Mom Still Lectures Me

I am 33 years old and my mom still lectures the crap out of me. I have learned to just take it in and say “okay mom!” every time she lectures, but there are days I have zero patience for anything (mostly to do with my job, or difficult clients), and then she randomly drapes over a blanket of unnecessary (no duh!) lecturing just to top it off.

I love my mom, all moms are full of great advice, but when you have a mom who was a project manager at IBM for 30+ years with a strong personality who gets mad when things don’t go her way until this day...communication and conversations with her get difficult!

Anyway, last night I made soup...extra soup. Since I have plans to go visit her today I called her up to see if she wanted me to bring some for her. She answered and said “no” and then she proceeded to asking me what I have done with the leftovers I got from her New Years Party...(kinda hinting that I *should have* finished those first or saved them in the freezer before making soup.) Okay, first of all, we finished most of them and second of all, there’s no more room in my freezer. I made soup because me and my boyfriend are sick and soup is perfect for that. So it’s never a ‘simple’ answer with my mom. It’s a “no” or “yes” followed by, “If I were you, I would have done _____” or “You should have done it like this or like that” blah blah blah.

As often as my mom brings out the “shoulda, coulda, woulda’s,” I get the tendency to snap at her as a response if I’m not just taking it in and saying “Okay mom, you’re right!” I could only do that so much.

A lot of the advice she gives me is about things I already knew (a repeat of things she lectures me over all of the time) to things I can’t really help, or her trying to change the way I do things so I could do things her way. She still tells me to put on a jacket when it’s cold, she still tells me to put the sunshade on my car’s windshield during the summer. I love her advice and reminders, when she’s being quick and simple about it. But when she tries to be quick and simple, and then it turns into a lecture and this drawn out reason as to why I should and shouldn’t then I get into defense mode and snap.

I’m not a child anymore. I think the psychology behind her still lecturing me like this is because she worked a lot while I was growing up...and when I was little my dad pretty much raised me (because she worked a lot and mostly a nanny took care of me along with my dad). They got divorced when I was 9 and I became under custody of my mom (where she went from working a lot and barely seeing the family) to all of a sudden having to raise me. So in this case, maybe she still thinks of me as a child.

I don’t know, but I need better ways to deal with this. I’ve talked to her many times and she’d just dismiss how I feel a lot of the time because she does not take me seriously, she is the parent, and she’s “always right”. I also do the whole “okay mom” and that keeps an argument from happening but like I said, I get fed up when I take it in so much that I get my snapping moments. She needs to know that I am human and I am my own person too. She just can’t always dictate me with everything and she just can’t always have control over everything. That’s just, an unrealistic goal to have! I don’t get why she is so particular with everything and anything! Just let people be, let them make their own decisions if it’s causing no harm to anyone or anything....jeez.