Can I just have a rant about my mum please.

[JaninePeel]

I feel guilty for posting this and have namechanged.

I've begun to hate talking to my mum by phone. She is old, but 'all there' mentally. Lives 5 hrs drive from me, so what with work and my own family I don't see her that much, but we do talk by phone several times a week, I manage a lot of the admin and her finances online for her, online shopping etc. That's the background.

The thing is that she talks non-stop on the phone in huge detail about things that are trivial or about people I have never met.

It's hard to explain but she relates every emotion, her thoughts, who was there, what they said, like a play script when ever she is telling me about something.

It's a 'she said this, I said that, I thought this, she said that...' in the most minute details about nothing. She will relate every word of a conversation she's had with a nurse, or the hairdresser, or tell me about the hairdresser's family circs or whatever in huge detail. It's just bizarre and getting worse.

She's NOT lonely- she has loads of friends and spends a lot of her day on the phone - they call her, she calls them.....and I hear her talking to them in the same way.

I've begun to get really short with her sometimes and say 'where is this story going', or'I'm in a rush can you just jump to the point'.

I've got 2 friends with mums who do the same and it's driving us mad. I can only describe it like someone reliving an incident in a second by second way, and telling you it all. It's exhausting.

I'm sorry if this sounds awful but I do really try to help her and keep in touch but her behaviour is driving me insane.

My mum does this and it drives me crazy. Gossip about people I don’t know and don’t care about, what the man across the road is doing with his lawnmower, a blow by blow account of a trip to the supermarket including a detailed rundown of everything that had a yellow sticker on it... I can see my parents’ world is shrinking and it’s not going to get better.

Actually as much as any of the previous posters would miss their mums it sounds VERY annoying.

I wonder why some people go this way and others don't.

MIL does this to DH - they have two set evening slots each week where she rings him - he just puts the phone on speaker and surfs/reads/cooks while she talks for an hour or so. He's very practised at switching off by now - unfortunately this means that he doesn't always pick up the important points among the trivia, which has been embarrassing when we visit and ask how XYZ ( eg distant relation or family friend) is only to find they are ill/have died and it didn't register.

This thread has cheered me up no end.

Thank you.

I know i will miss my mum hugely when she isn't here. I will yearn for the nonsense down the phone. But when you are in it, oh boy!

@Dimsumlosesum sorry for your loss.

Another one chiming in with sympathy, my Mum is similar. She used to be a great conversationalist with strongly-held opinions about politics, art etc. but as she's got older it seems all she cares about is trivia about next-door's dog (she doesn't even like dogs!) and her friends' cousins' daughter's boyfriend's medical treatments... Selfishly, it upsets me a bit that she also used to be very interested (if anything too interested!) in mine and my brother's lives, jobs, friends etc. and always remember everything we'd told her, whereas now she can barely tell you what we do or our DC's hobbies/interests etc. (but her friend Joan's Aunty Mabel's hernia operation she retains every minute detail of!) - irritatingly she does also 'forget' to tell us important things about herself too, e.g. dates of medical appointments/operations or important family news that she thinks she has told us and hasn't - her short term memory isn't what is was as she repeats herself sometimes as well.

I just try and view it as a natural part of getting older and something that will come to us all in the end so try and have patience with it- it isn't that she loves us any less than she did, I think your world does just shrink a lot when you are elderly and perhaps these things feel more like 'safe' topics of conversation if you struggle to keep up with the world/current affairs/complex issues? Like others I certainly remember my grandmother going the same way and driving my Mum mad so I am sure I am next!

My Mother did this too - always all about herself. She has no teal clue about me at all. I usef to put her on loudspeaker and crack on.

Now gone a step further. She has dementia and hearing loss so calls are many times more frustrating. She has developed a dreadful habit of saying ' yer wha''? She would have hit me if I had ever said that....

Careful OP, as tedious as this must be, I find it's hereditary... Dh and mil used to rib great mil about her long winded stories, now we sit and listen to mil longwinded, disjointed tales. When he gets going, dh can be really boring... grow from this OP!

OP my mum does this too

when I was working all hours and on the phone, it drove me nuts and I also used to say "where is this going" and she would get upset and say "it's conversation".

My life has changed a lot and it doesn't bug me any more but I have sympathy for you - when it bugged me, it really bugged me!!

PS I should add, mum does talk about politics and other things - it's just if she's been to the Post Office or whatever, she wants to share every detail of it.

Another one with a mum who is just the same!

