Some family issues can be really tricky to navigate.

Imagine disagreeing with your mom about something, and your dad takes your side. Would you think your mom overreacted if she got upset, or would you want to try to explain your perspective so her feelings wouldn’t be hurt?

This girl shares a situation like this, and she’s not sure if talking to her mom about it would make it better or worse.

Check out the full story.

WIBTA for telling my mom she’s wrong when she’s already upset

Did my best with the title but the full story is: Sometimes my (29F) mom (62F) and I disagree about how to handle interpersonal issues outside of each other.

I never know what to say to my mother after these disagreements, because I feel like she takes them too personally and then anything else I say after is just taken as me being rude/wrong/argumentative in another way.

Today’s disagreement was: should I drive 30 minutes to meet my visiting from out of town friend (Mary) for brunch or should she come 30 minutes in my direction.

Originally, Mary was going to drive to my side of town to join me and my parents for our weekly Sunday brunch tradition.

This is where it gets bad!

But my mom suggested we (me mom & dad) drive to meet Mary instead, since we had to go to a family thing in that direction.

On Friday night, we agreed to go with Mom’s plan.

On Saturday night, our dog hasn’t been feeling well, my mom doesn’t want to leave him alone for several hours on Sunday, so she suggests a new plan: I drive out to where Mary is for brunch while my parents stay home, then I come home and they drive out that same way for the family thing.

Then her dad got involved.

I said I’d rather just go back to the original plan and have Mary come to us.

We went back and forth for a few minutes; eventually my dad joined the conversation.

And he agreed with me.

So decision made: we’re back to plan A.

But Mom wasn’t happy.

Now to my actual question: After my dad makes the decision, my mom says “That’s fine, no one listens to me anyway.” (And then gets upset and quiet and doesn’t speak for the rest of the night (this my mom’s passive aggressive anger thing; I blame her generation)).

But in my opinion that isn’t true. I listened to her, I just didn’t agree with her.

Here’s what she wanted to tell her mom.

What I wanted to say is “Mom I did listen to you. I always listen to you. I value your opinion. I don’t always agree with you but I’m not ignoring you.”

Because a) I feel like she’s mad at me for something I didn’t do (not listening) which isn’t fair.

And b) I know my mom has many times had her opinions devalued and undermined by others even though she is very intelligent and capable and competent.

I don’t want her to think she shouldn’t voice her opinions or that I’m ignoring her!

It never got better!

But telling her that might make me TA because then she might feel like I’m just arguing with her in order to prove I’m right and she’s wrong about something else.

And right now she’s clearly already upset that we didn’t agree to her plan.

WIBTA for telling my mom, right after an argument, that listening to her and agreeing with her aren’t the same thing, and she shouldn’t be upset if I listen to her without always agreeing with her?

YIKES! That sounds rough.

She really does need to tell her mom how she feels, but should she wait?

Let’s find out what folks on Reddit think about this one.

This user suggests waiting till the mom cools down…

This user suggests having a calm conversation with the mom.

This user knows that sometimes hiding some feelings can be helpful as well…

This user also suggests waiting till the mother is no longer upset.

She’s really NOT ignoring her mother.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.