Need Some Stories to Make Me Feel Better!

Well my MIL called her 7yo granddaughter a c**t, and told all her grand kids they were going to hell, where their skin would melt off and they'd never see their parents again.

That kind of thing?

If you're in that situation again tell her "Education has changed since you were in school, mom. It's not about memorizing facts that could be looked up on the internet in a few seconds, it's about knowing how to find information, how to learn, how to ask critical questions, etc etc.

Oh I could give you plenty of mom horror stories...and MIL one's too.
But I'm pressed for time.
I did want to chirp in and agree w/ Sandy and Angela...I'm 32, and I don't remember all the state capitols...and big darn deal!
Not a vital life skill.
W/ some practice she'll know 'em all. And then...like me...she will forget a few. Lol! :)

Hi K.-

I cannot give you a 'mom' story...but it brought to mind YEARS ago when I was in HS dating my now 'ex' hubby. His father was (he imagined...LOL) quite a linguist. He would often say things in some foreign language such as Thai...Vietnamese...Urdu...or even latin! At the time I was an easily intimidated teen - eager to please- and I always felt SO STUPID!

I finally fessed up to my father (who I dearly miss these several years since he died) and he said, "Next time _______ speaks in another language....just say to him 'illigeitmus non carbarundum est' " (yeah...I know...terrible spelling...it is latin...lol). Roughly translated means 'don't let tha bastards grind you down'...

I said that the next time I was 'assaulted' with a language I did not know. And, in all the years I knew my father in law before he died...he only spoke to me in english!! lol

May not help your dear daughter...but hope it gives you a smile!

*Shame on your mom* (IMHO)

Best Luck!
michele/cat

Your mom sounds like my MIL. Always right there to point out what I have done wrong with my children. Case in point, she loves to talk to my kids about healthy eating and how her other grandchildren will eat anything that is put in front of them (not true). My kids will try anything, but if they don't like it, I do not force them to eat it. Ever. If they want to try it again sometime, good for them, but they are NEVER forced to eat anything. End of discussion. She disagrees with me on this and is part of the "clean your plate" club. My husband has struggled with his weight all of his life.

One time we were in a restaurant and she asked my daughter if she wanted to try a piece of shrimp. My daughter had tried shrimp before and didn't like it. My MIL kept pressuring her to try. I stepped in and said that she had tried this before, she doesn't like it and she has plenty to eat on her own plate.

My MIL looked me square in the face, didn't say a word and plopped a shrimp on my daughter's plate. Then she looked at her and said in a very terse tone: Eat it.

At that point, my husband took his fork and flicked the shrimp off of her plate and it landed back on my MIL's. Bad manners I know, but he was not happy with her. He then told his mom not to do that again.

She took what should been a lovely meal together and completely ruined it because she would not let it go and continued to lecture my daughter on eating what is put in front of her and how she would like this type of shrimp if she would only try it. It was only after my husband threatened to pack us all up and leave did she finally quit.

To this day, she will still get her jabs in because my kids won't eat things like spinach and lima beans, or they prefer green beans to salads. They are perfectly healthy, active and not a pound overweight. My MIL? Not so much.

Sorry this is long- thanks for letting me vent. I hope my story helped you feel better, it made me feel better! :)

PS- I too, have a graduate degree and am not quick to answer my states and capitals... I agree with the others: Shame on your mom...

LOL we homeschoolers learn to develop a thick skin on those issues. Every so often someone will quiz my kids on things like state capitols just to see if they know them, and if they don't - why it must be because they homeschool, poor things. :P

I went to public grade school, middle school, high school, college and grad school (good grades the whole way) and I don't know all the state capitols. Horror of horrors!

Honestly I think you need to learn how to "cut the cord" with your mom. Her comments and actions have to mean less to you. If the only way to achieve that is to distance yourself a bit, then so be it.

I always suspect that healing my "inner child" resolves many problems. But we are all a work in progress.

Good luck.

Your M. may be well meaning, but she is going about it all wrong.
You were right to step in. It was obvious your child did not know and your M. needs to stop. She can calmly share her concern with you, but then she needs to let it go. YOU are THE M..

I love my mom. She is a wonderful person and well-liked by all. That is part of the problem. She is happy, funny, sociable and the life of the party. Once she gets going with her stories, she doesn't know when to stop. She loves to tell embarrassing stories about her kids, us, me, ackkk! Oh, they are so funny and everyone laughs but they are often humilating for me, especially to hear them over and over and you know how the stories get more elaborate and funnier over time. There are a couple she loves to repeat and finally I told her how bad they made me feel and would she please stop. She was annoyed at me for not having a better sense of humor about but promised to not tell them anymore. Well, what she has in humor she lacks in memory because next time I saw her, out came the same stories. This time she was telling them to my kids as we all drove in the car. I interrupted her, reminded her that she promised to quit repeating this story and she kept interrupting me with, "oh, come on, it's so funny" and kept going. Well, I persisted with, "mom, stop, mom, mom MOM" and she finally stopped.

