Kind ways to escape parental monologues

[youplonkerrodney]

Mum is 82. I love her very much. She will talk at me in long rambling monologues, sometimes 15-20 mins long. I wait for her to finish her thought and then cut in to say I am going to the loo / to get dinner / for a walk / to make a brew but the ‘thought’ never ends.

Sometimes I will get up to leave the room and literally as I am crossing the floor to the door she will launch into a long speech about something I haven’t asked about or expressed any interest in.

Apart from this, she is cognitively ‘all there’. A bit slower and more set in her ways but I don’t think she has dementia.

How can I kindly interject to excuse myself from being her constant audience?

It sounds as though you are already doing well. Is she lonely? If she’s alone with her own thoughts a lot, she’s forgotten about give and take in conversation.
is she ok with you Interjecting to put the kettle on etc? Doesn’t get upset?

I don’t think she is lonely, she has lots of friends and I am actually staying with her for a few months while there’s work happening at my house.
I think she’s just lost conversational awareness. She is put out when I try to bring the conversations to an end and a common complaint is that I ‘interrupt her’ or ‘don’t listen’. I could cry, because if I were to never interrupt or walk away I would literally have to sit and listen to her talk for hours and hours every day. To demand I pay close attention and listen to everything she says is just beyond reasonable.

She is a lovely kind mum. I don’t want to hurt her. How can I deal with this? I just need a few phrases to help politely and respectfully cut across the flow / bring it to an end.

Omg I grt this with both my parents. My dad has always bern lilr this... long monologues, thry can last hours if you don't mske an excuse to leave... but now.my mum jas started similar smd it drains the life out of mr. It makes.visits or even phone calls harder ad I feel so drained afterwards!

I wonder if it's an ahe thing, but my father and mother in law wasn'g like this and npne of my grandparents were like it either!

Yes, I feel your pain. DM gets irate if anyone other than her tries to talk. She doesn’t get embarrassed that we needed to interrupt, she gets cross that we dared to!

Worse, I can’t concentrate long enough and lose track of what she’s saying, then I get caught out when she asks for a response. Fortunately that’s rare 🤣

I say things like ‘I’m listening, I’m just…. getting a drink/tidying these papers/getting that cobweb while I remember’.

My sympathies @Travelban.
I am getting seriously frustrated by it.
I remember as a child when I wanted to talk and she was busy she used to say “I’m busy, follow me”. But I can’t say that to her now, it would seem so rude!

This is hard isn’t it, you plainly love your mum and are a good daughter. Have you noticed if this happens with her friends? Are you able to listen in and see how they interject with one another?
As you’re confronted with a stream of consciousness coming at you… do physical cues help: in the sense that if you clap your hands together, straighten your back and say ‘ well this lovely, and now I must..’ and then stand up and follow through with your intended physical shift. ( like leaving the room) I’m thinking after a while she will recognise the signals that you are about to shift location. And begin to recognise your rhythm.

How’s the humour between you? Is it robust enough for you to say something like.. ‘ here we are chatting away all morning and I need to get things done! We are a right pair of chatterboxes!” Or “ we’ve talked each others ears off! Let’s rest with a bit of radio !’ Or “ Shall we rest our vocals a bit and listen to desert island discs “ ( or whatever programmes she enjoys )

if she has some favourite blast from the past tV shows, they might well be on iplayer or YouTube, too, and that might give you respite?

My mum is exactly the same. She can talk endlessly about what is in sainsburys, her neighbours and football. When i do excuse myself she will follow me and she will continue her monologue. She does have lots of friends. She has just never grasped that conversations are 2 way and that people do have different interests to her.

What's her hearing like? I have a friend in her 80s who even with her hearing aids in struggles to hear, and she does tend to bang on - though not for 15 minutes.

I think you need to cut in more frequently.

If she starts just as you are walking out of the room or about to do a job, cut in immediately and say, 'Ooh, hang on mum. I just have to... Can we save that story for later?'

DH's lovely dad can do this. I sometimes say: 'I'm going to apologise in advance because I need to concentrate on the cooking right now, so I won't be able to pay attention chatting.'

Another thing worth trying is to frequently interrupt to get a conversation going. Just blurt: 'Oh! that reminds me. Before I forget - did I tell you about X or did you see Y?' If she gets huffy – it sounds like she won't if she is very lovely – but if she does, gently say, 'Mum sweetheart, you have started monologuing and it is tiring having to listen for so long without being able to say anything. So if I butt in, it's because I have been listening for several minutes and want to be able to chat and chip in too, so please don;t be offended.'

My DM is like this. She lives very close by so I pop in usually twice a day. Almost always as soon as I open the door to leave she’ll start a new topic, quite often it’s far more important than whatever she was prattling on about for the previous 20 minutes!

I generally excuse myself to go to the loo, lol. Basically find a reason to leave the room.

I think with a lot of older people it's a combination of fading hearing and a slow breaking down of cognitive function. They seem to lose the art of two way conversation and generally a bit less concerned about others and more concerned about themselves!

You could try 'hold that thought mum, I've just got to nip to the loo/empty the dishwasher/sort out this laundry' and hope that she'll have forgotten by the time you get back!

Thanks, ‘hold that thought’ is a good line.

She really does seem to think that what she has to say is more important than anything else I could possibly have to do. She’d a dear lady but she does have a stubborn streak too that is coming more and more to the fore.

You are more polite than I would be, and it's obviously not working. I would cut in several times and then sharply say "Can I get a word in edgeways?" or similar, and try to reroute the conversation. If none of that worked then I would just leave. I am not visiting anyone to have to sit and listen to monologues for hours. Stop trying to be nice about it, tell her what is wrong.

Given that "I am actually staying with her for a few months while there’s work happening at my house" would it help to think of the listening time as rent?
Also set things up so she gets your undivided attention a few times a week, so she knows that you can listen to the end of a story?

I've had to tell my mum that I'm ageing too....

I will also forget what I want to say
I will also need to be listened to
I also can't remember the start of the story

In fairness, that has brought out her empathy and tends to calm things for both of us.

You probably can’t stop her but you could use the time effectively. Maybe take a novel or a Sudoku book.