Is this just my mum or do all mother's develop amnesia to how they parented?

[Weegle]

My mum is driving me potty. Apparently babies in her day didn't have teething problems. All babies went to bed at 6pm and woke (note "woke", not were allowed up) at 8am. We didn't have such frequent colds and bugs. We were never sick. The list goes on. I'm beginning to get a bit of an inferiority complex about it and take it as criticism. But when I say something like "so how did you get us to sleep 6-8?" she goes all vague and can't remember just says that is how it was. She also blatantly misremembers things about our childhood that my sister and I remember completely differently. Is this normal of her generation? How can I deal with it without answering back? She's become quite involved in DS care lately as I've been ill and so I need and value her support, I just find this all a bit infuriating.

lol at your post.
Are we sisters?

phew! it's not just me then?!

My mum recently bought DS a crazy wind-up tweeting bird, made with real bird feathers, sitting in a cage made of tiny, ultra-breakable bits of bamboo. It is the kind of thing a 2yo just has to look at and it smashes into 1000 pieces, each of which have maximum choking/eye-poking/foot-splintering potential - not to mention causing huge distress as well.

Now of course it was very kind of her but as DS went mad to clutch it I wanted to scream at her "What are you bloody thinking of woman? You have had 3 kids and surely they all must have been 2 at some stage!!! Don't you remember anything?!" But I really think she remembers very little. I can sort of understand it as I've already forgotten a lot of the details from when DS was a baby...

It isn't the norm of her generation. It is life. All parents ... and you will too ... forget the ins-and-outs of their children's lives.

My son is only 2.8, and I couldn't tell you what he was like a year ago, despite, no doubt, obsessing about it at the time.

I doubt there is an older parent in the land who could answer this question:

When did your baby wean?

Naaah, it's not just you (and you, zookeeper!). My mum definitely has maternal amnesia. The crazy thing is that some of the stories she tells have changed since my children were born - especially regarding sleep. Fortunately for my sanity my dad will often remind my mum.

She probably finds your 'modern' ways and determination to do things your way (ie differently to her) a criticism of the way she did things - though no doubt you don't mean it that way at all. There's really no mileage in antagonising her over it. I think it has to be a 'smile sweetly and say nothing' reaction from you.

Definitely same for moi and my mum aswell. Especially in the first year with first ds, and everything feels difficult.

Apparently all of us children loved sleeping / drinking milk / eating. They had NO problems with anything.

But it doesn't bother me know, ds is 2 and I'm feeling some amnesia with friends' new borns too. Really cannot remember when ds slept the whole night.
And it was only a year or so ago, so i can see that my mum would gloss the over bad bits after 30 years. But yes it did irritate me at the time!

How old is your ds?

apparently i was 'no bother' as a child (we've been discussing dd1 2yrold strops and bossiness) whereas my older brother remembers me as being identical to my dd except my mum pandered to me so i had no need to strop!
i think my mum has forgotten her favourite phrase ' just because .... has it doesn't mean we have to have it' re vcr/barbies or anything else i wanted! now she feels they'll be deprived and left out if they don't have xyz and it drives me insane, but then i'm just 'ungrateful and mean' so what do i know!

Yes I'm sure I'll forget things too - I actually had to look up in DS baby book when he crawled (9.5 mths) and he's only 13.5 months! It's the fact that she asserts with such determination that "oh no, teething is a modern phenomenum" for example and I just think WTF?? So, I'm imagining my son's pained cries, spiking temps and disturbed nights? I know I need to smile sweetly and let it go, especially as she's been so great bailing us out looking after DS lately, but it just rattles my cage!

My mum seemed to remember absolutely everything when my DS was born - ooh, I didn't feed you like that, I used to dress you in this, etc, etc - and I was feeling so delicate I hated her interference. Now I've calmed down and really want her help and experiences she can't remember a blooming thing!

I was whining to DH because our 4 mo DD cries every time I leave the room that "none of the others did that". He reminded me that DS1 (almost 20) was exactly the same. I don't remember!

As Desiderata says, you think you will remember every detail- you won't. Your mum doesn't.

(mind you, I can't remember what I did this morning, let alone decades ago )

Memories change/fade with time. Hate to say it, but our kids will probably be saying the same about us.

Ok that's great - I stand corrected! Maybe that's why everyone has such rose-tinted glasses to newborns, and little ones in general, they just can't remember! It'll be nice to look back on when DS was little and forget that we were so tired we could barely function and just remember him as a cute gurgling wonderful little being.

