My mother...

[beela]

Please help me to get some perspective! My relationship with my mother has always been fine. We've never been the 'best mates' kind of mother & daughter, nor would want to be, but have always got on.

However - she always manages to pick out the negative side of anything. E.g:

• DP won a trip to New Zealand a few years ago. Instead of saying 'wow that's amazing' she said 'oh just a week? That's not very long to go to New Zealand for'.
• A few months ago DS (aged approx 7 months) got the connection between the word 'bear' and a growly noise. I tell my mum that he can make a bear sound when we ask him - 'ah' she says, 'but does he know what a bear looks like?' Well no, but that wasn't the point.
• DP and I got married last month. Our witnesses had one of the pictures framed and gave it to us for christmas. Instead of telling us that we look lovely / happy as everyone else has, she said 'In 10 years you can look at that and laugh at your haircut'.

These are all teeny tiny things, and if I talk to her about them she will say I am being oversensitive, but they all add up and the negativity is beginning to get me down and means that I don't want to tell her things that I am happy about because she will put a downer on them. I think she is happy in her own life and I don't even think she realises she is doing it, so I'm not really sure how to tackle it, or even whether I should,

I know that there are people out there with bigger problems so if I just need to get over it and ignore the comments then please tell me that, but if anyone has any advice on how to deal with it and help her to be happy with me about happy things then please let me know??

You can't change her. I do empathise strongly, very strongly . But I don't think she would recognise what she's doing.

I don't know really, maybe she would if confronted (I tend to cynicism myself ), but it's such a habit...

They do say, you can't change other people, you can only change how you react to them.

I'd make a sort of 'error' noise at her every time she does it. Then if she objected I'd say she was being over-sensitive.

Thank you. Yes, perhaps it is for me to change my reactions.

I worry more about DS tbh, and whether she will take the same approach with him, and that he won't be old enough or tough enough to just shrug it off.... but then again she might not be like that with him.

Or you can intervene and perhaps beep at her as Flanelle suggests.

You can counteract her negativity - recognise it and defang it for your ds.

OP, some people are just negative by design. She won't change.

When she starts on just put the phone down or walk out of the room. My mum is like this and I just blank her. She behaves nicely for a while then I repeat the process

Oh, forgot to say my mum is now 80! and I'm able to laugh about "her" ways.

I think Flanelle has a good idea but first i would wait till she says the next negative thing and say "must you be such a kill joy?" It may shock her into thinking about it. It may just be a bad habit that she has got into and needs your assistance to break

My parents are like this - for some reason i have been cast as this tragic figure in the family divorced, unemployed and childless at 34.

So whatever i say i get a negative reaction. 'Knowing your luck...' is the saying a la mode. So i get a new job and tell them and get 'KYL you'll get ill and lose it' after telling them i was pregnant i got 'are you sure????!! KYL the test was wrong' then 'KYL you'll lose it' etc.

I pulled them up about it but they cant see it and kept saying 'but it's cos we worry about you because nothing ever goes right and you are so unlucky'

They have even named me a name which means impending doom!