Irritated by parents already😩

[Bellyblueboy]

I am an awful person. My parents are staying for Christmas - only arrived today - and I am already irritated.

The constant passive aggressive questions - the long, boring stories about people I don’t know - the complete lack of interest in my life

All my Electrical appliances have been unplugged so the remote controls no longer work. I will have to crawl under the Christmas trees now to turn them back on (don’t know how my dad managed to get under there, he is 80!).

the TV is up so loud I can’t think. They brought the contents of their fridge with them - I had to put most of it in the bin!

my mum keeps asking me are we having (fill in some obscure food item she never mentioned before) then looking disappointed when I say I didn’t know she wanted it. I went to Tesco to try and find Turkish delight with no chocolate because apparently it just isn’t Christmas without it.

i am already so irritated I could scream. They are elderly. They can’t help it. But in fairness they have always been a bit annoying, they have just lost their filter.

I am trying to find it funny. But failing. Every time I move my dad asks me what I am doing. Where I am going. Aggghhhh

Both parents with dementia. I'm still moaning about them.

nasty? I didn’t see anything nasty- you only had a couple of replies at this point. Did I miss something?

but anyway - I totally get it. You can both love your parents and want to scream at the same time.

All those things sound very irritating!

You're very restrained. I would have had a hell of a lot more than that to say!👿

I'd have lost my shit at this point OP. 🥹

Be grateful you still have them, appreciate them while you can, loud TVs and all.

I don't think I'd appreciate the horrors that Op has got!

Solidarity @Bellyblueboy Are you sure you haven’t got my parents over for Christmas by mistake? They are absolutely obsessed with unplugging everything and the minutiae of other people’s children’s lives rather than their own children. They have no idea what I do for a living and frankly couldn’t care less but they do know what the hopes, dreams and ambitions of the lad at the supermarket on the click and collect wants to do with his life. And I really feel for you with the eating disorder. That generation of women and their attitudes to dieting, thinness and worthiness are really damaging. Sending you positive vibes.

This. ^ I honestly get sooooo tired of the 'be grateful you still have parents' line that some people come out with when someone complains about their parents. And I say that as someone whose parents died almost 2 decades ago.

I loved my parents of course, and they were food to me when I was growing up, and I did have some laughs and good times with them.... (Holidays away, and Christmases were always lovely....)

But they could be quite difficult, especially my mother... As she got older (from when I was a teenager/in my early 20s,) she became quite critical of everything I did, from my weight, to my parenting skills, to my choice of husband, to the way I drove the car (she didn't drive!) and the way we decorated the house. Dad was easier to cope with but could be a bit grumpy and moany and opinionated ... sometimes... Mum was worse though. As they got much older, they became very hard work... And I spent a lot of time caring for them.

If someone had said to me (if I had complained about them being hard work,) that I should be GRATEFUL I still have them, they'd have got a fecking short shrift from me!

.

Insufferable. Not long to go now.

Well I wrote a whole message out and it deleted itself - just another story about an unreasonable
parent - I concluded by saying put your joggers and fluffy socks on and pour the wine - that’s my main point!

Problem is with some parents, they still see their children (even if said children are middle aged) as knowing less than them, being slightly incompetent, and being a bit useless at most things. They think they know best, and they bastard well have to keep letting their (adult) children know that they think this! They try and take over, and re-do things so they're 'correct,' and they LOVE to critisize!

Too true! I’m seen as a bumbling idiot, unless it’s anything tech related then apparently I’m some kind of genius who should know how every single electrical thing works.

Two more days be damned. Depending on distance they would be going tonight/first thing tomorrow if that was my house. It’s not the completely avoidable ‘accident’ it’s the attitude and lack of apology.

No, I don’t know where YOUR glasses are

Watching a soap only she watches ‘Now this storyline … this actor …’

She’s put on weight … size of her … she’d be attractive if she lost that weight .. (The person saying this is not slim)

Lots of sighing and performative groans, so that we’ll comment on her health - which she already talks about ALL the time.

The house is so hot you could roast the turkey in the sitting room. But when the heating is turned down - or off - extra layers appear incase of hypothermia.

All of the above I could laugh off, if she hadn’t reconnected with family who hurt me & my children massively. To live with herself I’m now painted as the problem, for not playing happy families. It’s broken my heart, and I now keep quiet for the sake of my lovely (compromised) dad.

Christmas will never be the same again.

