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.

[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.

[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!

[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.

[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...

[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]

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]

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

[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!!!

[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.

[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.

[Tortington]

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

P>>M>>S>>L