musings about the negativity of my parents...
Our evil pup (Hudson) was wild and out of control, so he was leashed. My dad was clearly unimpressed with his wildness (as were we, we're working on it), but yet he still kept calling him over, getting him going, then complaining about it. That's no biggie, but I noticed over the course of the evening that EVERYTHING made him mad. He's going in for minor surgery and he spent ten minutes slamming the medical profession because they sent him a package of information that was almost thirty pages long (to read about his surgery). I said that sounded like someone who was thorough to me. He says his doctor's a flake because he's going to have to use three different eye drops, four times a day afterward. (He says two is more than enough.) I was in disbelief. If you don't like your doctor see someone else I suggested. Nope, they are all the same. It's a conspiracy. But this dr's the worst because my dad knows a guy who had the same surgery but didn't need any drops (sure) and so my dad's not going to use the drops. It's all unnecessary...etc. etc. I'm worried that this attitude is going to actually inhibit the success of the procedure after the fact. He's in his seventies and has also declined to have a physical done (pre-op requirement) so he'll be even madder when the doctor refuses to do the surgery at all. I'll have to remember to screen my calls that month. He went on and on about not wanting sour cream on his chili. Fine. I don't use it either. I saw it in a recipe magazine and put a little out (as well as cheddar and green onions) in side bowls as choices for toppings. Don't use it. He then went on and on about the cheese. Okay, dad, don't. I like cheese on mine...can't we just live and let live? I promise none of the offensive cheese on my plate will spontaneously fly off and land on yours. My couch was too soft. Then it was too hard. The movie was too loud, and yet he felt it wasn't loud enough either. And, he really felt Mamma Mia should have featured the music of ABBA performed by ABBA. When I (foolishly) mentioned that that might break the mood of the piece (switching back and forth between actors and ABBA) he just kept repeating that, clearly, I wasn't listening to him. In fact, every single time I didn't agree one hundred percent it was CLEARLY because I didn't listen. I'm not griping or upset, but when they left (after a ten minute rant from him about the @#$% weather - this is me gently quoting him) I just felt such an overwhelming sadness for him (and for my mom too). How awful it must feel to BE that negative all the time. Should I be concerned that there's an underlying medical problem? I've talked to my mom about it a lot and she says it's constant, but that he's been like that for years. I definitely see a difference. He now knows better than EVERYONE. And everything is the result of someone who is incompetent and out to get him. I think that if someone dropped a million dollars in his hands he'd find a reason to slam that. I know I won't be able to talk this out with him, but was just wondering if anyone else has been through this with a loved one. I'm finding it really hard. |
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| Tracie,I think we have the same father!He has been much the same as yours,nothings right,nobody does anything properly,his doctor is a fool,he gets new medicines prescibed but doesnt take some of them as they are "unnecessary",hes been MUCH worse since mother died after 55 years of marriage.He had a heart attack and was revived 3 times "But they wouldnt know,it was clearly the Asian flu"so he refused to stay in hospital after the first day.He bought a house about 18 months ago,now theres a downturn in the market and houses are way slow selling and going for less than he paid ,but its our brothers fault as "he is a bank manager and should have known this was going to happen,and stopped Father from buying"...like that was an option!he doesnt have to sell now,he is just being a pain,if he sits tight the prices will probably rise again but no,he wants to sell NOW.He quotes Real Estate agents he has talked to,they have all told him house prices are up 30% and there are more buyers wanting houses than houses for sale(he is almost deaf therefore cant use the phone,is housebound,my sister lives with him as his carer and there have never been real estate agents visiting,so all these ones he talked to are in his imagination).His house is well priced for the size and location and has been for sale since just before Christmas,no offers.
