Er, make that pee-soaked* nursing home.
And of course, I was just joking and would never subject my mother to substandard care if it came down to it because of her bitchiness.
She loves my kids and my brothers kids sooo much that there is no risk of this happening until they are adults, if ever. She never cut me down verbally until I was a teenager. (Which is not okay I know.)
I have to say that I have some of the same personality traits, though not the damage that exxagerates them, and I have found myself saying not-so-nice things to my kids, which having apologised for, and upon reflection, I realised that my parents had never ever said to me. As a child I was never ever put down or made to feel stupid by either of my parents, and I wish I was able to say that I had never made either of my childtren squirm, but I’m afraid I have.
I think I’ll be a better mother to teenagers though - but who knows??
But yes, she would do ONE mean thing to my children, no more. (In that area, we have my MIL, who is obsessive crazy about the older son and could not give a toss about the second one… sigh.)
I just wanted to chime in with the others and say - call her on it. Not that it’s going to change her, because it might not; you still need to accept that she is who she is. But you don’t have to let yourself be hurt. It may take some practice for you to learn to speak up (or perhaps let your real reaction show) but her reality needs to be challenged, don’t let it override yours.
And how do you deal with that? The second one knows Grandma doesn’t care for him. Has your husband spoken to his mother about this favoritism?
It is a very hard situation - his mother is an uneducated Japanese woman who is obsessed with the idea of family line - my oldest is the inheritor and thus worthy of attention. It’s the “heir and the spare” syndrome, Japanese style. It’s also made worse by the fact that she spent four very unhappy months living with us while I had him (I was in hospital from 29 weeks with Placenta Previa) to look after the older son. I think she looks at the younger one and remembers that stressful time.
My husband doesn’t see the interactions, and it is very hard to tell him about them as each incident is tiny and it comes across as nitpicky. He knows she favours the older one but she is not stupid enough to do really overt stuff in front of him.
Some of the stuff is minor but for example giving the older one a bit of money when she sees them but not the younger one, giving the older one presents on the younger one’s birthday as well as the younger one (so the older one won’t feel left out) but then only giving the older one a present when it’s his birthday (“Well, it’s not YOUR birthday” said to the younger one.) The highlight last year was giving the younger one a telescope for his fifth birthday because the older one had told her how much HE wanted one. So guess whose room that’s in now?? Major stuff is starting an educational trust for the older one but not doing one for the younger one, and attempting to give a large sum of money to the older one but nothing to the younger one. My husband did intervene in those incidents, accepting the first and simply starting our own education trust for the second one, and refusing the second gift unless it was split evenly between the two. The kids of course know nothing of either yet.
The older one is very aware of the unevenness of presents and pocket money and now will openly say, “Now give Little Brit his share” when MIL starts handing stuff out. The younger one himself is very unmaterialistic (last year when we offered him a new bike, he said “No thank you Daddy, I already have one.”) and doesn’t notice yet about such things.
The trouble is that she is an elderly lady, ignorant and set in her ways, and we are not going to change her. She has lost the respect of both boys already because of the way she treats them, so she’s lost out as much as they have. Both boys love her but don’t particularly like her. We have decided that we have to just let her go on as she does but if she dares make a comment or attempts to be uneven then I or my older son will call her on it, and if its something REALLY bad then my husband will step in to stop it.
But yes, I hate her for it!
I guess under the circumstances all you can do is minimize the damage she may do. Is it possible for her to spend time with just the youngest one alone for a bit?
Dear god, I’ll never understand the mother-daughter relationship.
- Why mothers feel compelled to be mean to their daughters
- Why daughters can’t tell their mothers to shut the fuck up
- Why daughters can’t get the hell over minor little quips that I’m not even sure that moms mean
I’m sorry, but how in the hell is, “your kids will be so smart!” an insult in any way, shape, or form?
At least three other people have explained the aspects of the mother’s statement which you (and others) have apparently, somehow, missed.
She didn’t say “Your kids will be so smart.” She said “Your kids will be smart, and I know this because your husband is smart, and because your brother is smart.” Notice who is pointedly absent from that inference.
