It’s called “Random Assortment” for a reason!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My mother and I don’t have the best relationship. There are a lot of reasons. Some I’ve been able to accept or cope with, others still bother me.

In the “still bothers me” category is Mother’s ideas about intelligence and heredity. When my brother and I reached kindergarten age, Mother had our intelligence/development tested. Apparently, my results were “below average” and my brother’s were above. In elementary school, I attended the “special” classes and bro went into “Gifted and Talented.” We both got teased for our placement.

I’m 30 now. Brother is 28. He’s a chef. I’m a bio/medical research assistant at a University. Neither one of us took a “traditional” career path: Bro’s career started as an apprenticeship, I was trained and then started taking college classes in order to advance. We don’t have much in common, but I’d say we’re about the same in intellect. Mother doesn’t seem to think so. She loves to talk about how well Bro is doing at a resturant and the new flavor combinations he’s experimenting with. Whenever we talk about my college courses or my job, she comments about how I’ve “done so well, considering [my] limitations.” I can’t change her opinion, so I ignore the comments.

Recently, Mother called to see how I was doing.

“Fine. I’m having a very normal pregnancy.”

“Have you thought much about your conditions and if the baby gets them?”

*Conditions? WTF? * “Sorry, I don’t follow.”

“You’re depression, the PTSD, the struggles you had in school.”

Oh boy. :rolleyes: “I took a Behavioral Genetics class last semester. From the text, it looked like mental illness was a mix of genes and environment. I can loan you the book if you’d like. Anyway, I’ve always gotten descent grades in school.”

“But it was such a struggle for you. Do you know how much is from heredity and how much is environment?”

An insinuation about my mental abilities, followed by a request for detailed information, way to go Mom! “I’ll loan you the book. Genetics is not a cut and dry subject. Environment plays a role in many aspects of an organism’s development and life. Anyway, everybody is the result of a random combination of many characteristics gathered over a long period of time. Then these genes are mixed again to result in child. It’s impossible to predict the outcome. I’ll be happy with a healthy kid that has the standard number of limbs and phalanges.” Big technical word! Take that!

After this, I got off the phone as quickly as possible. My temper was rising, and the temptation to ask about Mother’s feelings about genetic purity and eugenics was getting stronger. That would not be a very mature response.

Ah, Mouseling. You’re grandmother is a little odd. Don’t mind her.

2

You know she’s going to be on you about testing the kid from day 1. If I were you I’d never tell her a thing about the mouseling’s scores, even if s/he turns out to be Baby Einstein.

I really liked how she thought PTSD might be hereditary. Uh…huh?

3

Maybe Grandma’s a Lamarckist.

Sailboat

4

Well, you know. The trauma of birth. And stuff.

I was tested as a youngun and placed in gifted classes, but I wasn’t told my scores until I was out of school. If you do have your kid tested eventually, DO NOT TELL THEM their scores.

5

So who does your immediate genetic predecessor blame for your faulty genes?

6

Geez, your Mom sounds like a piece of work.

7

Father, of course. And he blamed her. I’m not going to pay for braces. You got those nasty teeth from your Mother!

I think two very fucked up people got together and bred. Luckily, its mostly environmental. The genes are fine. :smiley:

8

Your mother sounds like a jerk. I don’t blame you for speaking to her as little as possible.

9

hee hee hee! :smiley:

10

Find out what IQ test you and your brother took. When your Mother brings up getting your baby tested, tell her that you’ll use a different test than that one because it was later proven that that test was way off (dress up the explanation, you know how, you’re smart) . Offer to show her the book you read it in.
My friend’s Mom does the same thing to her and it really burns me up because she’s one of the most intellegent people I know. Now at 47 she’s going back to school to be a nurse, and she’s in the top of her class.

11

Mouse_Maven, is this the first time you’ve ranted about this? It sounds really familiar.

12

Last year I posted in the Pit about a similar conversation. I told Mother that Mouse_Spouse and I were going to have kids one day. (It happened sooner than we planned.) She responded that since my brother was smart and my husband was smart, my children should be inteligent.

For my sanity’s sake, I should stop any conversation about mental ability with her. Its just to surreal.

