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.

Actually, SIL's ds's are aged 3 and 1.5, and I recall her having problems with colic, the older DS1 being a ball of energy while she was pregnant with DS2 and she having a really hard time because of it, DS1 taking tantrums.
But when I make any comment of some of the hard times I had with DS and DD1 (aged 6&5), and problems with DD2, all I hear is how she's had a really easy time with her sons! I keep my laughter to myself! She even told me she never had a problem with colic!!!!!! (Yet I was there when she was nearly pulling her hair out)

My mum's stories change according to what point she wants to make.

Apparently all her babies were calm because she was so relaxed and easy going , and when I was struggling with tiredness and a screaming baby when DD was 3 weeks old she kept implying that I had PND as "it's shouldn't be so difficult at 3 weeks" . Think she has rose tinted glasses as she had PND with all 3 of us!

I predict 20 years in the future that -

'In our day we didn't breastfeed for hours - just fed for 20 minutes every four hours and that was that.'
'You and your brothers never argued'

My MIL is best as she remembers dh as always perfectly rational, even as a toddler

my mother obviously missed the point where she was supposed to don her rose-tinted spectacles - or put them on late as she now regards my DC as being so much better (cleverer/better behaved/less stroppy) than we were...

(which means of course that I am not allowed to complain about them because she had it so much worse )

My mum's memory seems to be pretty accurate

However when I was struggling with breastfeeding, MIL made many "helpful" observational comments about her own b/feeding experiences.

This brought me close to smacking her, as I was having the most horrid time with b/feeding, and also because she'd previously told me how different it was in her day, when formula was the progressive, doctor-advised choice from birth, and all that...

My hand itches, just thinking about it

Whenever i grounded my son, my mum would always say "awwww you cant ground him, that's cruel" but then i used to always remind her how often i was bloody grounded (i was once grounded for about 3 months solid!!) and she just tended to say "yeah well that was then" and make excuses why i shouldn't punish my child.

I was a perfect child, never needed smacking, ate everything put in front of me, easy to potty train etc. Probably why I am so uptight and a perfectionist now then...

Also my mum can retell what people said over forty years ago... I can't tell dh what has happened 2 hours ago!

Think rose tinted glasses is right.

According to my MIL her children never cried at night (DS was 6 weeks old and it was 3am when she delivered this helpful remark).

My mother gave me her journal about me (I was PFB) - so I can prove that she had all the same issues with me that I have with DS... even if she can't remember it now.

Kathy
'In our day we didn't breastfeed for hours - just fed for 20 minutes every four hours and that was that.'

My Mum said the same thing. Then she thought for a while and said: 'It was awful - you could hear all the poor babies screaming in the nursery while we were in hospital. We probably starved them.'

Having said that, all the GCs are much smarter than any of the children Grandparent's perogative.

I've just come back to this thread and it's made me giggle - glad to see I'm not alone! In fact it seems to be very common!

Kathy and Potoroo, my MIL said the same thing!
I remember when ds1 was little talking on the phone to her and she said in a pitying tone "Oh, are you still doing that demand feeding?"
I retorted for the 50th time "You have to feed them on demand or your milk supply doesn't increase!"
After which, she said
"Oh, maybe that's what happened to me. My milk dried up at 6 weeks."
Good job I didn't listen to you then!

I was in a queue at a checkout today, and there was a lady in front of me with her 3yo grandson. He was very restless and trying to break free from her grip. I mentioned how I had the same problem with my DS (now 6yo) when he was the same age. She said her grandson is a spoilt brat, she reared 6 children herself and she could bring them everywhere - they never gave her any trouble and did everything they were told.
Next, I said how I believed men were just genetically programmed from birth to hate shops - to which she replied she had 2 sons and they hated shops, she couldn't bring them near any or they'd take tantrums. Talk about contradicting herself! Immediately, I thought about this thread and couldn't wait to get home to post!

YES - I just had my mum to stay and this exactly happened. General advice given, but when asked point blank ho tow achieve something there is no answer.

Example; Mum says never wake a sleeping baby. Mum says babies should go to be at 7-8pm. So DS sleeps all day, doesn't want to go to bed at 8.30 is up till 10. (Ok he's three weeks old, it's not a biggie). I asked how I get him to bed early if he's been asleep all day but I am not allowed to wake him.

No answer - just the general "you are doing fine dear".

It's a small thing but I have never taken any notice of my mum before, but now when she says stuff it REALLY bugs me.

And the feeding! Yes Kathy is completely right! I asked what she did to distract me from being hungry and she said "walk you round". Wat's the point of that - I might as well have been fed!

