Of the handful of phone calls I make every week, the one with my mom is by far the most socially draining; we always talk about the same topics every time: me, my pregnancy, her work, her finances and my dad or other family members.
I find talking about myself to be particularly draining. I really don't like attention on myself and she just wants to know all about my pregnancy and how I'm doing. This can easily take up half an hour of just talking about me. I have tried asking leading questions about her ("how was your week, how is dad/brother/etc") but we always end up in exactly the same set of topics.
There really isn't much to talk about between the topics mentioned above. We seem to re-hash the same information and the same conversation week in and week out.
I want to talk about new topics, and I really like talking about ideas instead of myself or other people. Every few months we'll stumble upon a topic that is outside of the above and it feels like such a breath of fresh air. My mom is knowledgeable about a wide range of things, so I know we can potentially talk about lots of stuff, but it feels like we are stuck in this conversational rut. (It seems like she's in "mom mode" where she just wants to talk about me the whole time and be all encouraging and fix all my problems, and it's really draining when she's talking like a mom and not a friend).
Tomorrow I have another phone call with her, and I'm really not looking forward to re-hashing the same topics again. I'm thinking about preparing a list of new topics to try and talk about, but I'm not 100% sure how to fit them into the conversation, and I don't want it to be boring for her either.
How can I steer the conversation away from the same boring topics, and encourage my mom to talk about other things that she finds interesting?