Do you know the feeling when you are a grown woman, you have two children and a husband who trusts you, you go to a party with your friends and you get a call not from your husband, who is at home with the children, but from your mom?
And this is not an isolated incident. It’s been going on for years. And despite my attempts to explain to her that I’m not a little girl, she still calls and asks: Where are you? Why aren’t you home yet?
My daughter is 15 years old now and she has long ago started to move around on her own, meet her friends and go shopping. And every time she goes out, every time she goes out, she gets a call from her bubshka with one question: where are you? How are you? Are you okay? When are you going home? It’s late.
And when my daughter gets bored and doesn’t pick up the phone, my mom calls me until I pick up the phone and asks why my granddaughter doesn’t answer, where she is, why she is not home yet.
If I can still cope with this, I am afraid that my daughter will soon stop communicating with her grandmother. And all attempts to talk have been unsuccessful so far. Has anyone had a similar experience? What is the right thing to do?
Comments
You might have to learn a tactful way to say “fuck off.” There’s no reasoning with crazy. Your mom may have y’all’s best interests at heart, but impact matters more than intent, and you need to learn to set a boundary. If not for yourself, then for your daughter.
Learn from your daughter and stop picking up the phone when your mother spam calls you as well.
>I am afraid that my daughter will soon stop communicating with her grandmother.
You are afraid she has more of a spine than you and puts up boundaries?
How about you stop picking up the phone as well?
Does your mom live at your house? How does she know that you & her daughter aren’t home yet?
“Mom, I love you very much, but if you choose to continue treating me like I’m a child and over stepping with my daughter, then you are choosing to have a limited relationship with us.”
Then follow through.
This may be the nuclear option (which seems warranted) but tell her you will be taking her for neurological and cognitive function tests since she seems so confused.
Edit to add: Why does she know everyone’s location?
Get your daughter a new phone and don’t let your mother have her number.
Tell her why.
I have had this problem with my mother too. My oldest daughter was a rebellious teen. 15 is a very vulnerable age. It’s easy for someone to get in their head and undermine your authority in her view. Explaining it to your mother won’t help because she’s doing this on purpose. She sees anything your child does wrong as a sign of you being a bad parent. I’m not sure how but you need to minimize your daughter’s contact with her grandmother until she’s older. Maybe get her a different cell phone and have more control over it. Now I’m a grandma of a teen so I’m not fully in favor of cutting out a grandma that cares about the children. But as long as you’re raising them, then you are the primary adult in their lives.
By going no-contact. You need to create the life you want for yourself, before you can give your daughter the same thing.
You shouldn’t engage with your mother’s behaviour. If she calls you when you’re out partying with friends, just don’t pick up the phone. Why would you, you’re busy. Don’t encourage her unhealthy anxiety coping strategies. Your daughter is doing the right thing.
You can both see your mother and talk to her at agreed times, that aren’t when either of you go out with friends.
Don’t try to reason with her, just tell her it’s gonna be like that from now on and stick to it.
How does she know when you aren’t home?
We’re Eastern European living in the states and we had to cut contact with my mother in order to live some sort of normal life. The situation was made worse by her borderline personality disorder she’d refused to acknowledge. We’d tried everything – she’d refuse therapy and would pretend to respect boundaries for all of one second each time.
Honestly she did it all under the guise of being afraid for everyone. At some point people reach a ‘big age’ and none of the fear bullshit is acceptable any longer. We’re now no contact.
If your boundaries are constantly disregarded then the only real solution is keeping the person at a distance.
The only thing to explain is some new boundaries. That you then enforce.
That’s incredibly excessive, and you’re overdue for both implementing boundaries where your mom is concerned and being ready to uphold them. Stop answering the phone, and when she inevitably demands to know why no one is humoring her micromanagement, tell her in no uncertain terms that while you love her, her role is not to manage or dictate your schedule or whereabouts, and she needs to stop doing that because it’s intrusive and annoying, and insulting in that it implies you can’t manage yourself or your own children. If she doesn’t stop, be prepared to demand some space or block her number entirely. The only way to handle someone who doesn’t take no for an answer is to insist on no, with no other options. You need to reinvent dynamic of your relationship with her to fix this, and it probably won’t be pretty, but it’s necessary. Especially, like you said, if you want your kids to want their grandmother in their lives. Because at this rate, they won’t. And they’re going to start wondering why you don’t feel the same, and may start to see you as part of the problem since you haven’t stepped in to stop this behavior. I wish you luck, this sounds difficult.