He tells the craziest stories,like my brother in law quit his job (as an area manager for a large department store)because one brand of cookies are now putting 2 less cookies in the packet but charging more!(brother in law actually had a better job offer and he has NO control over any cookie company). My poor sister has a cow of a life with him,she doesnt do anything like Mother did,Mother was perfect at everything but he is very very bitter that she died first as she was never ill and he has been ill for 30 years,so when she got ill and was rushed to hospital,he could only say "Get better and come home and look after me like you are supposed to",no concern for her own sake.Now she "ruined his life' and she was the old fashioned wife,did everything,he didnt know how to boil a kettle,he complained he always opened his clothes closet and there everything was,all his married life,clean,ironed,ready to wear,house was always spotless,meals on time and only ever the foods he preferred,now unless he gives detailed orders to my sister,sometimes a food he dislikes appears on his plate!How shocking!What can he do?Or the shirt he wants to wear today is in the wash.This would never have happened with Mother.She would have been up washing/drying/ironing it in the night in case he wanted to wear it again the next day. He is so rude and ungrateful Sis will pack up and leave one of these days. Older men seem to totally forget,the nicer you are to others(especially the people looking after you),the nicer they will be to you. My sisters husband does everything like taking time off work to take Father to medical appointments,specialist visits,and they take him out somewhere each weekend,they ran him around to the hospital,visited each day, and did his eyedrops after he had his cataract operations but as he had some lingering pain,they "hadnt done it right" even though the doctor confirmed they had.Any suggestion he join a group of other older men is met with derision,he has no time for stupid old codgers. He wants us to visit then complains about the kids,they arent interested in what he is (The War,planes and plants)therefore they have "no idea" about life and are wasters and too noisy.I am incompetint and shouldnt have had kids.My other siblings refuse to visit him but "I have no idea why not". Us offspring are divided as to whether this is how all old men end up,or whether he has some medical issue.His doctor seems to think he is "normal" for his 80 years. BE GLAD he doesnt live with you. |
| Ah, that was my grandmother as well.
She actually was like that most of her life, just getting worse as she aged. My dad was an only child, she even said if she had her way she never would have had him  . How would that make you feel as a kid???
She also didn't allow any pets - they were dirty, filthy creatures. My dad rebounded as an adult - we had lots of animals, just like I do. She also had the same views on doctors - paranoid and they all "were crooks". So if misery loves company, as the saying goes, you do have lots of people in the same boat. It just is a shame that some people are that way. |
| oh i know we have the same father.. he tells me all the time he is dying yes he is 85 but in better helath then me.. oh he loves my sheepies but tell me how i over spoil them and why do they have to be so crazy .. duh
so i feel your pain .. i love them but sometimes they make us crazy!! |
| they say we all become caricatures of ourselves as we age. if you think about it these are probably traits he always had to some degree. My dad is 86 and has become more active as he ages, but he does seem to have some paranoia about "them" whichever them it is of the moment - doctors, government (that's a biggie) etc.. I guess its to be expected to some degree of a person who became of age during WWII and lived through the entire cold war, in addition he was a NYC cop for almost 30 years, but he does seem to keep his sense of humor and likes to do things.
I assume if and when he can't get around as well he may get more negative. I guess the lesson here is to cultivate the positive aspects of your own personality or your kids will be saying the same things about you on a few decades 
ps I haven't found a man yet that liked Mama Mia - personally I loved it!!! |
| My parents are in their seventies and the are much grouchier now too. My mom and dad seems to argue much more, but they have switched places. My dad was the one who always insisted he was right...now it's my mom.
My daughter has an obsessive compulsive disorder and when we go to visist my mother will upset her to her limit within the first hour. They live in Las Vegas, and are constantly asking us to visit, but the only one who will go easily is my husband. He spends the entire visit in the Casinos...so...not fair. I just thinks it sucks getting old if you lose your sense of humor. I feel all of your pain. |
| I haven't experienced this with my mom yet but she's still in her 70's so I feel for you guys. However my sister who had a brain injury some years ago is very much like this and it's difficult being around her without it escalating into an arguement.
