Mum showing up unannounced - have I been unfair?

HPoirot

lostinrates wrote: »

Or it could just be that OP wants her mother to call so that when she comes round she can be dressed, ready to receive her and prepared, or arrange a better time.......

The suggestion to simply not answer the door I think is ok, but honestly the phone ringing/someone at the door does often put a dampener on things. If you know its not likely to be your poor dispose see mother but some campaigner or something its easier to disregard.

If you cannot force her to change her habits, surely you would alter yours to accommodate her?

arbroath_lass

Any wrote: »

Good for you. Very bad manners I was taught.

Edit: No, sorry actually, I don't think it was taught per se... it was just completely unthinkable. I don't know anyone who would enter my house unannounced or when not invited in.
Unless it was agreed before hand openly., they will knock and wait for reply, someone to come to the door..

I guess that's the difference. As far as I'm concerned my family and friends have an open invitation.

lostinrates

HPoirot wrote: »

If you cannot force her to change her habits, surely you would alter yours to accommodate her?

I don't know OP's full situation. One of the thing that raises my eyebrows here is some people's quite narrow application of what is 'normal' and thus acceptable.

I do know if I locked the door on my mother and she turned up at he door here and it were locked and we heard her DH and of would probably be frustrated but laugh and be put off and agree to continue later.

But you are right, we would start locking the door. In many circumstance, as I have said, I would lock the door anyway.

In OUR personal situation, we are not in the position of locking doors during most days for reasons I have described, but people have learned to respect boundaries. And no......not by walking in on us!

Vicky123

melanzana wrote: »

This board seems to be a magnet for winder uppers.

Think about it...OP complains about mother calling and finding daughter and oh in flagrante delicto.

What Does she do? Lock the permanently open door at the back? No, writes a post here.

We should have a poll for "spot the wind up post" .

The sad thing is, genuine posts will be seen with sceptical eyes very soon.

Yes, I'm all for taking things at face value but it's getting silly now, even if it is genuine how come this person hasn't thought about locking the door already? Why have the awkward conversation in the first place?

GeckoGirl1985

Just to add a few things here following on from people's replies

We use our back door a lot when home in the evenings and daytime, probably several times an hour as we are constantly letting the cats in/out and going back and forth to the outbuilding where our freezer, clothes line and all sorts of other things are kept. As we have a fairly open plan house (plus the noisy rattling suncatcher on the door) there is no way anyone could enter through the back of the house without us knowing, even if we were upstairs.

However, I have taken on board what you have all said about locking our door and will be making a point of doing this from now on - Obviously we now realise we should have locked it after the first time and certainly after the 2nd, but we are so unaccustomed to people arriving unexpectedly that we simply forgot. I should also point out that I did drop fairly heavy hints to Mum that a curtosy call before popping in would be nice after the first time this happened and we thought at the time that she had got the message, which made it all the more surprising when she then continued showing up at the house unexpectedly.

I popped round to my sister's house tonight to see her and Mum (having called ahead first of course to make sure they were in and not busy!) and Mum is completely fine and back to her normal self. I think part of her, and mine, defensive reaction last night was down to embarrassment, and now that we are both over the shock of the situation things are back to normal.

So, lessons learnt hopefully! In future we shall keep our doors locked, and fingers crossed she will understand why we would prefer her to call ahead if popping over.

wik

Locking doors!! whats that
In last house but one we didnt even have locks on either back or front door! And my nearest neighbour was known on occasion to just come in, grab calpol from cupboard in kitchen and shout out hi bye on her way back out

And we would go away for a few days and the postie would pop the post inside for us

At this house, both doors are unlocked in morning about 8am and front door locked about 5pm in winter, after whoever is last in in the summer, and back door after the dog has last walk... We have a super alarm here! She is about 5kg and has a set of very very sharp teeth!
I would never dream of asking anyone to let me know they were coming to visit, and would be upset if any family or friends waited for the door to be opened! Most walk in and put the kettle on as they pass it

GeckoGirl1985

melanzana wrote: »

This board seems to be a magnet for winder uppers.

Think about it...OP complains about mother calling and finding daughter and oh in flagrante delicto.

What Does she do? Lock the permanently open door at the back? No, writes a post here.

We should have a poll for "spot the wind up post" .

The sad thing is, genuine posts will be seen with sceptical eyes very soon.

Hello Melanzana,

As I've just written, we appreciate now that perhaps keeping our back door locked at all times (despite the fact we use it very often when home, and despite the fact that nobody else simply walks into our house, and also that nobody can enter without us knowing about it) is now the most sensible option for us to avoid similar situations in the future.

However, that wasn't really the point of my original post. What I was actually asking for was other people's opinions on was whether or not I had been unfair in asking my Mum to call ahead to let us know she was planning on visiting, given that we would hope to have some privacy in our own home. In my mind, it is only polite and appropriate to check that someone is a) at home and b) not busy, rather than just showing up at somebody's house. However I do appreciate that not everybody shares this sentiment and I suppose that depends largely on what kind of relationship you may have with different members of the family.

Anyway, thanks for your post. I suppose at least you must have found it of some interest even if you do seem to think that asking for other people's opinions is a wind-up, otherwise you wouldn't have read through it as far as you did.

carefullycautious

wik wrote: »

Locking doors!! whats that
In last house but one we didnt even have locks on either back or front door! And my nearest neighbour was known on occasion to just come in, grab calpol from cupboard in kitchen and shout out hi bye on her way back out

And we would go away for a few days and the postie would pop the post inside for us

At this house, both doors are unlocked in morning about 8am and front door locked about 5pm in winter, after whoever is last in in the summer, and back door after the dog has last walk... We have a super alarm here! She is about 5kg and has a set of very very sharp teeth!
I would never dream of asking anyone to let me know they were coming to visit, and would be upset if any family or friends waited for the door to be opened! Most walk in and put the kettle on as they pass it

sheesh your making me all nostalgic now

catkins

None of my family would ever just turn up without ringing first to check it was ok (sister lives literally round the corner and parents live about about a 10 minute drive away). Also none of our friends even just turn up. I think it is very rude to do that.

OH's family however do just turn up announced. When OH's dad was alive (his mum doesn't drive thankfully) they would just turn up even though the closest they ever lived to us was a half an hour drive. Sometimes they would turn up and we would be out and then we would get abusive phone calls as to their "wasted journey".

The worst was when we lived abroad and they would phone to say they were on the ferry on their way to us! I used to get so annoyed.

Oh and we don't lock our back door during the day as we have a large dog who would definitely not let anyone in

stebiz

I think your out of order. Not only did you not lock the door you've embarrassed your Mum. You only ever get one.

Mine never calls me and they visit a few times a week. If the doors open she'll walk in. Having 3 kids usually means that we can't get up to much anyway. That's what bed time is for. Surely you can wait.

Box of chocs/flowers in order and a big apology.