My Dad was like this too before he passed away, he would go off on a tangent so never actually spoke to you about the topic he had originally called for!

My mum will criticise people for wanting to put tedious drivel on social media but thinks nothing of regaling me with tales of health issues of someone I don’t know from the village.

I get this. I also get ‘did you see Xxx’s post on Facebook?’

The horror!!

I do listen though because, in my DM’s case, it’s because she leads a very small life. She has my DDad and 2 sisters she doesn’t like much but a lot of her friends have died.

If we are in the same room when she starts, my DDad stands behind her and makes a fake yawning face!

I bloody love her though and I bet things about me annoy her!

My adult DC, my DP, his family and I all take the piss out of each other about this stuff, and I hope that's healthy.

I'm late 50s now and I hate that 'small world' mentality that seems to befall so many people.

I was lucky my dad till the end always loved talking politics, poetry and piss-ups. Don't get me wrong, he could still tell me stories about someone I hadn't seen in forty years that meant nothing to me, and I heard lots of detailed stories about doctors' receptionists, but it was like listening to Dave Allen melded with Les Dawson.

He refused to be put on loudspeaker though.

I try to ring my Dad when I'm driving (hands free). Otherwise, like others, you'd be sat there hours wasting time when hes going on.

He can get a bit much sometimes with his "opinions" and nags too so sometimes if he starts, I cut him off. Then give myself 5 mins to calm and then call him back and say "sorry mobile signal!" lol.

He does the same mind. Did you see the cricket score etc? Yes Dad. So he tells me anyway. If Im on hols in Florida he'll say "you would have missed the score" and I'll say no I saw on the internet. But he still tells me. Once said "have they got the same internet in florida then?"

My mil is very much the same - and she repeats the same story's, even if I say 'yes you told me this last week' she ploughs on through with her take. She isn't quite as bad as your DM sounds op, maybe we have all this to come?

Ah yes, same problem here. Lots of minute detail, lots of people I don't know (and their ailments), long rambling stories with no real point......

I work with lots of older people and have told DH that we need to keep working (at least part-time) for as long as possible, get a shit load of hobbies, get some dogs to force us outside, move to a ground floor property within walking distance to the GP and supermarket. I see far too many people in old age bored out of their heads and living in unsuitable accommodation/locations.

I said to my mum the other day that she was talking like a machine gun. She said - i know- nd did it more!

All mums do that . It’s ok . We just have to remember that when we were little they had all the time in the world for us ...

I used to feel the same OP. My life was much too full on to listen to some old bat waffling on about nothing, same time, every day. God I so miss my mum now and would give anything to hear her rattling on about nothing in particular.

In hindsight I would have put the phone on speaker and got on with whatever I was doing, giving a cursory yes/no/never/aww where needed. You'll only ever have one mum. Give her your best. She deserves it

Gosh my FIL does this and repeats stories over and over again even if I've said that's he's told me before. I don't think he has dementia or anything similar, he just loves retelling stories in the most minute detail!

I'd give anything to listen to my Grandma talk about uncle Jack's second wife's auntie's cousin's gerbil!
I have family members like this but I try to be kind and sound interested. I know life is busy but it's also very short. Try to pick a time when you can be doing something else but still listening (eg hands free while driving is ideal)
I know it can be irritating but I'm sure your mum gets so much please out of your phone calls. Dh and I bore each other often with tales of work colleague etc. But we are each other's sounding board. Maybe your mum is lonely, despite all her friends. I know I'd be lonely without the dc and dh, regardless of how many friends I've got

*pleasure not please

Gosh feeling guilty re those who have passed- I’m trying to find some tolerance when the conversation begins with now what have I done today - and then she answers the question she just asked and I just breathe and listen to the monologue

I can so agree with most of what has already been said - the only difference with me is, my mum lives with us!!!! (So putting her on loud speaker is not an option!). I do a lot of eye rolling and interrupting, just to try and get to the point of the original conversation. (this definitely helps speed things up a bit!). I do understand your frustrations though, and dread to think that I could also become a rambling mother one day!

My mum also. Droning on about nothing and talking really slowly, telling me the carers relationships/kids, scripts from shite TV drivel, reading out loud the same letters from the hospital for the 100th time. My dad rarely speaks because for years my mum has answered for him. Even if the doctor asks him a question, my mum will answer without fail.
I pretend to listen, smile etc. They've made their lives quite small and empty. Pil similar ages are very different, still buzzing around, holidays, hobbies, fairly fit so no real medical issues, still have a full life and things to say.