AIBU to tell someone they will be dead in 15 years so relax *MNHQ ADDING CONTENT WARNING FOR TOXIC PARENTING DISCUSSION*

[pallindromeemordnillap]

My mother is a complex person. Very loving in some ways but very destructive in others.

She literally will lambast and chastise over spilt WATER not just milk. Making a mountain out of a molehill over very little things is her norm. So much so I remember bursting out crying at a friends house when I dropped a spoon. I’ll never forget the dissonance I felt when the mum gave me a hug and told me not to sweat the small stuff.

Anyway my mum was having a go at my dad for not putting a food clip on the cereal box and I just told her to “give it a rest with the negativity as statistically speaking you are likely to be dead in 15 years and some dry cereal will be of absolutely no consequence”. Normally my mum would retort back but she was clearly gobsmacked.

Dh told me I was a bit nasty for bringing up her death.

AIBU?

I'd be interested to know if @pallindromeemordnillap is a mum herself.

Because if she is, she would know that getting it right and being a good parent is the hardest job in the world.

How will her own children judge her in years to come?

Because here, she comes over as having a lot of pent up anger towards her Mum (and no one here knows at all if that's justified.)

I too saw my mum 'sweat the small stuff' and felt critical with the 'life's too short' reaction.

But I also saw my Dad and brother being selfish and sometimes lazy arses, whose behaviour drove her up the wall and where she felt under valued for what she did.

Dear God. By that reckoning we might as well all stop engaging with any post on Mumsnet as they are all from the POV of the poster, and we don’t know the backstory from all participants!

This might shock you, but it’s not professional journalists on here trying to give objective news stories. It’s all people giving their interpretation of their own lives. thats that’s how it works.

OP gave the backstory of her experiences to explain why she said what she did.

Except some posts are based on the flimsiest of 'evidence' and 100% subjective.

And no one acknowledges there is always another side - and are shot down for suggesting there is.

YANBU I would frame it humorously, if this is possible given that her behaviour sounds grating.

Children can be very concerned about not doing anything wrong in someone else's house. One of my DDs friends stayed over and had a shower in the morning. She was practically tearful that she had splashed some water on the floor, could she have a mop, she was so sorry, etc, etc. I told her not to worry I would wipe it up, it wasn't exactly a flood. Her parents were perfectly nice, maybe a bit more strict than me, but I was a pushover.

Well, I think she sounds vile. I’m not surprised you snapped.

How old is she @pallindromeemordnillap. Apologies if you have already said but I haven't read the whole thread.

I'm 64 and will often say "I'll be dead in 30 years".

If your mother is 64 or younger, I think 15 years was a bit mean. If 80, not mean at all.

My mother is 88 and has been unwell (recovering). She had a melt down recently about two little marks on her face - one a BCC is coming off, the other isn't potentially malignant and they won't take it off on the NHS. She was stressing about it get bigger and getting ugly and the Dr had said they could turn malignant in 10 years. I raised my eyebrows, "10 years mummy, how old will you be then". Fortunately it raised a laugh and a "I think I'm being silly - if I'm here in 10 years, I'll be lucky"

It's the sort of thing I say but I am very pragmatic and my family tends to be so and inclined to "We'll be dust by then" type comments.

Everyone's children will have an opinion on how they were parented one day. None of us are perfect parents either, so we'll have to hope they are generous and forgive us our mistakes.

Personally, I have no intention of sweating the small stuff. Maybe OP's mother eats cereal too. I don't. For me this would be easy. I just wouldn't buy the cereal. If you're not going to look after it, I'm not going to pay for it. He can buy it himself and then is free to waste it or not. If I did eat cereal I'd probably have my own box stashed away somewhere staying protected with a clip on.

LOL at you criticising your Mum for her over reactions to things !

Invoking looming death over a cereal clip is fairly extreme 😂

Can someone explain what is so "vile" and "disgusting" and "cruel" about what the OP said?
We'll all be dead one day.

It sounds to me as though your mother suffers massively from anxiety herself

I have an aunt like this. So negative and me me me me and she likes to make everyone dance around her because she's old, or ill or because she forgot to watch something on the tv, or just because. Constantly bitching and moaning.

Frankly being told it straight would be good for her IMO.

Statistically speaking the horrible parents who sweat the small stuff are most likely to live to and past 100

It appeared to be said with the intention she'd be glad when her mum was dead.
If it was said as a joke, and they usually had a good relationship, it wouldn't matter at all and OP wouldn't have needed to garner opinions.

