[Blindtlk] Being Disrespected: How to Handle

[Carly Mihalakis]

Good morning, Brandon, and everyone,

Something about the sensibilities of Ol'Sighty, particularly when 
Ol'Sighty is also your parent! My boyfriend and I are also totals. My 
Mom doesn't come up so much anymore but when she did, she would do 
the same thing, moving things, "putting things away" all in the name 
of you guessed it, neatening up! One time, we have a little bowl 
containing quarters for laundry, and there is also a container of 
sundry coins. She put the quarters in with the change! I mean, do you 
really need too much of an imagination to suspect a bowl full of 
quarters maybe having some purpose for being segregated like that? 
So, Sunday morning when we got up to do our laundry and seeing that 
and having to dig through all the change in search of our quarters, 
Upon asking her about it later, however, she gave that old tired 
line, "I was just trying to help..."
As has been said by many: Some people you just can't reach! 05:16 AM 
9/28/2014, Brandon A. Olivares via blindtlk wrote:
>Hello,
>
>My wife and I are just looking for a bit of advice on how to handle 
>a difficult situation.
>
>We're both in our mid-twenties. We live on our own in her own home 
>town, about 250 miles from my own family. By all accounts, we keep a 
>nice house. It's not perfect, but it's clean enough, as confirmed 
>also by several of her family and friends.
>
>But still, every. single. time my mother comes up to visit, she 
>finds something to complain about. The worst thing is that I think 
>she believes she is doing it out of love, but on our end it feels 
>like she is being condescending and disrespectful.
>
>I've tried before telling her before she visited to please not say 
>anything because Christine worked very hard on the house to make it 
>nice for her. But still she says or does something every time, without fail.
>
>I'll provide two examples to illustrate:
>
>The first happened a few months ago when she came up to visit. 
>Christine was out somewhere, but told me not to let my mother try to 
>touch anything. I said okay. So my mother visits, and pretty soon, 
>she says the table is cluttered and wants to clean it up. I say no, 
>please don't. We have it handled just fine. But then she starts and 
>just says she's only putting some things in the end-table drawer so 
>the coffee table looked nicer. I asked her not to, but she kept 
>doing it. I figured it was just small things here and there she was 
>putting away, but when Christine looked later on, every single item 
>on the table was put into the drawer, messing up our organization 
>completely. It took us a while to put everything back in its proper place.
>
>Case #2: It was my birthday just last week and my mother came up to 
>visit. Again I asked her not to say anything, and she said she 
>wouldn't. She made a few attempts which I successfully headed off. 
>But then she said the bedroom floor had cat hair on it and needed to 
>be vacuumed, and asked if she could do it. I said no, thanks for 
>letting us know and we'll take care of it. Well five minutes later, 
>I hear the vacuum being turned on. Apparently she told Christine 
>behind my back she was going to do it anyway, and not to tell me. 
>Christine was a bit intimidated I think so didn't speak up. But it 
>was very hurtful that I specifically asked her not to, but she did anyway.
>
>The ironic part is that before we moved out here, we stayed with her 
>for over a year, and she was never a neat-freak. Her own house was 
>often worse than ours would ever be.
>
>So we're not sure how to handle it. I didn't want to make a big fuss 
>about it last weekend because it was my birthday and I didn't want 
>drama. But she might come up for Christmas and we really don't want 
>this to keep happening. Unfortunately as said, every time we mention 
>something, she agrees, but then ends up doing it anyway. At this 
>point we're tempted to just not let her visit our house, but she'd 
>be very hurt by that. But we feel disrespected and degraded, because 
>it seems like she thinks we don't know what we're doing just because 
>we're blind. I'm 26 and Christine is 24, and we're both quite 
>capable to handle things on our own.
>
>Sorry about the lengthy message, but any advice would be appreciated.
>
>Brandon
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