[Blindtlk] Being Disrespected: How to Handle

[Judy Jones]

Hi, Brandon, this is Judy.

There might be several issues here, but the big picture is to keep the 
communication with mom going, and be as honest and loving as you can.

I am a mom with grown daughters, and sometimes we moms tend to enter where 
we shouldn't.  It is something we grow into, realizing our kids are on their 
own, no matter how grown and capable they are.  This is an interesting 
growing time for me, with one daughter engaged to be married, and the other 
on her own.

Not knowing the relationship you and Christine have with your folks, but 
suggesting you sit down with Mom, let her know the love is definitely there, 
that you value her, but let her know how you feel when she tries to do 
things around your house.

On the other hand, why not strike a compromise and let her do some little 
things around your house,?  It might feel to you like she is making a 
statement about what you are not doing in your house, but maybe, like me, 
she is a putterer, always finding something to do, whether it is in her 
house or yours, dusting off something for a minute, wiping down the front of 
the fridge, for no reason other than it is there and she's done it for 
years, etc.  I am a putterer, and sometimes it drives my husband nuts. 
He'll tell me to "light somewhere."

It also might be a good idea to impress on her that to move items from their 
accustomed places hinders your organization.

Maybe it would be okay for her to vacuum, for example, but leave your things 
where you guys want them, a bit of a compromise.  Allow her some puttering, 
yet help her to see where you stand, defining your boundaries, but let her 
enjoy her puttering if she is used to it.

Above all, however you handle this, keep the love flowing and the forthright 
communication open.

Remembering back, I can think where my husband and I went through a time 
where we subconsciously wanted to prove successful to our folks, so we were 
a bit over-sensitive because of that.  Our parents were very patient with 
us, I'm sure.

Let us know how things go.

Judy


-----Original Message----- 
From: Brandon A. Olivares via blindtlk
Sent: Sunday, September 28, 2014 6:16 AM
To: Blind Talk Mailing List
Subject: [Blindtlk] Being Disrespected: How to Handle

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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