Has anyone else avoided their mother because of her negativity?

RebeccaLynn - wowza I hear you. And from the number of responses here it looks like MANY people hear you too! In my opinion I think that it is time to start looking for another living arrangement for your mom. You would be suprized that there ARE nice places out there; I was blessed to find one for my dad (who has ALWAYS had a CHALLENGING negative attitude and now a limited physical state) which is only 5 miles away from my home. It is an AL/aging in place home that is safe, clean, friendly, very stable, affordable, small and intimate with a low staff to resident ratio (only 10 residents to 2 staff with the RN owner of the facility LIVES on site in a separate residence on the property.) He has a private room with the company of his pet cat too! It took a while to find but what a blessing. Don't assume every place is horrible - yes many are or seem that way, but there ARE gems out there too. I visit 3 times a week, and I am allowed to be his daughter again, not his mother. I can't tell you what a blessing it is. He wants nothing more than to come and live with me and my husband (who he doesn't like) so that he could give me the AL money but he doesn't understand that the money plus more would be need to be spent on assistance by helpers in my home as he cannot be alone for any longer length of time. Remember this: honor thy mother and father DOES NOT MEAN be a doormat. There are many ways of honoring them. We are responsible to MAKE SURE that they receive a good safe place to live free of abuse of any kind, quality nutritous food, medicine and medical care, positive interactions/socialization as desired, etc. If there is little to no dementia taking place, but rather lifelong personality issues, well we are NOT required to be punching bags. Sorry.

Hi RebeccaLynn,

My mom and your mom could be one in the same. My mom too lives with me, she is 97 and always negative. She says she is ready to go(die) so I am wondering what is taking so long...........( i know i am going to burn for saying thsoe words)
She says the same things as your mom. I try to avoid her also but she lives with me (for the last 4yrs) so there are only so many places to hide. I try to keep myself preoccupied with other things but this caregiving is a 24/7 job and I am an only so there you go. I love this site as we are all in the same boat.
Just know that you do not walk alone and we are all here for each other since no one outside in the real world knows our world.
Take care,
onenandonly

I think it is time for your mother to go into a nursing facility. I lloked after my mother for four years while she was recovering from a terrible car accident. She did not live with me, but was 5 minutes away by car. She was very negative about life, my deceased father, her ungrateful 3 children and on and on. Everything in life was done to her, not something of her own doing. It is true that she has had a very difficult life, but se also made some decisions that have caused her concern and she will not accept them.
While living in this senior residence where she had help , assisted living, she tended to refuse the help so that I would be around. I came to check up on her three times a day making sure she had something to eat, getting her to take her pills, which she would hide , spit out or flush down the toilet if I was not on top of it.
Everything was someone else's fault. I ended up with pneumonia and almost no immune system I a;so ended up with a questionable mammogram, which finally forced me to do something. When my husband and I decided to go to Europe at long last for a holiday, we took my mother to a facility with extra care, not quite a nursing home. She was there for 1 month. Because I promised to bring her home, I did so. Within a week she was in the hospital with a high fever. Once more the routine of coaxing her to eat, take her pills and live was forced on me. By month's end, my sister, who lives far away arrived and we got my mother to go back to the facility where she had been, because I was going to visit my daughter in the US and there was no one to take care of her. At no time did I consider her living with me. My home is not conducive to disabled individuals and she wouldn/t listen to me nor follow any rules. I would have been a prisoner in my own home, fearful about leaving her alone. She is not happy in the new facility and has burned her bridges with her rudeness with others and staff. I have tried to distance myself sowhat as there are people who can look after her needs. I have even removed myself from abuse and walked out to get her attention and it worked for a day.
I feel sorry for her loss of independence and fear of the unknown. She has not accepted her situation and feels I own her something. I have 2 other siblings who are far away. I feel for her, love her for what she has done for me in the past, bit do not feel that I should endure abuse at this point in my life. I am a pensioner myself and still feel that I want to live out my life with some peace.

