[Blindtlk] Being Disrespected: How to Handle

Sun Sep 28 14:37:04 UTC 2014

I think part of this is just due to her being your mother -- blindness just
exacerbates the situation. Have you ever known a mother that didn't worry
but was still a good mother? There aren't many of those.

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: blindtlk [mailto:blindtlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Brandon A.
Olivares via blindtlk
Sent: Sunday, September 28, 2014 6:22 AM
To: Cindy Ray
Cc: Blind Talk Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Blindtlk] Being Disrespected: How to Handle

Cindy,

Yes she was quite over-protective. I was an only child, and blind to boot,
so you can imagine. I feel like part of it is that now that I'm out of the
house and she doesn't have someone to care for, she doesn't feel useful. She
wants to feel like I need her, so she ignores my protests.

We both don't want to have to resort to preventing her from visiting, but we
need some breathing room, too. We thought moving 250 miles away would help,
but apparently not, lol.

On Sep 28, 2014, at 9:03 AM, Cindy Ray <cindyray at gmail.com> wrote:

> I agree that part of this is a mother-in-law problem. I have experienced
it in the past. However, I think it is definitely a blindness problem as
well. Brandon, was your mother especially attentive when you were at  home.
It fascinates me when parents do this.
> 
> I am afraid that even if I was my mamma's baby, I would have to tell her
without rancor that, while I love her, I am not willing to have her do these
things, thus hurting me and demoralizing my wife. I think I would tell her I
want to be ale to trust that she will treat me like the adult I am, but if
he cannot do this, saying she'll do things or not do things that she has no
intention of following through on, I would tell her that in the future she
will not be welcome in my home if she continues to treat us that way. I just
think it needs to be nipped in the bud. Of course all this takes courage,
and it would be sort of hard to do it. Otherwise, the advice to let her do
something like reorganize the table but make her say where she put each
thing. And if you are picking battles, heck, let her vacuum. But for me,
people think that as blind people we don't know if the house is messy, and
trust me, it doesn't sound as if yours is.
> 
> As for the term "sighty", I rather hate that term. I think it is sort of
disrespectful of sighted folks, but others I know do not share my view.
> 
> Cindy
> 
> On Sep 28, 2014, at 7:16 AM, Brandon A. Olivares via blindtlk
<blindtlk at nfbnet.org> 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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> 

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