mother advice

[flea]

I've honed in on a problem my mother and I have in communication. If I express any problems, anything that's making me unhappy or worried or even mildly ticked off, she feels like it is showing care and affection to tell me what I am doing wrong and try to fix things. I take this "care and affection" as criticism and undue bossiness.

Example today: Mother calls. In the course of everyday chitchat I mention I am having cavities filled this week. It is looming large; I am both dreading it and feeling guilty about it, since the existence of these cavities is exclusively the fault of my poor dental hygiene. But I just mention it along the lines of, "I'm having cavities filled, doesn't that suck? Oh, and maybe I'll plan to have my wisdom teeth pulled while you are here for Spring Break."

She immediately turns to her husband (a dentist, now retired, who did all of my dental care up until about 2002) to get his opinion on the choice to have my wisdom teeth pulled, quizzes me about why I have so many cavities lately, and tells me that I need to brush better and I should consider using an electric toothbrush (which I have tried and cannot stand, and she knows.) What I wanted to hear was the sort of thing a friend would say, more like, "Man, that sucks. I know you hate dentistry. Teeth are hard." I mean, I am a 36 year old woman. I know how often I am supposed to brush my teeth. I do not brush them as often as I should, but it is not from lack of knowledge. I tried to explain to her that her advice was belittling and not respectful of me, using the example, "What if every time you complained about how fat you are getting, I told you that it was simple to stay thin, you just need to exercise and watch what you eat?"

She doesn't get it. She's never gotten it, even when I try to explain to her during times when we are getting along fine that sometimes (let's face it, almost always) when I complain what I want is sympathy, not to be told what I am doing wrong and how she would do it better. (Today she explicitly said, "I haven't had a cavity in years, and I brush faithfully!") I read a book pitched at parents who want to have good relationships with their adult children, and it could be summed up in one sentence: Do not give them advice or critique their actions; respect them as adults. I considered sending my mother the book, but I felt like even if she read it, she'd never get it.

Do you think there's any hope for her to change? My coping strategy at this point is to try to be exclusively positive about everything when I talk to my mother (I never complain about the children any more - learned that lesson!), but like today, sometimes fairly innocuous communication turns into How Mother Knows Best. And I don't like the omit/lie strategy - it's like admitting I can never have a positive relationship with my mother. If she won't change, what can I do to minimize my feeling disrespected and criticized when she does this?

Comments

[katie-m.livejournal.com]

Do you think there's any hope for her to change?

My mother has, somewhat, but my mother listened to me when I told her how upsetting I sometimes found her giving me advice. I find that she and I can work a usually-harmonious middle ground where she still gives me some advice, me knowing that she's not saying "you are an idiot" but "I looooooooove you. Let me hellllllllllp you" and her knowing that she needs to make sure she's not pushing too much. I don't think that would work if I hadn't been able to have conversations with her where we put this particular conflict on the table clearly, though, and it doesn't really sound like you've had success with that with your mother.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Aside from my tried-and-true method of just not telling her stuff, one rhetorical strategy I've found that works -- for me, anyway; she's much less a buttinsky to me than to you -- is when I tell her a problem only in the context of its solution, already begun.

So, like, fenderbender a month ago, I didn't say, "I had a fenderbender"; I said, "I can't come by on Tuesday; my car will be at the shop. Oh, why? Had a fenderbender, didn't I tell you?" There's no opportunity for advice-giving or criticism, except maybe "How come you're such a shitty driver??" But that's kind of obvious, after-the-fact criticism that can't be couched as advice, so she generally desists. (Although she offers to throw her husband at all my practical problems, in a way that is both troubling -- dude is old! Nobody wants him shoveling that much snow! -- and hilarious.)

[sophiabrooks.livejournal.com]

I have a similar problem with my mother, although she doesn't so much give advice as take my worries and make them worse. For the tooth example, she would come out with things like "Isn't that expensive?" "How will you pay for that?" "What if the dentist accidentally sticks you with the dental tool and you get and infection?" "What if you end up partially paralyzed in the face?"

My solution has been that I don't talk about things like that until they are over. Unfortunately that does lead to some lies of omission, or just a reluctance to talk to her. When my job and department was very precarious, I found I could hardly talk to her because that was all that was on my mind.

I tend to have more the trait of your mother. When my mother complains to me, I am always giving her practical solutions and she just wants to complain. Of course she complains about things like possibly having killer mold in her basement but refuses to have it tested and comes up with solutions like moving out of her house and hoping to have it repossessed for back taxes so she doesn't have to deal with it.

Mothers!

[ellenbs.livejournal.com]

Of course every mother is different, and your entire history together tells you whether you are feeling disrespected and criticized or being disrespected and criticized. If it's the former and it's her way of feeling useful to you, maybe it would help to explicitly state at the beginning of conversations where you just want to vent, 'I just need to vent for a bit to a sympathetic ear and that's how you can be useful to me.'

My mother (although definitely a 'fixer') is pretty hands off. Seriously - my brother had to tell her that he was hurt that she wasn't more interested in his love life. (It's not that she's uninterested - she just doesn't like to pry.) I did finally teach her that sometimes I want to hear "Oh you poor baby - you must be feeling sooo sick!" - she does it even though I'm pretty sure she considers it a waste of time that could be spent give good advice about adequate sleep and chicken soup.

[mearagrrl.livejournal.com]

....yah, I tend to go for the omission, with my parents. Which is probably not the good plan. They feel very left out of my life, but I can't stand the way they try to plan and fix me, otherwise. I suspect they'd say that if I let them in more, they wouldn't do that so much on the occasions I do, but...yeah.

[loligo.livejournal.com]

Ouch. Hmm... are there situations where you actively *ask* for her advice? If not, maybe you could try tossing her one occasionally to see if that diverts some of the compulsive advice-giving from the other situations?