Don’t get me wrong, I truly love my mom to pieces. But she is always giving me a guilt trip that I don’t call her enough.
I don’t say this to her but I’m thinking: “Your fingers ain’t broke, you can call me.”
Does anybody else get this kind of flak from their parents?
Why is it incumbent on the child to call the parents? WHY!!!
Not from my parents (I don’t care much for them), but my girlfriend complains if I don’t call her often enough. I think it’s just a female thing.
For one thing, I’m retired and all my kids have jobs, kids and busy lives. I feel it’s up to them to find a time slot to give me a ring, as I’m way less busy than they are and so can be reached much more easily. But they’d rather post inane bullshit on Facebook, so that’s about the only contact I have with them on a regular basis.
Heh. My mom says this, too, yet I end up trying to get a hold of her for a couple of days every time I give her a call. Especially since she stopped working, the woman is never home, and she’s terrible about remembering to use/charge/turn on her cell. I try to just accept it.
The upside is that she doesn’t guilt-trip me about it, which helps a lot. Of course, I also try to make sure to call her at least once a week no matter how many times I get call-waiting or have to leave a voice mail.
Because she carried you for nine months, she was in labor for days and refused all pain meds because she cared about you. But that’s OK, she’ll just sit there in the dark…alone.
Parents, brother, sister. Mostly my sister.
She gives me flak because I only call her twice a year. I call her on her birthday, and I call her on my birthday.
If I call and it’s been a longer time than she thinks is reasonable since we last spoke my mom she’ll answer the phone by saying “Oh good, you’re NOT dead.”
If I wait so long that she has to be the one to call she will say, either to me or to my voicemail, “Why do you hate me?”
My mother starts her day at 6:00am every day. 24/7/365. Doesn’t sleep late on Sundays, holiday, her birthday, never. That being the case, although it is my general custom not to phone anyone before 9:00am, every once in a while I decide that 8:30 isn’t too early to call her. On those occasions she answers the phone with a brisk “Whats the matter?”
They’re retired down in Florida and I have a busy life up in Minnesota. She will call and leave a message but I like to make sure to have a longer time just in case to talk. I have gotten in the habit of calling during longer commutes. I think she’s been trained that if she calls me, it’ll roll to voicemail probably. Not intentionally, but I’ve got etiquette where I don’t like to answer a long call around other people. She doesn’t have the problem. In fact, last time I called, she was in the dressing room at the club house getting measured for a new golf outfit.
I talk to my mom about once a week. Sometimes I call, sometimes she calls, sometimes we miss a week.
But I never get any flak. Guess I’m just lucky; Mom’s pretty cool.
My mom absolutely cringes at the thought of paying long distance charges. She also hated that it was costing me money to call her, until I convinced her that it was included in my cell service. She has a cell phone that she uses to call me, but she lives in an area of iffy coverage, and she usually has to go outside to get a signal.
I call her when I have a specific question to ask. Otherwise, we communicate via email. It works a lot better. She doesn’t type fast, so her notes tend to be short. If I call, she talks and talks and talks and talks and talks…
My inlaws call my husband more than he calls them. They don’t have any daughters, so I don’t know if different rules would apply to them.
Mine too, but they have a busier social life than I do!
My parents are either batshit crazy or narcissistic/self-involved. I do not call them. When they wish to blather on about their lives, they call me. Approximately every 3rd call, I will actually pick up, usually because the messages start getting panicky sounding. “Are you dead? Why don’t you call me back?” I’m afraid they will call the cops if I don’t pick up once in a while, so I throw 'em a bone.
Despite my repeated attempts to share my boundary policy with them: If you leave a specific message and ASK me to call back, I will, asap. If you say you called to talk about nothing and just to say hi, I will pick up next time.
Just to be clear: Neither parent ever inquires after my life or asks how I’m doing. They generally have no clue what’s going on in my life and, I’m basing this on the lack of questions, I assume they don’t care. I have purposefully avoided divulging any details about me or my life just to see how many conversations it takes/how long it takes, before they finally pull their head outta their ass and actually ask me questions (that aren’t self serving, like “Why doesn’t my mouse work on this computer?”). It took my mom about three months. My dad still hasn’t ever asked, “So. How are you doing?”
If I thought they gave a shit, I would call them more often and volunteer information. On the few occasions I do that, the response is “Oh. Huh.” and then crickets chirping for a minute before they change the subject back to themselves.
Incidentally, I live 1200 miles away from them. I’ve often asked myself the same question as the OP: Why is it my job to fly to them for visits? Don’t they know the planes fly in both directions? How come they never come to see me? I’m single and have no kids; I’m not *that *busy.
My father is the exact opposite, but with e-mail. Maybe someone in my family will post a vacation picture, so I’ll post one too. My father will come back with “Where was that taken? When did you go? Who did you go with? What was your favorite part?” and on and on. When I reply, he’ll reply back “There. Was that so hard?”
My mom died in 1998.
I’d give anything to hear her voice again.
When your mom is gone, a huge piece of you goes too.
~VOW
Thankfully, this is not an issue for me. My mom emails me a couple of times a day for inane things and we both hate chatting on the phone. (If either of us phones, it is because we want something and the call is usually less than 2 minutes.)
However, my dad solved this problem by phoning his mother every week on the same day at the same time. That way, she knows she is getting a call and it is hard for him to forget.
I cannot imagine a world in which my father took any interest in anything my sister or I did. Your post is just astonishing to me.
Because she’s needy and she knows it. She is so needy she wants to hear from you and she realizes she is being an inconvenince to you. So she doesn’t want to call, because she knows if she did, she’d call you 24 hours a day.
Try writing her a letter instead. I bet she’d get a real thrill out of that, receiving a genuine piece of mail. I bet she’d be bragging to all her friend, her kid takes time to write her a letter.
I can’t recall the thread, but I know you’ve done a post like this before. I think it’s great that you had a great relationship with your mom and I’m sorry that you miss her so much.
But please do realize that not everyone’s parent was great, some peoples’ parents are straight up shitty people. My mom’s mother is a shitty person and thankfully, after over 50 years of verbal and emotional abuse, Mom has cut off communication with her. I will not expose my unborn child to that woman unless I am forced to. Don’t assume that once a person’s parent is gone that person will have some gaping hole in there life, often it’s the complete opposite.
Ugh, my dad is like that. His attitude is that he already tried to have a relationship with his kids and we rejected him, so now it is up to us to pursue him. He doesn’t understand that being a crazy person and forcing visitation with kids who are afraid of you is not the same as trying to have a loving parent/child relationship.
I realized, about three years ago now, that for the duration of my entire life, I have always been the one to call my dad, rather than him calling me. Practically the only time I ever remember him calling me was when I was in college, to let me know that my grandmother had died. So about three years ago, I decided, screw this. The guy’s a borderline asshole anyway so if he wants me in his life, he knows how to pick up the phone. He can call me for once.
We haven’t spoken in three years. Shrug. He knows my number. I’m all over the Internet. I’m not hard to find. If he feels like talking to me again, he knows how to find me.