Even tho my mom means no harm, it's not cool for her to get laughs at my expense, after I've asked her not to. It only took me 50+ years to realize that my feelings matter too and that's it's OK to be honest when something bothers me.

BTW, I think you did good standing up for your daughter. Your mom was being a bully. You modeled for your daughter a gracious way to speak up. You nicely called out your mom's weird behavior and affirmed your daughters feelings.

My mom never says mean or rude things however my MIL well.......she has said some pretty horrible things. She has flat out called me dysfunctional to my face. She has tried to hide what she has done with my children from me, and lies directly to my daughter about simple things. For instance, last weekend we were visiting and enjoying lunch, my daughter specifically asked if there were mushrooms in the salad because she doesn't care for them. My MIL said "No, there's not any.....turns out there were and my daughter flat out asked her "why'd you lie to me grandma?" her response? Oh, grandma's old she forgot, besides you should eat them they're good. When I walked into the room I flat out told my daughter that 1) No she does not have to eat something she doesn't care for and 2) it was wrong of Grandma to lie to her. It was obvious to everyone that she did not forget at all.

Four years ago I taught 5th grade and knew all the capitols. Four years later .... I can remember maybe 5 or 10. Your mom needed to take a chill pill. You did a great job protecting your daughter from the 'bully.' So long as your daughter sees that you had her back and would stand up for her, then the whole situation wasn't for nothing. :)

My mom and MIL - eh they've had their moments that make me want to scream. Most recent one that comes to mind is when my MIL came to visit and basically told me flat out day 1 "I won't be able to help wash any of the dishes while I'm here." (because of the height of the sink may strain her back like it does mine). Say WHA? So I have to wash all these extra dishes? It's almost twice as many dishes when she comes because she can't eat out of this kind of pan, or husband and I want spicy dinner and MIL won't eat spicy .... so I have to cook in twice as many pans.

I was 7 months pregnant with number two when my mother told me that I was getting kind of fat!

Day after I had this baby number two, my mom brought us dinner. She then invited herself to stay for dinner, trashed the living room with my 2 year old, and expected ME to treat her and my father like guests. I just had my son 24 hours earlier, I was bleeding like crazy, should have been on the couch or in bed, but instead, I am setting the table for guests and picking up toys from her playing with the 2 year old. Then, during dinner, she made a religious comment, and I just said, "we get to decide how our children are raised." I offended her and they left!

I didn't talk to that women for 5 days. I was so hormonal and pissed off.

Well I remember finding out I was adopted at two and a half when my mom said if she had known I would be this bad she never would have adopted me....kind of went down hill from there. :(

I can say the one benefit of having an evil mom raise you by the time you have kids you are immune to it.

One of her more memorable things with my kids was telling them all the time why do you let your mom drug you? All my kids have ADD and oh the horror I decided to medicate them. Since this was clearly an affront to how she raised me she needed to try to turn them against their meds regardless of how well they worked.

Hmmmm...the closest I can get is that my MIL, who totally lacks the brain/mouth filter, says things in FRONT of my kid that (especially) when he was very young) I don't want him to hear.
Things like "He CHOPPED her head OFF" and "They STABBED him 457 times!" Ugh. Please. Do ya even REMEMBER having little kids?

Riley--Wow!

Hi, K.:
Sometimes we have to change roles and become a teacher.

Ask a question when you notice the children aren't being successful with the quizzes. "Mom, do you have a map so we can learn what the capitals of the states are?"

Help your children feel successful when you notice that they aren't being successful.

Have compassion not only for your children, but for your mom. She is so proud of her grandchildren.

Learn to ask questions to make things right.
Good job for asking for help.
That demonstrates courage and compassion.
D.

All I can comfortably share is that you are not alone.....Different people, moms included, have different intentions. Some are well-meaning. Others less so....I have a very 'special' mom :) I have learned to see her 'specialness' as a gift somehow...Your mom has now taught you to be more sensitive to your daughter in ways she perhaps was not to you. What a gift! You accept your daughter and want her happiness -- whether she knows the capitols or not! That is great.
If you can, breath a great deal, and realize you probably cannot change her. Only how you react to her 'style'.
I hope this helps. Believe me. I am writing from deep and painful experience, but again, my experience is a gift.
Jilly

My mother was very immature when we were growing up. So, one year we (my mom and I) were suppose to go to a haunted house. Well, my best friend called and asked me to go out with her. Of course I wanted to go to out with my best friend (hello I was 15!), so my mom got all mad and said, "I didn't raise my daughters to be such bitches."

