Study and Safewords.

[baratron]

I have five or six livejournal entries in my mental queue to post here at some point. This is not one of them. As often happens, I'm buried in mostly-offline life, and A Thing has happened that's stressed me enough to need to post about it NOW

Comments

[hiddenpaw]

It may well work once at least as long as you don't tell your mother about the concept of a safe word before hand. A random compleatly incongrus word thrown on its own in to a conversation can stop it dead while your mother asks what it means. At this point you can change the subject to the concept of safe words and hopefully quickly round to taking a break.

[firecat]

This works in my family: "I'm getting tired, so let's call it a night."

[artremis]

o urgle! Much sympathy an *gentle hugs*

i'm guessing your mother isn't used to direct honest communication what with living with your Dad so it's maybe hard for her to hear it and not be looking for hidden messages and power-games. Specially when although it's an entirely reasonable (and sensible) thing for you to say it could feel a bit rejecting to a person in a bad-head-place. (i'm assuming you were already doing stuff like using i-statements to make it more gentle and hearable)
A thing that's sometimes worked for me is to (slowly and gently) physically remove myself - so i your case i guess i'd have started doing my bedtime routine and if she stayed around have eventual acttly have gone to bed leaving her to choose stay in other parts of your house doing clearing etc without you to argue with or take herself home

[hobbitbabe]

Is your Mum able/willing to stop perseverating on something when your physical condition intrudes? Like if you had to run to the toilet or if you couldn't breathe, is she responsive to you saying 'I can't cope now, can we take it up tomorrow?" If yes, then the trick is to get her to see 'too tired to think' as a physical urgent crisis.

My former partner (yeah that one) was difficult to convince that we really would be willing to resume the hard convo later. With him we developed the convention of offering the other person the last word. "I have to go to bed, do you want the last word?" Also, we had to be rigidly rude about not talking at all after we had asked him to stop.

With your other friends, what would you do if they ignored your cues that you'd had enough? I think it's hard to be the same kind of assertive with one's parent, but at the same time, hard to expect them to pick up your cues.

*sympathy*

[micheinnz]

Has anyone ever tried the concept of a safeword with their mother?

Not with my mother, but Weasel has known what a "safety word" is (if not necessarily the original context) since she was tiny. If we're having a tickle war or playfight and she says the safety word, the silliness stops Right Then. It works the other way round, too -- if I or the DH say it, _she_ stops.

I can't see us abandoning the safety word altogether, although we may not use it just for playfights when she's an adult.