My mom's behavior when we visit

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, was she like this when you were younger? My mother had lots of patience with my sisters' kids 20 years ago, but she has undergone age-related mental changes since then, so that her relationship with my kids is not great. She expects them to act like adults and has said some harsh things to my loving son when he has made too much noise in the house, etc. We now stay in a hotel every time we visit so that we aren't in her face all day every day. She cries when we leave, wants us to visit more often, etc., and I do my best to let her disapproval of my kids slide, but I have the tough choice between allowing more time together and limiting it so that my kids don't start disliking her. She was so loving and sweet when I grew up and it's heartbreaking to know that my kids don't know her as she was.

Good luck.

We have a similar situation but it is anxiety. We are fortunate to have grandparents in their 80s alive and very well but they get very anxious over issues that never bothered them before - traveling, ticketing, luggage issues, tipping the hotel service, working the hotel telephones, paying for incidentals at the hotel, checks made out to the children - every single issue becomes complicated x 10 and requires 25 phone calls. But we are really fortunate that they are alive and THERE for the grandchildren, unlike the other set of grandparents who have checked out. So we just try to be as patient as possible and head off (husband works with me as a United Front) problems when we see them coming. It breaks my heart to see my parents having difficulties coping, repeating themselves and sliding into dementia but when we get frustrated with the 30th phone call about how to work facebook, we just have to step back, take a deep breath and model for our kids how we hope they will treat us when we are in that situation.