My mum is jealous of me being a grandmother ???

[Armychefbethebest]

Hi I'm not sure what is going on and why I will try and be thorough but to the point . My eldest dd gave birth to my beautiful granddaughter a year ago, It was a shock at first but I absolutely dote on my granddaughter. I try and have her overnight when I'm on annual leave as I enjoy having her and I work in education so I get my fair share of holidays. I have 4 children and my mum saw them but never really went out of her way to have them over night take them for the day ect not that I expected her too I add .
So in this year theres been a few occasions where my mum has acted well a bit strange , as soon as someone mentions nana meaning me she jumps straight in with 'well I'm a great grandma and I dont look it ' a single throwaway comment wouldnt bother me but its everytime. She bought a travel cot and said she planned on having little one over night , at this point she hasn't asked my daughter or really made any effort to see dgc. My daughter asked me to have dgc over night and there was an uproar , crying down the phone , shes going to focus on herself from now on shes moving away , I can have the cot she wont ever get to use it . It was really intense and my daughter was a bit weirded out by her nana behaviour and tried to arrange times where my mum could spend time with dgc but each time she cancelled or was poorly.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago my mum calls and asks if she has done something to my daughter as she hasn't rang or text. I said no shes just likely busy as well as my dgc she has 3 step kids 50 /50 and runs a little business baking at home so it's not unusual to not hear from her any more than once a week maybe once a fortnight . Today my daughter popped round with my granddaughter she had just taken her to look at a nursery and she wanted to bring her round to tell us about it , whilst she was here I took a few pics as dgc looked really cute in her outfit and I put a pic on fb saying look who I got a surprise visit from.
Within 5 minutes a message from my mum ' while she is there find out what i have done ' then she just went nuclear at me rant after rant which I didnt rise to she concluded with messaging my daughter with ' I'm going to delete your number whatever I have done so you wont ring or text me so you dont have to bother I wont be in yours or dgc name life and I wont send her anything time to focus on me' to me it seems absolutely batshit my daughter is confused , my partner is going 80 miles away for a big operation monday so I'm stressed as it is , what are your thoughts on my mums behaviour she does have form for this but it's usually me if I've not picked up the phone in a week but it's because I've been busy . Any advice what i really want to do is call and tell her I'm not happy with her taking her mood out on my daughter and my dgc shes a baby fgs x

I would just ignore her and let her have the tantrum. It sounds like she wants you to all jump and reassure her, and do whatever she wants. She is clearly quite jealous that the attention is not on her.

How old is your mum?

Adjustable it is very much like that when I was younger say 20s I would dance a little better to the tune but I'm 41 now and wont do it , I just dont like that the pattern shown to me in the past is now being used on my daughter shes just busy and done nothing wrong , and she is 61 Toilenstripes

I'd tell your daughter to block her tbh... she (your mother) sounds like a lot of work. I have no patience for this kind of stuff.

Yes, she is probably jealous, but she doesn't get to be jealous when she makes zero actual effort to be a part of your lives.

Is she normally like this OP? This doesn’t seem like normal behaviour at all, it sounds completely paranoid. Has her behaviour in general changed recently?

Your Mom sounds toxic. Leave her to it. Presumably she has a history of trying to manipulate situations for her own gain.

It sounds as if your mum wants to be adulated and for no apparent reason. Good on you for not dancing to her tune anymore. Grey rock is a good technique.

Hi yes I have a long painful history of this behavior from her it's been like this since I can remember I joined the army at 16 to distance myself really , in general shes not too bad but has these outbursts when people haven't contacted her for say a week, as I have got older I have had less tolerance for the tantrums the last time she directed it at me was during my youngest daughters 11 hour surgery on her back and I wasnt updating enough , I was preoccupied. She has now deactivated her facebook and sent me a message to say she has done is because all people post is shit. I am actually disgusted that she has turned on my little 1 year old granddaughter now and referred to her picture as shit as that's obviously the issue. About 10 years ago I realised there had to be more to her behaviour I'm pretty sure theres personality disorder or narcissism at play x

She probably has a Cluster B personality disorder and needs everything to revolve around her. I agree with grey rock technique, you can't be her narcissistic supply if you just give her the bare minimum.

This is my mum to a T.
We haven't spoken now for more than 3 years and it's actually fine.
I'm sure I'll be getting called out to all and sundry as a terrible person but as I've got older I dgaf.
Lots of your post really hit the spot for me and one of the main reasons we stopped contact was that I didn't want my children to be around that sort of behaviour.

Sadly your Mom's behaviour is pretty textbook for people that act like her. No doubt she's never wrong and can always justify her actions / has an excuse.
The difficulty is this group are very good at being manipulative and as you mention it can take people years to realise what's really going on, I only realised as I had a chat with someone that had a similar experience they had researched the area in detail.
Grey rock is a good technique although its bloody hard with your own family.

She is self obsessed and childish. She needs a dressing down and/or blocking.

She is jealous because she sounds like a shit mother and gm and you are the opposite of her. She can't bear to see you function normally with a loving family because she didn't do that with her own kids. Stop texting and encouraging her. Ignore her. She sounds very toxic.

