Sorry, I just had a row with my mother - don't need sympathy etc just to vent

[FloraPosteschild]

She's lost it a bit tonight. She's one of these people with no boundaries, and thinks I'm too harsh with Ds, because she is extremely soft with him and I tend to overcompensate for that when she's here. Like this morning - he was over, overtired and he had some toast, and he'd had enough, and had left half the toast round the edges - so she offered him the second piece, before he'd finished the first, thinking he doesn't eat the edges. (He does, if the bread is nice - it's our rule and he knows and is happy with it.)
Anyway I knew it would cause trouble as he was so tired and fed up, and Grandma has different rules to mummy and it confuses him, but he was in a mood to kick off about anything really.
So I stayed quite calm and assertive and took the plate away, saying, finish the first bit and then you can have this.
Of course he protested, and my mother turned to me with this pleading look on her face as if to say, 'Oh, can't he have it, surely you aren't going to make him eat the edges' and I smiled without meaning it, and went to wash up in the kitchen (she was holding baby while I did some work this morning).
She came in to contest the ruling as it were - I explained our rule about toast, but she still wasn't happy.
Anyway. This evening I rang her to have a chat, and I apologised about this morning being difficult - it was the same for about an hour and a half, Ds refusing to dress, things like that, and us handling it in different ways. I decided it was better if he was at her house with her, or at my house with me, but not both of us at once.
She said that she can't stand to be around when I am being so 'cold' and 'dismissive' toward him - I was angry with her, this morning, not Ds - she can't 'bear' to see me talking to him like that.

It's so upsetting, because she often compares me to her own mother, who was truly cold and very unloving. She sees her in everything I do such as having rules and so on. I sometimes even think she wants me to act like that so she can 'save' Ds - she has admitted wanting to save him before, like a fantasy.

It's horrible. And then tonight she started on about how she hates having to decide whether to look after him or not, like I could make that decision for her? She hates having to make decisions about what time she wants him etc. I can't decide for her.

And then it was about me 'talking about her' on MN, or to my friends - she is making this up, as I very rarely discuss her, with RL friends or on here - and how she has no one she can talk to, and she can't talk to my Dad, etc etc etc...blah blah. It started off with me feeling shocked and hurt about her criticisms, worrying that I really am too harsh, and then I realised that she was after a fight and didn't care how she got it and wasn't really in control so I told her I wasn't going to talk about that sort of thing, and calmly ended the call.

I feel almost dirty, really undermined, and I have no idea why she wanted to dump all that on me tonight.

She hasn't done that for a long time and I thought she thought I was doing Ok with Ds, sort of anyway.

ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Thanks for listening. I guess I fulfilled her assumptions tonight anyway...

[FloraPosteschild]

...as soon as I posted that, she rang to apologise. I asked her if she had been reading MN, she didn't get the joke at all...

[constancereader]

You handled it all really well. I wish I was as together when dealing with my family.

[FloraPosteschild]

Oh God Constance - it's taken a long time to get to the point where I can see she is being toxic.
I am still so upset about it...angry with her and afraid of being manipulated, like it might be better if I left and went off somewhere so we didn't see her so much.

I am a bit scared of doing that though...being a single parent, and so on. I find it hard to see the real situation sometimes.

Thanks for not saying 'your mother is perfectly sensible and you are obviously an abusive parent' btw!

[WallOfSilence]

I can't believe you have rules about eating toast.....

[FloraPosteschild]

We have to have rules about something!!!!!! I am always being told off for being inconsistent so I try to have unwritten rules, in my head, you know...

for my own reference really.

Don't you have any?

[FloraPosteschild]

I think it helps Ds know where he is iyswim. especially as I am a bit off in the clouds much of the time.

Call it a policy if it helps!

[WallOfSilence]

Plenty of them.. just not about eating toast

I want the kids to feel like they live here too & have decisions, not like I am their jailor.

Anyway, we all differ, so if it suits you to have rules about the way your boy has to eat his toast, then who am I to criticise? I probably have rules you would think were daft too.

[FloraPosteschild]

Bloody hell.

That's a bit harsh.

[FloraPosteschild]

The smiley things don't help btw. Your post makes me feel completely shit, for asking my child to finish onepiece of toast before I give him another.

What the fuck is so bad about that?

[WallOfSilence]

If my post makes you feel like shit then you're taking it too personally!

Sorry, I apologise to you.

I was trying to say in a round about way not to sweat the small stuff.

Will leav you to it now.

Sorry again.

[FloraPosteschild]

It's Ok. I see what you're getting at now, it just came across wrong.

I think I will go and talk to my mother instead

Thanks for the apology - sorry I got shirty too.