13

Yep, that’s what I remember. Sad.

14

Oh well, there’s nothing I can do about it. Mother is lucky I keep much of my sarcasm to myself. I can’t change her, but sometimes she’s good for a laugh.

Past discussion
Me: That’s one of the effects of a market economy.
Mom: We don’t live in a markey economy. We live in a “what the market will bare” economy.
Me: Isn’t that the same thing?

The best compliment my husband ever gave me,“Honey, if things were better, you would have been a phd, not just just working for them.” :smiley:

15

Wow, Mouse_Maven. I am so sorry. I know your pain, my mother is a pathological jerkass, too. I honestly do not understand how PTSD would come into play for the Mouseling, isn’t that environmental?

IQ is nothing more than one’s ability to take tests, by the way. My IQ is off the charts, but that doesn’t change the fact that I am an ambitionless individual who did just enough work to get A’s or B’s in school, I currently do just enough to keep my job, no desire to go into management or anything else. In my experience, the people that I knew who struggled in school went way further in life than those of us who had no struggles with the curriculum.

FWIW, my mother suggested I abort my daughter, I was going to be “such a horrible” mother and “pass on the worst” genetics. My daughter (and son, too, for that matter) is a gorgeous, well-rounded, intelligent and ambitious individual. just because we have issues, does not necessarily mean our kids will.

16

The thing about mothers (and perhaps everyone else in the world) is that once they get something stuck in their heads, it’s very hard to get it unstuck. Once, back in like 1985 or something, I expressed a desire for a non-diet caffeine-free Coke. A few years before, one of my first attempts to do laundry ended in disaster. To this day, when I visit mom, she’ll have bought an entire case of non-diet caffeine-free Coke just for me. And I’m banned from using the washing machine.

17

I haven’t wanted to be an actor since… oh… freshmen year of college. It was then that I decided to become a writer. I have since become a writer, my mother has read my work and seen the minor advances I have made toward actually having it as a fulltime career. Any acting I do is simply for fun.

I still get books from my mom with titles like “Making it as an Actor” “Practical Advice for Actors” and “About Acting”.

Once they get it into their head…

18

I’ve noticed that this can be an issue with both my mother and my future MIL.

While I was in college, I’d occasionally come to visit. I like yogurt and other dairy products. I do, however, prefer a very heavily varied diet. My mom latched on to the yogurt thing for a while and only bought that in addition to the other stuff she normally bought. After a while, though, she got the hint that I was buying myself things other than yogurt and our standard household fare to eat. These days, she just asks what I’d like.

My future MIL, on the other hand, hasn’t quite gotten to the point where she understands that I like a wide variety of things. Bafflingly enough (to me at least) is that there’s stuff that’s bought for me separately from the things that are normally bought (foodwise) because that’s what I’ve expressed liking in the past. It’s almost never just one or two small things, but more like two weeks’ worth of food for my two day visit. It’s not that I don’t like the foods that are already in the house, or that I won’t eat the dry goods that were bought for my last visit two months ago. I just have to wonder whether she throws the stuff out after every visit I make, as, well, I don’t visit more than once every two months. I feel kind of guilty about it too, as it’s not like I asked her to get me anything special; in fact, when she’s called, I’ve mostly said “buy whatever you normally buy; I’m not a picky eater at all.” I think my attempt at politeness and honesty has confounded her, as one of her kids is a notoriously picky eater.

19

Well, that’s certainly how Hugh Hefner and Joe Francis would define it. :smiley:

20

God lord and butter! What an awful thing to say :frowning: I’m very sorry.

For the most part, I use the same rules for radioactive material at work with my mother.

  1. Limit exposure time.
  2. Keep a protective barriere between you and the source.
  3. Wear safety equipment.

Since I’m going to have a baby, Mother has been calling more often and wanting to see me more. Its frustrating, but I try to behave like an adult - one of us should.

Right now, I think she’s mad at me. She called again and I was an ass.

Mother: I want to buy a stoller. The kind with a car seat built in.
Me: That’s nice. When are you due?

The offer was generous. I got angry because it felt like she was telling me what to do and I was pissed about our earlier conversation. ::deep breath::