Ok, I lost it with my mother and here is as good a place to moan as any

[UnquietDad]

Mum has her own worries as my dad has been seriously ill for months (needs 24-hour nursing home care). But today on the phone I had my first real grrrrrrrrrrrrrr moment for a long time.

Like many "sandwichers" we have been putting our own problems on the back-burner and not mentioning them when we are helping her (she is 200 miles away, btw). But today I got this sighing, oh-poor-me message on the phone about the fact that I wasn't "in" (whereas I was actually spending the morning glued to the phone sorting out some bloody urgent financial affairs). I phoned mum back and explained this to her, as calmly as I could, and was told that - wait for it:

we "live expensively" - DW is "always on the phone" and we "assume" we are going to have a holiday, supposedly!! I pointed out that we are on a fixed tariff and sacrficied a holiday last summer in order to get essential repairs done in the house - but it's no good.

The problem is that her generation inevitably compares us with previous generations: they didn't have a car, they didn't have holidays, they didn't have a phone, blah blah blah... Yes, and her great-grandma didn't have flush toilets! What is the point of this kind of comparison?

So I ended up getting cross with her and tellig her she didn't know what she was talking about.

Anyway, hoping for sympathy and being made to feel like less of a shit ONLY here. Anbody who wants to take my mother's side can fuck off and so it somewhere else.

[Tortington]

"Anbody who wants to take my mother's side can fuck off and so it somewhere else."

P>>M>>S>>L

[breadgirl]

sympathy! .. some mothers!! some of my friends agree with me that mine is the worst mother they know!!
She's always doing our head in.
If she doesn't get through to one of us on our phone, she doesn't leave a message, but calls another demanding to know 'where is she? why hasn't she answered my call?'
I don't argue with her anymore as there's no point arguing with somebody who is unreasonable.
kewcumber, what you said about your grandfather i could say exactly that about my dad .. he is wonderful.

[Carmenere]

God no I won't be like that and my mum isn't either BUT she wasn't a war baby. MIL was and is very similiar to the way you describe your mum.

My mum used to spend 6 weeks in the summer in the Canary Islands with us and her mate with my dad flying down for the middle two weeks. So she is hardly in a position to criticize
She thinks that we all work too hard and is immensely proud of us whilst worrying simultaneously. She is a bit bonkers(show me the mother that isn't) but she is very tolerent and that is something I aim to be as a parent.

[Pages]

Sounds to me like her needs are always greater than yours, her life has always been harder, etc etc - with knobs on. Nothing you say will convince her that you are not living the life of Reilly while she has worked her fingers to the bone all her life, etc. so I wouldn't bother trying.

My mother's needs have been allowed to overshadow mine all my life and I have finally managed to separate from her sufficiently so that I no longer feel the old guilt pangs when she plays her victim role. It is a great feeling and I highly recommend it!!!

[WideWebWitch]

Probably. And we'll say "in MY day we only had TWO cars per family"

[UnquietDad]

But do you think we will all be like this?

Will our children see hi-res plasma screen walls and mp3 download implants and hover-cars for each of the kids as "essentials", and will we be there on the phone berating them for their profligate lifestyles?

[WideWebWitch]

Sympathy UQD. I wouldn't dream of taking your mother's side! My mum said when I recently cried on the phone at feeling a failure (didn't get a job I wanted, not a huge deal but upset me at the time) "you've got a job, what's the problem?" and she said it in HUGELY unsympathetic tone. She has never brought any money in in her life btw, whereas I support my family, grrr. Anyway, I guess I understand the expectaton gap lecture and it pisses me off too. Best of luck with the visit.

[UnquietDad]

Thanks for the sympathy and advice, everyone.

Something else we are berated for is "always jetting off" somewhere to see friends in differtent parts of the country - we see our closest friends twice a year, if that!! Of course in her day they just made friends with the opeople nearby because they "had" to. If my only friends were my neighbours and the parents from the school run I think I'd probably kill myself. Our "far-flung" friends are the only people with whom we feel we have a lot in common!

We are going to see her in half-term, so we'll see... but how extravagant of us to spend all that petrol money...

[Marina]

UnquietDad, plenty of sympathy here. We are a sandwich family too. we have two mums and a dad between us, all aged 75 or over and we both WOTH full time.
My parents are fab and supportive in terms of still doing two school pick-ups a week at 77 and 82 (their insistence) and their fierce if somewhat bonkers devotion to the dgcs.
BUT we get a lot of ear-bashing about...our wasteful lifestyle, my inability to keep the family home tidy (that would be in the 1.5 hours nightly I might manage of time post bedtime), how the children have way too much stuff, how my MIL is a poisonous old bag but it's down to me as a woman to keep the lines of communication open (but then I am told that they will not come for Christmas lunch if she is there).
And just lately with advancing years we have had one or two nasty little phone messages too, the rug pulled under me once or twice for rare social engagements I had been looking forward to for weeks.
My dad was at D-Day and do we ever forget it ? And they were young (well ancient) parents during The Great Freeze of 62/3 and had to hack icicles off the toilet cistern to boil up for soup, etc.
So boundless sympathetic acknowledgments from me. And it is so much worse when it comes from a parent you really love, isn't it. Neither of us like MIL much so we are never disappointed by her behaviour.

