Difficult adult daughter

What's the old saying??? "You can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family."
 

Victor Meldrew said:
Reading this thread has been both enlightening and heartening in that I now see how my mom's ordeals with my older sister are not as uncommon or unusual as I thought.

My mom turns 94 at the end of the year. My older sister turns 64 in a little over a week. My mom was born and raised in Germany. Spent the first 28 years of her life there before marrying and moving to America with my dad. She is kind of the classic European, middle class type elderly lady. Very neat, tidy, old fashioned and set in her ways.

My sister was always sort of the black sheep of the family, taking up with kind of "loser" type guys. Her third and last husband passed away a couple of years ago after he had left her for two years and destroyed his health partying, boozing and drugging, then came crawling back after the bottom fell out and he had nowhere to go. Two years after coming back, he was 100% disabled, dependent on oxygen and a cardiologist told him he couldn't do anything for him. She found him dead in his chair after coming home from work one day.

So now she's living in our mom's house, taking care of her. It was pretty rocky for awhile, with both of them going out of their way to set the other one off, but for the past year or so, things seem to have smoothed out somewhat. My sister is still friends with her mil and bil who live about three hours northwest of her. She spends all day Facebook PM'ing with them and talks on the phone with them a lot. And of course, she's nothing but friendly and buddy-buddy with them while treating my mom like she's just an inconvenience. And she still often talks to my mom in an impatient, disrespectful tone of voice.

All this, knowing full well that my mom is leaving the house to her in the will. No sense of appreciation whatsoever.

I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that my sister fancies herself a "good ol' country gal". Likes country music, NASCAR, Florida Gators, etc. Her inlaws are all into that and of course my mom is totally clueless about all of it.

But the main thing about my sister is that she still seems to have a nasty attitude towards my mom and me both. I really have to tread carefully any time I even try to have a friendly, civilized conversation with her, because anything could set her off. She seems to think if I or my mom disagree with her on the slightest thing, we're somehow trying to imply she's dumb and doesn't know anything.

Just this past Friday, I had spent Thanksgiving with them and spent the night. My sister went grocery shopping and bought a pizza for lunch. As she was cutting it, we got into a spitting match over the subject of pizza cutters of all things. I was trying to tell her about a certain unique kind I have when she cut me off saying she'd seen them before and they looked just like any other. I knew that wasn't so and I politely and humorously pressed the point.

Kablooey!!!! Off she went.

I said a couple of rather harsh things in response, she told me to shut up and leave.

Needless to say, it cast a pall on the whole holiday.
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What would happen if your sister went to live with her in-laws instead? Does your mom need someone to be there all the time?
 
Victor Meldrew, Being the care-giver of an aged parent or parents is an extremely difficult and highly stressful job. It can be all-consuming and terribly frustrating. Care-givers often feel underappreciated (because they are) and can be very sensitive indeed, particularly, I should think, when they have provided a holiday meal for siblings and/or other able-bodied family members who are not sharing the responsibility of care-giving or, at least, providing support of the care-giver. I would have so loved an occasional weekend off during the years I was my parents full-time care-giver, and an annual two-week vacation should not have been out of the question. (alas...)

To the poster, I stopped thinking of my kids as *my kids* when they married. Sure, I brought them into the world, but they are *other adults* now, and I treat them as such. If either of them said something disrespectful to me, I would react the way I would if it came from any adult. Fortunately, that has never happened. But maybe since I don't think of them as my kids, I'm not as sensitive to that sort of thing. ikd.
 

At some point I would suggest that you stop walking on egg shells and just be yourself, polite of course, don't try to turn yourself inside out, set some boundaries and use phrases like " I am not comfortable with this conversation/situation or what ever and if the person persists excuse yourself and leave the room. It is hard at first but it gets easier and you have your personal control back. In the sister situation the problem is purely hers, don't be drawn in, she can't argue or try to manipulate a situation if you won't engage or if you are not there. Believe me this really truly works, after a while she will get the message and might just stop pressing your buttons, she may also give you a wide berth but again that is her problem. After you have left the room a few times and she gets the point all you need to say is " time for me to leave" then immediately go. It is incredibly empowering.

Good Luck Jeannine
 
BlondieBoomer said:
What would happen if your sister went to live with her in-laws instead? Does your mom need someone to be there all the time?
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My mom can take care of herself inside the house in terms of making her meals and bathing, etc. She uses a walker to get around the house. She can't drive anywhere, though. She has a housekeeper come in once a week because my sister isn't about to lift a finger dusting, vacuuming or mopping. She does the dishes and takes out the trash as needed and that's about it.

My mom needs her there to take her to her doctors appointments and do the shopping. Also, just for general looking out for. Honestly, if my mom had someone to do her shopping, run her to the doctor and the bank and help her make sure the bills get paid and so forth, she could live alone. But there's nobody close by to do those things so my sister needs to be there. Besides, I don't think my sister wants to live with those people either. Not sure if she knows what she wants.
 
anodyne said:
Victor Meldrew, Being the care-giver of an aged parent or parents is an extremely difficult and highly stressful job. It can be all-consuming and terribly frustrating. Care-givers often feel underappreciated (because they are) and can be very sensitive indeed, particularly, I should think, when they have provided a holiday meal for siblings and/or other able-bodied family members who are not sharing the responsibility of care-giving or, at least, providing support of the care-giver. I would have so loved an occasional weekend off during the years I was my parents full-time care-giver, and an annual two-week vacation should not have been out of the question. (alas...)

To the poster, I stopped thinking of my kids as *my kids* when they married. Sure, I brought them into the world, but they are *other adults* now, and I treat them as such. If either of them said something disrespectful to me, I would react the way I would if it came from any adult. Fortunately, that has never happened. But maybe since I don't think of them as my kids, I'm not as sensitive to that sort of thing. ikd.
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My sister doesn't do much in the way of "caregiving". Mostly she spends the day on Facebook. She also doesn't provide any holiday meals unless you call going to Walmart and picking up the deli platter, sub rolls, lettuce tomato etc, fixing a meal.

The day after TG, she picked up a premade pizza and put it in the oven.

She's not overworking herself by any means.
 
Marty, this situation doesn't only occur in mother-daughter relationships......I have the same problems with an adult sister, who constantly picks & finds fault with everything I say or do. Should someone happen to agree with something I say, compliments me about a new outfit or praises a dish I've cooked, she can't resist making demeaning comments. She's even told me, I'm to blame for my health problems. If I've learned anything about these kinds of relationships, it's that one person enjoys exerting power & control over someone else. Our father treated our mother the same terrible way.
 
Don't forget most of the folks who treat other folks with constant put downs and demeaning comments would pride themselves on their honesty, personal I would acknowledge their gift of always speaking what they think face to face but also remind them they have zero people skills!!
 

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