It'll be your turn in 20 years to rewrite history don't worry.

They all do this. It's a bit like childbirth, we overwrite the nasty bits so we don't have to have the pain of remembering.

My Dad does this, not just about my babyhood but my whole life! From claiming that I never had any discipline of any sort and was totally indulged as a pre-schooler to the fact that I never paid him board when i was working. All of it total and utter infuriating lies!

I'm an only child and I now have 2 dd's so I consider myself the more experienced parent and adopt the smile and wave approach.

Just found this thread, and as I have just returned from an infuriating 6 day trip to see my mum I could not resist posting!

It is not so much the fact that she does not remember exactly at what age I crawled etc, I don't expect her to remember that, but it is the sweeping generalisations that bug me.

For instance - the dc are learning to swim, with mixed results. Apparently when I was little 'we did not bother with armbands and floats, we just put the children in the pool and they swam, no tears or tantrums. I remember a 'floatation belt' made of cork blocks. I also remember hating swimming lessons, and crying every time.

We are Dutch, and she swore blind that 'all Dutch children are blond'. Hmmm, looking at mine and my sister's baby photos we were definately brunette!!

It is the statements that imply that nowadays children are pampered and mollycuddled too much. Perhaps she is right (in fact she probably is) but it is still infuriating when she implies that I am too soft on the dc.

GRRRR

My mother loves to suggest that I'm too soft with ds. She comes across as some stern Victorian parent. Completely unlike her real self - a young mother who had just emerged from the 60s and used to dance to Top of the Pops with us and who we could usually wind round our little fingers. I just laugh and tell her it's the first sign of senile dementia!

oh god, not just your mum

mine stretches the truth to breakjing point all the time - e.g. claims i spoke at 8mo and slept through the night almost immediately

i think they have a tendency to remember the good things and not the bad

My mum thinks I'm too hard on DS1 because I shout at him sometimes (usually when he's done something really awful, like thoring DS2 on the floor)

She forgets that she used to spank me with a hairbrush when I committed heinous crimes like not eating all of my dinner.

She also said I was potty trained by 9 months

Neither of my parents seem to remember much about early parenting, but fortunately they don't make up ridiculous stories to make me feel bad. I sympathise with the forgetting though. This afternoon DH and I were sitting around with my friend, our DD (3.4), her DD1 (3) and DD2 (7mo). Friend says 'when to they stop just chewing things, and start playing?' None of us could remember!

My mother's dead, but I see this kind of behaviour in older women I work with who have reared their families! When I went through an awful time with DS taking constant tantrums, they indicated their own children never did such a thing as they knew who the bosses were. They never had to shout at their children, they just did everything asked of them straightaway without having to be asked three or more times.
My aunt says one of her sons said "Dada" at 4 months, and other son started walking at 6 months.
At the moment, my DD2 aged 8 months makes strange with MIL, MIL says all her children had their full independance by the time they were her age

My mum was complaining recently about my DB not helping her out over something (completely unreasonable) she wanted him to do for her. I said to cut him some slack as he was adjusting to parenthood (he had a two-month-old baby at this point) and it was bound to be tiring and stressful. She got really indignant that anyone might find parenthood tiring or stressful and insisted that despite having had four of us under the age of five at one point - 'it was always wonderful, I can't understand anyone feeling any other way'.

Sorry, didn't read it all, so sorry if I'm repeating, but sounds like a definite case of rose tinted glasses...only remembering the good things, like when you break up with someone you can no longer stand a year or more down the line you're thinking, he was so funny, so cute, so nice, so why did I break up with him (because he was this that and the oher) my long, laboured point is, you only remember the good things (like sleeping all night)

Lol at this thread.

Apparently I was potty trained at 12 months yet when I ask my mother how I asked to go to the toilet at that age when I could neither walk or talk she is strangely silent. Apparently, though, she used to sit me on the potty after meals and I managed to do something. Sounds more like she trained herself to catch me doing something rather than me learning to use a potty.

She swears blind we were never ill which I know is not true.

MIL is even worse. She can't remember a thing about DH. No help at all in working out where the weirder traits in my children come from.

Absolutely agree with OP. My MIL says she cringes when she hears her DD shout at her children. I said that was a bit rich considering she used to clout her children on a regular basis. She denied it but DH went red with fury when he heard her say that.

I can understand forgetting tiny details but not things like hitting your kids and then getting all precious about shouting. Grrr.