Living with older family members sometimes means dealing with habits and comments that slowly drive everyone a little crazy.

Today, we’ll meet a man whose grandmother started showing signs of mental decline after his grandfather passed away years ago. Over time, she developed strange behaviors that mostly seemed directed at him, including constantly demanding that he stop looking down because it was “bad for his neck and posture.”

The problem is that she would interrupt him while he was actively doing things that required him to look down.

Eventually, he got tired of arguing about it.

So, one day while pouring food onto a plate, he decided to follow her instructions and keep his head up the entire time.

That did not end well, because it made a mess and angered his father.

Read on to see what happened next.

Keep your head up, never look down!

Before anyone gets mad at me, I know my grandma is old and is losing her mind. She has been exhibiting signs of mental decline since 80.

Grandma is my dad’s mom. Grandpa (dad’s father, and the best adult figure I ever had) died when I was 12 and it really hurt Grandma hard. Like really hard. It hurt me too. I’m now approaching 30 (and feeling it). That’s when Grandma started to decline in mental sanity. She has made it to 90! Hooray!!!

Malicious behaviors started popping up with Grandma only targeting me (a dude) for attention and it REALLY annoyed the middle child, an identical twin.

Apparently, grandma acts weird sometimes.

Grandma will only look at me, even when the ENTIRE family is visiting grandma. Nobody else seems to notice that grandma will stare at me and wait until I look at her to shyly smile and look away like a hot girl getting turned on.

Granted, she has been doing that since 80.

“Don’t look down, Oberus, it’s bad for your neck and posture.”

When she starts telling him this, he just goes along with it.

She’d say this every time, regardless of what I’m doing. I must look STRAIGHT AT grandma. What do I do?

Starts pouring food out of a pan onto a plate where I HAVE to look down (it’s below eye level). “Oberus!!! hey! look up, it’s bad for your neck!” says grandma.

I do just that I start looking right up (she purposely stands in my line of sight) and continue what I’m doing. Food starts missing the plate and spilling onto the table (but not the entire thing).

The cycle doesn’t stop.

“Oberus!! You’re spilling onto the table!” grandma exclaims.

Dad comes over to yell at me for being so careless. Hey, grandma told me to not look down and demanded I do so WHILE I was pouring it. So I did.

Grandma is furious that I spilled food because I wasn’t looking at it.

Dad (her own son) yells at her FULL volume the same way he does at me whenever I break something. This repeats for 5 months until grandma is just tired of her own son yelling at her for this situation to cause a mess in HIS household.

Yikes! Living in this situation must be pretty stressful.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman’s family who is trying to stop her from moving away for her husband’s job.

Let’s check out what the fine folks over at Reddit have to say about it.

This person’s not sure it’s malicious compliance.

Here’s a kinda sweet thought.

This could be interesting.

Respite care could be a great option.

Dealing with dementia is hard on everyone involved.

The grandmother probably believed she was helping and had no idea how exhausting the constant comments became over time. Meanwhile, the grandson spent years dealing with the same corrections over and over until frustration finally took over.

And once the food started spilling everywhere, the father finally saw firsthand why the situation had become such a problem in the house.

Sometimes family tension builds slowly until one small moment finally makes everything click.