While my mom was here, we took her grocery shopping (different than banana incident). I found her at the seafood section buying a lot of fish so I tried telling her that it was too much but she insisted that they tasted great and we’d love it.

I wanted to argue that they would just go to waste because we wouldn’t be able to finish them and if we wanted more, the grocery store was still going to be there. I quickly paused to weigh my options.

Normally, I would tell her that it was such a bad idea to buy that many fish and she would disagree and buy the fish anyway. And then I would be upset because she didn’t listen to my opinion and if I didn’t eat the fish that she cooked, she would complain that if she knew, she wouldn’t have bought that much. Then I would be even more upset because I had already told her not to do so and despite my warning, she did what she wanted to do anyway.

Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best idea. What else can I do?

I had always been a very straight forward person but previously, being straight forward didn’t work very well with her. But I had learned that sometimes, there is more than 1 way to achieve a goal.
I always thought that if I disagreed, I had to say it out loud; I had to make other people understand why my idea was better than theirs. However, not everything needed to be spoken out loud every single time. You could say things with your actions too.
So, even though I still felt uneasy, I chose to stay quiet and see where this new option could take me.

For several days, she was quite happy that we seemed to like the fish that she cooked. However, after days of eating fish after fish (she loves fish and she bought a lot of fish that day :P), Erwin and I finally gave up. We only took a bite or two out of the fish.
Since my mother really didn’t like to waste food, she felt that she had to finish what was left of that fish. She asked if it weren’t good and I politely said it was good.
It was indeed good; it was just too much to have on every meal for too many consecutive days.

After couple days, I think she got the idea that we didn’t love fish as much as she did.

We didn’t argue.
I was being polite and respectful to her.
I didn’t screw it up this time!