Currently, my mother and my brother are unable to get along. If you talk to my mom, she says it’s because he’s rude and obnoxious. If you talk to my brother, he says it’s because mom is obnoxious and controlling. The nuances of the “why” are probably rooted in deep-seated childhood issues that my brother has a hard time viewing as relevant to his life today. But I’m not sure the “why” even matters. What seems more important to me is the “how.”
Family members don’t always get along. Not only do we have the possibility of simply disliking someone who are related to, but biological families also have hard-wired personality traits that could create clashes. The oil and water thing. Or two similar polarities, working so hard to repel one another. If my brother and mother share the exact same personality traits, that could be a problem.
But the real problem, as I see it, is the behavior that my brother indulges in when he is bothered, frustrated, angered, or otherwise unhappy with my mother, AND her acceptance of that behavior. He yells. He tells her to “shut her mouth” or to “stop talking.” And worse. She gets upset, and she leaves the room. She may avoid talking to him for a few days. But then they both just drop it. Things become “normal” again.
My brother is not a child. He is 30-something. He has a wife, and he has two kids. He lives around the corner from my parents in the town we grew up in (I live 2.5 hours away). So it’s not just a “maturity” issue. It’s not something my mother lets go of because she thinks he’ll learn as he gets older how to behave. He should have learned already. Apparently, in other areas of his life, he has learned to behave. He holds down a job. He holds down a marriage. I’m told that he does not exhibit this behavior in his marriage. It’s just with my mom.
And it drives me crazy that she doesn’t draw a line. Every time it happens, she is sad and unhappy. But within a week, she’s doing him favors – she even told me recently that she packs him a lunch for while he’s at work (he works with my father, so she packs them both lunches — see above — my brother does NOT live with my parents).
Things seem like they might be coming to a head. My mom is feeling done, and my brother’s noticing that the pattern is a problem. No one knows what the solution is, but we know it won’t be an easy one. I guess it’s a good thing that people are starting to look for a way to fix things, or to at least come to a place where the relationship can be accepted on scaled-back level. It’s too bad, however, that things had to disintegrate to a really nasty level before civility is being sought.
So all of this was swirling around in my brain the other day, when E said said something that I couldn’t understand (i.e., she mumbled). I asked her to please repeat herself, speaking clearly, and she turned around on me and YELLED what she had said with a very rude tone. I reacted swiftly. I let her know that she could not talk to me that way. That if she had a problem with something I have asked of her, she can express the problem, but she cannot yell at me, and she cannot be rude to me.
She is pretty good about going back and thinking about these things, and doing some self-assessment. Which I hope means that we will not ever – when she’s a child OR adult – slip into the patterns that have developed in my family of origin.
Yesterday, she had a good bit of independent time while I supervised a handful of 11 year olds in a pumpkin-carving extravaganza. E did her homework, walked over to a friend’s house, and then zoned out on her computer for hours. (Something she rarely has the opportunity to do, especially with our last 17,000 weekends being crammed to the gills with activities, events, house guests and trips). When I stopped by her room in the early evening to remind her of the piles of laundry (that she was lying on top of) that she had yet to fold, she was pretty snappish in response, insisting that the ONLY thing she could actually do at that moment in time was take a nap. Which I forbade her from doing, since it would have meant she was up until 3 a.m. (again), and quite frankly – I had “after the kids go to bed” plans in place, and wasn’t willing to worry about the kid tossing and turning in the next room.
Instead, I let her know that her continued grouchy behavior would result in an 8:30 or 9 p.m. bedtime (VERY early for her), and left her room.
About 10 minutes later, she came into the living room where I was showing her sister how to use Google Docs and said, “Mom, I realize now why I’m so tired, irritable and grouchy. I really haven’t had much to eat today, and I feel like crap.” So she grabbed a banana, since dinner was soon, and stayed civil – fun, even – for the rest of the evening.
I let her know that I appreciated her taking stock, and recognizing that the irritability and grouchiness was coming from within.
