Cognitive dissonance re. parents' lack of intelligence making me truly miserable

[lancia24]

My parents are in their seventies but this is not an age-related issue, they've always been the same.

I've come to realise that 24/7 my whole life I've been psychologically bending over backwards and tying myself in knots to not to acknowledge just how airheaded my parents are.

I know it sounds cruel, but the evidence is simply overwhelming, and it's caused real problems.

Examples my seem trivial but this is hour-by-hour, day-by-day, week-by-week, year by year...:

My eight year-old niece visits DM/DP & wants to go to a Disney Store. DM/her grandmother insists there's one in the nearest town. Swears blind. Literally refuses to check online and insists 'nicely' nobody else needs to. Family trip to town, no Disney store, devastated (and confused) niece, and no apology (just a lot of 'well I could have sworn' etc.).

Problem with mice. They have bird feeders too close to the front door. The birds drop food, which attracts the mice, who end up venturing into the house. Takes literally years to persuade them of this. Finally, after bird feeders have been gone for a few months, no more mice. Their response? Put the bird feeders back out, because the mice have gone.

I could go on forever. It has always revealed itself when we've watched films/TV together too - they honestly don't pick up on any subtlety whatsoever, no emotional grey areas, no piognancy etc. If it's not white hats vs. black hats and the white hats win, they don't understand.

And yet when I was a child - as I'm sure all children are - they seem to have indoctrinated me with programming that makes it impossible to see that they are stupid. I seem cursed to entangle myself with trying to figure out why they do the hundreds of things they do, as in, why non-stupid people would do the things they do...

There must be people out there experiencing something similar, surely...? How do you deal with it?

Your examples feel more like a sort of wishful thinking. Like if they just keep hoping will become true. Quite childlike - it's like I can tell DD that there is no Disney store in town, I can show her on google, and she will still beg me to just let us go and look.

Possibly that is also a sign of being a bit dim because the brain doesn't mature past a 10 year old's?

My mother had plenty of common sense but wasn't terribly bright. She didn't understand a lot of things related to current affairs for example and I suspect if she'd ever studied a subject like history or geogrpahy she'd failed miserably. that feels more like being stupid than your parents who are just sort of a bit childish and naive?

No. Read my post again. Your comprehension skills don't seem to be working today.

You do realise that some people's parents are absolutely vile?

Not saying that this is the case for OPs parents, but she has described unnecessarily disappointing an 8 year old child and willfully repeating behaviour that will encourage vermin (back) in the house.

Would you prefer that she just smiled sweetly and ignored it?

Or another example, MIL is, objectively, extremely intelligent. I have long suspected that in another time and place she would have been hugely successful - she's got a real maths brain on her, can absorb new ideas and analyse them etc.

BUT, she's absolutely useless at risk assessment. It's mindblowing to me that a woman who I KNOW is smart, can be unable to learn the basics of internet security to the point where she will not use online banking/contactless payment etc. When she travels, it doesn't matter what information is available, she will behave according to some random theory she has that hasn't been updated in 30 years, often massively over or underestimating perfectly normal risks. It's weird.

Any discussions about are SEN needs increasing its always pointed out we are just better at identifying it. So that means that there are many many people of all ages just getting through life who would now be recognised as having SEN needs and your parents could well be amongst that number.

Oh FFS, if we can have an anonymous rant on here where can we?
MN is where I say things I cant IRL

My MIL is barely literate (she can't write a birthday card for example, although she can read simple text as long as she takes her time) or numerate (not able to work out if a ten pound note is enough to pay for two items costing £3.50 each) and we're starting to worry about what happens if FIL dies first. He does everything - pays bills, makes appointments for her, reads her mail, makes phone calls to companies - and every decision that's made is his. It must be a frightening prospect for her, knowing she knows so little about how the world works and isn't able to communicate effectively if she has to.

I think your mum sounds stubborn as much as stupid. The Disney Store thing wasn't her misunderstanding, she just didn't want to back down.

I sympathise.

I have a close relative like this. Won't participate in family WhatsApp groups as "facebook will steal my data" but has had to be saved twice in recent months from financial scams that have come in via email.

Has spent all her own savings on partner's nursing home fees while preserving his with no paper trail so it isn't easy to repay her without looking like we are depriving him of capital assets. She had financial power of attorney for his affairs and let us all think she was using his money. We had asked directly and offered help.

Quite honestly I'm fed up with it. I don't want to do her adulting for her.

PS: university graduate, worked in professional job for years so no SEN.

No, she wasn't saying anything about her children.

She was slapping herself in the face for not seeing how stupid and presumably devoid of common sense her husband is until she was well and truly stuck, or at least until the point where leaving him was more difficult than it would have been if she had seen the light earlier.

Amd fwiw, it's very hard to co-parent with a spouse who is truly stupid. Maybe there have been completely avoidable near misses when he was in charge of the children?

@PhilosophicalCheeseSandwich

Talk to your dad about you getting POA for them both. If your mum can't understand what it's all about or is stubborn about it, he might be able to talk her into it if he were included in it with her.

If he predeceases her, you'll have a massive mess on your hands if the POA isn't in place.

