I am close to my parents and get on well with them. They live at a distance but come to stay regularly, partly to help with childcare in school holidays. I love them and I love having them here, but there are some traits I am finding really frustrating and wondering how to address. Mainly to do with a) asking incessant questions and rapidly jumping from one topic to another, and b) overruling my decisions / not treating me as an adult.
Here is more detail of the two issues:
- So many questions! They jump rapidly from one topic to another, ask an in-depth question, move on to another topic before you've had a chance to properly answer. Spot something out of the corner of their eye and move onto that topic almost mid sentence. I find it mentally exhausting, I can't keep up with what topic we're on, they're talking over each other and asking me all sorts of details about things. Partly exacerbated by their poor hearing I think - i.e. they don't always register that they're talking over each other. It's all lovely enthusiastic stuff, and I feel bad shutting it down.
An example of this is coming into the house after an outing, asking if I've been there before, asking if you can buy a membership, asking if it's normally like this in school holidays or do people go more at weekends, spotting some post on our hall table from a local venue, asking if we go there, asking if we're going to another venue much these days, remembering a time we went somewhere completely different but vaguely similar and commenting on that. All massively enthusiastic but I'm left thinking how did we get to this, and I'm still trying to answer your first question!
- The other thing is telling me what to do! My dad much more than my mum. I feel like he doesn't recognise me as an adult. It's draining because he won't just follow an instruction, he'll argue against it, say it should be done another way. Then I go down the track justifying it, he digs his heels in. I often concede to his opinion as my opinion is ignored and argued against and it gets really draining. I've noticed I have huge anxiety over decision making and getting things wrong and I really think this is where it comes from as he was like this when I was growing up.
An example of this is he took my son swimming, afterwards I said give me the towels to wash, he insists they don't need washing, I reiterate, he insists on pegging them on the line, I give up on repeating my request to pass them to me for washing and decide I'll get them off the line later and do another wash. All done at high volume because he either doesn't hear properly or is ignoring me.
I want to say something kind. They understand I have some difficulty with cognitive processing so may understand the first issue more. I don't want a fight over it as I know they don't even realise this is annoying, and I cherish my time with them.