Lovely. Do you feel better? LOL

Just because someone can't remember capitols doesn't mean they're not smart. They could be great at remembering something else like songs, numbers, languages, or people. I remember a few capitols because I had a mnemonics book that had funny pictures to help make the capitols easier to remember. Like a spring with a face sitting in a field making an ill noise (Springfield, IL.)

I am fortunate that most of the time my mom is a nice person. The exception to that was when I was planning my wedding. First she had asked if the engagement ring was a "friendship ring". Also, as I've shared on here before, she didn't want us to have the kiss at the end of the wedding because she suddenly decided that it was against her religion.

Sometime after my fifth birthday, when my mother showed me a picture of a reversible drawing in a puzzle book – Rubin’s vase – I might really have made her see things clearly the way I did. You could make things shift in your mind and see there was a larger, brighter world hanging on the outside edge of this one. You could see there were invisible designs at the heart of everything! Instead, she tried to make me see – which blinded me for years.

When she asked if I saw the white vase with the black background, I nodded. Who didn’t, right? Equally clearly I saw two black faces staring at each other in front of a white background, only I didn’t mention it because I’d already learned the hard way to be careful about telling her everything I saw. I’d seen her look at me as if I were some weird creature from another corner of the universe often enough.

So this time I kept quiet about those other images in Rubin’s drawing – the two black faces with the white background. She wouldn’t see them anyway. She never saw so many things I saw, mostly because she never wanted to hear what I saw, as if it frightened her.

My mother held the book open patiently with the drawing in front of my face and asked me to look at the vase until something fantastic happened; however, she wouldn’t tell me what that would be. Obediently I stared at it until my eyes watered. Obviously my seeing this unusual happening was terribly important to her, but nothing happened.

“Mommy, does something happen to you?” I was letting her down and my stomach knew it.

“It didn’t at first. Not for hours.” That was comforting, “But then I read what was supposed to happen, and I kept trying. Suddenly, it did.”

Ah, so that was it. You had to read about it first. Maybe I wasn’t so stupid at this after all. I hadn’t read the book. Nevertheless, I kept staring at that design my mother had propped up now on the table in front of me, growing furious with myself because nothing happened. After a half-hour or so I gave up – about the same time, I could see, my mother definitively gave up on me. That’s when she told me I should have seen the vase turn into two black faces with a white background.

“But I saw those right away!” I exclaimed.

“Don’t you lie to me! You would have told me if you did.”

How cheated I felt! Not only had I seen those stupid faces from the beginning, but for as long as I could remember I’d been doing this same kind of thing, not with a silly drawing of a vase, but with everything – with objects, with events – far more complicated than that stupid drawing.

It usually happened when I stared off into space, the space between the couch and the violin on the wall, or the space between the player piano and the front door. That’s when unexpectedly, without warning or a sound, I’d find myself staring into the inner light of a larger, brighter world hanging on the outside edge of this one – or sometimes on the inner edge. And yet…and yet it was this one, this same world I could touch, only it had turned inside out.

I still saw the living room, the couch, the piano, the front door. Yet each thing was clearly something else besides – something else in disguise. Ah! How interesting it all was!

Blurring my eyes, or rather, blurring my mind, is what did it. When I stopped listening to words, then spaces became solid, more solid than objects. And what had been solid before became transparent. Fluid. Alive.

I’d see, hidden within the spaces, new wholes made up of combinations of objects or parts of objects that were separate, solitary, distinct things. The arm of that chair, that left curtain, the blue cape on the peasant girl in the picture on the wall, and the fringe on the lampshade (for example) made up one whole new thing I had to learn about and name.

I’d look around for figures I’d known in dreams and the moods that belonged to them, delighted to find they were real. That soft “she” was inside the softness of the towels, the blankets and the rugs and…toilet paper! Hi! I’m so glad you’re here.

And the strong handsome uncle in my dreams… Here he was, all around me. He was wood now! He stood over there as a door, lay under me as the floor, hugged the books in the bookcase as shelves, made the music of the piano possible by the structures he had formed, held my feet carefully and supported them with each step when I went down the stairs.

Where was that little snot…Ah! Outside. The briars, weeds, thorns, bark and…bird droppings! Of course, it would have chosen to be that!

