She lives alone. Hopefully the last move now as I've moved her once a year for the past 3 years as she's hated everywhere else.
I'm 37. I have a 13-year-old son who is autistic and selective mute and currently going through mental health assessments for potential schizophrenia. I am also currently at risk of losing my home as my landlord is selling.
My mum is very, very needy, and clingy. I spend on average Mon/Tues/Thurs with her 1/2pm to 9pm, and Saturdays around 12-midnight.
Yet, all I get is that she's lonely. I drive her everywhere with no offer of fuel money. Must be around £30 a month.
Due to my partner's work schedule (nights) I see him Fri and Sunday. And that's our alone time or family time with our son. Occasionally he books a Thursday off for us to have an evening together. My mum hates this as she deems it "her time“ and will see us Saturday and be like "oh it's been DAAAYS since we've seen each other".
If I do anything with my son and partner i.e., visit the beach/play golf/visit anywhere she will want to go too.
I feel like I have very little life of my own. Everything I do I plan around her or check I'm not needed.
Even though she will ask "will you take me to the doctors on Monday?" it's not really a question. And after that it will be "don't forget I have an appointment on Monday". If I said no, she would be annoyed with me, want to know why, and would cancel her appointment and want to rebook it for a day I could take her. She COULD get a bus to it. Very easily.
The home she moved to is an 8-minute walk from the hospital. She wanted me to take her to get a simple blood test! I did put my foot down and she did walk it.
She also verbally abuses my son, she is hard of hearing and mis-hears him sometimes and jumps down his throat rather than ask for clarification first. She also says things like "you'll be sorry when I'm dead!" if she doesn't get her own way or if she feels he/I have been rude to her.
She seems to have no desire to be independent. I've mentioned groups to her, but she turns her nose up.
I need to put my foot down and start living my life. But it's so hard. And I guess my point with this question is clarification that I'm not overreacting or being spiteful. And any other advice I'd be grateful for. TY
So, when I had to move the folks out to my state to be close to me after dad couldn't drive anymore and (of course) Queen Mom refused, I got them set up in Independent Senior Living, then moved them into Assisted Living, then eventually Memory Care AL for mom as her dementia progressed. Dad died 10 months after they'd gone into Assisted Living, and the RESIDENTS of AL kept mom on her feet and functioning afterward! Had I not moved them into AL, mom would have been MY burden entirely to deal with! Not that she wasn't, but at least she was not living in my house and others were looking after her, not ME. Others were in charge of entertaining her, not ME. The doctor came into the AL to see her, meaning I didn't have to schlep her around. Oh, I did plenty, what with all of her hospitalizations, rehabs, ENT visits for vertigo, the list is endless. But at the end of the day, I dropped her off to be someone else's problem at the AL. I realize you don't live with your mother (THANK GOD) but she considers you her Entertainment Committee and Scratching Post, so you've got to figure out how to change that dynamic STAT!
You have a special needs son whom your mother is verbally abusing. Not okay. He is your number 1 concern in life, not an entitled and passive/aggressive mother who's telling you how 'sorry you'll be when she's dead.' Yeah, I don't think so, sorry ma. I listened to my mother threaten to 'throw herself out the window' or 'run out in traffic' for the past 10.5 years, and for 5 decades prior to that b/c she was ALWAYS 'dying' or trying to 'kill herself' which was just a passive/aggressive manipulation technique to keep me at her beck and call & emotionally blackmailed. Her 'my way or the highway' lifestyle didn't fly with me, which is why she lived where OTHERS had to put up with her and not ME!
Women like this need to be told *in my opinion* to Sit Down & Shut Up. They aren't, so they're running hog wild over everyone else's life, insisting they get what they want, abusing others with their forked tongues, and wreaking havoc wherever they go. It's up to YOU to tell her to sit down and shut up, but not literally; you can do so by setting down firm boundaries starting with this: The next time you speak like that to your grandson mom, you are OUT OF MY HOME and not coming back. Period. You'll see how fast she stops doing that, after she has a meltdown over being told what to do, and insisting she Did Nothing Wrong to begin with. Snicker.
