How would you have handled this situation?

Hi guys. As you well know, my parents are currently visiting me in London and I've had a massive argument with my father this afternoon. Let's see, it took a total of 6 days before we had our first proper argument. Allow me to get it off my chest as I am at a total loss as to what to do about the situation and all that will happen is that I will end up drifting further and further away from my parents as they slip into denial mode about just how distant and dysfunctional our relationship is. This incident which I am about to tell you about was the last straw that broke the poor camel's back.

My family decided to go shopping in London.

So, my sister took my parents shopping today - I didn't go with them as I had to work. My sister then told me that it was tiring because she had to do exactly what they wanted, when they wanted and she didn't complain a word. My parents are extremely difficult and demanding - sometimes I think they deliberately do so or maybe I have underestimated the demands of taking care of elderly folks. My sister does all this without a word of complaining. Now we were supposed to have gone to an Escape Room else this evening with my sister but the company called me up in the afternoon and apologized that they had to cancel the booking because of a technical problem. So this was 4 pm in the afternoon and my sister then checked with my parents if they are happy to rest at home whilst she went back shopping. (She didn't put a foot wrong so far - that's my sister for you, she is a living saint I swear.)

My mother then asked, "we've been shopping all day, you still want to shop for what?!" My sister said, "I was busy taking care of you, I never had the chance to see anything I was interested in." Now the appropriate response from my mother at that point should have been either, "thank you for taking care of us" or "yes why don't you go shopping now whilst the shops are still open?" But you know what my mother had the audacity to say? She claimed my sister had done plenty of shopping and didn't need to go back to the mall - which isn't the case at all. She did virtually none (she told me so and I know my sister loves shopping). So I took my mother aside and said, "that was not the right response - you should have just listened to what she said." Instead, my mother got extremely defensive and raised so many things about what happened at the shopping mall. And I was like, "this has nothing to do with what happened at the mall - I wasn't there and don't know what happened. I just want to point out to you that you completely ignored what your daughter had said instead of listening to her. And right now, you're not listening to me either - that's the problem!"

There was a right and wrong way to respond.

I'll fast forward the next 30 minutes - I'll summarize it by saying that my parents got extremely defensive, listing every thing that my sister did wrong on this trip and making it sound as if my sister was the devil who tortured them at every opportunity. (Oh my poor sister can never ever please them, like ever.) None of these accusations are true of course, but when cornered, my parents are such total liars who would not hesitate to make false accusations to deflect any kind of blame. They then attacked me for daring to criticize my mother. I got upset at the way they were completely skewing off on a tangent and I raised my voice - that then gave them ammunition to use against me and they said things like, "how dare you raise your voice at us, have you forgotten we are your parents." My dad then shouted louder than me and it all went downhill pretty quickly. I felt extremely disappointed in the way things went - I should have kept my cool of course and remained calm, but I didn't. My parents get extremely defensive in the way they conduct themselves - I feel like they have zero interest improving their relationship with their daughter. I came bearing advice (which admittedly I could have delivered better - generation gap/language barrier notwithstanding of course) but it seemed in their heads that they are perfect and could never make a mistake.

I can get quite spiteful at times like this. I realized, okay if I can't make you see my point, well I can at least upset you by winding you up. So I said a few things deliberately to push their buttons. My dad even said (in Chinese), "even if your mother said something incorrect, why can't you just let it pass? Why do you have to fault her and make her feel bad about it?" And I'm like, perhaps I could have done it more tactfully, but why is it impossible to offer any kind of advice on matters like that without it descending into a "how dare you criticize your parents" moment? For them, it's impossible to listen to any kind of 'advice' or even (dare I say) constructive criticism. Why do Chinese parents reject even the most simple constructive criticisms and perceive any such constructive criticisms into personal attacks? Why does it have to be, "it's my way or the highway"?  My father then went on and on about how I'm such an awful son and how my sister - the good daughter - doesn't pick on them when they say stupid or wrong things. He even said things like, "she's my daughter, I brought her up, I'll talk to her any damn way I like and she has to put up with it." And I'm like, you don't want to try to improve the quality of communication with your children? You never listen to a word I say anything. No wonder we barely talk and when we do, it often ends up like this. Fine, be like that then. I'll give up.

Behold: the art of asking a question.

Anyway, let me tell you what happened next. I took 20 minutes out and calmed down - then I went to my mother. She was on her own whilst my father was in the shower, I then explained to her exactly what I intended to say with good intentions and apologized for how it had misfired so badly. I guess I was frustrated by the way my parents barked up the wrong tree by going on and on about who said what to whom at the mall earlier and I was like, this was nothing to do with what happened then at the mall, like I wasn't even there. It had all to do with my mother not listening to my sister when she talks. My mother then pleaded ignorance and claimed she was confused by the situation. I then gave her a good analogy from the world of sales. Imagine if a customer said, "yeah I like your product, it is quite nice - it's too expensive, give me a discount or I won't buy." You know that if you said no to the discount the customer will just walk away yet you're not authorized to give a discount. What do you do in this situation?

Simple: ask the customer questions. "But sir, why do you think you need a discount? Why do you think our prices here are too high?" That easily gets you out of a difficult situation - when you ask a question like that, the customer is then obliged to explain himself and justify why he thinks he deserves a discount. So for example if he says, "oh I saw something similar in a shop across the road and it is cheaper." That then allows you to sidestep the issue of the discount and discuss how the two products are quite different hence the different prices. It's a common tactic used during any kind of negotiation: when forced into a corner, the only way out of it is to put the other party on the back foot by asking a question. Human nature decrees that we usually cannot resist the urge to answer a question when asked and we exploit that uncontrollable urge to answer the question in order to regain full control of the situation.

