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When you grow up and move out on your own, parents will often try to ‘help’ by telling you how to do things, even if it is annoying.

What would you do if your mother came to visit for a weekend, but she kept complaining about how your house looked, that you were impolite, and that you didn’t have any food in the house?

That is what happened to the daughter in this story, so she told her mom she could leave if she didn’t like it, which Mom then did.

Now she is wondering if she was too harsh on her mother.

While I think it is important to set boundaries, it seems to me that Mom was just concerned and the daughter is being overly sensitive. Read through the full details below, and see what you think.

AITAH for allowing my mom to storm out of my house early from a weekend stay when she criticized my household and me

My mom lives about 3.5 hours from me, so as you can imagine I don’t get to spend weekends with her very often, and most often when I see her, I drive to her with my husband or my sister (26) and I meet my mom in the middle somewhere.

We all live far away from one another.

It is nice that she can see her mother.

She came down this past Friday to see me and stay at my house until Sunday evening.

On Friday, once she arrived things were nice.

I drove her over an hour to the city as she needed to speak with a specific jeweller about an alteration, and drove her back (and for context, we’re in the middle of a heatwave in the UK right now, which I’m really struggling with, she knows I’ve been very unwell recently).

Mom seems a bit controlling.

Later I took her out for dinner and paid for the bill, to which my husband thanked me, but she did not.

We chatted for the rest of the night and went to bed.

The following morning, I woke up to her franticly cleaning my kitchen. I said “good morning, how are you”, and received no reply, just a ‘look’.

I asked again what was wrong, and she complained that my house is filthy and disgusting and needs to be sorted.

Her friends wouldn’t be likely to tell her if the house wasn’t clean.

Now, I have checked with friends who have visited, and not one person has said my house is filthy, just that it doesn’t look like a show home, because it’s lived in and there’s the odd bit of limescale and dust where dust tends to fall.

We have two cats, so even after vacuuming, the house is never spotless, especially as they’re moulting a lot in the heatwave.

Ok, so the cleanliness is obviously a real issue.

I said to her I know it’s not perfect and I’m sorry.

For more context, I’ve been suffering with severe depression for the last year and a half, which she knows about, and this has made it difficult for me to focus on my house, but my husband works hard to pick up my slack thankfully.

I took offence to the fact that my husband had cleaned the house before she came over, while he was supposed to be working from home, and it still wasn’t good enough.

I put it behind me and calmed down.

If you know you are going to have guests, you should have food in the house.

Later on she asked for directions to a pharmacist as she needed some medication. Taking this literally (as I tend to do, while she doesn’t understand), I gave her directions.

She came back with butter for toast so we could eat. She sat and chatted for a few minutes, but as soon as my husband left the room, she made me feel bad for not having anything in for her breakfast.

(We didn’t have anything because the butter had melted from the heat, and we had tried to get butter the previous day, but couldn’t as the fridges at the supermarket were broken).

What did she say that was unkind (assuming those complaints were accurate)?

I asked her to speak to me calmly, before everything came out of the woodwork. Apparently, I had made her feel so unwelcome by not offering her a drink the whole time, by not having anything in for breakfast, and for having a filthy house.

I asked her again to be kind and just speak to me civilly, but that I won’t entertain her being rude and disrespectful in my own home.

She doubled down that she might as well just leave.

I said if that’s what you want to do, then you can. So she did.

Mom is right to only address her concerns to her daughter, and not to the husband.

I feel like this whole situation feels very blown out of proportion and it should not cause a mother to 1) get upset and angry at their child (of 30y/o), nor to storm out in a huff and paint me as a villain.

Also, in this argument I mentioned that there are two of us who run this house, yet she conveniently chose moments my husband was not in the room to bring these things up.

She was upset that I would ‘blame’ him, when that wasn’t the case I was making, but that neither of us did what she’d want but only I’m getting an earful.

I agree with Mom here.

She said “he’s not my son”.

His family have always treated me like part of their family, but my mom refused to meet my husband (then boyfriend) until we were 20 (we’ve been together since I was 14) because she didn’t agree I should have a boyfriend.

I have apologised to her multiple times since for my role in it and how I reacted when I could have been calmer, but have received no apology, neither inclination that she accepts any responsibility for what happened, despite even mentioning to her that I think the blame falls with both of us.

Would anyone else accept this? She’s made me feel terrible for letting her go and has already tried to twist the story to my sister. AITAH?

It seems that Mom is frustrated with how her daughter is living and is trying to help her to change, but the daughter is getting very defensive.

Let’s see what the people in the comments on Reddit have to say about the situation.

This isn’t the way I took the story.

She is an adult now.

To me, this seems more like enabling than supporting.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a mom who gets fed up with her son not working and puts him in charge of nightly dinners.

Here is a commenter who says mom should be grateful for the hospitality.

This commenter says to go low contact with mom.

Was this Mom being overbearing, or is this daughter too sensitive? It is difficult to know for sure based only on what is in this story.

At the end of the day, hopefully this family can work through their issues in a positive way.