My mum is Japanese but I'm Australian. My Japanese is not that good so we mostly speak in English. Every now and again we seem to have a similar misunderstanding surrounding the word "strong". It happened again today.
So for context my family is getting sick a lot at the moment. It's winter and we have a toddler so we bring a lot of germs home. This morning I was on the phone to my mum and she was saying she doesn't understand why we keep getting sick. I said it's to do with our toddler I think. She said yes but lots of people have toddlers and don't get sick this often (I disagree but didn't say anything). She then said "I think you need to be stronger". I got upset and said I'm doing the best I can and that I don't think it's my fault we keep getting sick, as it seemed to be what she's implying. She then said that's not what she meant and she doesn't think it's my fault. We've had some variation of this misunderstanding before involving her use of the word 'strong'.
My mum doesn't handle me getting upset very well so she always tries to shut down the conversation at this point, saying she shouldn't have said anything because I misunderstand her English. This always make me feel even sadder because I feel so bad for her that she doesn't feel like she can talk to me. I just want to understand what she means when she says this so that this doesn't happen again. Is there some phrase in Japanese that you say to people when they're struggling with the word 'strong'? I think maybe she's basically saying something like 頑張って, and its supposed to be an encouragement rather than an accusation.
Can anyone help?
by eiiiaaaa