[Blindtlk] Being Disrespected: How to Handle

[Chris Nusbaum]

Dear Brandon:

First, I am very sorry you are having to go through this. It is often said
among our circles that at times our families are the hardest people to
educate. I am blessed to have a family which has always been supportive of
my growth and capabilities. Unfortunately, however, this is not true for
many of us, confidence and prowess in the skills of blindness
notwithstanding.

It seems to me that your mother simply is not "getting it." In my opinion,
this is not something for which she can be blamed. A mother's instinct is to
protect and care for her children, no matter their age. For this reason,
parents of *any* child--blind or sighted--often feel uncomfortable with
their children branching out and doing something on their own which they are
used to doing for them. As evidenced by the experiences shared by empty-nest
moms Julie and Judy in this thread, getting out of these habits takes some
time and, in many cases, emotional maturity. Your mom may simply need more
time to work through whatever emotions she might have.

By acknowledging this I am by no means condoning her behavior. You and
Christine are adults. This is a simple statement of fact and with it comes
certain changes, rights and responsibilities. You live on your own, with all
that this statement implies. Therefore, you ought to have the right to take
care of your own house, which you duly bought with your own money, without
someone who has no responsibility for the upkeep of the house meddling in
your affairs. To me, your mother, when staying at your house, is a guest
there. If this is how she is to be viewed, never in my experience has a
guest constantly criticized the cleanliness of the house without being
thought rude. Some hosts might even feel this cause to kick the
inconsiderate guest out of the house. This, in my opinion, is a universal
principle of common courtesy, whether or not the host is blind. However,
this is not just any guest we are talking about here; this is your mother.
You cannot kick her out of the house, nor would you (probably) want to. So,
what to do?

I think all of this can be boiled down to a matter of communication. Sure,
you have tried to communicate with her in the past to no avail, but this has
been in the heat of the moment when emotions run high. Therefore, I would
talk with her privately and in-person when neither of you is caught in your
emotions. I would then take care to calmly explain to her how I feel without
accusing her of anything. We often get defensive when we feel as though
someone is accusing us of some wrongdoing. If we keep the focus on
ourselves, however, the person on the receiving end often is more receptive
to what we have to say. For example, you might start off with the following:
"Mom, Christine and I bought this house with our own money and we have been
taking care of it for the past few years now. We are adults and we want to
be treated as such. Right now I feel disrespected when I am constantly told
what is wrong with my house." All you can do after this is see how the
conversation goes.

Please understand that I am not trying to put words in your mouth. I am
merely trying to give the best suggestions I know to deal with this
situation. If you have any other questions or would like to talk further, I
would be happy to communicate with you privately by phone or by email. I
hope these suggestions help you and I wish you the best of luck in dealing
with this sensitive situation.

Sincerely yours,

Chris Nusbaum

-----Original Message-----
From: blindtlk [mailto:blindtlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Brandon A.
Olivares via blindtlk
Sent: Sunday, September 28, 2014 8:16 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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