-FrL-
Surly Mom is also very belittling, saying things like “What on earth did you do to your hair” and "You’re not going out dressed like that, are you? and “You look really fat in that.” It’s very harmful to one’s self-esteem when growing up not to mention pissing the shit out of me. Finally after one particularly biting comment, I said “Do you sit up at night thinking of nice things to say to me or do they just come naturally?” It turns out that she didn’t realize how nasty her comments were coming off and has never said anything like that since. I wish had had the courage to respond earlier and a lot of pain would have been avoided. The weird thing is that she’s always bragging about me to friends and family. She just rarely compliments me! I guess I just have to take what I can get.
I went to a seminar some years ago that addressed this kind of thing. Dr. Jennifer James presented the class and some of the information is addressed in her book “The Rise and Fall of Criticism: The Slug Manual.” The seminar went into things more deeply, but the book is helpful too.
It is complicated, but she talks about the different kinds of criticism and the ways you can handle them. She lives here in the PNW, and she uses slugs to demonstrate critical remarks. In case you don’t know, slugs are slimy icky creatures with no redeeming value (at least as far as I know) and she likens critical remarks to someone handing you a slug. If someone handed you a slug, you could do several different things with it. You could take it, and KEEP it. You could take it and then hand it back. You could take it and then drop it. You could politely refuse to take it…and etc.
The seminar helped me tremendously. The book isn’t quite as helpful, but it is good as well. It might help to find a copy and read it…and it certainly couldn’t hurt.
The truth is, the information I gained at that seminar changed my relationship with my mother in a powerful way…a very positive way. It is a truism that “you always hurt the ones you love” but things often beCOME truisms because they tend to BE true. I think that maybe it is because if you love someone and know that they love you back, you don’t take the care to choose your words carefully the way you feel you have to do with strangers, or casual acquaintances. We tend to feel that since we love each other, we can say whatever we think and even if what we say is hurtful? They won’t stop loving us. Not very conducive to happy and functional relationships, but I think that most of us fall into that trap, at least sometimes.
I wish you the best…either in dealing with this without having it wound your soul, or with being able to stop it without ruining your relationship with your mom. In any case, I hope you can do the former.
My dad called us 3 kids stupid and idiots until we were well into our 20s, at least. This despite the fact that we all had tested as very intelligent, and we were all at or near the top of our classes through high school.
I’m pushing 50 and I still haven’t entirely gotten over it, and he’s been dead for years.
So go ahead, rant some more, it’ll do you good.
Oh for goodness sakes, are you serious?
Comes a time when we have to stop blaming our parents for all those slights they cast upon us in our youth. If you’re nearly 50 and still harking back to those days, I suggest that maybe your dad was onto something. :dubious:
You’re an ignorant asshole.
He didn’t say he was blaming his father, he said he “hadn’t entirely gotten over it.” I still have bitter memories of stuff my grandmother did to me.
Stuff that happens when you’re a kid tends to stick with you. Good thing for parents to remember, huh?
Exactly. And let us not forget that these are feelings we are discussing. Feelings. As ephemeral as air and as absolute as mountains. Which is my work-tired brain’s way of saying that anyone here can have any kind of feeling whatsoever regarding their past.
It’s really sort of obvious.
And I second the grandmother stuff–I have come to the conclusion that mine was bitch. Or mentally ill. Or both. Depending on my day/mood/memory currently thought about.
another good thing for parents to remember is guess who chooses your nursing home? heh.
Thanks, folks, for your kind support.
Wow! Thanks for all the advise and support.
I was going to flame that Mother Maven is getting evicted from her apartment and has been hinting that she would like to move in with Mouse_Spouse and me.
There is no fucking way I’m letting this poisonous woman in our house!
(By the way, she’s losing her apartment because she refused to pay a raise in rent. To me, a sensible person would give 30 days notice of moving and then find a new place. Not refuse to pay more rent, contact a lawyer, and then let this grow into a drama.)
What I have learned from therapy: I am NOT responsible for my mother and her mistakes.
Boyo Jim, I’m sorry about what your father said to you and your siblings. Some parents don’t realize that what they say can have a huge effect. Didn’t someone once say that “Mother is another word for god”?