Perhaps some of the kind folks here can explain this person’s motivation to me - for I can not. This is a long message.
Here’s the situation. My 16-year-old daughter and 4 of her friends went stag (is that the term for unattached females?) to their high school semi-formal dance last night. To have a group of friends to hang with and have fun with is a recent event for my daughter, and, like her, her 4 friends are shy girls who are just coming out of their shells. Think band geeks without the band. Come to think of it, they are chorus geeks. Boys have not entered the picture in any serious sort of way.
Their night was going to be this: Have a pot luck at the house of one of the girls, get dressed up, go to the dance, come back to another friend’s house and sleep over, go somewhere “fun” for breakfast (like Starbucks), disband.
Everything went according to plan until they went to the house of the girl who was hosting the sleep over. At 11:30 or so, they were outside this girls house with a car radio on too loudly. {As befits wild and crazy pussycats such as themselves}. This is were it gets odd-
The girl’s mother comes screaming out of the house - yelling at them to turn off the radio, then yells at each one of them individually, yells at them all together again, then tells them they are not welcome in her house. My daughter calls me at midnight to see if they can crash at my place. Which they do, have a yummy breakfast of strawberry poptarts and before they can go to their homes crazy mom calls and first asks to talk to me (I’m not available) and then insists that they return to her home and apoligize to the neighbors. The girls do this meekly. When I finally return crazy Mom’s phone call she seems perplexed because she thought she’d resolved the issue by insisting the girls apologized. She told me that she had to “forcefully let them know that they were being disrespectful” but that she was “very proud of them” for making ammends. I responded that they were great kids and that was that.
OK - if you’re still with me. WHY IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY didn’t she just yell - “turn down the radio” as soon as it was apparent that it was too loud? If she had done that -and they told her to get bent - then I could see going ballistic and doing what she did. But why come out of the gate in full psycho bitch mode?
Is she making too much of this, or I am making too little?
Was it your daughter who told you this? If so, did “crazy mom” confirm it? Because it is possible that your daughter was not entirely honest with you. Perhaps she omitted some part of the story to cover herself. I know I sure did when I was 16.
Some people just have to be drama queens. They’re lovely people, really…as long as they’re under sedation.
Prosecution’s Exhibit #1: The collectible plate owned and smashed by my father’s wife because I didn’t dust it well enough. To this day, I am still “at fault” for the broken plate. You know; if I’d dusted it properly, it wouldn’t be smashed. :rolleyes:
“Full psycho bitch” Mom was responsible for all the girl’s safety last night until someone else acknowledges that task. Either she yelled at the girls and had them leave at an unacceptably late hour or she wasn’t monitoring them and didn’t realize until the next morning they were gone.
That pretty much makes her skills as a stable person you can always count on suspect and, by extension, I don’t think you’re at unreasonable in using caution in further dealings with her.
If my son had told me the same story, I’d be right there with you. But these gals are awfully tame.
When we spoke on the phone the Mom’s story pretty much confirmed the events as described by the girls. Of course, she didn’t say “I’ve got some issues which manifest in my inability to behave in a normal manner”, that’s my interpretation of the events. But she did say that she Immediately needed to let them know in a forceful manner that they were disrepecting the neighborhood. From the rest of the interaction, I have no doubt that if the girls had blown her off I would have heard of it.
Why did Psycho-Mom go psycho at all? had her neighbors called her to complain of the noise?
And why for Og’s sake did she go ballistic at all? I’d just have walked over to the car, asked the girls to turn off the radio and come inside, then put in some earplugs and go back to sleep
For crying out loud! What did she expect them to do after she went postal? Were they supposed to crawl into her house and kiss her toes for being so mean?
Yikes.
Also, were I you, I’d avoid that bitch whenever possible
This should be a warning label on humans. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Anyway, what is the position/feelings of the daughter of the Pyscho Mom? Mortification or This Happens All The Time Please Kill Me Now.
That’s why I posted this, because it what she did was so incredibly overblown given the nature of the offense. It made me worry I had missed something. The more
I don’t know how her own daughter feels about this because in all my dealings with her I’ve heard her say perhaps 4 words. She’s very, very quiet. Now I can kinda see why.
Thanks everyone for your responses.
This sounds like something my mother would have done. Her motivation would have gone something like this:
Years of having all the responsibility and none of the power. Years of being under the yoke of an emotionally abusive but not present spouse. Constant high levels of anxiety coupled with untreated depression. Abject fear that she will be blamed and punished out of turn if something, anything, bad happens (like the neighbors complaining, or hell even thinking less of her). Misperception a-rampant of her kids, etc.
You may say psycho bitch. I say hair-trigger reaction to fear based on years of abuse.