Mothers and daughters (or just me and my mum...)

[flyingcloud]

Ugh. Where to start.

My mother has just been staying with us for five days, helping us with DD as DH and I have been away for work.

She has gone home very upset with how we treat her (me mainly, DH keeps his feelings in check). She is right, I am so intolerant to the point of being horrible. She is a very vague, forgetful 70 (with no real concept of living in the real world). DH and I have stressful lives, DH has just started a new business and I am working full time, 30 wks pregnant and with a 22mo DD.

She is not sick - she has always been like this. She repeats herself non-stop, she asks the same questions over and over again. Once she gets an idea in her head she will keep at it. She is messy, she breaks things (despite us showing her how to use them each time she comes). She is generally great with DD but gets tired quickly. She leaves things lying around and doesn't really take all dangers into account (whereas others, such as the stairs, she goes on and on and on about). She walks all over the house with her muddy shoes. She makes a huge effort to be clean and tidy but leaves teabags and foodI out and lying around, not using chopping boards or bowls, etc.

I know this all sounds incredibly petty on my part and that is really why I am posting this. I am not overtly rude, but just impatient and often ignore her in a bid not to get snappy and snippy. DD adores her but walks all over her. DH is a tidy, organised person who struggles with her, but as I say keeps it all in check and is perfectly polite. Obviously as her daughter my tolerance and patience are much, much lower.

She went home very, very upset and while I haven't spoken to her my brother said he has and she feels very sad about our lack of respect for her. Which is partly true - she has never really had a job and has always been a fairly dependent person (she inherited money and property allowing her not to need to have a career but she has always needed people around to do stuff for her, she has been dependent on my brother and I for company, holidays and her life in general ever since our father died 16 years ago). She was nearly forty when I was born and we are of completely different generations and outlooks.

How do I address this? I am 30 and my general snippiness with her has only got worse over time. I need to sort it out before it is too late. Equally part of me feels that she doesn't make enough effort on her part (but is she really going to change at her age). I live abroad so don't see her that often, which again makes me feel like I am really an awful person.

Please excuse typos!

I really feel utterly miserable. I am not looking for any more sympathy but I am alone and just needed to type that out.

Thank you.

OP, I'm struck by how a few of us instantly knew what type of person you were on about. So I wouldn't beat yourself up too much.

And who says only one of you is allowed to be affected by family disfunction? If she's got a difficult background then poor her, but it doesn't mean you have to suck it up! It's not scapegoating or blaming to try to understand what went on. Best wishes, really.

OP I understand how you feel. I am in France too as you know and my mum comes over very rarely and when she does she drives me mad. And she complains about how snappy I get but FFS she forgets to turn the damn oven off

Hope you feel better about this soon. Can't offer any advice really but you're not on your own;

she has never really had a job

so what? Just because you choose to flog yourself to death, are you a better person? Maybe she is the more sensible, not working herself into an early grave where she is too stressed to be civil to her family.

Just a thought

I am not quite sure why people are being so hard on the OP

i don't think it's the done thing to be irritated with your own mother, but this seems to have evolved into a different story, more complicated than the one described at the outset.

I don't think the OP did any favours actually, the subsequent posts kind of helped pad stuff out a bit, but many just go on the first post and wade in.

Agree with Houdini on all counts.

Your post really struck a chord with me. My mum is one of the best people I know and manages to drive me from nought to 60 within three seconds of seeing her or even being on the phone.

With my mum, I am snappy in a way I would never be with anyone else. Ever. But she just pushes my buttons and has done all my life. I love her. I wish we could get on better. But it's not going to change now.

I am sure I will be just as annoying to my own kids. It's very sad.

I'm going to cut you a lot of slack here, OP, because you sound a lot like me, and your relationship with your mum very similar to mine. The people giving you a hard time probably have quite lovely mothers, and just can't envisage wanting to throttle them.

But mine can be irritating too, in similarly minor ways that you describe, and when I have to spend a whole day in her company because she wants to come and visit her granddaughters, I spend as much time as possible in different rooms to her to avoid losing my rag.

And yes, it is all the stupid little things. For me one of the things that drives me round the bend is when my mother takes her blood sugar (is diabetic) and leaves the little plastic bit with her dried blood to fall to the floor. It's ever such a small thing but it happens multiple times, every bloody visit, and each time I get just a little bit angier than the last time.

I'm intolerrant of almost everything she says and does, and I think it's because for 20 years I tried to ignore everything, for the sake of a quiet life, and then I left home, a huge weight was lifted, and now it feels like that weight keeps pitching up at my door.