What occurred to me when reading the post is perhaps it could be the onset of Altiezmers (think I spelt it wrong) as one of the symptoms is aggressive behavior. Don't want to diagnose anyone but perhaps it's something to be aware of? It must be so frustrating trying to deal with someone in that state and hugs to all of you. Marianne |
| I have an idea about this and if you will bear with me, it might help you all with your aging parents. Through my life, my mom was a tough old bird, and of all five of her children, I was her least favorite, years went by when I was in my early 20's she didn't speak to me. I can go on with the crap I took from her growing up, but frankly I don't even want to remember. Cut to today, she is 86 in March and lives with me, the one who would never amount to anything.... When she had that stroke a few years ago, about when I was most absent from OES.org, I mentioned to the Md's, I thought she may be uncompliant with her meds and I thought it might be because she was depressed... Well, they started her on Lexipro, very small dose, half a pill a day and I live with a dream. On occasion, I will see her start slipping and getting a little nasty around the edges and I will put a whole pill in her meds, maybe only once a week or less. I discovered that my mom may have needed to be on an antidpressent all her life. If you don't think this half pill is doing anything, I let it lapse thinking it was really not all that important. I will make a very sad and horrible story short and tell you, that her without that little dose of Lexipro, she is not a person you would want to meet, between wanting to die or bitching me out for something.... the nasty mom returned, the mom from hell who I would never have been able to care for. I couldn't get that perscription filled fast enough and her levels up fast enough.
If you or a sibling has anything to do with taking them to the Dr's or helping dose out the meds, suggest that they are depressed and might need a little antidepressent in thier lives. It is fact that as we age Seritonian (sp?) levels decrease and with strokes the production can be stopped altogether. As I say she is on Lexipro, but there are others out there and some I'm sure that are less expensive and again, some may work and other may not. I was lucky, the first one they tried her on was perfect. By the way, I don't remind her that she takes a mood elevator, cause she is not "a depressed" person, yeah right! I think she may have been depressed her whole life. I'm so glad that I mentioned to the docs that she seemed depressed and did a little research myself regarding the effects of strokes. I love taking care of my mom, and 97% of the time there are no issues. When there are issues, it is due to a lower level of seritonan and I adjust her meds slightly for one dose and things are better. I hope this helps all of you to enjoy your parents and see that with a little chemical adjustment they can be better moms and dads. I'm not a person who believes that you take a pill for everything, but I do believe in this for sure. |
| Tracie, I really feel your pain. My parents have always been very difficult to deal with. I'm an only child and always felt like a gooseberry. At weekends when dad came home from work, I was told to stay in my room. Mum was (and still is) very jealous. Just an example, when I was 9 my mum told me, in front of a room full of family friends, that if I had been born 6 years earlier she might have loved me.
This weekend I called her to see if she was OK and was bombarded with totally false allegations, accused of ridiculous things I would never even think of.. and then she confessed "I have PMT" which always makes her so frighteningly violent. I put down the phone after an hour feeling exhausted, abused and very upset. Of course that is just the tip of the iceberg. My dad, who lives with Greg and I although mum & dad are still together- mum likes her space.. is very, very negative. In fact, everything he says is negative. It drives me mad, it really drags me down. He is so sarcastic and always thinks the worst, the world is against him. He is 64, and has been this way for at least the last 5 years. Prior to that, I didn't really get to see much of him so can't really say if he's always been like it. It is so hard to live with. He doesn't see anything the way I do, if I try to say something good he just throws it back at me. I would love for my parents to try anti-depressants. But I don't think they would like the idea of that. I guess the important thing is to stay positive yourself, even after such a negative episode. Keeping a clear perspective is so important. |
| Fortunately, my mother tends to always be upbeat at the age of 83. Sometimes too much & that can be annoying. Like repeatly complimenting me or my sons or my husband about something or contatantly"bragging" (in my opinion) to her friends about us. When it sorta gets to me I think back on my dad & my mother-in-law & how negative they were about things. My dad was pretty much that way all his life but more so near the end. Not super negative but never the less not a very upbeat person. My mother-in-law was that way about the last 3 years of her life. Once when I visited her when she was in the nursing home (an inbetween stay before going to assisted living) after working 10 hours that day, she made some very caustic remark to me in front of her sister & daughter (who didn't speak up to defend me but had stunned looks on their faces). I stood up, told her I had had enough & when she thought she could talk to me in a civil manner again, I'd come back for a visit but not until I got an appology & I walked out of the room! It took about 5 days & she finally appologized thru her son to me.
