AIBU to snap after my mum kept calling a bike a trike?

[Crayo]

i am looking to get my daughter her first bike. She’s 5 and has had a balance bike before but never a real bike. Everytime I speak to my mum she asks me if I’ve found a “trike” yet. I keep telling her it’s a bike I’m getting, 2 wheels” and she always says “oh yes, you know what I mean”.

Well this has been going on weeks and literally everytime I speak to her she asks about the “trike” and I constantly correct her and say “bike”. She does have a habit of asking the same question for weeks at a time and she also has form for deliberately saying the wrong words for attention and it’s tiring.

this morning I was at my mums and my sister was there. I went to toilet and when I came back my sister said “not being funny but isn’t DD old enough for a proper bike now?” I asked what she was on about as I am getting her a proper bike and she said “mum! You said she was getting a trike!”

So I lost it, screamed and shouted “stop saying it’s a fucking trike!! You know it’s not so just fucking stop it”

my sister said “Jesus Christ is there any need for that?” So I told her she’s been saying trike for weeks and it’s winding me up so she said “she gets mixed up, there’s no need to scream like that” but the annoying part is she doesn’t get mixed up!!! She does it on purpose and has been doing this for years!

Absolutely do this!

Buy the bike then you can just say "yes".

I recognise this behaviour and I can understand your reaction and I don’t think you were unreasonable, if she’d said something like ‘let’s watch a video’ meaning DVD it wouldn’t be irritating because the meaning is clear and it’s just an old fashioned was of saying the same thing, but a trike is for younger children and a bike is a grown up toy, clearly by your sisters reaction it’s insulting to call it a trike for a child of that age. It would be like asking a teenager if they want a tommee tipper cup for their juice.

The way I see this is that either

a) You’re correct and she is doing this deliberately to wind you up. So then I’d ask why are you letting her? Why are you rising to it? Because if she is displaying such toxic behaviour then your rising to the bait is going to make it worse. Either just answer the question as if she’s said ‘bike’ not trike or stop speaking to her often enough for her to ask. I’ve seen you’ve said that you feel like she’s diminishing a big moment in your child’s life of her getting her first bike. So don’t let her. Don’t tell her things. Don’t engage in conversation about it with her. Should she behave that way? No. Are there things you can do as an adult to stop her from impacting on your daughter? Yes. You have a choice about how often you interact with people even your mother.

b) The other possibility here is that your sister is right and your mum is genuinely muddled. Has got the wrong word in her head and isn’t doing all of this deliberately. If that’s the case then yes you were being unreasonable and you should apologise for swearing and raising your voice.

Either way if it’s impacting you enough to make you that cross then you need to do something about it. Clearly this isn’t the first time your mum has done something like this and, if she is doing it on purpose, that’s not going to stop especially now you’ve given her a a big, angry reaction because people who wind up and goad thrive off things like that. You need to either maintain a totally calm and unaffected exterior when talking to her so she doesn’t get the reaction she wants or your withdraw from spending time with her.

As for your daughter you tell her that her grandmother gets a bit muddled with her words and that as long as your little girl knows her bike is a bike that’s all that matters. Honestly, at 5 I doubt she’ll care beyond thinking ‘silly grandma got the wrong word’ because she won’t see any ill intent or diminishing behind it. It’s you that will be hurt/bothered by that.

My mum is the same OP. I love her dearly but you tell her something once and you’ll never hear the end of it and she will also mispronounce words on purpose for attention. It gets exhausting after a while but the mispronunciation I have learnt to just ignore (through gritted teeth), because the more attention you give, the more it happens. The latest one is Digi-Cal instead of Digital. Don’t even get me started if someone doesn’t have an English name, she makes out like she is trying to pronounce something written in hieroglyphs.

I feel for you and I don’t blame you for snapping. I have done it in the past too as I can’t stand people that don’t listen and keep repeating themselves. I just have to remind myself it’s my mum and as much as it annoys me, I still love her. Every so often if it’s been particularly consistent I will have a break from seeing her for a couple of weeks to reset, and that normally works.

