My daughter in law and her mother are so close that it is not healthy for my son or their children. My son and his wife have no family time together. All holidays, birthdays, weekends and vacations are spent with the mother and father-in-law. The mother-in-law knows all about the sex life of my son and his wife, the bills all the household tasks. EVERYTHING.......As far as me and my husband we are not invited to any family affairs, holidays, birthdays because the mother in law does not want us there. We are ready to close the door on our son and his hateful, spiteful wife and the mother from HELL.....................

My Daugter is 33 & thinks she knows everything & that I know absolutely nothing. She treats me like something she " wiped off her shoe" Now, due to a disagreement between us,when she said " You know what Mom, you think I care more than I do..." she won't let me see my 8 yr. old Grandson ( our only grandchild) I am so upset missing him, i am now medicated ! My husband is disabled & I am his caregiver. My Grandson helped make the tough days easier to handle... Please advise ... captskid@yahoo.ca

My mom has resented me very since her and my dad divirced over 30 yrs ago. She treats me mean, my kids mean and makes it very plain that she wants nothing to do with us. I am married ,educated with 2 degrees, and don't ask for anything. Tis makes her more resentful of me. She spends all her time between my oldest brother, 41. Who hasn't worked a job in 18 yrs, and a another child she adopted who smokes crack and shoots herion all day. She totally ignores my children and could car less if we were alive. My mother is a total dissappiontment to me and I wish she would have never had me.

While my daughter was in high school and college we got a long very well. We talked on the phone everday for four years (while she was in college) and she told me everything about how her day was and what she learned that day. She graduated college in the spring and then she moved back home. Everything went down hill from there. She treats me like I am her servant, she calls everyday on her way home from work and asks what is for dinner, if I tell her I do not know yet, I just got home from work, she then calls her dad ands asks him what is for dinner. When she gets home she expects dinner to be ready. I told her today that I was not going to cook for her anymore, she does know how to cook she had an apartment while in college. She says I work hard, I tell her to grow up we all work! She talks down to me and I tell her to grow up. I do not know what to do, she is making me very angry, and I do not want to be around her at all! I have other children at home and she has become a bad influence to them, with her attitude, and I can not allow her to teach the other children that it is okay to treat me so disrepectfully. I do not know what changed I just know that she is angry with me, for some reason.

Thanks to everyone for sharing. I looked up this subject because at 45 I feel at a loss in how to deal with my mother. She has this crippling way of treating me and responding to me as if I were 12. Actually she was unavailable when I was 12. I have lead a very independent life which included years of therapy identifing the years of being invalidated as a source of some depression episodes. I realized today that I have allowed this relationship back into a place in my life that is negatively affecting it. Time to get the boundry line marked out again. I need to move away from her and re-establish healthy boundries so that I am able to enjoy some kind of relationship with her.
Thanks Again

My mother and I used to get along. It was when I turned 14 everything blew up. I love her, but I get easily annoyed by her. She tries to help but I feel like she is telling me all my faults. She doesn't trust me but she says she does. When I am having a bad day, she's there for me. She and I both take everything out on eachothet. The hardest thing that my mother has ever said to me was "You have changed from being a sweet loving person to having a bad attitude and no respect." I was devestated and that taught me that I needed to change for her. I hope my relationship with my mother changes in the right direction.

Our roles have switched being mom is 87 years of age and not healthy. I do my best to make her life happy and remembering to not forget myself in the process.

My daughter and I are so close we wonder if there is something wrong with that. We talk several times a day, we love spending time together, I love hearing all the news of her sorority and college life. She is beautiful, intelligent, funny, and every life she touches is made better. I thank God every day for her.

I thought that my mother and I got along very well until I moved in to care for her after her operation. After six weeks we were driving each other mad. Nothing I did was right. We were just about a wits end when she told me that I wasn't doing it wrong, just not her way. She was just frustrated that for the first time in her life she could not take care of her self. Once the air was cleared we were friends again.

I loved asking my mother what she thought about things that were important to me. I did not always agree with her reasoning or always take her advice, but that really wasn't the point. I found her input valuable because we knew each other so well and understood where the other person was coming from. That intimate perspective has been irreplaceable.

My daughter and I have a comfortable and loving relationship, we are close, but not too close, I let her live her life and she lets me live mine, but we talk all the time and she tells me everything about her life, and vise versa....If she needs me, she knows I am there and I know the same...I was divorced after a long, bad marriage with abuse...and my children only had me for most of their teenage lives and now their father wants to be in their lives, so I sometimes worry he will try to take my children away from me now, but my daughter is there to tell me I am nuts and that will never happen...So she is my anchor at times....we respect each other and keep in touch on an almost daily basis....we love the same things and even though we are not together all the time...we have a sort of 6th sense about each others feelings...I love her and she loves me, and I feel its just right for us....However, my own mother was not nurturing or helpful and always made my life difficult...maybe that is why I make sure to have a good relationship with my daughter....I love her very much and want to always be in her life...not like my mom who shut me out...thanks for the article, it was great !!!