My husband says parents get us back in the end for what we did to them as teenagers!  I really think it all boils down to the fact that healthwise they are not able to control their lives totally anymore & it is very frustrating to them. I remember visiting my dad the last week of his life & helping him eat dinner. He looked at me & said very nicely with a sigh, "It's not supposed to me this way. You shouldn't be having to help me. I'm your father & my job was always to take care of you".
So when it gets too negative maybe try to change the subject immediately or remove yourself form the room for a few minutes. Sometimes that's the best way to handle it. |
| LOL. That sounds very similar to my dad. Rile the dogs up, complain they won't settle down. I can't hear, it's too loud. This guy's an idiot because I know another guy who did it a different way.
To make matters worse, my dad is obsessed with how much money people make but has a very distorted view of what the value of a dollar is in today's society. He thinks if you make $40k a year, you should be sailing a yacht, jetsetting on vacations all the time and really, living the high life. There's no telling him differently. He's lived the last 30 years not actually working for money so he just doesn't relate. I try to steer all conversations away from working and money but it inevitably always comes back. |
| If I started telling stories about my husband's grandmother, I'd be here writing all week. She's the nastiest human I've ever met - she should be a character in a movie or book. She has a fortune but gripes about every single penny that she has to spend. She lives off of her social security check and makes more in her interest than my husband and I make in a year but rails against having to pay for her medicaid supplement. She has every right to get out there and enjoy life, travel, shop, volunteer - whatever, but instead she just stays in her home and complains about everything. She's miserable and makes anybody around her miserable as well.
How I've learned to deal with it over the years is to literally let it roll. I know while she's telling me something terrible about someone else in the family that the next day she'll be telling them something terrible about me. We have all just come to accept it and not pay attention to it at all. If we expended emotions in accordance to what she dished out, we'd collapse, so we just don't. Ignore the negativity, take care of her physical needs (get her to the store, the dr, take her to lunch, etc) and that's it. |
| Sounds like my father. But mine will not come over to my house with mine dogs. |
Well as everyone else here I feel for you. I'm going to add my tale, read if you want if not just skip to the very last paragraph. It might be insightful and help to understand, I'm sorry it's so long but i don't know of another way to tell it. 
When i was 14, my brother who was 23 was killed in an accident. I remember my mom TOTALLY losing it at that time, and she was never the same after that. There were things said that I will never forget, but i know now that it wasn't really my mom talking. Fast forward about 8 years or so and my dad started thru a personality change. We found a brain tumor in my dad the size of an orange . She became very bitter that my dad had become ill and had to retire and she lost her 'position' in society. My dad was a very prominent oil and cattle banker in West Texas/New Mexico. My dad lived anothr 15 (?)years, and my mom grew harder and harder as the years went by. My mom was just a very hard person and very selfish. She was extremely jealous of the closeness my father and i had. I truely adored my father and was very much his "tomgirl". We went thru a period when my dad died of her not speaking to us for almost 1 year. Again a very stressful time and my mom lost it again. But I at that time still hadn't put all the facts together.......... We just knew she was mad as a hornet at the world and we were her target. In thinking back on all of these items I realized my mom had depression and probably fought it for most all of her life. ( and now I have learned to watch for it in myself at times) My mom never wanted for anything in her whole life........She was a debutant (who wanted a daughter who was one but THAT wasn't about to happen and didn't!! ) but i remember her complaining like mad about my dad, saying a lot of what you guys are all saying. (Yes I was very close with my dad)
Bear with my story here, i'll get to the end and you will understand better). I was showing Duncan and campaigning him when i received the call my mom was in the hospital and probably wouldn't make it. I went to Tx. thinking i would be gone 3 weeks. .... 4 months later after the trust account lawyers all agreed that i wasn't out to take her money..... I came home, acquired a home in the assisted living place (as she would not under any circumstances come live with us), rented a motor home and went down to pick her up. Had the movers come and get all of her belongings to come here to Colorado. I went down to bring my mom back to be with us. (Dog showing went out the window at that point and it's amazing how everyone will forget you and a wonderful dog when your not in the ring every weekend!) The morning before we were to leave, At 8 am we went for her hair appointment, to her attorney's so she could change her will (we found out the caregiver she had had, had been stealing her blind), and then back to the nursing home to get her ready to leave the following morning. We got back and they checked her over and her foot leg were so swollen they were concerned. So off to the hospital we went.. She had a blood clott in her leg. This was at 4 pm. within 1 hour all 98 pounds 4'8 of her was standing in the corner, had ripped out her IV, and was kicking and spitting at the nurses! That sweet little kitten had become a hellcat that it took 4 BIG nurses to contain! I had to find a sitter to stay with her that night......... I could not believe they released her to me the next morning.. They sedated her and put her in the bed in the motor home waving goodbye as fast as they could! Now, i can do a Jeff Foxworthy tale about you've never lived until you've driven to Greeley Colorado from San Antonio Texas with a 76 year old oxygen depraived half blind, pre dementia woman semi-sedated.
