Has anyone found ageing parents become unable to hold a two way conversation

[Blackberryandcherry]

Let me preface this by saying I adore my mum and she is so kind and would do anything for me. But, as she’s become older (she’s 70) she seems to have lost the inability to have a two way conversation.

If I meet up with her I tend to get a monologue about various (I think minor) things which have been happening either that day or that week. I can often see her and say almost nothing as I just get talked at.

If I’ve been on holiday, she’ll likely remember to ask how it was, but then with no follow up questions about how was the food, or the hotels or any of the usual things one might ask (for example).

I’ve had a few things going on in my life recently and she’ll never ask about them. She never asks about my friends, or what I’ve been up to. For example I may say I met up with X friend at the weekend but she’d never think to ask what we got up to, or how they were, it’s just straight into her next topic.

I can’t work out if she’s not interested, not listening or too busy thinking of what she’ll talk about next.

It’s odd because my grandmother got like this when she was older and my mum complained bitterly about it at the time.

Can anyone relate to this? I have no idea if I should try and address it, or just put it down to older age. I have just been feeling increasingly drained and frustrated with it recently.

Responding to a conversational prompt with an anecdote about your own experience of that thing is very common amongst autistic people as a way of engaging with the speaker and trying to bond with them by demonstrating shared experiences and understanding of the situation

Christ! Not only must I be autistic but just about everyone I chat to must be! This is how normal conversation goes.

Yes, I find this really interesting. I understand that people want some interest to be shown in their own story, a few follow-up questions, rather than an immediate ‘back to me’. That’s about the pace and flow of the conversation.

But I also think a lot of people actually want their friends and family to provide therapy rather than conversation.

We have the opposite. My generally lovely in laws came for a weekend recently and just sat like a pair of gowks staring at the rest of us like they were watching a TV show. It was excruciating. Obviously we don't have exactly the same conversation as we would when alone as a nuclear family, so we ended up doing this slightly performative and hugely awkward show of 'chatting about kid number one football' or 'things we could do to the garden'. They just didn't join in. It was utterly bizarre. I felt like I was doing improv.

Fil doesn’t speak and never has. Struggle to see the value in meeting up at all he just sits there in silence. No relationship with grandchildren or anyone really. It’s very strange.

I could probably count the handful of times my FIL, now in his 90s, has in the last 30 years I've known him, asked about the kids or ourselves. And that is a bald 'How is X?'. That's it. He doesn't then engage with the answer but goes off on a story about himself. It kills the conversation because I then feel rude steering back to them instead of commenting on whatever he's said.

When our kids were small any milestone they achieved was responded to with exactly the same story about their slightly older cousin and his precocious small motor skills with a raisin.

As the kids were growing up his responses to how they were doing were generally critical remarks about their cousins and their choices in girlfriends, travel, study. So it seems he must listen to what people tell him even if it doesn't seem like it at the time. But he doesn't and never has had anything positive to say about any of them. Which makes me even less inclined to chat to him as I wonder, if the information is going in, what negative spin is he going to put on it.

He had a very tough upbringing himself and I think that's a lot to do with his social skills and his generally critical outlook. But it still makes me sad. My mum, late 80s, (who incidentally also had tough stuff to deal with in her childhood) has a lovely warm relationship with our kids and they have lots of contact independent of us.

What I can’t get an answer for, is why a dm/mil (men are generally less loquacious) knows about everyone else when they fail to ask you a single question or listen at all.

My aunt can tell me in the greatest detail about a neighbour’s river cruise, but if I said, for example, “I’ve just been to the moon” there would be a deafening silence. And even if I tried to expand on said trip, she’d go, “Well, anyway…”

Mil would always try to trump everything. “Ds got his GCSE results and….” would elicit a response of, “Oh, Brenda’s grandson did very well; he got 9 1s as well as grade 8 flugelhorn.”

There’s a certain way some people do this though where someone can say something truly awful or talk about how sad they are about something and there’s a complete lack of sympathy or emotion in the response, just ‘that happened to me once’ which is very frustrating to be around.

Yes! How can they know so much detail about their neighbour's daughter's weekend in Edinburgh (no shade on Edinburgh btw, great city) when they cut off GC's account of 6 months travel through India and Nepal with a story about a hot curry they once had. This could be pardoned as a brief but relevant diversion into interesting food in 'foreign lands' but it turns into a wide ranging but dogged review of all their digestive problems.

