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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Original poster

Gah family. So petty. Am I being over sensitive?

32 replies

Gretagumbo · 06/03/2014 22:56

I am a single working mum. I am 36 and self sufficient. My family 99% of the time are brilliant, and are v. supportive but sometimes they have a tendency to stick the boot in and run me down whilst offering this support. This week has finished me off.

My house is not a show home but not a shit hole either. My mum came in at the beginning of the week saying how awful it was and at least I should of cleaned the kitchen as I know she likes a clean kitchen. She just kept on with my sister as an audience about how I'll get rats and am unhygienic. She proceeds with angrily scrubbing my kitchen.

Dad offers to look at my dodgy toilet and then yells at me for pooing excessively & putting tampax down the loo. This in front of his friend (one of my work colleagues) and my neighbours.

My sister then has a strop on as my son over sleeps through his nap and she wanted to take him out somewhere. I was unaware of her plans. This was my fault apparently. My dad stated that she had a right to be pissed off as she had been trying to help me.

My brother helped me with something yesterday. I thanked him for it and offered him some chocolate. My dad berated me today for not thanking him sufficiently apparently he was affronted by my lack of gratitude.

I walk into the house today and you know when you can tell they've all been having a good old bitch. I approached my mum to try and sort it out but she was still in the pissed off zone.

I am not ungrateful at all but it just seems that every offer of help comes with a put down, it's making me feel like shit. I'm not sure how to go forward as I need some help but really need to stand up to this sort of stuff.

Am drinking baileys in bed...

OP posts:
LoisPuddingLane · 06/03/2014 23:14

I'd say it was support you could do without. For some reason, they seem to need you to be the family scapegoat. You don't have to be.

LoisPuddingLane · 06/03/2014 23:16

Also, this "help" they are offering seems much more like control, or another way to blame you for something. You put too much shit in your own toilet. You let your son sleep too late despite not knowing your sister wanted to take him out. You offered chocolate to your brother and this wasn't enough, although he didn't tell you himself.

You aren't to blame, and you don't need to take the role they've assigned you.

Mrswellyboot · 06/03/2014 23:22

Would love to join you with a baileys. You deserve it! Try amaretto in your coffee Grin

All jokes aside, you can't put up with that. They are not dong you a favour if they are criticising and putting you down. So my honest advise is not to go no contact (as you obviously love your family) but for a short while distance yourself, don't row or anything but say no thank you when they offer. Keep a very low profile.

They will ask, then just say no you're ok doing things for yourself, you know their advice may be well meaning but they have taken the good out of everything with spiteful comments

Lemsy · 07/03/2014 04:58

Get some space from them and get some counselling. You are being used as the family scapegoat. Get out of the box they have put you in, your life is your own.

I'm just starting to follow this advice myself, not easy but can be done.

Best of luck...with love..x

AttilaTheMeerkat · 07/03/2014 07:11

It is NOT your fault they are like this. Often in such situations there is also a golden child/children and a narcissist parent to boot.

You need a lot of time away from these people along with far less direct contact. They will not like this at all and will do everything possible to keep you in the role they have assigned for you. Your birth family are not emotionally healthy and have assigned the role of scapegoat to you hence all their crap dressed up as "support". Its more like control.

I would start reading "Toxic Parents" written by Susan Forward and post on the "well we took you to Stately Homes" thread as well. Counselling for yourself is also adviseable; you need though to find a counsellor who has no bias about keeping families together despite the presence of mistreatment. BACP may be helpful to you.

AttilaTheMeerkat · 07/03/2014 07:13

If you were to really think about it too, I would think that your original figure of them being 99% brilliant would actually go way downwards pretty much quick as well. That figure anyway is in no way accurate from what you have written and was probably only written as well because you would like them to think that they are not really as nasty. They're your parents after all you think.

They are likely only to be properly" supportive" towards you when you do as they want you to do.

FunkyBoldRibena · 07/03/2014 07:14

Why are they excessively in your house? Get them out pronto.

NMFP · 07/03/2014 07:24

Some people (usually family members) seem to think that as soon as you accept help (or have it foisted on you) you are fair game for general and specific put downs.

I suggest next time you get criticised, relieve them of the job in hand.

'sorry, mum, my kitchen is a mess so you can't come round today'

'that's fine, dad, I'll get a plumber'

(I would be happy with a thank you for anything I have offered to do. I would be ecstatic to get chocolate as well).

Original poster
Gretagumbo · 07/03/2014 08:33

Wow thanks for the replies it has given me some food for thought. I guess I am quite low self esteem at the moment and it hurts that my family are doing this. It makes me annoyed with myself for not standing up to them.

I had recognised this need for independence and joined the gym with a crèche. It has been brilliant but picking up on what someone said, they didn't like this as putting my 2yr old son in a crèche for 3 seperate hrs a week was 'too much'. I have kept going!

Yes as much distance as I can manage seems the best way forward. Politely declining offers of help. YouTube has some excellent DIY tutorials!

I think I will investigate some counselling too, I'm pretty down on people at the moment in general, so it might be good to give it a whirl.

