My mother has come to visit this summer, i've only seen her a couple of times this year.
She told me she was coming to stay, twice. She sent me an email with dates of when she would be coming, along with a list of dates of all the other places she was going to visit for her summer holidays. The first visit was to arrive the day after I got back from a very busy holiday abroad without DS so we'd been apart for the longest we'd ever been. DS is 5.
I thought she was coming to visit for 4 days but then it turned out to be 6. I asked her if she could look after DS on the Saturday when I was invited to a wedding but she said she'd be on the coast and so she couldn't unless he took the train with her and I came to pick him up. (too expensive) But then after all, with lots of last minute arrangements with my Dad she ended up staying and I'd already said I couldn't go to the wedding.
When staying with me it's like my house is her house. I gave her a sofa bed in the lounge. She found a £95 quarterly phone bill that I hadn't paid and started to talk about how I was 'in debt'.
When I let DS pour his own cereal she was aghast and moaning about the mess. When DS went to get his own spoon and milk she was shrieking at him to sit down and ask! She gets thoroughly exasperated with me for doing things my way.
When she walked into the lounge and DS was watching TV he said 'What are you doing in here? Can you go out?' And I'm not surprised he said this as I feel my Mum makes everyone tense because she is quite likely to switch off the TV and decide 'that's enough tv'. It's her tone of absolute shock and exasperation that is so manipulative that she goes around the house controlling both DS and I. This made her come to complain to me about DS - really very upset that DS would ask what she was doing in the lounge. She took it so personally she obviously wanted to make me furious with him about it. I told him off.
Every day she makes suggestions, lets go here, do this, eat this, buy this, then we'll go there, I'll pay. I feel like she wants to do loads and loads of things but she talks so much I have no time to think about what I want. Then she decides I am sick and also depressed, because I say I think I should just focus on jobhunting for a new job and DS can draw.
She buys groceries for us and then if DS says something is his then she snaps that she bought all the food.
Anyway I am just so exhausted by having someone visit who thinks everything should be done differently I actually said I don't think she should come back for her second visit which was going to be in a few weeks time. I said it was because she keeps arguing with DS. She told me she is not my pal, she is my mum and DS's grandmother. What she is is a pain in the arse. She will make a suggestion like, lets all try to eat really healthily today, or I think we should go to the sea side and stay in a B&B, and even if I say I don't think that's what we should do she just keeps pushing and pushing to do it.
What the hell do I do to have an adult relationship with someone who wants to treat me like a 14 year old? I feel she affects the way I deal with DS. I feel she stresses me out although she is always trying to plan fun things. She is coming back to visit again even though I told her I didn't think it was a good idea. But instead of staying for another week she's just staying overnight.