Yes - what on earth are they telling their friends about us?! 😄 Do they make stuff up?

I can’t honestly say what’s said about me and mine as I made a pact with myself two years ago to say nothing about me, dh or dcs after I was cut off mid-way through saying something about dd. And, guess what? Not one single question has been forthcoming. Life events good and bad have happened, but I feel there’s no point in opening my mouth.

Yes, I share pretty much nothing and never get asked anything (except sometimes - at the end of a phone call - "So, are you all OK?" "Yes." "Oh good, lovely to talk to you, bye!")

But I'm pretty sure other people get stories about us from her. Either from many decades ago, or invented/embellished, or both.

Most of DM's monologues about herself are about stuff from many decades ago, and are also partly fictional. This is just her normal way of "making conversation." No reason to think she's not doing it about us as well. In fact occasionally I do get to speak to one of her friends/extended family, and it becomes pretty clear that a) this is exactly what DM has been doing, and b) the people around her have learnt to take her stories with a pinch of salt.

In terms of how she gets to know anecdotes about other people: well, most of those anecdotes are also decades old, and partly fictional. (You can see the theme here). With the recent ones, I think that some of her friends and neighbours operate in a similar way to her, on monologue broadcast mode. Perhaps they're just able to talk over the top of her? I've seen them do it once or twice, when we've been visiting and they've dropped round. It's surprisingly entertaining. Like watching an irresistible force meeting an immovable object.

Why is it these people often show more interest in virtual strangers than members of their own family? I find it most bizarre. My daughter had just landed an amazing job but my mother hasn’t even asked what it is or show any interest. She’ll go on and on about her niece who she barely knows and who lives in another country though.

70 seems quite young for this to happen. My mum died at 71 and was definitely not like this.
MIL died in late 80s and she was monologue queen for a few years before she died.
Some of it is not seeing people a lot so just wittering on about nothing to someone she can talk to/at, some early dementia setting in or at least cognitive decline.
I hope I’m not like this at 70! Only 15 years to go & my health is shit do my world isn’t as big as it once was!

Perhaps all their peers are stuck on 'broadcast' too? :-)

My mum is 82, some days we have lovely conversations, she remembers to ask me about things I’ve previously told her, she’s interested and interesting. Other days I’d happily chop my ears off not to have to listen to her blathering on about people I don’t know. She asks questions then doesn’t just not listen, she starts talking over my answer. There’s no dementia so no idea why days are so different.

The talking about people you don't know thing is tough because that's a topic of conversation for younger people as well, but the stories are more interesting. Maybe that doesn't really change but it's just that they know less people, and the people they do know are doing less interesting things.

My mum is obsessed with reality TV shows.

DD1's phone rang two weeks ago. She was surprised, as my mum never ever calls. Thought she was calling to wish her luck with a big presentation that day. No, not at all. No mention of the big presentation. Was ringing her up to get insta gossip on Juliet from "Married without sight" (as she persists on calling it) Meantime in the background my DS, who is visiting says "Havn't you got your (big) presentation today? Good luck". My mum says nothing about that, just OK bye". DD1 puts the phone down, 15 mins before big presentation, gutted that the ONLY time granny has contacted her in years is to ask about a reality TV celeb. She tries to laugh about this kind of shit, but is hurt.

Me and DD haven't contacted her since and she has yet to notice.

I've said this on mumsnet before: When my dog died, I told my mum. She gave a one second "oh that's a shame" (or similar perfunctory response), immediately followed by "I've got to go: Janice has collapsed in the diary room".

DS should have been Dsis

I had been living abroad for two years and turned up on the doorstep as a surprise. Dm didn’t react at all but rushed back into the sitting room because it was mid-way through Emmerdale. ☹️

Ok you win!!!!! More stories please! You gotta laugh or you'd cry.

Cause words? Typo?

‘Words’ as a euphemism for ‘cross words’ or someone having a go at someone else.

I suspect that Emmerdale contains subliminal addictive messages.
Years back we were invited to stay for a couple of weeks with some friends who had moved from the UK to Spain. We were all in our 40s, IIRC.
When Emmerdale was due to be on everything else had to wait. Goodness knows why they couldn't record it and watch later. Nope - no interruptions permitted.

My sister in law is exactly like this and she’s only 43!

MIL was like that, from the day I met her, when she was about 60. DH said she was the same, when he was a child. We thought she was a bit ND, because four of her descendants either have ADHD and autistic traits, or ASD!