God, you sound unhinged.

30 years my mum has referred to the London Tube as “the subway”

“Will you take the subway?”
“Yes Mum - the Tube runs quite regularly”

30 years. She won’t change 😂🤦‍♀️

But won’t

She's been patient since her mother was in her 30s. Are you suggesting her dementia started then?

yup

Yabu. It's annoying yes but that's a massive overreaction.

Imagine shouting screaming and swearing at your mum because she said trike not bike. I think you could do with some therapy.

This just sounds like the straw that broke the camel’s back, OP. You have a history of your mum taking the piss and you snapped. Keep doing it until she reins it in.

I based my response on the original post which states 'for years'. My mother also did it 'for years'.....8 in fact.

Nasty OP. No need to speak to your mum like that.

Not to be a pedant but a first bike normally would involve stabilisers.

Are you getting your DD a quad?

Yep. Sometimes I say the wrong word for things... I know it aggravates the fuck out of people but I have ADHD/ASD... if the word is enmeshed in her brain then she's not doing it on purpose.
My mum does the same... I strongly suspect she has ADHD also looking back but I'm not about to tell her that at 80.. it fucked my mind getting diagnosed at 50.

Maybe just stop seeing your mum so much if this is the level of your relationship. Or divert her attention when something like this happens. I just never told my mother anything of any consequence.

You sound like someone at the end of their tether and this is totally not about a bike/trike. I get it. But you won't change your mum. Only thing you can do is change your reaction.

Grey rock her. Calmly correct her when it matters, pick your battles. I am currently dealing with the fact that my mum is convinced, despite several conversations, that my DD is starting high school this year. She isn't, she's too young. When I've corrected her, she says "are you sure?". I'm desperate to shout and swear in response to this ridiculous gaslighting question, instead I just raise my eyebrow and say "yes I am certain". I don't let her see how pissed off I'm getting. I'm ultimately becoming a very boring person to her.

I think this is so common, because it is a common phenomenon to get stuck using a substitute incorrect word and then be unable to disassociate it from the correct version. People's brains short circuit to the word in their mind they use for something above the correct term.

Yes it's a failure to learn when corrected but very common, especially in low stake environments e.g. they wouldn't do it at work.

My mum did it a lot. We treated as a cute grandma quirks and knew what she was talking about when she made errors. We even adopted some of them as family terms.

I also have a friend who does this a lot. She mixes up her children and grandchildrens names all the time, which is annoying because you can't tell who she's talking about. But I think she's done it so much now it's automatic.

Swearing at your mum is more concerning than calling a bike a trike.

In her mind a trike is probably the word for a young child's bike.

That would drive me nuts too. Not sure I'd scream about it but I'd want to.

In fact thinking about it I probably do it.
My son works in fashion and I still misprounce the names of designers.
It's not deliberate I just seem to have got certain mispronunciations stuck in my head.

My son doesn't imagine I'm disrespecting his work, he just thinks I'm a bit useless and sometimes corrects me.

The fact you think this is a conspiracy to undermine you probably says more about you imagining you're the centre of everyone's universe and less about your mum disassociating words.

My Mum does this too. It's like she gets something in her head and just wont physically hear updated information. It is infuriating, and like your mum shes been doing this for decades so I think it's more of a personailty trait than cognitive decline.

Or it could be the result of years of repeated comments like this gradually wearing the OP down until they’ve finally reached their limit. The mother knows that referring to it as a “trike” instead of a “bike” upsets the OP, yet she continues to do it. In isolation it might seem insignificant, but in the context of years of similar behaviour, it can feel very different. How you interpret the situation will largely depend on your own perspective and experiences.

Yeah, my MiL did this with a previous job of mine and it really upset me. I was a customer service team leader and then I moved into buying with the title Merchandiser. 5 years later I was still overheating her telling my husband's other relatives at weddings etc. that I was a CS team leader. 5! It's not about the information but I still don't know if she didn't care enough to remember, thought "team leader" sounded better or didn't know what a Merchandiser was so was lying to avoiding having to explain.