Mum driving me mad

[Littlestrickle]

How would you deal with this please? Any advise/ideas gratefully appreciated. My retired Mum age 70 has no hobbies and lives with my Dad. When I see her she has about 3 or 4 same old topics which she tells me/my DH EVERY TIME I SEE HER. And it's drivig me mad. She definitely doesn't have dementia. I've tried saying "yes, you've told me that before Mum" but she ignores that and carries on. My Dad feels the same and rolls his eyes at me when she starts up. I personally feel it's because she has nothing else to talk about, although she would never admit that. I've tried encouraging hobbies, etc - to no avail. I'm so sick of it I've been cutting down visits but feel guilty and they live in the next street to me so difficult to make excuses. Any ideas anyone??

Hmm. Try doing things with her when you are there rather than letting it be about conversation?

My mum had dementia, and it was very hard to hear the same thing over and over (different circumstances, same problem) so I used to take a cross word book with me, and we would try to solve some puzzles, or we would share a newspaper, read a story and chat about it. This was when she was at the better end of the disease, when she got worse she was not able to do these things - but I am sure your mum would.

You could start off with a catch up and as soon as she starts on one of the same old stories, grab your paper and say "did you see this story about the dog that rescued 7 children from a burning car....?" or whatever, and see if it helps.

Maybe you could take her out somewhere or do something outside the house? Different context might lead to different conversation. Does she watch any of the soaps? My mum could chat about the current story lines (as if they were real) for a while, and that was sometimes more interesting than the war stories she would come back to otherwise!

Good luck with it

My mum is the same but we don't live nearby. I tend to tune out to what she's saying and kind of nod along

My mum does the same, but as morbid as it is I know my mum won't be here forever and I'll probably long for her repetitive stories when she's gone. So I smile and behave like its the first time she's told me. I love my my mum to bits and I don't care if its the 1st or the 50th time she's told me something I'm just so grateful to have her.

My Mum does this too, I tune out.

I think I read on MN once about someone's Mum or MIL always retelling the same old shit, they called her 'Tales of the Expected'.

Sorry no advice to give but I feel your pain.