I find it odd how upsetting or mean people think this is? For centuries and across cultures wise people have reminded us that we will all die one day so use our time well. (My DP also reminds me of this if I get too bogged down in the negative or trivial and it's annoying sometimes but he's right!
)

15 years is a long time of happy life if Op's DM chooses to reflect and behave better.

It's draining living with someone relentlessly negative and critical. Fortunately for me it's DS rather than experiencing a parent who shapes your world view and behaviour, and being DS it's easier to challenge him about it. He's an autistic perfectionist and the world is frustratingly imperfect, but that doesn't mean that the rest of us have to be ground down by constant Victor Meldrewesque critique.

We're all mortal and we don't live as long as Methuselah. It's important context in life. Yes, I have lost a parent, young and suddenly, and the life-lesson I took from that was live fully while you can.

To be the kind of critical parent that has the effect of making a child cry because they dropped a spoon can be deeply damaging and it's no wonder that OP has eventually cracked with a spontaneous retort.

Very well said

Agree with this. It wasn’t about the cereal it was about being so negative all the time which actually does affect our health. Sometimes people need to be told as they get stuck in a loop. Albeit this loop has been going a while so the likelihood of change is small but at least youve tried. (Altho couldn’t softened delivery perhaps!)

I think you need to find a better way of communicating to her how you feel about the way she treated you growing up and to hopefully both work towards improving your relationship.

There is no guarantee she will be there in 15 years. How will you feel about what you said if she were to go unexpectedly in the next year or so?

I completely agree with you. My son was born with a life limiting illness and his life expectancy at birth was 32 so death has always been a big part of our discussions while he was growing up and it really put things into perspective and we all realised early on that some things are not worth getting stressed out over. Anyway my son ended up dying in an accident at age 22 in 2022 and I can honestly say that I was so thankful that nothing was ever left unsaid between us because not many people get to have that, obviously I wish he was still here but I'm so lucky that I got to be his mum and I knew it was for a limited time right from the start so we made the most of it every day. Now it's just me and my 14 year old daughter (my partner died in feb of this year so that has been shit too) people are horrified at the way me and my daughter joke about death lol but it's gonna happen and nobody knows when

Nothing in the OP suggests that the OP would glad when her dm was dead! She was asking her dm to let go of her negativity because one day, the ceral box will be totally insignificant

I’ve just remembered my DM saying very cheerfully while we were crossing a road in Aberdeen (after she’d been having a good old moan about something)
‘Never mind, soon be dead!’

Aeons ago - I was in my teens, she went on to 97. 😂

I don think you were wrong with the essence of what you were getting across, but the actual words are a bit jarring.

In this case it’s the ‘other side’ which is built entirely on the imaginings of posters.

What replies on this thread actually show is how empathy works. People empathize with those they can imagine being. On a site of mothers, it appears many are automatically empathizing with what they imagine as the stress or anxiety of the mother ( this is imagined. They have no idea why the mother behaved like this. She might just be a bully who likes the sense of superiority and power she gets by belittling and exerting control. None of us know).

What I object to in posts siding with the mother, is the assumption that’s it’s ok for Mothers to use their kids as their whipping boys ( or girls) if their own lives are stressful or difficult. It’s really worrying that so many posters seem to think it is. And this is not a case of Mother going through a particular acute stress and overreacting and later apologizing. This is a set, unchanging, behaviour of shaming and belittling over small, inconsequential normal occurrences.

I’ve been through catastrophic trauma when my kids were little which stripped me of every resource I had, material, psychological and social. It was when I realised the impact my low emotional resilience was having on my kids that I realised it was far from ok for me to take out my distress on them, and that I needed to do better and not ‘indulge’ my trauma and distress on them. I worked really, really hard to turn things around with my kids and really make sure we had a secure bond.

Because it’s not ok use them to relieve yourself of your own ugly feelings of stress and temper or frustration or worthlessness. They are people in their own right and your job as a parent is to see them as people, not as recipients of your stress.

It’s not ok for bosses to take out their stress and anxieties on their staff and it’s not ok for parents to do that to their kids. Both are bullying. I’m somewhat appalled that so many posters are defending Mothers reducing their children to weeping in fear because they dropped a spoon. This is not ok.

My next door neighbour isn’t in great health and must be cracking on to 80. When I moved in she started saying how much she hated the tress in my garden as they blow leaves in ti here and the previous owner wouldn’t remove them (hoping I’d say I’ll remove the 25+ year old tress but I did t as they’re lovely!)

Anyway she lost her DH quite suddenly about 5 years ago. And as pleasant as she is she still has digs about the trees and I often think, statistically you’re unlikely to have that much longer to live and I wonder why she still makes a fuss about something so irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. It doesn’t block her sun light or anything.