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[quote=Anonymous] Growing up my mother was, well, interesting. The two points that I think illustrate this the best are:

1. Her behavior with my sports. I was very involved with competitive sports growing up and was decent at them. Not the best, but made the top teams (travel teams, varsity in HS for my key sport, etc). She used to have these expectations of constant high performance. She would get intensely competitive and get soo moody/angry if I did not perform well. By the time I was in HS, if I did well I used to be so happy, not because my hours of hard work and effort were paying off, but because I knew she would be in a great mood and proud of me.

2. Boys/appearance. Everything was always about appearance with her. She would get moody/angry if I didn't get up in time in the morning in HS to do my hair properly and just put it in a ponytail. Didn't I want to look good? Boys wouldn't pay attention to me when I don't take care of my looks! Of course I didn't actually look bad, I would still put on makeup and I was in decent shape. I was a bit of an introvert and just an average kid, friends in multiple 'clicks'. She was also determined to be my confidant when it came to friends/boys. She used to sit by me at my computer when I was I'Ming (ahh the early 2000's) with friends/boys and help me come up with responses in conversations or those stupid 'away' messages.

It was awful. She was disgustingly emeshed in my life. She was completely living vicariously through me and I didn't really develop close relationships with anyone until college (when I moved over 3 hours away and rarely went home, even in the summers. I didn't really realize how bad it was until I started to develop close female friendships and realized that this was not how mothers/daughters behave. I believed her when she said that she just wanted to be close because she wasn't with her parents.

The thing that makes this different is that I know she really does love me and my siblings. I am not really sure what her problem is, but I do know that she's not like a narcissist because she does love us. She is always supportive of goals and dreams, displays affection, doesn't have a golden child, wants to hear about our lives-- not just talking about her, for example. She just seems to not be able to see where her life ends and ours begin. She also is weirdly obsessed with looks/weight (constant remarks about weight, even when I weighed less than 110 at 5'4) I have had disordered eating nearly my whole life (sneaking/hiding food, likely anorexic the first semester of college).

Anyway, that is the backstory. The problem I am having now is with my own children. Needless to say I am doing a few things differently in our home. We also live about 4 hours away, so there is some distance. But they looooooove Grandma. And Grandma milks that for all its worth. Goodbyes are like, "ohh, I am so sad, I have to go now, but I love you guys sooooo much and we will talk on the phone etc".  The last time my mom was here my daughter (5) was exhausted from a busy day and cried that Grandma had to go when giving grandma a hug goodbye. I try to take her to bring her upstairs to bed, but grandma goes, "ohhh, she is sad that I'm going, let me just keep hugging her" clearly enjoying that my dd was so sad she was leaving.

She has started commenting on their appearance (both five and under)-- ie my daughter was wearing a costume shirt and we were going to take pictures for fun-- family memories-- and when my daughter did not want to take it off, "oh, we wil just take the picture from the neck up *laughter*" She also buys my daughter bags of clothes, the vast majority of her wardrobe. The way she does it, it seems like she is just trying to be generous, but there is also an undercurrent of that if she didn't my kids wouldn't have as nice of clothes. Chances are, we wouldn't have an entire wardrobe of hanna andersson, but they would be fine.

I do not want my daughter to develop the same complexes I had. She has started saying things about wearing particular clothes make her look beautiful-- and I am trying to reinforce that she is beautiful no matter what she wears-- but it makes me nervous. I also do not want them to be too close to grandma because I am afraid of her undermining me when it comes to dating in the future (we have different ideas about age appropriate datign guidelines, to say the least).

Advice? Am I overreacting? Am I underreacting?[/quote]

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