Grow up and stop allowing this. Stop answering the phone. Grow a spine and create some boundaries. You are a grown ass adult and letting yourself be treated like a child.
Time to work on your boundaries. Or actually the time was about 20 years ago but start today since you haven’t yet
Do you and your daughter live with your mom or something? Does she not have much else going on in her life? How does your mom know everyone’s plans all the time? Does she show signs of cognitive decay?
Bluntly tell your mom: “You may think your repeated calls are acceptable because they come from a place of concern, but they’re not. They’re infantilizing, intrusive, and smothering. This behavior is pushing us away from you, and it needs to stop. If you don’t respect this boundary, I will change my daughter’s number to one you will not have access to, and I will mute all notifications from you on my phone.”
Then enforce the consequences, or she won’t stop. Stop telling her about your plans, and turn off any location sharing on your phones. At this rate, your daughter will absolutely not want to talk with her grandmother at all, and she will be rightly upset with you for not stepping in on her behalf.
Your mom doesn’t have to fully understand in order to respect that boundary. If she has that much anxiety about you and your daughter going out and living lives, then that’s really unhealthy, and maybe she needs to see a therapist or have a cognitive exam.
The right thing to do is grow the hell up and stop letting this happen. Don’t pick up the phone. Be more like your daughter.
Your mom knows things about this world that are darker than you clearly are aware of. She worries for your daughter because there are monsters out there that hunt young teen girls and she worries because your daughter is just as clueless as you are to just how horrible people can be to young girls. Her keeping tabs is because she’s probably sick with worry. She might be watching too much news, maybe she had something horrible happen to her when she was young and can’t speak about it to you because she doesn’t want you to be scared of the world like she is. She just wants to check in and know what’s going on, where you are and who you’re with and how you’re getting home because she knows these details matter if something unthinkable should happen.
How does she even know that you’re not home?
You don’t need to explain anything. Stop picking up the phone. Stop all contact if you need to. You are just allowing her to treat you like a doormat. You need to grow a spine and enforce boundaries.
It might be worth speaking with a therapist about boundary setting. They’ll have some useful advice for you about how to respond when she pushes back.
If you love your mom you understand she is doing this because she loves you and is worried about you and her grand daughter. It means she loves you and wants to know you both are safe and wants to know how you’re getting home alive and well. She doesn’t feel like she’s being a good family member otherwise if she doesn’t do these things. Clearly no one else in the comments gets this. When you care you worry and sometimes you check in to alleviate the stress. People who don’t give AF don’t stress because they don’t care and therefore don’t check in.
You need to stop her from being able to know when your out and then learn from your daughter and answer the phone.
She’s calling you like you’re 5years old not a grown ass woman.
If it was your husband calling you like this everyone would be saying he’s controlling and abusive the relationship is just with your mum and not your husband
You literally cut contact with her.
SET BOUNDARIES
You need to grow up. It seems your 15 year old daughter already did, thank goodness.
She is living through you. Over you. She’s going to do the same to your daughter. Your daughter is entitled to stop speaking with her. That would be the healthy thing for you daughter to do.
If you try setting boundaries (and actually doing it, not just trying to speak to her) she’s probably going to throw a fit. She’s going to feel like you’re taking her life away, because you will. Her life right now is to control you and your entire family’s every seconds of your lives. Because you allow her to. And she’ll continue doing so until you force her to stop. Lock the door and shut the phone off.
If you don’t, your daughter will probably shut her out of her life as much as she can. If you don’t set boundaries with your mother, your daughter is also going to avoid you. Your daughter will not come home, because it will mean your mother will try to retake control of your daughters life, because you allow your mother to do that. Same if your daughter has children and your mother still has good health, your daughter is going to avoid you in order to avoid your mother and her trying to take control of both their lives.
By the sounds of it, you’re not actually going to do anything though.
There isn’t any explaining you can really do to someone who doesn’t think they have a problem. This is an enmeshed parenting style. It can be very hard to get these people to seek help. And you and your family may need to seek help as you grapple with what’s to come when you assert boundaries: rage, ramped-up control tactics, threats, et cetera.
For now you just need to assert boundaries – not picking up the phone when you see it’s her calling, not replying to texts asking you or your daughter where you are, and so forth. Again, talking to a professional can be really beneficial in validating that you’re doing the right thing here, as well as leaning on any friends or other family members you might have who can be positive and supporting.
Does she have access to your/your family’s location sharing? Stop that shit right now if she does. Start setting a schedule of when you will talk to her and have your daughter do the same. If you want her to treat you like an adult you need to act like one, set boundaries, enforce them, rinse repeat.
