How do I deal with a rambling mother?

[aciddrops]

My mum drives me mad for many reasons. One thing that really gets to me is that she rambles on and on and on. She will start a conversation and go into every little detail, whys and wherefores, etc. For example she might tell me that she bought flour from a supermarket like this - "I went to Tesco to get some flour. Well it was Tuesday and I wanted to make a cake for Flo. Flo was friends with Mavis and Mavis was ill and I knew she was worried. Flo worries an awful lot and last week she phoned me and said "blah blah blah" and I said "blah blah" so that's how she is. So I got on the bus and I didn't have the right change but the bus driver found some and then I sat down next to a man who was very chatty. He said that they are opening a new supermarket in Newtown, so when I got off the bus...ramble, ramble, ramble....That Tesco is very big you know - I can't find anything. Well, after all that I found the right aisle and.........I bought the flour."

She rambles so much that sometimes she doesn't even finish the story. She turns it into another one and I find it really difficult to follow what she is on about. She even tells me stories that other people have told her - just repeating conversations that I have no interest in.

It drives me mad! I want to ask her to leave all the irrelevant details out and get to the point.

I know I am being mean but I just don't have the patience. Does anyone else have a relative like this?

By the way, she has no memory problems and is fit and well in all other respects.

You have my sympathy, my mil does that. And she doesn't listen to replies, so there's never an actual conversation. I don't see her very often though, so it's not a major irritant to me.

My DM does this, too! In her case, I think it's because she doesn't get a lot of social interaction so the tale of buying some flour gets expanded into a saga. I've found that by letting her run with it, adding the occasional comment ("Is that Flo who used to live over the road?" "A new supermarket will be handy for you, won't it?") is the best strategy. Hopefully she looks back on our day and thinks we had a lovely long chat!

Having said that, I occasionally find myself relating something to a friend along the lines of "On Tuesday morning, as I was leaving the house - oh no, it wasn't Tuesday because I was on my way to Yoga, so it must have been Monday" and want to stab myself!!

Yes. We all have a relative like that. My mother is like it and it drives me bonkers. I hope if I ever start doing that my children will have be euthanised for my own good.

I dread becoming like this. My mum didn't use to be but is now (although she still catches herself occasionally and laughs at herself doing it saying 'I've turned into your gran!), possibly because my eyes have started to glaze over or I'm looking puzzled. I don't think it's deliberate so pointing it out probably won't help you OP.

That said, Billy Connolly built a whole career on the tangential anecdote so it's not always bad.

My mum does this. She attempted to tell me my cousin was moving close to me but it turned into a massive ramble. Most irritating is if we're giving her a lift and she tries to talk but can't really hear because she's in the back. She abhors a silence. My sisters FIL does it as well drones on and on and on. He's very self absorbed.

DP does it a bit as well but I can't bear to tell him as he has no confidence at the best of times.

My sister does it. Some of our best phone conversations took place while I was ironing. I would place the phone handset on the end of the ironing board and carry on pressing DH's underpants etc. After half an hour I would pick up the phone and make an innocuous comment which would be enough for her to continue for another fifteen minutes.

Oh god I'm staying with my mum at the moment and this is driving me mad. It's even worse if your in a hurry and try and rush her - she is incapable of just giving the information needed. Argh!

My granny does this. She also just buts in a conversation and talks over while you are actually speaking to her about something else!

She is 82 and m old queenie

My dad does this - it is irritating and also you can see people's eyes glazing over Sympathy!

My mum is the same. My husband always knows if I am on the phone to mum or dad. If its dad I speak if its mum I just listen! A conversation with her ping pongs between loads of different subjects and I can never properly follow it!

Also she will finish a conversation and then pick it up hours later in the middle so I have no idea what she is talking about.

I say next to a guy at my friends family party this Christmas who did this all night. I ended up just turning away as he was giving me the start of a headache - it almost ruined my evening. He wasn't family though!