Oh and she would be mortified if she knew I thought this.

Right! When DD1 was 4, I yearned for another baby. I longed for the gorgeous little newborn, the breastfeeding and the cuddling of this little being that stays in one place all the time. That's how I had remembered DS and DD1 as newborns who were by then aged 6 and 4yo.
DD2 was born, equally adorable and gorgeous - but very contrary, wanted to be carried around the whole time, constant breastfeeding, suffered colic for 8 weeks, then very clingy and couldn't be babysat by anybody. When she cried, it was a very high-pitched scream that could be heard in Australia - when she did it while I was shopping I got such filthy looks and would have to abandon my shopping trolley!.
I now understand my DS and DD1 were exactly the same as babies, but previous episodes of maternal amnesia has failed to make me realise this! It was a rude awakening, but DD2's babyhood will remain engrained in my memory forever and I never want to have another baby.
Despite what I've said there, I love DD2 (and DS and DD1) with all my heart and she has brightened up our lives in lots of ways! She's now 18mo and getting easier.

Maternal amnesia- nature's way of propagating the species!

Though I think it will take me a bit longer still to forget that dd was very hard work.
Even my mother hasn't been able to erase all her memories. She remembers that my elder brother was a sickly child, constantly developing colds and coughs, that my youngest bro was a poor sleeper, that two of us had croup so needed frequent monitoring at night, that I was an incredibly stubborn child and that my bro had bad temper tantrums. Though she believes that we were less noisy than children today (ha! she shouldn't have made those tape recordings then ) and that we never argued (bless).

My Mum never got big with us
Bottle fed and had tablets to "dry her milk up"
We came out of hospital having been put on a routine by the MWs, we only ever wanted feeding every 4 hours.
Slept through very early apparently I slept for 17 hours at a time
Potty trained day and night at 18 months
Never had a tantrum, she would just give us a look when we were out and we would behave.
Everyone in our family smoked around us and we are OK.

Huge pinch of salt I reckon.

sometimes i look at my mum and wonder how she did bring us up, and she did do a good job. I just can't imagine that the sporadic, lazyish,mad person that is my mother actually did all that we do now!!

I used to feel a bit hurt that she couldn't remember things about me, about my development, when I would ask for advice.

Now my dd is 6, i can totally understand why ages 0-3 yrs are now in fact a blur, and no I can't remember specifics either!!!

he one thing that is different tho, is that I remember my dd as a person, as a character, whreas my mum has never really said much about me, so maybe thats a bit og a genreational thing? Altho my mum wasn't prasied as a kid either, so despite her very best efforts ift has never come naturally to her.

I can only now look at this with the benefit of having become a parent myself.

Not necessarily a generational thing, piratecat; my mother could be very generous with praise and, I think, knew our personalities very well.

My mum does it too! She so funny. Oh, my dad like that as well. Whenever ds stays with either of thwm, they get paper and pen out to take notes on how to feed, bath, play. All parents are mad. It'll be us in 30 years!

Oh this has really struck a chord with me! So glad it isn't just my mum. Must e-mail a link to this thread to my sister as we're always complaining about it. My DM fictionalises my childhood completely. I caught her out the other day - she was talking about how I used to play with a remote control all the time so they gave me one without batteries in. I said 'but there wasn't any such thing as remote controls when I was a baby' 'yes there was' 'no, Mum'. Long pause. 'Oh'. I'm the youngest so she wasn't remembering my sister or anything. It was just pure fiction, she'd probably 'borrowed' it from hearing about someone else's baby more recently. Also apparently she never got a spare minute when I was little, she didn't sleep or eat, she just looked after me all the time. Always tempted to reply 'So didn't the full time live-in nanny, or the housekeeper, or any of the other staff help you out at all? Were they all drinking tea all day long? ' (She was SAHM. And I am jealous of her staffing levels, does it show? But she says she knows all about how hard it is 'I went through it all with you'. Ha!).

my mum refuses to admit that she spat on a tissue and wiped our faces. even after I caught her trying to do the same to dd!

Ha! Just after DS2 was born and he was having an unsettled period in the early hours of every morning, I got panicky that he'd be a terrible sleeper like DS1, and moaned to my mum, who said "Babies these days just don't seem to sleep". Wot? Because obviously it's a recent phenomenon, caused by inferior modern babies/parents! Despite her having previously told me severally that my brother never slept day or night, and how relieved they were when I came along and slept 20 hours a day! Just like DS2 started to
Mad old bat!