All my mothers and my daughter’s relationship

It was the early 1940’s; after mommy graduated from high school, Mommy and Daddy were married. I was born the next year and we all lived happily in a medium sized town in northern Illinois. Daddy had a good job, but the war needed him so he left for Arizona to be a solider in the Army-Air Corps. Mommy went to work and her Aunt looked after me in a small town nearby. Over the year Mommy and Daddy would visit me together when he got a furlough. But soon Mommy and her friend would visit, and Daddy and his friend would visit.

As time went on Mommy worked different shifts, and I stayed more and more in the small town with Mommy’s aunt, that I called ‘Ma’ Sears. Ma and Pa Sears had a grown daughter, and a son. The son was married and had four boys. Ma Sears and I found many things to do together; I’d help her pick flowers, and we would help Pa Sears find worms so he could go fishing. When I got big enough, I’d climb the ladder up into the fruit trees in the yard and pick the fruit for her. We had a lot of fun together. ‘Aunt’ Babe, the daughter, worked at the ‘Sweet Spot’ where I would visit her at work, and ate chocolate candies and ice cream. She was not married and treated me like her little girl. I have photos where she took me shopping with her in the ‘big’ city. Later she did get married and I remember spending time with Aunt Babe and Uncle Harold in their new home.

In 1951 my Daddy, Mama Kay, a little boy, and a baby girl came to visit. I remember my Mommy, that I now called ‘Mama Betty’ was at Ma Sears’ house too, and she was crying. I had to say good bye to everyone there, and go with my Daddy to Michigan to live with him, my new Mama, brother and sister. I was sad to leave but I had a new adventure ahead of me; I was nine years old. As time passed Mama Kay gave us all a new baby brother. Mama Kay always had me write letters and thank you notes to Mama Betty, Ma Sears, and Aunt Babe, and they wrote me back too. Aunt Babe and Uncle Harold had a motor home and would visit me when they went on their vacations. I got letters and a picture from my Mama Betty now in California, and she has had more children too; I now had three sisters and a brother more.

When I graduated from high school I joined the Navy; and soon my writing of letters started to get further apart. I didn’t hear from anyone except for Daddy and Mama Kay in Michigan, and occasionally from Aunt Babe. I was transferred from Maryland to South Carolina where I met Cal. A year later we married, had a son and the next year our enlistments were up and we moved to Nebraska, to Cal’s home town. Cal’s Mom and Dad were wonderful people. And I had another new mother; that shared her life with us. I had lost contact with Mama Betty by that time, but Aunt Babe still made an effort to stay in touch with me.

Six years later we had a daughter, to this day I cherish her very much. Even though I have had many wonderful ‘mothers’, I looked forward to be the only mother in her life. She is a wonderful daughter; we have shared a lot together. She has grown up to be a wonderful mother herself. When each of her children was born, we shared a couple of weeks of special closeness. I now live in Iowa and she lives in Nebraska with her husband, son, and daughter. We try to visit each other at least every other month.

When our son graduated from high school, Aunt Babe wrote to tell me she had an address for me. I thanked her, and wrote a letter to Mama Betty. I really didn’t know what was going to happen. It was 1982 and I hadn’t seen my mother in thirty years. When my mother got the letter she had my sisters call, my mother couldn’t talk to me, because she was crying so hard. We arranged for the four of us to fly to California to meet my mother, and three sisters. We all had a good cry and our hearts were all healed. We get together at least once a year. My mother is a very wonderful mother, as well as was Ma Sears, Aunt Babe, Mama Kay, and Cal’s Mom. I have been blessed with many mothers in my life…

My mom and I have not gotten along since I was about 11-years-old. Many times throughout our lives together we have switched roles.
I remember being more of a caregiver for her than a child because I had to lick her wounds and protect her from my abusive stepfather while growing up.
Now, I am grown and I can see that somewhere along the way I lost respect for her for allowing someone to abuse her for so many years and making me a witness to it.
I insisted that she leave him, or else, when i was sixteen-years-old, and we never went back to live with him. This helped me to respect her more, but she has done other shameful and harmful things in front of me, and to me, that have not allowed me to respect her completely.
She is getting older, now, and I am hoping that, before one of us leaves this earth, I will love and respect her more, and she will love and respect me and not be so resentful to me for taking her youth from her when she birthed me at the age of seventeen.

