Accused of arguing all the time

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My mother needs physical therapy for her elbow. She is 88 years old. She is supposed to do exercises with her arm 2x a day.

My mother told me today she is supposed to do the exercises 1x a day. I knew this was wrong. The therapist said 2x a day. Not only that the paper with the exercises to do says 2x a day. I even pointed this out and she still said she is supposed to do them 1x a day.

We got into an argument over this to the point she started crying and accusing me of arguing all the time. I have been accused by this by her and others in the past. 99.9% of the time the argument is over facts like this or near facts. I always take the facts side and yet I am accused of arguing. It is nuts to me. My viewpoint is always that other person is arguing.

I do not get it and am lost.

In an argument most people think the facts are on their side. That's why they pick the position they did. Usually that means at least one is wrong and the facts are not actually on their side - or they're talking past each other and neither understands what point the other is trying to make.
In the case of your argument with your mother she may have genuinely believed that she was right or she was lying because she did not want to do her exercises.



It is rare that one person in a discussion is arguing and the other isn't. Usually both or none are arguing. Whether you're arguing or not does not depend on if you are right or wrong. It is a matter of how you discuss things - your tone of voice, how much you insist on continuing the discussion even if it is clear you won't agree, if you sound accusatory, condescending, or aggressive etc. Being right or wrong has nothing to do with it.
And again, usually both people believe to be right. That's why the argument happens. It may be rare for people to believe they're right in 99.9% of their arguments, but many people would say they're right 90% of the time. Obviously that can't be true and most of them are mistaken.

My question to you is: What does it really matter?

Your mother is 88 years old. She's already past life expectancy and is at the end of her life. I'm going to assume she doesn't work, so her elbow mobility will probably not suffer greatly from only doing her exercises once a day.

You need to learn when to let things go - what is important and what is not. You can have a relationship with other people or you can be right all the time but you can't have both.

It's okay to discuss things with other people but you should learn to recognize when the discussion is becoming too heated and then learn to back off. In this case you stressed her out and made your 88-year-old mother cry.

It's possible that she really did think that she was supposed to do them 1x a day, or it's possible that she just did not want to do them. Either way, it doesn't really matter. It's not like this is going to affect her career or something. The woman is almost 90.

Last edited by Luhluhluh on 18 Sep 2019, 6:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

I would be harder on your mum with regards to the physical therapy, it's really important. Tell her if she doesn't do the right amount of physio it could affect the movement of her elbow for the rest of her life.

She wants to do the therapy once a day, apparently. She doesn’t care about elbow movement at this point in her life.

You were right in pointing out the truth......but maybe you shouldn’t have been so adamant about it.

I hope you both hugged later.