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?

Mine never needed a smoke alarm in her house as she doesn’t smoke (I fitted them for her in the end).

Critical thinking is probably the problem, OP. I learned it at school and uni but my own parents left school relatively early to start working and just...didn't learn how to think critically. It shows in their choices and opinions. For example, they have repeatedly lost large sums of money in several get-rich quick schemes. They have not quite realised that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is a scam.

Why is it seen as ok to have a hidden disability like dyslexia , dyspraxia or mild autism and not a low iq?
Both are presumably what you are born with and unable to do very much about.

She’s just stating things they’ve literally done, on an anonymous support group. It can be exhausting when their stupid actions cause harm and distress for other people. And all you can think sometimes is ‘what the actual fuck is going through your heads’. I had to return a farm dog mine stole once. They were driving through the local countryside and saw a border collie chilling out in the entryway to a farmhouse. They decided it must be a stray so took it from the farm. I walked in on them feeding it an entire chocolate birthday cake 🤦🏼‍♀️ my dad was very reluctant to give it up even when I explained that was sheepdog Jazz from Dave’s farm and he needed to give him back. ‘But he’s called Ben now and we’ve bonded, he’ll be sad’. He’d only had him about 4 hours. They’re complete fucking morons

My sister is like this. Lives like a Luddite and expects everyone to bail her out . So anything like emails, websites are beyond her . Never very good in school didn't pass any exams . However a hard worker , very likable and social. She is only in her 50s . Got really badly into debt with credit cards , I tried to help her sort it out and realised that she had no concept of compound interest. Nor insurance, thought it was some fund held by some bank to help people out . It is only a problem when she disbelieves me when I try to explain something to her. However if she needs to can tell you all about Love Islanders histories.

Well said.

I found OP’s post very thought provoking, actually. What do you do with parents who do really stupid things?

Both of my maternal grandparents left school at 14. Grandma went into the mill, did manual work until she had her first child at 20, returned at 24 when her second child (my mum) was 2 then continued to work until she was 60. She received very little schooling - her mum died when she was 10 and she ended up doing all the household chores whilst her father, my great grandfather, drunk himself to death.
She definitely had some learning difficulties, and I’d say now that she was likely dyslexic. But she was determined her children had a better life and knew the key to that was education.

Oh the irony. Nope that's not what op is saying.

@Rocknrolla21 😂😂😂 FFS.

I don't think it's vile to speak about them like this.

It can be EXHAUSTING.

And one day all of your children will be saying the same thing about you!

Absolute agree
As if they are sub human.

I have a much loved relative like this, it's bloody hard work

I 100% identify with this, particularly my mother and her husband. I was a "gifted" kid in school (late diagnosed autism with a special interest in school). Talking to her about anything important was like banging my head against a wall. I rember this feeling starting in my preteen years. She was dependent on me for even very simple things. She would call me while I was in class begging me to order something from a shopping channel for her before it sold out. She is/was utterly helpless. Now she is an utterly helpless homophobic evangelical conspiracy theorist so .. that checks out.

I won't elaborate on her husband because I've met toddlers smarter than that man.

It's frustrating. My husband is clever and witty. He can understand logic and think critically. I thought I must be an alien before I met him.

OP is entitled to raise this subject - clearly a very stressful one. If I was the parent/aunt of a child who was taken to town by a grandparent insisting there was a Disney store without ever actually checking there was one, I’d be wondering how to deal with it.

Of course you are allowed to say it here. I understand. It’s hard.
All you can do is not let her in charge of your children and nod along, smiling.

We are all born knowing nothing, there is nothing wrong with being a bit stupid, everyone is sometimes, but it’s the repeating of the stupid things that’s frustrating I’d imagine.

I disagree - I’d tell my DC that they were being stupid, if necessary. It’s far more tricky taking your parents to task.

That's also a dearth of common sense and a surfeit of naivete. Maybe these things go together? The inability to consider pertinent questions before plonking down money in particular is incredibly annoying if you're the one left to sort out the mess or bail them out financially.