Read Boundaries by Cloud & Townsend, a good book to get you started.
Read this great article to glean some tips about how to deal with narcissistic personalities who are also passive/aggressive:
https://lifelessons.co/personal-development/covertpassiveaggressivenarcissist/
I'm sure you get the Silent Treatment when things don't go Mother's way, too, right? Oh I know it well! It's actually a nice REPRIEVE from the chronic BS, isn't it? :)
Wishing you the best of luck putting yourself & your son first now, and seeing what senior residential community you can get mom into to live. Make her someone ELSE'S problem is the best advice you'll get.
I gotta agree. It aggravates me to no end when people let these women (not that men are exempt!) do and say whatever they want, whenever they want, and expect people to take whatever they want to dish out. Most of them have been coddled their entire lives, but to hear them talk, you'd think they've had to work in coal mines since birth.
Now if one has dementia or some other issue where they have no filter anymore? Still annoying, but I can overlook it. But often it's not dementia, they simply feel entitled to cut people down because they've reached a certain age. Sorry, no. It is rude to tell someone they're too fat or their dress is ugly.
You may even want to get some tips from a therapist on how to deal with her. Just the fact that you have given so much of yourself to a relatively fit, young senior says that you may need help extricating yourself from this situation.
She's fortunate enough that I don't get my partner full-time.. He does say what would she do if I was home all the time. And honestly I don't know!
I think she struggles as she brought me up alone, it was always "me and her against the world".
She very much views me as a possession. And that I owe her for everything she's done/does for me.
As a parent myself I don't understand that mentality at all, I chose to be a mother, what I give him is my duty and I do it with love and I'm grateful to have him. My son owes me nothing. Basic respect yes of course. But he will never owe me. And I never want him feel he has to consider me when he's grown.
In the short term, I would develop an illness (hopefully fake) that will make you contagious for a month. Covid or flu would do – really bad flu is genuinely more common than Covid where I am at the moment. You can’t risk seeing her! Phone the AL places near you and get them to send her pamphlets. The groups too, if they will post. If she’s sitting at home lonely, she should at least read them. Tell her that your illness is prone to relapses, so she would be wise to look at alternatives.
Honestly she is impossible. When covid first put us all in lockdown she had a massive argument with me because I chose to stick to the rules and not see her. She does not care about it one iota. And she has COPD.... She feels she already had it back in November 2019 🙄 when she was indeed very poorly. And apparently we just wouldn't have know it was covid.
She would tell me "it's OK, mummy will look after her princess".... Yes she still speaks to me like I'm a child. Its infuriating. I am perfectly mentally capable. I don't need babying. And she doesn't like it if I don't also significantly soften my voice back to her. I get accused of being funny with her.
I've spent probably 2 years working on me, bolstering myself and learning all about how people like her work and I'm a different woman. And in a way, this scares me. I'm about to set boundaries and her reaction will be the same as its always been, insults, telling me I'm spiteful. But I'm different now, it will be water off a ducks back.
I am 75, just returned from driving my motor home, towing a car over 6000 miles, all by myself.
Set your boundaries and enforce them, if she can do it for herself then you do not do it for her.
If she decides to cancel a doctor's visit that is on her, not you. You have taught her how to treat you, it is you, not her.
This process is only as hard as you make it, NO is a complete sentence, not up for discussion. She could live for another 20+ years, is this really how you want to live your life? Think!
And I won't be. I've worked hard for the last 2 years to bolster myself ready for this. And now her words don't get to me like they used to. I'm just a little nervous about this final push and knowing my reaction will be different.
I think it's 37 years of being a push over and being told I'm spiteful and selfish, when I've tried to set boundaries before too. It lives within me to panic that I'm the bad one when in reality I'm not. Yes I can have a short temper and a sharp tongue, but that's down to extreme pressure.