How would you deal with this?

[TotorosOcarina]

I'll TRY to keep this simple.

Uncle has new puppy - is bringing it to my nans Saturday, I tell my nan I'll pop in to see dog.

I think I'm just popping in to see dog so I won't bring kids (admittedly don't visit grans very often as she smokes in house and kids have asthma)

Granny however pressumes I'm bringing kids and buys Xmas DVD for them to watch.

Saturday comes - we don't drive so had to walk to sainsburys in -4 freezing weather to get supplies for sunday roadst next day (we are doing granny a dinner too - we drop it at her house) so after being out of the house for 2 hours i the freezing I put DD up for a nap.

Granny rings and speaks to DH asking why we werent there, granny says ok, its freezing don['t worry about it - stay inside its too cold to be bringing kids out.EVERTYTHING SEEMS FINE TO ME!

Next morning (sunday) I speak to granny telkl her dinner will be dropped off about 3pm she fine.

speak to her again after dinner, she says dinner was lovovely etc...
So that night i ring my mum for a chat.

She asks me if I know just HOW upset my granny is that i didn't go round with the kids.

she tells me granny bought a DVD for them and had been looking forwards to it all week

I tried to explain that this was the FIRST i knew of a DVD and I thought uncle just wanted me to see the dog for 5 mins.
I tried to explain the kids were half frozen and granny never told me she thought the kids were coming.

Cue my mum shouting at me saying

'why the FUCK wouldn't you take the kids'?? you live round the fucking corner!'

At this point i was in shock and just asked why she was trying to make me feel guilty and why was she swearing at me??

I didn't know what to do and put the phone down.

DH was furious and rang my mum asking her why she had made me cry/why she was swearing at me and making me out to have abandoned my gran when it was just crosssed wires?!

She started at him and she gave it back as bad :(

I iphoneed my gran immediatly after in floods of tears explaining i had no isdea she had big plans and if i HAD have known I would have taken the kids.

Apparantly my gran rang my mum last night and told her to apologise to me,

my mum has not rang.

TBH i know what my mum is trying to say but i feel she was really out of order and shes been like this alot lately and I just dont get on with her anymore :(

she lost her dad last year and now gran has suspected dementia and i think its all getting on top of her

she was screaming at my DH down the phone ...

'totoros will be sorry when her grannys dead, she'll be sorry she didn't take the kids round then!!'

she said some really hoerrible things and I don't know whether i need some time away from her,

she did some awful things when i was young and these feelings and memories keep rising to the surface lately because of her behaviour and im finding it harder and harder to be around her.

PS I went out with my granny shopping today and shes totally fine and even bought me pop and a choccie bar cause i was upset over it all, shes such a sweetie!

You poor thing! And thank heavens your Gran is ok about it all.

I'm not sure what to say about your mum. It sounds to me as if she may have been feeling guilty about her mum/your gran herself and then took it out on you but not sure if that would make sense at all.

I think I'd just leave it now and wait for your mum to apologise to both you and your DH but I'm wondering if that's likely?

Hopefully someone will come along who can actually offer you some good advice.

Your mum's behaviour sounds worrying Totoros, do you think she might be depressed? When someone suddenly becomes very irritable and irrational like this it's usually a warning sign that something serious might be going on. I know you say she did some bad things when you were young so understandably you have reservations about doing anything but for your own conscience and peace of mind it might be worth having a quiet chat to her to find out what might be going through her head. The comments about your gran dying are quite telling - do you think she might have been very badly affected by her dad's death?

Of course if you do try to talk to her and she fobs you off or gets angry then there's very little more that you can do. It might be worth a try talking to her though.

Your gran sounds lovely :)

My gran is lovely and it makes me feel guilty, but ive had a very busy last few months but im trying to make it up to gran now.

Despite what my mum was like when I was younger we have gotten on well since I had DS1 at 20, but the last few years i feel like she had put some mask on and now its slipping again and I can see the woman who did things to a child no mother should do.

So its hard for me to deal with this stuff on top of the stuff thats coming up from my childhood.

Ifeel like I sound ridiculous and dramatic but its only the last few years that ive realised just how bad the things are that she did.

Would you like to talk about those things Totoros? It might help.

By the way it's not ridiculous to feel the way you do. My mum seems completely normal by anyone's standards but when I told DH about some of the things she did as a child he was shocked and it made me realise that I had a right to feel a certain amount of anger towards her now. She was never abusive or malicious, more just cold and unavailable. Things like that can have a profound effect on you and I would say as I've realised how bad these things were I've pulled away from my mum a lot. We get on fine, but I don't think we'll ever be close.

sorry not as a child but when I was a child

i have talked about them on mn before but under a namechange,

she was just incredibly violent. hitting me, hitting me with objects, strangling me, covering my nose and mouth until i almost passed out, biting me.

its only just registering with me the magnitude of these experiences and the fact she acts the role of wonderful, heart of gold mum and nana now just makes me quite angry

these things were done to meas a child, not as saome terrible 15 yr old, i cant imagine what i could have possibly done for her to disgh out such punishments.
i was never a bad chiolod, i never even went out or drank when i did get to that age, was always at home.

Oh Totoros that's awful :( No wonder you feel so angry. I can see why the way she acts like she's perfect now would really piss you off. She sounds like a horrendous mum and not many people in your position would still have any sort of relationship with her. Do you feel that it might be time to distance yourself from her?

Totoros, that's quite serious abuse. Have you ever spoken to anyone about it in RL?

No never.

It doesn't 'seem' like thats how my kife was really. because 90% of it was her buying us whatever we wanted/ taking us nice places / allowing us to have lots of mates round etc ... then its like I'd ignored that part of it.

So we have a mainly normal relationship now. But lately all the bad stuff has come to the surface.

Just wondering if you would benefit from talking about it in a safe environment? I guess this is safe though. Really feel for you and wish I knew how to help.