[RubberDuck]

Have had that lecture myself from my mother and MIL simultaneously (especially rich from my mother as she thinks nothing of going on a 3 month cruise to "get a bit of sun" in the winter, where we camp to get any sort of holiday at all).

The most recent one was "in my day I wouldn't have dreamed of buying something as frivolous as a camera just like that. (I'd bought a DSLR)

Erm, mum - I'd planned it for 18 months and saved for 12 months to buy that camera. How is that living unfrugally?!

I do like the idea of a forgettery!

[UnquietDad]

kewcumber - I often try this one - that they fought the war, and had a hard life, precisely to be able to give us choices. The fact that some of the choices will not be what they would have chosen should be neither here nor there.

[Kewcumber]

My grandfather (sadly missed) had a very hard life (physically and financially that is) and thought it was marvellous that I had an office job. wouldn;t ever dream of telling me how tough it was for him and how easy it is for me. He used to say it was why he worked so hard - to support his family and send my dad to college, so that we had a better, easier life.

[OrmIrian]

Well. Sorry but they probably are warthog! Nothing like being the target of bombers, leaving your family for strangers, potentially losing loved ones and not having enough to eat to get other things into perspective....

I personally find it horrifying what my parents went through as kids and they just accepted it as normal.

Not an excuse for bending your ear endlessly however UQD

[UnquietDad]

warthog - she was an evacuee, no less. very perceptive!

[warthog]

hmm your mum sounds like a war baby. growing up they didn't have anything to eat but lick the pavement for squashed bugs, worked 21 hours a day and had to get up before they went to bed...

she's always going to be worse off than you and her problems will always be more serious than yours.

[GooseyLoosey]

Lots of sympathy from me, I could hear my dad's voice echoing in my head as I read your OP. It is often impossible to have a relationship with my dad on normal adult terms so I have to resign myself to either accepting his lunatic/selfish comments or not having a relationship. My preference varies from week to week.

[DANCESwithHughJackman]

unquiet dad - we need a male point of view here

[Kewcumber]

I'm so lucky my mum doesn;t do this and she was genuinely poor when we were little. However it is very funny when she leaves a message on the answer phone - long discussion ensues with pauses in the appropriate places (presumably waiting for it or me to respond?).

[UnquietDad]

Thanks for the advice, folks.

I'm sure all of you say you won't be like this with your sons and daughters when they are grown up!

[doggiesayswoof]

I don't get this specific thing from my mum - because she spends money like it's going out of fashion and is much more likely to cast aspersions if she thinks we are being "tight" (which doesn't happen often, thankfully).

However, she pushes my buttons like nobody else can. I always call screen and only talk to her when I am in just the right mood...

[OrmIrian]

Have to admit that my mum is suitable in awe of my juggling abilities so rarely critisises . Though I have had been told that children are better off with a mother at home...yeah thanks mum, that makes me feel so much better But generally she's great. MIL drives me mad with some of the things she says - her favourite is 'the rot set in when building societies started taking wives salaries into account when giving mortgages"...err really? OK.

Poor you UQD. Both of you under stress Don't feel bad.

[ShinyHappyPurpleSeveredHeads]

Sympathy UQD. Mothers are impossible. Just got off the phone to mine who is talking to me in icy tones because I refused to involve myself in my (30 year old!) sister's self-made dramas that my mum gets up to her neck in with much screaming and hysteria. I just don't have the energy for it. And a counsellor told me I can choose NOT to be part of the "destructive triangle" (that is me, my mum and my sister) if I wish. So that is what I choose.

Now I am a selfish and uncaring daughter! Ah well.. c'est la vie!

Your mum was probably just sounding off to you because of her own worries and frustrations.. probably wasn't really about you "living expensively" (you don't sound as if you do) , or even you at all. But because you are her son, you are a safe place to vent.

Just breath deeply. Like I am doing now. To stop myself flinging the phone as far as I can out the back door.

[UnquietDad]

Comparatively, of course - in relation to the cost of living - a lot of us are worse off and in more debt than our parents were at the same age.

But they only see these things in absolute terms. They didn't have central heating/ car/ mobile phone/computer.

When you point out that it is fairer to compare, not with a couple who were in their 30s in 1975 but with your peers from today, you get "oh, well [patronising-scoffing voice] I wouldn't worry too much about what anybody else has got."

[PregnantGrrrl]

i never get this malarky off my family...thank god! And my parents had to live in a homeless hostel with me when i was a baby to get a council house, Dad had to beg for an apprenticeship, we lived off baked beans and fish fingers for years- they still appreciate that times have changed and our 'problems' or worries are different but valid.

You poor lot!

I suggest you buy them tangerines for Xmas and only correspond by telegram from now on.