Does anyone's mum do this?

[oneungratefuldaughter]

I ought to be grateful but my mum in her 80s and still very with it, just doesn't seem to 'get ' me. Today she's posted a clipping from their local rag about someone I went to primary school with 50 years ago, who has had recently an old pic ( as a child) in the local rag. I have no interest at all in this girl, who wan't even a friend at school except I think we played recorder in a group at the time. I know this is so trivial but on a more serious note I don't think my mum realises how this is so meaningless to me now. I've not lived in the area for 40 years anyway, since I moved after uni.
This isn't a one-off. She often posts stuff like this, which I could access online anyway, if she told me she'd read it in their local rag, but the point is it's meaningless to me, and she can't seem to understand that my life has in 40 years moved on. Grrrrrrrrrrr! My mum seems to think I am sentimental about that time in my life but I really am not.

DS is only 6, but I can imagine in years to come that I'll be interested to hear news of the friends he goes to school with. It might be that the only person I know who will remember who I'm talking about is DS, so I'd probably mention the news to him. He might not be interested, but I hope I'll bring him up with enough manners to humour me in my ramblings.

I agree with everyone else.
It's a way of 'keeping in touch'.
She's taking the time to do this for you and it's not really any skin off your nose.
It's a bit like the "I saw this, and thought of you" advert a few years back. It doesn't matter that you don't remember 'Mary' or whoever, or if you do that you aren't interested, surely it's just nice to get a letter through your postbox that's not type written, has no window and has an actual stamp rather than franking? It shows someone has though of you.
If they really offend you that much, she can send them to me - I love getting things like that through the post, but sadly don't have anyone who sends me stuff like that.

I don't know how you can judge Humble how much I am in touch with my mum
dead easy. you clearly demonstrate your lack of concern for her and you complain she doesn't know how little certain things matter to you. its not 'judge', its 'assess'. but in your case, I feel like judging because you're so horrible about your mum.

I think people do spend more time in the past as they get older. And for some people, they probably remember very fondly the years when they had young children to look after. For those of us who are still in that stage of life, we might tend to think the older generation are wearing their rose-tinted spectacles when they reminisce about their time as parents to young children!

When your mum contacts you, try to appreciate it, or at least tolerate it. I would give absolutely anything to hear just a few seconds of my mum's inane ramblings again.

a friend said outright to his mum that he wasn't really interested in news of his classmates at age 5. She said "but you went to school with them!" and he answered "Mum, that was 25 years ago". She was brought up sharp and realised and stopped doing it. Might that work? If not or if it would hurt her, just grin and bear it and humour her.

You sound really awful bitching about her. Poor thing, just want to share something and it angers you. The problem is you not your mother, because what she's doing is very normal. Take a good look at yourself because you don't seem to be very nice.

It makes me sad that she thinks something like this matters to me. It makes you sad? Really? Maybe you're just not coming across as you mean to in your posts, but you sound a bit mean really. Maybe your mum feels out of touch with you and she is trying to use the past as a way of connecting with you. She's not doing any harm, surely?

At primary school age you really are in touch with your children's lives and friends, as you run their lives and organise every playdate. From secondary school on, you gradually drift out of touch. My children are still just teenagers, but I don't see their friends unless they visit, and even then they just scurry off to their rooms and giggle! To keep up with their lives I have to rely on them letting me in on what is going on. I could also imagine turning into an old mother trying to remind my children of those first years when I knew every little detail. It was such a meaningful, important time to me.

My own mother is a bit younger than yours, but we've also just met up once a year or so over the past 20+ years, so if I didn't tell her stuff she'd have no clue what was up in my life. We still have little to talk about even so; she usually tells me stuff about her hobby meetings, not absolutely the most fascinating subject but you have to talk about something!

Crikey, I do stuff like that already. Of course she's out of touch with your life. I'm out of touch with my dcs life. Different world. Still love them. Still remember the past.

