I agree. Remember back to when you were a teen and your parents still treated you as a child? You’re parents are adults, and sometimes adults make bad choices but it’s their choice.
Stopping them from living isn’t going to keep them from dying. It’s one thing if the issue is driving, where they are endangering others, but if you’re mother has a sound mental state, you can only reason with her, if she doesn’t she may fall and have a bad time of it.
But it was her choice. As cruel as it sounds, sometimes even 80 year olds have to learn things the hard way.
I’ve had 4, plus an aunt. They are teenagers; they think they can do things far beyond their ability and have forgotten how to estimate the risks, something most of them hammered into us when we were teens. It is why so many predatory people prey on elders. The once capable adult who never would have fallen for the scam is now an easy mark. Sure, they get to make their own decisions; many simply don’t make good decisions like they did years earlier. Just like parents should try to protect their teen offspring from their bad decision, adult children should try to do the same for their aging parents. And it is a lot harder to do. At least the teenage will mature (eventually, hopefully). The same can’t be said for the elderly parent.
As a coda:
My sister and I decided that the only way we felt comfortable staying in the house alone was to move all her stuff to the first floor (where there is a guest bedroom), and then put a lock on the basement door. I gave the keys to the neighbors, so she needs to call them if she needs anything in the basement.
She is moving into a retirement community as early as next week, assuming she doesn’t kill herself in a fall first.
As part of the interview process for the retirement community, they had her do a one-on-one evaluation with a social worker, to see if she was fit for independent living.
She bombed the cognitive part of the test.
I knew she was declining, I just didn’t know how badly. So, I have no guilt about putting restrictions on her movement in her house.
Oh, and for those who say I don’t have the right to do this - Tough. She can cut me out of her will if she feels that badly about it.
Good point. Unfortunate incidents happen every once in a while. If you accidentally slip and fall on a banana peel and injure yourself, does that mean that you need lifetime institutionalization? If I decide to take up dressmaking as a hobby and accidentally prick myself on a sewing needle, does that mean that my children need to show up right away, take all of my needles away, and put me in a “home”? Yes, there’s a line, but it’s not a clear one, and the OP’s statements don’t convince me that it has been crossed yet.
Also note that accusing someone of being “in denial” can be a dangerous thing. Saying someone is in denial requires a careful assessment of the underlying facts. How would you like to be confronted by someone who said that because you tripped on a banana peel once at age 25, that you need to be institutionalized, and that any attempt from you to explain why he is wrong is actually evidence of you being “in denial” of your own invalidity?
The moon is made of green cheese. If you don’t believe this, you are obviously in denial over what should be plain and obvious to anyone with half a brain. Proceed directly to a care institution.
The bolded is key. No one likes to lose independance, and if an adult is still cognitivively competent, you really ought to let them make their own decisions about what risks are worth it to them to continue to feel independant. But if you mom can no longer make good decisions – which is different from making decisions that seem risky to you – that’s a different story.
Good luck with your mom, and do try not to strip her of self-respect when you are trying to keep her safe.
Good point. There’s a very important, and crucial, difference between someone who makes poor choices because they are the kind of person who makes poor choices and someone who makes poor choices because they can no longer think rationally. If the first type of person were deemed pathological, people would be forever in danger of being institutionalized for voting for a disfavored candidate (“Only an idiot would vote <whichever political party you most disfavor today>…to the old folks home with you!”), following a religion that someone else disagrees with (“You left your ancestral religion not because you are smart, but because you are senile enough to be duped by a missionary. To the old folks home, right away!”), or for doing anything that someone with some level of power happened to disagree with. That would jeopardize civil liberties to a frightening extent.
You did good, beowulff. My mother-in-law resisted all assistance for a long time, and it was really hard on the rest of the family trying to get her proper care with her actively resisting. She is now in a dementia-care facility at age 90, but man did she put us through a lot. The whole aging parents thing really sucks.
You need to report her to the DMV. I’m sorry, I have no pity for people who can’t get their aging family members off their road. She is going to kill someone.
In NYS you can anonymously report someone and I believe they have to take a driving test and a vision test. My friend did it for her mother in law and they took her license away, and no one ever found out it was my friend (except for me, whom she told, and I don’t tell).
Here’s one for California. Google it for your state:
beowulff, you did good. I know we’re all convinced that keeping the parents at home is the loving thing to do, but it really isn’t, if they are impaired. I cannot look after a parent 24-7 the way they can.