Is your mum lonely? Does she have solid relationships or friendships with other people? She seems very intense and I wonder if she latches on a bit too much and expects constant contact because she has noone else in her life? Total shot in the dark with this comment as on the face of it, she seems incredibly difficult to manage.

That sounds really hard OP, leave her to it and don’t respond to her bullshit. Honestly, if she never contacts you again, what have you actually even lost? None of this is even a problem, let alone your problem. She’s orchestrated an issue in order to take attention away from a baby.

" daughter asked me to have dgc over night and there was an uproar"

How did your mum find this out?

Ignore your mum.

She's a narcissist. She doesn't actually care about anyone, least of all the baby, she just wants people to think she does.

My mother is very much like this, and if she was still in my life, she would probably say the same things about my family when my dc have children someday! Like you, i felt her behaviour was tolerable until she started doing the same thing to my own dc. Then I started limiting my time with her, and stopped sharing so much information about my life.

A few years ago, she went absolutely nuclear, started stalking me across every social media platform I was on to swear at me and hurl accusations (she got banned from one platform for targeted abuse). She messaged my boss and tried to get me fired. My crime? Not centering her in my life and taking time out from our relationship after an argument.

In her fantasies, I have ripped her away from a loving family life, and stopped her from being a doting grandmother. In reality, she played favourites, acted like they were a nuisance, and lied to them/gave empty promises. She used Facebook to play out these grandiose fantasies, talking about how sad she was that she couldn't bake cookies and have sleepovers with her grandchildren. We moved closer to her, to facilitate a better relationship with the family, and we saw her even less compared to when we lived further away.

It's all so much calmer and easier now that she doesn't have access to my life.

Sounds exactly like my Nan. I went on holiday with her and my Mum for a week a couple of years ago and it really opened my eyes to how she treats my Mum.

Classic narcissistic mother. I could see it all playing out in front of my eyes like a role play!

So I called her out on it.

She removed me (her own grandchild!) from FB and at Christmas I sent a card and gift as usual and she sent nothing...not even a card.

So I thought...fuck it. No way am I being sucked into this. We haven't spoken now for 2 years and honestly I don't miss her a bit.

I bought DM a book about narcissistic mothers which she read and agreed that it is her DM to a tee. She still sees her DM but understanding more about her behaviours has helped her to emotionally distance herself. She's stopped trying to please her as she's realised that whatever she does won't be good enough and that isn't anything to do with her.

Wow so many replies when I woke up thank you so much for your advice and own experiences,wine academy I could have wrote your pp word for word she has been like this all my life , my father left age 5 and I never saw him again she has had 4 marriages from one of these came my brother who is in his 20s he still lives at home he suffers from depression and we dont have a relationship really , to the poster who asked how did she find out my dgc was sleeping over , I mentioned it on the phone this is all new territory and I didnt realise that having her overnight would be something i had to hide . Unfortunately my children are all growing up the youngest being 11 they all have the capacity to form their own opinions of her have they have all seen her being verbally aggressive at some point , babies are impressionable so maybe that's the fascination, I'd love to be able to share the experience of my dgc with my mum but sadly I dont think its possible x

She sounds like she is acting out because she is depressed and lonely. It’s still acting like a toddler and very rude but I would meet it with kindness and things might improve

If they don’t then I would move to distance a bit

God she sounds very childish. What a carry on for perfectly normal behaviour. I guess this is who she is though as you say this sort of thing has been going on a long time. That must be really painful for you to realise she’s willing to take out how she feels on your daughter and granddaughter.

She won’t change now so i would try and minimise contact and can you and your family decide you won’t tolerate her rants? - every time you all listen to them and respond it feeds into it.

You're doing the right thing. Your mum is weird (though in a fairly common way). Don't let your narcissistic mother disrupt your relationship with your daughter and granddaughter.

With my Nan - I think me standing up to her and calling out her behaviour for what it is was a real shock to her.

She's effectively groomed her own children into feeling the whole fear / obligation / guilt thing if they don't cater to her selfish manipulative ways.

She'd been a nightmare for the whole holiday (which my DM paid for) and on the last day I caught her mid-conversation telling my DM that 'she is who she is' and that 'yes, she's selfish' but that DM has to accept that and that it's not acceptable for DM to talk about it and make her feel bad about being selfish because that's just who she is as a person

She didn't take into account that I haven't been raised by a narcissistic mother so I don't have the fear / obligation / guilt. To say it somewhat took her by surprise that someone would say "Sorry, no, you can't act like that. This isn't how normal relationships work."

I also called her out on faking tears. I've never seen her cry in my life, not at my Grandad's funeral or any other time. That morning she pretended to cry because my DM was getting attention from me (because she'd been up ill all night with a dodgy stomach) so I was getting up to get her breakfast from the buffet and checking she was okay. Nan could not handle not being the centre of attention at all!

Immediately started to pretend to cry so that my DM (who is ill!) starts running around after her - is she okay? Does she want anything from the buffet?

I was like

Armychefbethebest,

Indeed it is not possible to have a relationship with a narcissist and that is why you do not have that with your mother. Narcissistic women cannot do relationships at all. Its not your fault she is like this and you did not make her that way.

You absolutely need to keep both mental and physical distance from her.