My Mum passed the phone to someone I knew at primary school(I'm 53!), saying heres DW he wants to speak to you, the last time I saw him (in 1974) I bopped him on the nose for beating up my little brother, errr I don't think so.

She also shows all male visitors my photo, and passes on the phone numbers of any that she thinks are interested!!! Ive been married 25 years and no longer live in the same country thank god

So all mothers do it, its more embarrassing sometimes than others

.....and actually, although I've obviously not kept in touch with everybody I've ever known, I do like to hear news of people I knew 45 35 25 years ago, in a 'wondering what they are doing now' sort of a way. I think that's a fairly normal topic of conversation between a parent and a grown child who has perhaps moved away from the area.

Good grief, I pop into my elderly neighbours when I can to give them a bit of company - she spends an hour telling me about all sorts of people who live within a 2mile radius of us, with no concept that I don't usually know who they are, but it's conversation for her, so I nod, smile and comment occasionally on how much better her memory is than mine! I'm sure you could feign a bit of interest when your Mum is trying to connect with you.

Not everyone understands whats important to people and what isn't. My mum threw away all my precious stuff (that I'd asked her to store whilst I was in Australia - but she forgot and binned it - just a month before I returned - arrgh). It was things like drawings I'd done at school, important projects from uni, a doll that I'd had since I was a baby. And all the furniture my grandad had made by hand.
Yet she kept some crappy table I'd decorated as a teenager because she thought it was important. To be fair she also kept my diaries.

Nothing was done maliciously or even thoughtlessly. She just didn't realise the significance of things because we are very different. Also their memories of our childhood are very different from hours.

I agree she's trying to engage you and keep in touch. Mine sends me handwritten letters now and again which I love - full of waffle about people I don't know. She texts me too, but the letters are much better. Just accept the gulf and at the same time accept that she loves you, even if you don't think she 'knows' you.

I would love to have news of ould acquaintances. Unfortunately my Mum has been dead for 20 years but there you go...

Yes my mum does this she keeps telling me how an old friend of hers is dying of cancer now whilst this is very sad for this lady and her family neither me or my mum have seen her in about 35 years she will also start random coversations about people I have never met and talk about them is if I know them and her tell me about old school friends whom I haven't seen since I left school twenty five years sgo!

My mum just phoned up to let me know a tv program was showing a local village. She thought I would find it interesting. If I watch it we will have something new in common to talk about later...

One day your mum will no longer be here to share her snippets. I hope you have nothing to reproach yourself with when that time comes. Worth bearing in mind.

My mum does this too. It really doesn't matter in the scheme of things, does it? I have learnt to agree when she says "Do you remember..?" It saves long winded recitals of who is related to who in the local community.

Do you have trouble accepting that you are now the "adult" in your relationship with your mother now, OP? The whole thing about her not trying to understand you makes me thing you may still see yourself in the child role. Roles change later in life and it is now up to you to understand and adapt to your mum, not her to you. This often happens when parents become elderly.

Perhaps your mum is also aware that she doesn't know exactly what interests you now, that there is a bit of a gulf. Sending something like this may be an attempt to share something you both know, something from the time when she did know what you were into, to show she would like to able to share things that interest you. I think it is a very nice gesture and shows she wants to share things with you.

How would you like your relationship with her to be, OP? You want her to get you - does she ever show any interest in what you're up to now? Because if not I can partly understand your frustration (though there may not be much you can do about it without hurting an old lady's feelings).

But mostly I think you need to chill out and accept this for what it is - a way to keep in touch and a bit of reminiscence about the time when she played a much bigger role in your life than she does now. With luck, one day we'll all be looking back over 80+ years of life. When most of a person's life lies in the past, maybe the past is where their thoughts tend to go, however compos mentis they are. Your childhood was also an enormous event for her. Let it continue to be important, eh?

Was there a time in your adult life when you felt she was more aware of the present you? Are you missing a sense of someone knowing what was going on with you, someone who'd notice and care if you were having a rough time? Or is it just the frustration of having no common ground?