Thanks mumsnetters x

OP posts:
Wigsy · 07/03/2014 12:18

3 hours a week is not too much at all for a 2-year-old. He will have fun and you will get some space and a workout: it's all good. I'm glad you've kept going!

Please keep them out of your house. This is really rude behaviour. DP comes home from work sometimes and moans that it isn't as tidy or as orderly as it might be, but it's half his mess and it's his shared space and his shared frustration and we roll our sleeves up and sort it out together. Your home isn't theirs, and personal space is just that: this is disrespectful of them. You don't expect others to make their homes just right for you before you visit: you're in someone else's space.

I'm so sorry they're like this. You sound ganged up on. Awful people will continue to dish out bad behaviour for as long as it's accepted: don't accept it. See them on neutral territory. I hope things turn around for you.

Logg1e · 07/03/2014 12:42

I think these people, perhaps unknowingly, benefit from keeping you in this role of neediness, accepting their "help", "benefiting" from their advice etc.

I can't read anything in your post that is actually helpful or beneficial to you. Why on earth would you keep opening yourself up to their opinions and unkindness??

LoisPuddingLane · 07/03/2014 13:10

Positions in the family are "decided" when we are small and it's hard to get out of them. You have a right to live outside of their definition though. So you don't keep your kitchen up to your mum's standards - so what? And who the hell has a go at his daughter for "pooing excessively"? That's just humiliating.

Break free. If they have keys, either take them back or change the lock. Do not let them in if you aren't expecting them. Decide when you see them and if they insist on continuing the put downs, challenge it.

I have one brother who still tries to put me in my place - that is, the place he decided I was in nearly 50 years ago when we were little. So I stare him out now, or swear at him harshly.

FelineLou · 07/03/2014 15:01

I think you need to prepare some answers - Its my kitchen and I am happy with it like that.
The toilet is put to normal use and I would rather not discuss these rather personal details.
If Sis wants to take him out she needs to let me know in advance and he needed sleep then.
If brother did not like the chocolate he should have told me.
Learn some assertive statements and turn it around to them.
My house, my son, my rules. Recognise that.
They will continue to be unkind till you make it clear that you will not accept their carping.

CogitoErgoSometimes · 07/03/2014 15:18

Yes, this is the point where you need to have some withering put-downs ready to hand. I quite like the Mumsnet classic..... 'fuck off to the far side of fuck and then fuck off some more'. Grin

Nomama · 07/03/2014 17:16

I am writing that one on a PostIt!... Fuck off... fuck off.. fuck off some more Smile

I am my family's scapegoat, DH is his too! We must cling together, we scapegoats.

I have always been 'the one who was too independent' and so they concentrated on sis, never mind. She is growing up OK Smile

DH was always the outsider in his family and when his mum suicided and I managed to keep him strong by talking it through they started with that old chestnut, always thrown at the family member who refuses to be co-dependent - 'it is alright for you'.

Just what it is that is alright for him is something that, 14 years later, we still do not know.

All you can do is mentally rehearse what you would like to say - and then probably not bother saying at all. You can grow this really smug smile too, it can be infuriating, apparently. But most of all, grab that independent feeling and enjoy it.

Good luck.

LoisPuddingLane · 07/03/2014 18:12

And get a toilet plunger thing, then if you do crap excessively you can deal with it yourself.

AngelaDaviesHair · 07/03/2014 18:16

YANBU on anything except tampons in the loo.

gamerchick · 07/03/2014 18:19

Personally I wouldn't ask them for help.. some parents get in a rut treating you like a little kid.. time to be assertive with them.

but [/whispers] you're not supposed to put tampax down the toilet [/whispers] crap all you want though Grin

LoisPuddingLane · 07/03/2014 18:34

Who puts tampons down the loo anyway?

clam · 07/03/2014 18:52

I do! Mains sewers, why not? Have just googled this to check, and it seems responses are 50:50. The Tampax site says the actual tampon can be flushed, as can the cardboard applicators, but not the plastic ones or wrappers.
I wouldn't flush in a property with a septic tank, or up a mountain (ski resort recently! Blush ), but Home Counties in the UK? Yes.

gamerchick · 07/03/2014 18:57

the only thing you put down the toilet is shit,piss and toilet paper. You're not even supposed to put down those moists toilet wipes.

Have a chat with one of the dudes who have to work in the sewers and ask them if they mind unclogging tampax from other stuff that isn't supposed to go down the toilet.

count the swears Grin

clam · 07/03/2014 19:01

Where do you people live?

If tampons are not meant to go down a "normal" (for 'mainstream' UK) toilet, why are we told on the packet that it's OK?

LoisPuddingLane · 07/03/2014 19:03

I've binned them since I had the most horrendous back up in the sewer running through my back garden. The can't break down so they could easily cause blockage.

gamerchick · 07/03/2014 19:04

it doesn't matter what it says on the packet.. it wasn't so long ago that sanitary towels told you to rip in half and put down the toilet.

Tampax is not supposed to go down the toilet.. i've seen enough sewer related programs from the mouths of the workers to say that.

LoisPuddingLane · 07/03/2014 19:04

Oh and that was in London.