PS: university graduate, worked in professional job for years so no SEN.

It doesn't necessarily follow. Especially for people educated decades ago.

I'm reading this thread with a relative in mind and they were also a "professional" in what was then a non-graduate profession. Very limited ability to understand various things. They scraped in despite missing their grades in the midst of an early "widening participation" push in the seventies.

Other people might find their general cognition undermined by something like a spld.

I sometimes internally roll my eyes but I was blessed by a much better quality and quantity of education than my parents, who both left school at 14. And that education was mostly down to their encouragement and support.

I've spoken to my husband and SIL about this, but they're very much burying their heads in the sand. SIL says she'll help MIL when the time comes, but I don't think she understands how difficult that can be with no POA in place.

It took me a long time to see it, but my parents have always been incredibly naive. My mum would fall for scams like miracle diet pills, and once got very excited over a new working from home venture that would make her money… after she had sent £20 off to a random address and never made a penny back. My father would become super absorbed in doom-mongering issues. He genuinely thought there would be some apocalypse due to the Millennium Bug, and refused to let us eat beef for years when there was a scare about BSE in the 90s. He strikes up friendships with scammers seeking expensive supplements and tries to send them money. You can explain until you are blue in the face that these guys are opportunists and telling him what he wants to hear. He refuses to believe that their sob stories about needing to pay hospital bills are fake, and if he doesn’t hear from them in a while he will email and call to see how they are doing. Both parents also became completely anti-vax and were pretty disappointed that I chose to enter the medical profession instead of becoming an alternative practitioner.

They also show an inability to weigh up pros and cons: for example my father has refused medical treatments that could have transformed his quality of life because he is hyper focused on the small possibility of side effects. As a result his medical issues have become significantly worse and he has had to undergo multiple procedures and end up on a long waiting list to have the original problem dealt with which literally could have been done around 15 years ago, preventing so much suffering. Instead he has spent a fortune on useless alternative remedies and ended up in a much worse situation.

The problem often ends up being dumped in my lap and I have to bail them out and rush around fixing the inevitable crises when they occur. It has been a very long time since I have felt like I could rely on them for anything. If anything, I feel like they have put me in a parental role and it sucks.

Sounds like my MIL she told me to move from door between too rooms once because I was blocking the WiFi!
She used to complain about the cats meowing to come in or out. So we bought her a cat flap. Which she would also have on lock closed ! So she could moan about the cats.

Mother in law also gained weight on weight watchers diet cause she didn't realise that the milkshakes were meal replacement drinks. She would drink them as well as her 3 meals and snacks a day

With a sigh, an eye roll and count to ten.

My mother is like this. Does the weirdest things and can’t be told. Gets obsessions, has to be right, will not swerve from her way, gets angry if contradicted. Has always been that way. Getting worse now she’s older. I have wondered if she’s been lifelong undiagnosed ND (ADHD - can’t concentrate, can’t take in instructions, gets distracted, constantly leaving one task for another and leaving them undone, emotionally disregilated, always late… 🤔).

She’s not stupid. But she does stupid things.

I feel your pain, OP.

It took me many years to work out that actually my mum was really unintelligent.

I agree that it's harder to realise this with your parents - they are naturally in a position of authority over you at a time when you're an impressionable child. You tend to take them at their own valuation. Plus my dad was very bright and this covered up for her decisions while he was alive (they knew each other much less well when they married than is normal now - I sometimes wonder how he felt when he realised...)

In my mum's case, she is also full of self-confidence (went to a posh school) and adept at passing off anything she can't do as a charming eccentricity rather than a genuine inability. This helps cover it up. So when I had to (for example) do even simple sums for her as an 8 year old, that was just one of Mummy's little blind spots.

Once I realised that she was actually very hard of thinking, a whole lot of things fell into place. For example, her obstinacy about things which are obviously and demonstrably wrong (I think she lacks the ability to take in and process a lot of new information, so she just holds to "her view"), her complete refusal to deal with certain things, and her utterly vicious rages when she feels threatened by situations that might expose her.

Totally agree!

My mother killed at least 15 of my childhood pets by just being careless from leaving cages or doors or windows open ... there was no learning curve and no apology because nothing was ever her fault. I'm not quite sure how we children survived, but I saw with my children how she'd just leave them in a cafe to go to the toilet, or expect a 2 year old to walk across a car park by themselves. She had a PhD as well.

Oh my goodness. I completely recognise this situation.

She can speak about her parents any way she wishes. They are not sacred.

Not sure what the point of the post is.
Your parents are what they are. They are not claiming Mensa prizes, or are they?

To me a sign of intelligence is not about recognising/judging others that are less so.
It is in being able to live along and navigate the world where people are of different intelligence - and different from you.

If you KNOW your Mom is flaky about recollections - say about a nearby Disney store - check yourself???!!! Quick quiet Google is an easy thing, no?

Not sure what it is you do 24/7 re your parents and your upbringing/present. Don’t you have a life???

Yeah, but how lucky it is that such apparently thick parents managed to rear such intelligent, critical thinking children…😷

I sympathise, but I think having stupid parents must be easier than having stupid children, which is statistically just as likely.