You don’t “explain” people like this into changing their behavior; you set boundaries. The fuck are you picking up calls at a party? Or answering to anyone for what you allow your daughter to do?
Disable notifications for your mom’s calls, OP. Set a frequency for how often you would like to talk to her, and ignore disruptions between those intervals. When you do speak, do not engage with harassment or arguments about your whereabouts and do not entertain her questioning about your child. If that’s all she has to say, end the call.
> Do you know the feeling when you are a grown woman, you have two children and a husband who trusts you, you go to a party with your friends and you get a call not from your husband, who is at home with the children, but from your mom?
Honestly, no I don’t.
Why would my mother even know where I am? It’s none of her business where I go and how late I stay. I might tell her these details afterwards if we chat about it, but my [late] mom would never have been so entitled as to think she could tell me off for living my very own middle aged life.
I mean this kindly but it sounds like you need to grow up, shut up, and put your mother on an information diet.
Your mom is still controlling you bc you allow it. Set boundaries and enforce them. Its up to her if she respects you and what you say and if she listens. If she doesn’t its her choice to not be apart of things.
You need to realize that she knows EXACTLY what she is doing, and is doing it ON PURPOSE.
You are not responsible for your Mom’s anxiety.
I think everyone is saying the same thing, which is learning how to set boundaries. You can learn this through therapy or self-help books or podcasts.
Boundaries are not bad. Boundaries keep you safe and let the other person know what you’re comfortable and uncomfortable with. Your comfort matters. This may feel like a tall order, but doing small steps and building up will help you and your daughter over time.
Imagine if your daughters future partner treated her this way. How would you feel, and what would you do? What do you want to instill in your daughter? You and your daughter can learn together how to set boundaries 🙂
How does she know if you leave home? Does she live directly across the street from you or something?
You don’t explain WHY. You explain THAT. You explain THAT we are no longer going to pick up the phone when she calls at an inconvenient time. You explain THAT if it continues to happen, we are going to block her number. You explain THAT the ball is in her court about whether she can still chat with you and your family or not.
Then you stop and wait, and FOLLOW THROUGH. She can only harass you because you are allowing it. Nothing you can say will explain to her why it’s wrong. She will only learn by consequences.
PS If you have location sharing turned on with her, for the love of god turn it off. Don’t ask permission.
Your daughter is within her rights to stop talking to her grandmother. You should enforce the boundary.
I come from a family with a grandmother that goes nuclear with anxiety if people don’t do what she wants, including picking up the phone. Sometimes the best thing to do is limit information, for everyone’s peace.
“Mom, I understand you care for me and [daughter] but how you are expressing your care feels stifling instead of supportive. I need you to do xyz. If you can’t follow through on this, then abc.” People can comprehend without agreeing, they can also ignore and turn it back on you. You can’t control other people, you can only control yourself. If your daughter chooses not to talk to her grandmother anymore then that is consequences for your mother’s actions. If she has a problem with that, that’s something she has to work on. Best you can do is enforce your boundaries and encourage your daughter to do the same.
How about boundaries or telling her to fuck right off?
>If I can still cope with this, I am afraid that my daughter will soon stop communicating with her grandmother.
I would simply let the natural consequences happen and stop trying to broker a relationship between your daughter and a relative who feels entitled to steamroll her boundaries and yours.
Learn from your daughter.. Don’t pick up your mom’s calls when she’s being annoying. If you pick it up and she starts asking you questions like you are a 5 year old, hang up on her. If she repeatedly calls you, either put your phone on silent or block her for a day.
The more attention and information you give your mother, the more annoying she’ll become.
silence worked for me during the early days of cell phones…..the routine was to call repeatedly and when multiple attempts were unanswered she would call my husband out of “concern”……I let him handle it from there.There were occasions when she’d drive to my home in a rage and pound at the door unannounced during my night shift rest times……didn’t respond then either.You have zero obligation to participate
Girl what the fuck
You are an adult with teenagers. Stop letting your mother run your life. Go to therapy, learn about boundaries, put them up, and keep them in place.
My own mother was like this,up until I had my baby,she felt she had more say over MY child and would constantly disrespect me and my husband, talking down to us like kids.All while we’re grown ass adults in our 30s.i cut her off,it’s 3yrs of NC and I have ZERO regrets.
You are an adult with your own life,stop letting your mother have control.She is taking control cause you are allowing her too much power.Take that power back!