DEAR ABBY: I’ve been having a problem these days involving my mother. It seems like she isn’t really my “mother” but someone who thinks we’re best friends. It’s like she never really grew out of her highschool days — and I’m almost 30.
I’ll have days at work where she texts to inform me about her day or her recent struggles, or she asks me to seek out furniture that may interest her. I feel awkward answering her questions, and need I had a parent to speak with about a few of my issues as a substitute of feeling like I’m the more mature one.
She’s telling me that only I do know what she likes, after I know her taste changes on a dime. She doesn’t speak to me the way in which most moms consult with their sons. It’s more like how two teens in school consult with one another.
I do know she has been through quite a bit, so it’s not that I would like to disregard her. I don’t know what to say because I don’t know learn how to consult with this person anymore. I’m bored with feeling my stomach sink each time I even have to reply to her. Please help. — SON, NOT FRIEND, IN WASHINGTON
DEAR SON: You should not going to alter your mother. She is who she is — needy, emotionally immature and determined to depend upon you. You possibly can, nevertheless, change the way in which you react to her. A step in the best direction can be to limit the time she will contact you during work hours. One other is to inform her you should not comfortable being her interior decorator and she or he should find someone with more time to spend along with her. And last, remind her that you just are her son, not her contemporary, and that YOU would love to give you the chance to speak along with her son-to-mother as a substitute of as “buddies,” because you have already got enough of those.
DEAR ABBY: An old friend, a sweet elderly woman who lives in California (I live in Recent York), is affected by some type of dementia. We keep up a correspondence with phone calls. She lives alone. Our phone calls are necessary to her and to me, but our conversations, increasingly more often, have gotten countless, repetitive loops.
The duration of a call is often 45 minutes to an hour. Nonetheless, now that each jiffy there’s a complete reset of what we discuss, my friend seems to think I’m ending the phone call after just a few minutes. She doesn’t remember we’ve been saying the identical things again and again. The calls would go on perpetually if I didn’t end them.
I attempt to end the calls gently, but is there some solution to help my friend understand, without upsetting her, that we have now indeed had a protracted conversation and that I’m not rushing to get off the phone after a few minutes? — PHONE PRISONER
DEAR PHONE PRISONER: Since you didn’t mention anything about it, I’m going to assume that your friend has relatives who know what’s happening along with her, and that she has a protected environment through which to live. A solution to end a conversation without hurting someone’s feelings can be to say you might want to do it because “a pot is boiling over” or since you “must remove something from the oven, take your pet out for a walk, have a very important call coming in or need to go away for an appointment.”
Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also often known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at http://www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.
DEAR ABBY: I’ve been having a problem these days involving my mother. It seems like she isn’t really my “mother” but someone who thinks we’re best friends. It’s like she never really grew out of her highschool days — and I’m almost 30.
I’ll have days at work where she texts to inform me about her day or her recent struggles, or she asks me to seek out furniture that may interest her. I feel awkward answering her questions, and need I had a parent to speak with about a few of my issues as a substitute of feeling like I’m the more mature one.
She’s telling me that only I do know what she likes, after I know her taste changes on a dime. She doesn’t speak to me the way in which most moms consult with their sons. It’s more like how two teens in school consult with one another.
I do know she has been through quite a bit, so it’s not that I would like to disregard her. I don’t know what to say because I don’t know learn how to consult with this person anymore. I’m bored with feeling my stomach sink each time I even have to reply to her. Please help. — SON, NOT FRIEND, IN WASHINGTON
DEAR SON: You should not going to alter your mother. She is who she is — needy, emotionally immature and determined to depend upon you. You possibly can, nevertheless, change the way in which you react to her. A step in the best direction can be to limit the time she will contact you during work hours. One other is to inform her you should not comfortable being her interior decorator and she or he should find someone with more time to spend along with her. And last, remind her that you just are her son, not her contemporary, and that YOU would love to give you the chance to speak along with her son-to-mother as a substitute of as “buddies,” because you have already got enough of those.
DEAR ABBY: An old friend, a sweet elderly woman who lives in California (I live in Recent York), is affected by some type of dementia. We keep up a correspondence with phone calls. She lives alone. Our phone calls are necessary to her and to me, but our conversations, increasingly more often, have gotten countless, repetitive loops.
The duration of a call is often 45 minutes to an hour. Nonetheless, now that each jiffy there’s a complete reset of what we discuss, my friend seems to think I’m ending the phone call after just a few minutes. She doesn’t remember we’ve been saying the identical things again and again. The calls would go on perpetually if I didn’t end them.
I attempt to end the calls gently, but is there some solution to help my friend understand, without upsetting her, that we have now indeed had a protracted conversation and that I’m not rushing to get off the phone after a few minutes? — PHONE PRISONER
DEAR PHONE PRISONER: Since you didn’t mention anything about it, I’m going to assume that your friend has relatives who know what’s happening along with her, and that she has a protected environment through which to live. A solution to end a conversation without hurting someone’s feelings can be to say you might want to do it because “a pot is boiling over” or since you “must remove something from the oven, take your pet out for a walk, have a very important call coming in or need to go away for an appointment.”
Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also often known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at http://www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.
