving me mad.

When Mum was ill, they wanted someone to go in to hospital to get her results. I said me and sis would go. Dad was insistent that he should go.

So I said, "well, you'll need to be as sharp as a tac!", to which he replied "what shark attack?"

😆

I suspect it will be the opposite in our case. Dad (again, very rigid black and white thinking, lacks theory of mind) moved all their bill paying, insurance, banking etc online. My mother can't use computers at all. Despite us repeatedly pointing out that if Dad died in the morning, she would be completely unable to access any money, pay bills etc, and us asking him to give her or one of us the passwords etc, he doesn't seem to grasp this. He keeps just saying that he knows where everything is. We keep saying 'But you're dead in this scenario.' He just doesn't get it.

It reminds me of when DS was little and I would bring him on a visit to my parents (we were living overseas at the time) and Dad would take DS out for what was supposed to be a little walk around the block on his scooter or something, and not come back for hours, and I would try phoning him, to discover he'd always left his mobile at home. When he finally returned I would say 'Please keep your phone with you so I know where DS is' and he would look at me in genuine surprise and say 'But sure I knew where he was!'

OMG, you need to get those passwords! When Mum died, Dad knew absolutely nothing, but Mum had been quite organised with her filing, so we muddled through.

I'm really hoping that FIL has good filing, because his affairs are uber complex - lots of property and bank accounts - we have hinted he should tell us things, but there's absolutely no way he will.

The thing with your son rang so true with me - my FIL took my son for a walk when he was about 18 months old. He didn't tell anyone, and he didn't have a mobile (was almost 30 years ago). All we knew was that they were both missing, and had to hope they were together. We got a similar response when they returned, and he was Irish too, so always saying sure to be sure, ha ha.

Just had another call, asking have I done it!

Aaaaaand another call, to change the order. 😐

My dad has Alzheimer’s and has been living with us for two years. Unfortunately even before the Alzheimer’s he was completely batshit 🤣 and barely housetrained, so yeah, he drives me round the fucking twist. Aside from the daily grind of caring for him, his medical appointments, the fact that he will only eat British, overcooked dishes drenched in brown gravy…it’s the crazy off-the-wall stuff that really gets my goat. Recent highlights include:

He bought a grotty old hat in a charity shop last time I took him out. The following day I found it on the draining board, completely filled with all the washing up liquid we had in the house.

I was out weeding the veg beds in the front garden, and got pelted with large chunks of stale bread. He was throwing it out the upstairs window “for the birds”.

We have to make sure nobody is using the bathroom when he goes up to bed. If we don’t, he will piss into a pot he’s hidden in his room (we regularly remove them) and throw it out of the window, onto the front doorstep and flower beds.

He has recently taken to striding up the back garden for a few minutes every time he makes a cup of tea. I was intrigued, so I followed him. I found three different caches of tea bags that he has been creating in my flower beds, also “for the birds”.

He will put everything from pastry crusts to mashed potato to custard in the cat bowls, despite our having put up a large sign telling him not to. When gently challenged, he laughs at our stupidity - he has “lived with cats all his life” (he has never owned one!) and they eat everything.

I could go on. Indefinitely. 🤯🤯🤯

OMG you must have the patience of a saint! There's no way I could have mine live with me!

My late mother-in-law was the worst - a combination of decisiveness and dithering. She disregarded ALL appointment times and turned up when it suited her, co-opting me as her driver. (Her DS always managed to dodge the bullets.) Even when told that her appointment was next day at a totally different time, she went in all guns blazing and said it was the only time that I could give her a lift. If anyone continued to demur, she would list all my real or imagined responsiblities and her "vulnerability"(Ha!) and urgent needs. I would be hot with embarrassment, muttering fervent apologies and it amazed me that she was always allowed to ride rough-shod over any objections and have her way.
She once commissioned a well-known local artist to fashion some jewellery for her, using pearls her late husband had given her. She talked to the artist as if he was a gormless incompetent while clearly having no clear idea what she wanted and when she saw the finished article (three or four cringeworthy visits later) she was vocal in her disappointment and dissatisfaction.
I have never met anyone else in my life so ruthlessly determined to get her own way, yet when I was standing in front of her with two bottles of her preferred soft drinks asking her which she'd like, she would always say "Whatever's handiest." (She was teetotal and boy, did we hear about that, every single time she came for dinner.)
I've always found it interesting how people, as they age, somehow condense and strenghten aspects of their personalities that largely go unnoticed in their younger lives or are just considered their peculiar little foibles. It's frequently uncomfortable when these become their whole persona.

My mum did this annoying thing when playing with my toddler.
Say she was doing the farm puzzle, my mum would say the name of whatever it was over and over and over and increasingly louder
"cow, Cow, COW, COW!

And i would be sitting there thinking. Geez mix it up a bit
What's that?
Moo
Where does it go?

Then it was onto the next. dog, Dog, DOG

My child loved that puzzle so it was constant 😂

It was same with colouring too. green, Green, GREEN

I think the world shrinks, and older people become self obsessed. FIL for eg. never thinks to ask about us, or other family. Just talks about himself all the time. It's really quite odd.

Absolutely, re header. The other week I was putting gold leaf precariously onto a homemade birthday cake using tweezers. I'd already rang DM to ask if she wanted anything then warned her I'd be busy after that. Right in the middle of a tricky bit she rang, happily asking me to order something for her. I must admit I was pissed off as I'm always at her beck and call.

It is very frustrating- but it is something we may all do one day. My lovely dad would ring me to ask if he had enough steradent tablets - and I lived 100 miles away! He was an intelligent, well educated man who felt his grasp on every day life was slipping away. Oh how I wish he was still with me, so I could count his tablets each week when I visited and reassure him when he rang.
There were a lot more instances , but this just illustrates how life became for him. He died at 94, eight years ago, and how I still miss him.

It’s not that he can’t do it, it’s that he won’t do it. And you’re enabling that unfortunately.