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!

You probably had a nice one. I snapped and called my mum a bullying bitch once before I stopped speaking to her at all

What was her word for bonsai?

My DH thinks my mum just doesn’t listen. I don’t think it’s that. For some reason she wants me to think that what I say is so trivial to her that she can’t possibly be expected to remember.

Sometimes, when someone has spent a lot of your life deliberately trying to wind you up, it’s very hard not to get wound up. We’re only human.

it gets much easier with practice

I’ve been practicing for 40 years but I still fail sometimes.

It's not a toddler bike. The child is not a toddler.

Some mums definitely deserve to be sworn at. You’re very lucky to have not realised this before now.

I think you have anger issues, full stop.

Mil deliberately pronounces jiu jitsu wrong. DS has been going to classes since he was 4 and is almost 13. He is asked weekly how his jahowl heehotsuu is going. No one has ever laughed, I do fantasize about loosing my shit but I just avoid being in the same room as her.

Yes, but sometimes people use generic words habitually without thinking whether they make sense at all in the context - even people who have English as their native language.

People call a quadricycle a 'quad bike'; people call a penny 'one pence'; people call a die 'a dice'. It irritates me when I hear this, as I am a pedant; but let's not pretend that nobody ever does do this.

I think people who think OP is annoyed because her mum accidentally uses the wrong word are not understanding the situation

Can you wind her up back when she does it? If she deliberately gets something wrong tell her she should see the GP for dementia, or whatever combination of words will wind her up the most. Use the exact same words every time.

True - although some people on MN will still refer to their children as toddlers long after they realistically are. They don't stop and think about what the word actually means - they just use it generically to mean a very young, dependent child.

Then again, when I was young, I attended what was officially called 'infant school' - even though nobody ever uses that word outside of a school context to refer to a school-age child. Technically, the word means 'unable to speak' - yet I and every single one of my schoolmates could speak very fluently by that age.

Yabu to go off on her but I would of potentially done the same and then felt guilty afterwards Its just so irritating

This isn’t about the OP’s mother accidentally using the wrong word. Anyone who thinks that is very lucky that they haven’t got a mother/parent like this.

But some people just do that. My mother pauses lengthily before she says a name she considers ‘foreign’ or ‘pretentious’, even if it’s in no way difficult to pronounce and she’s known the person for years. I know someone who makes a ‘listen to me being French’ face and sort of screws up her nose to say ‘croissant’ which she pronounces ‘QuossANT’ to rhyme with ‘boss ant’. My MIL consistently mispronounces her half-Guatemalan grand daughter’s name, because she think she should have been given a name from the other half of her heritage.

Maddening*, but not wildly uncommon.

My mil used to call my kids twats instead of twits.( not that she'd say it often) don't think she knew the difference! Hahahaha
Only a mother can eind u up like that!

I totally and genuinely believe you.

However, the OP's sister already heard "trike" and thought "tricycle", so the evidence points to OP's mother having been clear on the different names for small two wheeled bikes and for children's tricycles when she was bringing up her own children. If they'd grown up hearing their mother call small bikes "trikes", the OP's sister wouldn't have told the OP that five years old was too old for a child's tricycle!

You are a mum yourself now. Stop behaving like a child, just laugh and diffuse the situation.

It will impact your dd much more to see you taking it so irrationally seriously and letting it get to you.

You wouldn't last five minutes in this house - my DH calls us all by the wrong name, says cardigan for a jumper, calls sunscreen sun tan lotion, every hedge is a privet 😃 I find it mildly annoying at times but I know what he means. He's a very intelligent bloke and absolutely does not have dementia. It's just stuck in his head and he can't be bothered to call things by their proper name.
You should apologise to your DM

I don't think anyone who hasn't experienced a person who purposely and repeatedly mispronounces things can understand how infuriating it is.

My MIL is terrible for it and it will be stupid words like instead of saying electric she will say yectric. Praise the lord I'm NC with her so I don't have to hear it anymore.

This makes no sense.

You are saying that the OP should apologise to her manipulative mother because your husband can't be bothered to use language accurately and doesn't have enough respect for others to call them by their own names.

What kind of logic is that?

It’s actually really funny 🤣🤣🤣

Are you the lot who have just been on holiday together?
😂😂