my mom is negative also - in addition to her vascular dementia- and it was a real shock to me because I had this fantasy going that she was going to be sweet and loving like her mother was when she got tobe in her 70's - and whoa !!! She sure isn't the same as my grandmother was ! Part of coping for me was to give up my fantasy and stop hoping for something that was never gong to be. I also have learned to let it roll off....do not respond- what we feed, grows, what you starve, does not grow. She eventually runs out of steam, and I can get her into talking about something else. Mom won't leave home and go visit with others her age, so I go on and do what I need to do , making sure when she needs to have supervision, either my brother stays with her or I hire a caregiver for the time I need to be gone, and I no longer grieve for what I used to have because I have trained myself to look at her as a stranger inhabiting my mother's body - the illness has taken away the mother I knew and replaced her with a person who is ill and cannot help herself, and to honor her memory I am taking care of this alien as well as I can.... I know to some this is going to sound absolutely crazy and heartless but it is not... because once in awhile, when I am grounded and feeling good, I can put my arms around her and kiss her on the cheek, and tell her I love her... and I see the faint glimmer of what I used to have with her in her eyes... and I know I am doing the right thing. Sometimes the negativity is there because they have lost so much.... my Mom has lost everyone of her family to death, and she just needs to be loved..... there is no one else left but me and my brother to love her. Ice Cream cones work too.... she really likes Dairy Queen soft serve !

My love and prayers are with you. It is a HUGE task to undertake. Please do not allow GUILT to eat you alive. Just do the best that you can each day and know that you gave it all that you were capable of giving. If you DO NOT set some boundaries and TIME OUT for yourself and your HEALTH, you will become sicker than your mother.
Who will take care of you? Not selfish -REALITY!!!

I don't have the 'rolling thunder' but I do have the heavy footsteps coming down the stairs, I know your pain. My mom is negative as well, but more than that, she REFUSES to take responsibility for ANY decision making, that way she cannot be blamed for anything. She will not even choose the meat from the platter, tries to make me fix her plate. I just tell her to take her time and choose.
Today I told her she needed to move to a retirement community nearby, that I can't take care of her any longer. Her health is good, but she is nearly blind. I work 100 miles away, 10 hours a day. I have a few days that I work at home each week but I have to WORK and am tied to the computer. I just can't do this any longer. She can afford the rent on the apartments at the community..it's 12 minutes away from me...Its lovely there, I would move in! Am I so wrong to be doing this? She is making me take all responsibility for this decision...so she can blame me later if something goes wrong.

I think a big part of this reason is that our mothers were not in this boat to take care of their mothers because a) people didn't live that long, b) medicine prolongs life and then the side effects of the medicine, c) our mothers lived in an era where women stayed home and were caregiviers, and typically we are working mothers, d) and i think our mothers were not prepared for this at all. One positive part is that we are aware and can plan for our own old age.

So healthy boundries are something that others will not give you if they have not already. People typically need the support of a counselor to help them develop healthy boundries if they are adults and in a long time relationship that continually violates healthy boundries. If you don't learn this skill then after the parents are gone someone else will impose -- like a boyfriend.

Sounds too familiar...my mother has a problem for every solution. Somebody once told me I had that saying backwards. No I don't.
May God bless you for the stuff you have to take. It is so hard to do this. We will, however, look back with no regrets.

Thanks to everyone for sharing their experiences and potential solutions. I too am a caregiver for my widowed Mother who has Parkinson's. I have come to agree with many of the previous posts that I cannot do anything that makes my Mother happy or change her negativity for longer than about 10 minutes. I've also tried to be as positive to her negative focus as possible, but it rarely changes the equation. I have learned much from all the others out there that are assisting parents through this difficult time, and appreciate your strength and courage. I hope I can stand up to this situation and feel that my anxiety and stress may be reduced a little by reading other's solutions to similar issues. Thanks again.