My mil does this aand it drives me insane, especially when there is an actual interesting conversation going on and she decides to have a 1:1 chat with me over the top of the interesting conversation about the price of sprouts etc!
I use dd as a distraction, oh look dd needs her nose wiped then change the conversation or talk with someone else. Or suddenly become fascinated with what game dd is playing, oh look that jigsaw puzzle is upside down, let me help.

My nan does this...
It's now become more like "Doris died. Do you know Doris?" (Whether I say yes or know she still says...) "we used to live next to her on high street when I was born. Her son's best friends with your cousin's cousin's dog's littermate's owner's nephew. You must remember him. He used to go grass track racing when you were a baby. Or maybe that was your mum. Blah blah blah blah. Oh, maybe you don't know her then. But she died. Her funeral's on Friday at the crem." Amazing with the detail though...

Yes, another one here! It's not really a conversation, more like DM is simply downloading her brain. And she jumps randomly from one subject to another. For example, she'll be talking about an elderly couple, then say "And her baby is due next month"

I would love to hear a scientific explanation of this type of behaviour.

I'm glad it is not just me that gets irritated! The other thing she does is once she has finished a pointless ramble and stops I will take the opportunity to get up and leave the room to go to the bathroom or something else that I need to do but instead of recognizing that I am going to do something else, she just starts again on another topic so that I can't go. I've started now to just walk away and leave her rabitting on!

Another thing is that when I am talking to my Dad she just constantly interrupts by saying things like "Don't put it in the dishwasher like that" or "Can you get the sauce out of the garage?" (Yes she keeps food in the blasted garage). A normal conversation is impossible. She can't watch TV either - all she does is comments on the outfits people are wearing. Arghhhh!!!!

At least it's a blood relative - you probably have residual positive feelings to suck it up. I have to listen to my MIL doing the same. Drives me nuts. She doesn't seem to clock the glazed expression and drooping smile.

This is mum to a tee! However she is getting rather forgetful so at least although the conversation comes around again, the names and place frequently change!!!

Luckily when she visits the doctor/the paramedics are called (because of a little fall) I am there to explain she may well have had a minor stroke 15 years ago but it was most likely to have been when she lived in Hillingdon, not Ilford, as she has never ever lived there.

The worst convo was when she got my brother mixed up with her now dead sister and insisted that he and herself used a pram/pushchair thing as they wanted a scooter like the boy next door. I had to remind her that her sister died when I was 5- my brother would have been 4, so it is unlikely that my brother was there with her when she herself was 7. It is almost comical seeing the light come back in her eyes and recognition (sort of) come back!!!!

To be fair she has a bladder infection at the moment and last time she had one she was hospitalised and went ga ga about Goblins invading her garden (who where really from the IRA trying to recruit my brother) as he has an irish surname.........

My Mum does this, we have Skype marathons, sometimes for many hours.
In fact, she talks so much, without hardly stopping for breath that I can walk away from the PC, go to the loo, have a few puffs on a cig outside and come back without her knowing I have gone. On and on and on, goes off at tangents, bores me senseless with long winded tales about people I have no interest in or don't know.

She repeats herself a lot at well. She's not old, in her 60's and has always been this way. It's hard work sometimes at quite often she does have interesting stuff to say.

I do it too, and I'm not old enough to have that excuse. I know it's irritating because it even irritates me. XH used to call it "verbal diarrhoea".

I do have an awful lot of things sloshing about in my brain, mostly useful and/or entertaining, but the filing system is kind of broken so that the bits I need are often hidden under a pile of totally irrelevant stuff.

I have relatives that do it too. It's usually when they have do little in their own lives to talk about that they either go into every little detail of their own life, or start going into detail about lives of others I don't know.

My trick is to raise a topic on the news or the storyline of a programme they watch and talk about the rights and wrongs of that instead.

So just find better topics of conversation and steer then onto that instead.

Good tip, thanks Joysmum

My fiancé does this. Luckily I love his voice and can listen for hours... But I can appreciate how infuriating it'd be in anyone else.

Oh god this was me the other day with my tale of buying butter...I was trying to describe a sandwich equally dull and ended up talking for about 20 minutes about how I chose some fucking butter.

Mum laughed at me.

I'm only 29. There's no hope, is there?!