My dad seems to have become more mature while my mom has regressed. A lot of times I feel like my mom acts like she doesn’t want to be a mom anymore. Makes me feel a bit bad for my youngest sisters sometimes. My dad used to act like a teenager when I was young and I was always disgusted by how poor his behavior was at home, and I idolized my mom who seemed to constantly slave away.
Now my mom seems to spend most days lounging by the pool and today went to the movies with her friends and came back seemingly drunk and my dad came back from a long day at work put up mesh around the gate to keep our puppy from getting out and sprayed the yard with mosquito repellent. She keeps trying to come out of her room to snuggle our puppy who’s crying in our kennel and we have to tell her to go back to bed because that’s bad for training. Ugh. Anyone else notice this trend with their parents? Maybe my mom just burned out.
My dad was an alcoholic for most of my life. He is now sober and doing better. Mom wasn’t much better at times. Both learned the hard way. Sometimes Time Will change a person other times another person will change a person.
Parents are people too. They change and grow. They have stressors and life changing events too.
My oldest son noticed that my husband and I changed between when he was a teen and when our youngest became a teen. We used to be more authoritarian, now we are more laid back.
Also since I developed Sz I have changed a lot. My husband has changed too - taking on more of the caregiver role.
Cut your Mom some slack, she may be going through a mid-life crisis, starting menopause, or dealing with some other stressor you are not aware of. One bright thing to notice is that your parents make a pretty good team - when one is unwilling/unable to handle family stress, it seems the other steps up.
Yes I try to be sympathetic as she has been a wonderful mom growing up and I know she has a ton on her plate with 6 kids and deserves to do nice things. It’s just hard on days like this where it feels like all responsibility was dumped on me. But that’s not true because the first part of her day was very busy.
She is starting menopause and it’s been hard for her-it messes with her sleep. Also I think she has been realizing that a lot of aspects with her relationship with my dad aren’t healthy and she’s been very stressed about it. She talks about it often now.