I would be furious and not let go till I got some genuine contrition or apology.

Oh my god - my dad seems to think I am really stupid. Something came on the news that I had worked on - they reported it wrong and I stupidly said well they haven’t quite understood that. He then gave me a twenty minute lecture on what ‘I have to understand’. It was an issue I have a masters degree in and I worked on for five years. He has no specialist knowledge of this and only knows what he has read in papers. But he knows more than me☺️☺️☺️.

when I started work (he was in his fifties so not an age thing) he told me to keep my head down, do as I am told and not to draw attention to myself. Even now he tells me not to speak in meetings incase I embarrass myself! I hat a way to build your child’s confidence!

They do sound very very annoying OP.
I hate feeling irritated and sympathise with how uncomfortable it is for you. i'd much rather feel sad or disappointed, when things are not going my way, but irritation seems to appear first when it comes to house guests.
Anyway, Christmas day is almost done now and you are on the home stretch. Good luck.

Immensely well stated & so compassionately commented too
💚🙏💚God bless You&Yours

Despite agreeing the time table for the day - appetisers and drinks at 1 followed by presents then dinner at 4pm - MIL went upstairs at 12 and did not appear
again until after 4 when she had a long call with SIL.

Mine aren’t even here and they have annoyed me 😂 I phoned to say merry Christmas, they handed the phone to my toddler niece, then they proceeded to ask me questions over her burbling into the receiver so I obviously had no idea what they were on about. Sigh. They’re up tomorrow so I expect my dad will have a long lecture on what (he thinks) is wrong with my car and how to fix it whilst I’m doing something crucial with the food, my mum will grasp the wrong end of the stick at least twice, my sister will make at least one glaringly passive aggressive bitchy comment but I will be the bastard for calling it out, and my nanny will sulk on the lounge because she can’t hear anyone and is sick of people telling her to turn her hearing aids on. Families eh 😂😂😂

That's lovely for you, well done.

Do you know what though? Families are complicated. I love my parents dearly, but got annoyed by them at the same time. They have both passed and this is my first Christmas without them, it's sad and I miss them, and I feel an ache inside, but it's also the most relaxed Christmas I've had in 10 years or so.

I wish we could all be as binary as you, but sadly not...

He sounds like an old school sexist. Infuriating

My parents are dead and I miss them tremendously. But they sure did irritate me sometimes when they were here - as I did them, I'm sure!

I'd clean the house before they arrived, but Mum would still get up and clean it.

I was working full-time but they didn't cook dinner, so I'd have to start dinner for four when getting home at 7pm, and they'd laugh about how they had to have McDonald's at 4pm because they knew dinner would be so late.

In 2001, I told Dad that I had had a McDonald's on the way home from work one time. From then on, he became convinced for the next 15 years that that was what I did the whole time.

For a few years I often wore leather boots with 2-inch block heels. Then I switched to flats. For ten years after, he would refer to how I always wore high heels.

He would comment a lot about my weight but disapproved when I joined a gym.

That's just a selection!

My dad died a few years ago and yes I miss him dreadfully. But he also never saw me as anything other than a child he had to organise. When I was well into my 30s and living alone in London and doing a really high flying responsible job he used to come and stay. And then he’d make sure he woke me up at a time he determined was right so that I wouldn’t be late for work, all done as a massive performance of oh my goodness where would you silly young thing be without me? Pointing out to him that I managed to make it into the office by 7.30am every other working day of the year all by myself made no difference.

I think the wine bottle/flooring thing is quite malicious. You said yourself he only moved the bottles because you told him not to. My mother for some reason still opaque to me went through a phase of breaking my stuff at least semi-deliberately (eg, in showed her how to use the cooker and she deliberately I’m sure twisted one of the knobs too hard and broke it off - I say deliberately because of an utter lack of contrition or apology). I think there’s some weird dynamic of them showing you who’s boss.

There are threads galore about irritating DHs, family or in-laws of the same or younger age than the OPs of those threads. This doesn’t mean the DH, family or in-laws of everyone else are irritating.

So just because you share a characteristic of an irritating protagonist in a thread (in this case, age) doesn’t automatically mean you will be seen the same way by your family.

In short, don’t be sad for yourself, save it for the OP whose updates make clear she didn’t have the best relationship with her parents while growing up and is now just needing to vent a bit while doing her best to host in what are undoubtedly trying circumstances.