My own grandparents left school early and were sharp as tacks. They were farmers during the great depression and the War and survived (and thrived) by their wits and brutal hard work, which was also the case for the families they were born into.

You don't need formal education to be able to understand there's no such thing as a free lunch. Just a strong aversion to making a fool of yourself and also the knowledge that you and your children will end up taking the boat to the slums of Boston or New York if you roll the dice unwisely.

I had to look up cognitive dissonance also, as I didn’t know what it was, so I shouldn’t really be commenting here 😁

My dad couldn't understand why I 'thought so much'. Still can't. I was gifted in English and Humanities (though post kids you'd never know it!) and he got the massive hump one day when I owned him in a discussion about his homophobia (which back then would have been considered mild/casual but now would be completely and rightly unacceptable).

Both of my parents left school with no qualifications and were generally encouraging of effort in school work, but didn't really have any depth of knowledge about any of the things I was learning, so I leaned on the library a lot, as this was pre internet. Tutoring was a thing rich people's kids did.

My dad couldn't stand that by age 15 I had a strong growing knowledge of Shakespeare and the classics (thanks again, library). If he saw me reading or talking to my mum about a book he would do this stupid voice and twiddle his fingers and say 'forsooth, forsooth' to mock me.

I distinctly remember a Sunday lunch one day in my mid teens when I was explaining an essay I was writing about Romeo and Juliet (my least favourite of Shakespeare's works) to my mum (who was well read and self taught) and he started doing his whole 'Forsooth...' bullshit and I asked him if he even knew what it stood for, in modern colloquial English. Of course he didn't. He did rip it out of me for saying 'colloquial' though.

After that he just got sort of sullen and bullish whenever my school work/exams/uni applications came around. He didn't understand me. He didn't understand why I wanted to live two hours away from our absolutely horrible dying market town. And when I married my husband, who is not just bright but incredibly bright, he decided we were in a tier of weird that he'd never understand and he's never really bothered.

Which is all a shame because I do understand him, and would like to understand him more.

Some parents say or do stupid things but are generally not stupid. I think everyone has some gaps in their knowledge. I know my children will say I said some dumb stuff and it will go down in legend, further embellished.

I have some more examples but it did not make my mother stupid, she was capable of many things and passed her exams at school.

My dm insisted Cary Grant was Gary Grant. She was convinced our local catholic priest was Jewish with no evidence other than his surname sounded a bit like a common Jewish name but actually it wasn’t it was just a biblical name.
Oh and she mocked me when I told her that stars in the sky were suns, and many had planets around them.

My grandmother was illiterate (no schooling) yet very clever, I’m not convinced it’s education. Can’t help how you are born, some people just really struggle to learn new things or think critically regardless of level of education. It’s frustrating to deal with but they probably genuinely can’t help it.

Yes my DHs parents seem to have no general knowledge or common sense what so ever, they just live in a little world of their small village and if something happens outside of that they’re oblivious. I feel sorry for him because I can imagine when he was growing up if he asked a question the answer would’ve always been ‘I don’t know’

Some people are simply not very bright. It's not their fault. I can understand that the actual things they do must be very annoying though!

Just do it yourself. Let them all think what they want to about you.

The others will leave it all to you to sort out if there's no POA in place, I guarantee it. I wouldn't believe a word of SIL's. Talk is cheap, and also easy.

Contact a solicitor and get the ball rolling. Speak to your dad if he still has all his marbles, and get him on board.

I feel you, it’s utterly infuriating @lancia24.

Neither of my parents have much education but are good with money and budgeting but after that, all bets are off.

My mum has the common sense of a cabbage and retains not one single thing when it comes to learning from her mistakes.

I find myself going into another room after yet another pikachu face and ‘how did that happen’ at the very things she’s told will go wrong, go wrong.

Who knew if you insist on having a net curtain directly over a gas flame, it will catch fire. Twice.

Or if you leave a door open mice, birds or insects will come inside. Every day.

It’s not even a lack of critical thinking, just a lack of any kind of thinking outside of ‘this is what I want, it must happen’ every time.