She's not exactly a bad person, and I don't think you think yours is either, but they're just exhausting, and if they were friends rather than family we'd have cut them off as dead wood years ago.

So I have no advice, but rest assured I don't think you're the ogre some are trying to make you feel.

I empathise, You do feel guilty or you wouldn't have posted. My mother was really dependent on me at the end of her life and nearly, well, did send me a bit doolally. Nothing was ever just right, always just a little bit wrong, and the martyred sighs......I am tensing up now thinking about it!

But I loved her and she loved me, you don't find anyone around perfect all the time, do you?

Be kind to yourself, you seem to have some underlying issues ith DM you might want to explore when life is a bit easier.

Next time you see her have some strategies in place, discuss things with DH. Iwould recommend copious amounts of wine but it may have to be chocolate I can see.

If you weren't 4 months pregnant, working full time, looking after a toddler and supporting your husbands new business venture you probably would have dealt with your mums visit by simply rolling your eyes and having a bit of a whinge about her with your husband once she left. However, you've got a lot on your plate so of course everything is amplified.

Give your mum a call or write her a letter talking about the positives of her trip and what things you plan to do next time. She's your mum and she obviously loves you and your dd very much, she won't hold a grudge and you don't want to beat yourself up with guilt just because it wasn't a smooth visit. Life is too short :)

Sorry, Just re read your post and see you said you were 30 weeks pregnant, of course that's much more than 4 months along!

OP, I really feel for you. Just because she's your mother doesn't make her a likeable person.

It sounds like your reactions are very understandable. She's in YOUR home, but she doesn't in any way, shape or form try to fit in with you or act like a guest should. It sounds like an attitude of 'you're my daughter and I'll act as I damn well please and you WILL tolerate it' and when you get upset and react there is this reaction of horror of 'how DARE you be so unkind to me?!'. (And I'm not buying the 'it's old age' reaction from people. She sounds like she was this bad all her life.)

But SHE is being unkind to you. You live incredibly busy lives, things aren't easy for you right now, and all she is doing is creating extra work for you and pretending she's 'helping you'.

Yes she wants to spend time with you and her GD, but in return she needs to act in a way that makes you want to spend time with her.

But she won't, and that's where you are.

Coping mechanism suggestions.

I'm afraid that unless you have accommodation which gives her the ability to stay in an almost separate section to you so that you all have time apart then your mother will need to stay at a B&B. Book a taxi to pick her and your DD up (that is if you and your DH can't do it) some time in the afternoon and take them to your house. This gives her a few hours with DD on her own, but not too long to make it too awkward/difficult.

If need be, turn the spare room into an office or something and make sure you don't have anywhere appropriate for her to sleep so that her feelings aren't offended.

Hire a mother's help while she is there. Stress that this is more of a 'cleaner' person, but you know very well that they are also there to help with childcare. Twofold benefit, they clean her mess for you, and they can make sure your DD is safe.

You're NOT a terrible person. Remember that.

Thank you all again.

I didn't mean to drip feed, I was just trying to frame a very black and white post without dredging up old resentments. I was trying not to colour people's judgements of the situation as I do feel that I am the one with the power to change and she isn't.

She has never had a job - well that's because she thought it beneath her and frankly I don't have that choice, I may be working myself into an early grave but what's the alternative? I am also proud of my career.

One of the biggest problems is DH as he has become less and less tolerant of her. I find myself constantly apologising to him. When I said I had a lower tolerance, I meant than him - he can tune it out a lot easier. He is normally a very tolerant person but he becomes quite stressed when she is around. He doesn't particularly enjoy going to visit her as that is almost more stressful than when she comes here.

Also when I said I ignore her, it's not that I shut my bedroom door and refuse to speak, it's more that I don't respond to everything she says. It's a bid to keep my sanity, but again perhaps not a good coping strategy.

I do have a cleaner that comes in while she is around, but DM makes quite a lot of demands of her, asking her to do stuff and then criticising her when she has gone. We have great childcare at the moment - and don't rely on family, partly because my mother is abroad and MIL lives too far away (she is a saint). We have to have good childcare. We are in the process of hiring a full-time nanny as with two it will be a necessity.

And yes, I dream, dream dream of a granny flat.

That, and alcohol.

Remember it's your house, your child, you set the rules. Hire the help when she comes, put away/unplug the stuff she breaks. If she's being snobbish or bitchy about brother's girlfriend then calmly call her on it. Again, you are in control, you set the boundaries. You are both adults so you can relate to each other as adults.