And that huge project inside me I’d spent so much time on in my dreams, the one that cost me so much effort? I’d see the clouds, billowing cumulus clouds well-outlined against the sky, and know. And those ugly thoughts? There! They were out there all right, the mud in everyone’s garden.

“I do this all the time,” I repeated to my mother, irritated now she thought me an idiot. “You know, see things turn into something else. I see things turn inside out whenever I want to. I thought you meant something…different. Something special.”

honey, it aint a vacation with someone like your mother in tow..course thats probably why she came along to begin with.. to make everyone miserable, but especially YOU.next time she invites herself over tell her, "NO thank you, MY daughter and i are going OUT, maybe next time." if you stop inviting her along, or ALLOWING her to invite herself ALONG,( which is probably closer to the truth)she will stop COMING over, change your number, and change the locks, if you have to. but, trust me on this, her behavior toward your daughter will get worse as the child gets older, and she will lay the blame on you.. she will tell the child, "well if your mother BOTHERED to teach you the state capitals, I wouldnt HAVE to."
been there. done that.
K. h.

I'm one of 3 girls. My mother saw fit to work into everyday conversation a few years ago that I was an "accident". It went something like - "yeah, we really weren't planning on having any more children and then I got pregnant by accident. When my pregnancy seemed different from my previous 2, I assumed you were a boy. I was so convinced you were a boy that we really didn't even pick a girl's name. When you were born and they told me you were a girl I was so disappointed." Gee, thanks, Mom. Way to break out the warm & fuzzies. To add insult to injury, I got a half of a left-over name from my sister (don't ask). Mom didn't even know how to spell it, so she told the nurse - THE NURSE - to just spell it the way it sounded. So my name isn't even spelled like anyone else's. I've had therapy, it hasn't helped much. Love my Mom, but her filling in those details really wasn't necessary.
Added - I have no baby pictures. The ONE picture I thought was my baby picture turned out to be my older sister. I turn up in pictures after about 2 years old. Oh, and my 2 sisters have beautiful baby memory books. I don't have one - nothing. Thanks.

I don't really see what's bad about nana wanting to make sure her grand-daughter know the capitals. Did she push more than she should, probably, but I wouldn't make that an issue. I don't have a story to top that other than mothers always being over passionate and putting their foots in their mouth. You might be that one when your daughter grows up...thats what Nana's do, get on your nerves. Just bear with them.

K., truly, I don't have any. My mom never did that kind of stuff - she has always been wonderful with my kids.

But what I DO want to tell you here is to buy the book "Yo! Sacramento!" It is fun, funny, hilarious! And it will teach your daughter the states and capitals. Google it - I think you can probably buy it from Amazon.

Truly, I still remember some of the stuff in the book!

I'd stand up to your mom, if I were you, even if she does get mad. But standing up to her doesn't mean having a fight in front of your daughter. It seems to me that you did just fine!

(If your mom had the book to help teach your daughter, it might have actually have been fun for your daughter and your mom might have been the hero. Instead, she made your daughter uncomfortable. Sometimes we need visual AIDES to teach a subject that is just rote memorization!)

Dawn

I hate in when the grandparents try to step in and try to parent for you. I don't really think its your fault that your daughter doesn't know her state capitols if they haven't started learning them in school (which is suprising I remember learning them in third grade) I have more problems with my aunt (my mom's sister) then anyone. I was over at her house one time when my son was a couple months old. She laid him down on her bed and walked out of the room, I walked in and scooped him up. She was like "what are you doing he is sleeping." I said "He can't sleep on the bed like that." he hadn't been on the middle of it but near the end, he could have eaisly rolled off and and she has a very plush bed and laid him on his belly. And at our wedding we had an outdoor reception and it was cool and a little windy (it was at the end of september) and she was holding him and I said that he needed to go inside. She said that he was fine. I said you can hold him but go inside so he doesn't get cold. She said oh he is fine. I blew up and said "Look this is my kid not your's! you raised your's and now its my turn."

My MIL says all kinds of things.

She told my husband (before we were married) that he should marry me cause I had good genes and good child bearing hips. Yikes, yes THAT's why we should get married.

She greatly interferes with all kinds of things in our lives. Some of it trying to be helpful, some of it trying to muddle in, some of it cause that's what she straight up WANTS.

She tried to get us to name our son first after her uncle (who killed himself) then after her brother (cause he had no kids and he would leave us LOTS of $$ someday HAAAA! right) then she tried to convince my hubby that our son should be a JR even though we had already decided that neither of us wanted that.