Why do we feel the urge to answer a question when asked?

Thus I explained (very calmly) to my mother - okay, so you were confused, you thought my sister didn't like anything despite having looked at a few things. So instead of making it a statement like, "but you did spend time looking at things at the mall today!" Surely it could be a question, "didn't you like any of the things you looked at earlier? Did you not manage to find what you were looking for? Would you have rather gone shopping somewhere else instead? What else would you still like to buy before leaving London? Do you want to return to that mall tomorrow if we have time? Why didn't you buy any of the things you looked at earlier today?" Clearly, my mother had formed an impression about my sister's shopping experience from earlier today and what my sister had said had contradicted my mother's original impression. My mother just didn't have the tact or the social skills to clarify things using questions - instead, she just shoved her opinion down my sister's throat in a most blunt manner.

Now my sister would probably tell me to let it go, it's not worth the argument over something like that. And perhaps she's right - heck, I spoke to one of my best friends as well and she told me the exact same thing. My sister just puts up with my parents because she knows she can never change them. When my sister returned from the mall, she had even bought so many gifts for my parents - that's the kind of person she is. She takes whatever unreasonable crap my parents may throw at her on the chin and reciprocates with kindness and generosity. My parents are unlikely to change. There's just no way they can appreciate the difference a slight change in tact can make when it comes to handling a situation like that. Even with the best intentions and a very valid point, my parents are simply refusing to accept that their (extremely well educated and worldly wise) children may have anything of value to offer in terms of good advice. I find that frustrating to say the least because I only have the good intentions when trying to offer advice.

I'm pleased to see my parents but they drive me nuts.

My mum is a retired primary school teacher. I remember her yelling out instructions as if she is trying to herd a class of 40 primary one kids at a school event. "Come here, sit down. Don't talk. Do this, do that." She's as blunt as they come and trying to get her to be more tactful and subtle is too much to ask for. She talked to us like that when we were kids, ie. "I'm the adult, you're the child, what do you know - shut up and do as I say." But now the tables are turned, my sister and I are the working professionals who are seasoned travelers whilst my mother can't even do up the zip on her winter jacket without our help. Yet somehow, my mother still wants to bark at us as if we are 5 year old kids who know nothing - it is almost as if our relationship hasn't evolved at all since the early 1980s and she hasn't realized at all that her children at now in their 40s. Heck, as I type this right now, I do realize that. But I guess there's a part of me that just couldn't resist calling her out when she handled that situation with my sister rather poorly. I don't know what I was thinking, believing that I could actually teach my mother anything. Ironically, I have just shared that valuable lesson about using questions to deflect your opponents in a negotiation with you, my dear reader. Was it crazy to try to teach my mother something, anything? Was the whole thing entirely my fault then?

I guess it all fell apart because my father was there and I had tried to do the whole thing in Mandarin when quite frankly, my Mandarin sucks. I am eloquent in English, fluent in French and I could have had this conversation in English or French but when it comes to speaking to my father, I can ask if things like if he would rather drink coffee or tea but to talk about listening during conversations and how that facilitates communication? Forget it, I'm so out of my depth, I struggled very badly. I have this 有口难言 situation whereby I fail to accurately express everything I want to say in Mandarin properly and I get so frustrated. You know, I am so eloquent and articulate in English but the moment you want me to express something in Mandarin, I sound like an inarticulate mumbling fool. How can my father know me well when we struggle to communicate because of a freaking language barrier, never mind the huge generation gap?

This is how I felt all week.

I even told him as much - I said that if we could communicate in English or French, we would not have such problems. But saying something like that only winds him up even further because he thinks that I should make the effort to improve my Mandarin not just to speak to him, but because it is 'my' language. I told him that not one of my four grandparents spoke a word of Mandarin - but they spoke a mix of Malay, Hakka, Hokkien and Cantonese. So Mandarin is as much my mother tongue as French is - heck, at least I'm a lot more confident and comfortable in French than I ever was in Mandarin. But even if you get rid of that language barrier (my mother has a decent grasp of English), we still can't bloody communicate because she doesn't listen at all to anything anyone ever says to her because she is most probably autistic. With all these factors in mind, I'm now blaming myself for even having tried to raise the issue of her poor listening skills and tactless ways.

But no, I'm not prepared to rake up the past. Not even when my dad went on and on about what good parents they had been to me - I refused to take the bait. I thought they were awful parents who were simply were painfully unprepared for the difficult challenges of parenthood. I get the impression that they simply kept having kids till they got a son but were clueless about parenting 101, especially when I became a teenager. We barely ever talked throughout my teenage years and they hardly knew anything about what I did then (never mind as an adult). I could have shoved it in his face and told him exactly how dysfunctional our relationship was, but even I drew the line at that. Yeah I have a terrible, lousy relationship with my parents - would good would arguing about it with them do about the situation? So I decided to let it go. There comes a point when it becomes an argument that nobody can win - even if I told them exactly what I thought about their parenting and my childhood, all I will do is make everyone feel even more miserable.

I wonder if I could have handled it any better.

They leave tomorrow. I should feel ashamed at saying this but I am kinda relieved. I didn't get my hopes up for this visit. They showed zero interest in my new job and were only really interested in fussing over my nephew. But I have expected nothing less - I'm just looking back and wondering if it was wrong of me to even try 'teaching' my mother anything about communication. It seemed like a good idea at the time but in hindsight it went down so badly. What do you think? What would you have done instead? Many thanks for listening and allowing me to get this off my chest.