My MIL does this, usually about distant relatives who my husband doesn't know. She volunteers and we also hear about who she works with in depth. We just go along with it as it does no harm.

my mum because she doesn't seem to understand me or how I tick - well, clearly you don't understand your mum or how she ticks do you?

Surely any relationship is 'give and take' - I am bored stiff when my DH talks about his football team, or DS talks about Fifa - and they are probably bored stiff when I talk about the interesting debates on Mumsnet - but that's life isn't it ....... you share each other's interests and listen to them (and learn to smile and nod when necessary ).

My parents are in their 80s and a lot of their conversation is tedious and boring but I try and show an interest, and they show an interest in what I do and talk about.

I doubt the op will be back

I get you OP. It isn't what she has done that hurts you, it's what she doesn't do.

I used to feel the same about my mum too. She would send me letters and clippings about people who lived in the village I grew up in, whom I had never met, insisting passionately "you remember mrs x, with the bunions . . ." I could have ignored that if she had had any real conversation based around what we do these days, rather than always harking back to the past. So if I was moving house or my best friend, whom mum had met many times, was getting married, there would be lots of excitement, planning, discussions - with everyone else but mum. She would smile politely and nod when I talked about it, but they eyes would indicate that she really didn't care, cause mum was only interested in mrs x and her bunions.

However, she is now in her early 80s and it has become clear that she has a form of dementia and probably has had early symptoms for decades. I can see that what seemed like lack of interest in me was probably a psychological inability to take on board new information. She is still animated about things that happened in the past, and clearly remembers them in technicolour detail. But anything new (ie in the last 40 years!) is filed in her brain with limited information. (I met my husband when I was nearly 40. She really struggles to remember anything about him!)

So lots of sympathy. I used to cry about endless one sided conversations. We too would talk on the phone three or four times a week, discussing the weather (which always had to be her weather - she wasn't interested in what it was doing 3 hours south of her, where I am!!) - or discussing her neighbours, her friends etc. It is much easier now that I understand what was going on. I do remember the huge sense of relief when we realised that her memory was seriously affected, and I realised that it wasn't that she didn't listen to me over the years, it was that she couldn't. She was already living in a "different country"

HTH

That was good to read, longtallsally. I have had frustration with my mother not being able to take on board new information and I have recently been thinking that maybe it isn't that she isn't listening, but that she can't actually do it.

Thanks longtallsally2 for saying you understand and I'm sure you do. I could have written your post.

I must admit that I stopped reading the posts after the first few because on the whole they were too nasty- and sometimes missed the point. I posted this on the spur of the moment and without going into masses of history, it was the straw yesterday that broke the camel's back.

I love my mum to bits but like most mum and daughter relationships, it's complicated. I felt a mixture of anger and sadness. Yes, I fully understand that my mum was reaching out to me, and had made the effort to find an envelope and post a letter, and I am grateful. I know she won't be around much longer. But at the same time it just made me aware of the gulf- geographical and emotional- between us. Like LTS2's mum, mine will spend hours on the phone giving me a weather forecast and discussing friends of neighbours who I've never met and have no interest in. But she won't ask me about my work- which is creative and bloody hard most of the time as I am self employed. The best she can offer is 'Oh I bet you are busy' then she moves on to another topic without any real interest in what I am doing. She doesn't listen well and never has- she finishes sentences for me ( often incorrectly by assuming) then moves on to another topic without allowing me time to speak. I think my first post was too simplistic. It's not about anger, it's about my mum and I not connecting, not having the closeness I'd like ( due in part to her criticism of me and sharp tongue when I was a teen) and the cutting was a sign of that. I was shocked to think she thought that a photo of Jean Spratt ( not real name) from 1965 would be of any interest to me especially as Jean was never a friend just someone in my class of 40 at primary school. But , there you go,that's mums and daughters. I do love her but it makes me sad that we don't have the relationship I'd like.