I made that drive by myself with my mom in 36 hours straight. She never did remember that trip. We pulled into this gorgeous assisted living place, where i had all of her own furniture etc. (did i mention i had lost 2 of my nursing jobs by this point?). They told me to go home and get some sleep. Norm and I made it home, to the phone ringing and my mom having tried to run away. Hire another sitter..it took her about 2 weeks to come out of this spell.
That place lasted about 2 months. Found a smaller one. She was happier there, and fine for about 8 months and then started getting meaner and meaner. We took her in where it was determined she had Alzheimers and probably had for many years. She quit talking to me again, and only to Norm for about a week. Then (bright funny side) she decided she needed to go back to San Antonio to "that research facility with all the monkeys so they could do research on her"  .... I told her i wasn't driving her back down there! She said she'd take a bus or a taxi.....
My dad had always covered up for her. Anything stressful brought it out which would cause her to wigg out. She could be the Belle of the Ball and sweet as she could be but if she was mad at you.......... Katie bar the barn door! She was one Texas Tornado. She called my husband to the day she died (and he did Everything for her and had the patience of a Saint with her) a damn yankee. She was a southern belle to the day she died. She's been gone 5 years now, she died 3 days before my birthday and i burried her on my birthday. I loved her, but was never ever close with her as she was jealous of my relationship with my dad..  I never understood her until after, I had her come and live here for the last year of her life and why things were as they were. Yet i find myself thinking of her almost daily and wishing i had asked her different things about her life, and just wishing she was here at times. When it gets too maudalin i remember her mean times and that ends that! 
My point is, Stress can do horrible things to people. Totally change their personalities. I would think your dad is possibly very frightened and very scared of this surgery and this might be his way of acting out. If it is at all possible I would consider calling his Dr. and telling him of your concerns of his personality changes. There may definately be some other underlying disorders. I wish you the very best and hope things all work out for you and your family. Keep the faith. Know we are here for you should you need someone to talk to, a shoulder to cry on. One or more of us have been thru it. |
| Allene, do you ever wonder if your mom was also depressed? I look back at the childhood I had, I was also very close to my dad and had to deal with the green monster from time to time with my mom. But now that she is on a mild antidepressent, she is so much easier to deal with. My mom was very mean to me, I didn't want to get into the details of some of the horrors she visited upon my childhood, but I was told more than once "I wish I had drowned you at birth". Not exactly a warm and fuzzy childhood memory, but that is a phrase I heard more than once from my mom and it was directed at me. There are worse moments than that too, sadder memories that I have from my childhood, it serves no purpose to bring them up in detail, just let it be said that parent should edit what they say more.
I think my mom suffered depression of various depths throughout her life. One thing I learned from living with her, is watch what you say, once it is uttered, you can never take it back. Things she told me and said to me should have never been said. It doesn't matter how something is meant, it matters how it is recevied and everyone receives input differently. I was wounded much of my childhood by my mom and my father was the only one who seemed to understand me. I also find it funny that I was the one who "would never amount to anything" and I'm the one who cares for her now... funny how stuff works out. I wish parents would use the edit button more often when they talk to their children... I know I would have been different if my mom had. |
| Oh yes I do now in looking back! And when my brother was killed i too had the statements .......
I wonder if it was something with 'that' generation ? First one after the Great depression?? |
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