My mom is my best friend in the whole entire universe. We share stories and laughter. I'm not going to make this sound like some novel, I'll admit: we have the occasional spat, but who doesn't? We'll be arguing one minute, laughing five minutes later. I can't put into words my respect and admiration for my best friend, and mother.

My mother is my best friend. I don't know how those things happen--you start off as enemies and then wind up at some point, not knowing how you ever did not get along. My grandmother (her mother) was also my best friend and I can't be more blessed. When I was 24 I was diagnosed with cancer, and I can't not put in words what my mother did. She was my caretaker--and the person who yelled at me not to give up, who told me I was strong, who let me cry and who made me what I am today. the legacy they've passed on is one I hope I pass on to the world in their love and grace.

My mother is very challenging, so what I try to remember is 5 good things about her so that I don't loose my cool with her..the first one being..that I know that she means well even in her meanst moments.

I have two daughters, both of them different as night and day. The oldest and I have bumped heads since she was born. Now at 23 we are coming along slowly. My youngest, she is an inspiration, encourager motivator, and friend. Life has its twists and turns.

I million times I wish my ONLY daughter and I would get along. She treats strangers alot better than she treats me. My daughter is beautiful, intelligent and I am so proud of her, she is also a good mother to my only grandson. I was a single parent for many years and was out looking for a husband....bars....I worked alot to buy her everything she wanted and needed, for my needs I shopped at the cheapest stores but not for my daughter. I was there for her no matter what and I am still there for her even now and especially for my grandson who I love with all my heart. My daughter talks very caustic to me, never has time for me, is always on the defensive, never a nice word from her UNLESS she needs something, then I'm there jumping hoops for her. It's sad. I have been married for 15 years to a WONDERFUL man, who has treated my daughter like his own, she is nice to him but not to me. It's sad, very sad.

A couple of years ago after losing my mom, and while leading a Mentor group to young mothers, I found a wonderful book called "Motherless Daughters" by Hope Edleman. I so affirms what is needed in the M-D relationship and teaches us coping strategies in how to honor this bond even after one is gone. I find the testimonials very helpful as a mentor and life coach.

I truly enjoy Real Simple. However this article was incomplete without the mention of those of us who lost our Mother prematurely. I was disappointed considering the vast number of Motherless Daughter support groups in our country, and the wonderful books by authors Hope Edelman (Motherless Daughters, Motherless Mothers ) and Allison Gilbert (Always Too Soon) that offer hope & support to many of us who feel alone without our Mothers . Many of us are now Motherless Mothers…trying to reconcile what we had with what we are creating between ourselves and our children. My mother was an amazing person who taught me self reliance, perseverance and compassion. I always felt loved. I think of that often when I am having one of those moments with my little girls. I can only wish that my girls will feel the same about me when they are older I love when my four year old tells me “you’re my best friend in the whole world Mommy”. She makes everyday Mother’s Day for me. It makes up for those Mother’s Day’s that I could not celebrate after my Mother died.

My daughter Leigha is 9 and a lot like me. This means artistic, wild and full of mischef. She rarely gets in trouble, but when she does it is usually for smarting off. So I tell her to go to her room and come out when she feels human. It never fails, within two minutes she will poke her head out the door and yell " I feel human" . It always makes me smile.

I have always looked up to my mother for her business sense. She is a powerhouse in the business world and I on the otherhand dabbled in comedy and more creative things. We always had shopping in common, but it wasn't until I created a cartoon for kids our lives changed. The business is just that, business! I needed her, but couldn't fathom how this would work seeing that our ways were so different. Well it has been 3 years now, that we have worked together and co-authored a book. Yes there has been ups and downs, but the biggest thing I think we both have learned is that we each have our own strengths and weakness' but together we are a force to be reckon with!!! Yes, she does get on my nerves and yes, I get on hers...but I think we have grown to know each other as people and that is even better. The down side, when I get mad at my boss, I can't call her (my mother) to complain about her :) www.thefossibles.com!

My mother and I are enmeshed. The key phrase that caught me was "there's one person you can always count on" . My mother and I have been through it all together and it shows in our realationship. we feel each others emotions, good and bad. we love each other and rely on each others advice and input. With our closeness comes great love and friction....

This story neglected the mother-daughter relationship that has been cut short. My mother passed away when I was eighteen.
A column on reconciling with a departed mother (or daughter for that matter) would have made your story more complete. This is one of the times of the year where the loss is most acute - whether the relationship was enmeshed (now suddenly making decisions on my own without my favorite consultant) or clashing (leaving arguments open without the hope of settlement, ever.) You can't even go to the grocery store or bookstore without reminders of Mother's Day.
How do you honor Mother's Day when you no longer have a mother? or a child to celebrate you?