Times must have changed: 18 years ago I reported to the NYS DMV that my father was not fit to drive. They wouldn’t do anything unless I signed a formal complaint. He died, still possessed of a license. We sold the car. || We got a life alert for my mother - she mailed to back to the manufacturer. || Not far from their age now, myself - hope I can do better.
My mother was the same way at 89. I sent the state DMV a letter asking them to test her the next time her license expired (it’s an auto renewal state). Check your state DMV site for terms like ‘elderly driver’ and see what pops up.
I had to involuntarily move my mother into assisted living. She was not managing her many, many meds correctly and descended into paranoid psychosis. During the move, she called the cops on me. Anyway, fortunately I had Durable Power of Attorney and a letter from her doctor that she could no longer manage her finances or her medications. A Durable power of attorney, and a relationship w/ her doctor was key to getting things moving. She’s doing better now, although occasionally she still tells me people are stealing her underwear.
(Actually, I called her today and had a nice conversation with her. She didn’t bring up the locked door at all, so I don’t think it’s bothering her very much.)
My MIL resisted moving to assisted living - within a day or two she commented on how much she loved it, and she has never expressed a desire to move back to her old place.
Real tough situation. IMO&E, your options are essentially:
-do what you are permitted legally in terms of having them declared incompetent and taking over finances/driving/housing/health care;
-try to take precautions which they will try to circumvent;
-enable them to act in a way you feel unwise/unsafe;
-convince yourself to care less.
All of these approaches impose different costs on you and them. But whichever you choose, be honest with yourself as to what you are doing and why. Doing what is best for your aged relative, and what is best for you, is not always the same thing. I strongly believe that if an older person truly cared for their children (presuming competence), they would not put the children a position where the children would experience such stress. If a parent does not care to relieve their children of such stress, then the child has the choice of caring less about the parent.
Not sure I agree. My parents both died suddenly in their mid-70s while in full control of their mental faculties. While I resented having them taken so early at the time, I have since come to see it as a blessing that I can remember them as the thinking, caring people they were, rather than through a long period of deterioration. __ Emmanuel wrote in the Atlantic that he wished to die at 75, so he would be remembered as a capable individual. While I’m not eager to take myself out at any “end-by date”, there is some merit to such thoughts.
I hope I never become a burden upon my kids the way my MIL is, and that my kids never think/talk about me the way my wife and I and her siblings think and talk about the MIL. You feel like a miserable person when you find yourself wishing that she would just die in her sleep. But it would be a lie to say I never thought that.
My mid 80’s parents refuse to move their laundry room up to their main living area floor (ranch) even though there is a small room off their kitchen designed for just that, and my husband offered to do the work for free. It has been brought up 4 times by 3 of their kids and we are not allowed to mention it again!
My mom can’t forget how 50 years ago, she had a dryer in her kitchen and the lint was all over her kitchen. Now, she thinks the lint will not leave through a vent and will instead float around a corner to the kitchen and land on her food. Meanwhile, my parents take turns gingerly going up and down their concrete basement steps to attend to the wash. Oh, the washing machine must be manually filled for wash and rinse cycles. No, they don’t want a new washing machine and they can afford one. She says she won’t live long enough to get her money’s worth from a new machine.
The thing with the stairs is that when one of our elderly parents falls and breaks a hip or leg, we are the ones to be inconvenienced. So, shouldn’t we have some say in the matter? I want to tell my parents, When you fall on your concrete steps, don’t call me.
This is the kind of thing I was getting at. It is not realistic to persuade yourself that you will NOT be torn up when mom or dad takes a dive, and that you WON’T want to be there for them should that happen.
IMO your concerns are reasonable. And if someone I care for expresses reasonable concerns, that I can easily accommodate, refusal to do so is not a sign of a loving, mature individual.
Then they piss you off, and you find yourself thinking about leaving roller skates and banana peels on the steps to help them on their way… :rolleyes:
Sometimes you just can’t convince them and you just have to put your foot down. You CANT drive anymore. PERIOD. You CANT stay in this house anymore because you just can’t safely be here anymore. PERIOD.
It can get rough, and be a huge struggle to get them to stop fighting it (if they ever do), but sometimes you just have to pull the trigger and force the issue before they’re willing to accept it, not after.
