AIBU to think care homes need more age-appropriate entertainment?

I really hope by the time I need one they are all playing the music of the 80s and 90s.

As long as he doesn't join in 😅

Obviously i meant watching it !

Football?
My 84 year old Dad is still an avid man u fan.

myislandhome Just wondering how the SAW movies will go down! I am scared os them and nowhere near a Nursing home !

I want to go to this care home 😆
love the lady in the white cardigan 😍. :

https://youtube.com/shorts/_F1qVu10kCs?si=3qWg5HmdBb7hXH3v

in my DM's flats a chap runs a regular music activity where he plays music on a particular theme/era, one theme was 'music you would like played at your funeral'!

This!

Well, one home had strippers visiting-your Dad might like that!

When you've got it off the ground let me know and I'll put my name down. I was born in 1971 😁

I think OP has made a good point. Why would care homes be stuck in the war years, with Vera Lynn songs and even first World War songs. If I were ( God forbid) to go into a care home, they would play 60s/ 70s/ 80s songs to be appropriate for my eras.

Big VE anniversaries aside, I had no idea care homes still did this. The few I'm aware of have far more age-appropriate entertainment.

My 97 year old father is now in a care home because of a number of unexplained collapses that came with no warning. He's obviously frail now and his memory is a bit hit and miss, but he loves the staff and is happy there. There are lots of activities, but a lot of them are aimed at women as women make up the majority of residents. I've just filled in a form they sent asking for suggestions for activities for the residents and suggested pub visits and darts matches. Can anyone suggest anything else? Thank you.

If I am ever in a care home I want Monteverdi, Handel, Purcell, the Velvet Underground and the Rolling Stones - and electric folk.

But just because the oldsters in your family have particular tastes, that doesn't mean everyone does. My parents would HATE listening to 'modern' stuff like the Beatles, let alone Queen and Led Zeppelin, and enjoy the war-time and pre-war/early 50s stuff. My mum has been very disappointed that the old people's choir she contemplated joining was all 'modern' songs that she had no interest in, and they both hated the music on loop at the old people's hotel they recently stayed at. It's good when there's a wide variety - hopefully there'll be something for everyone. But why should your parents' taste be the only taste catered for?

On a side note, I think it's interesting that there was a huge cultural shift between my mum's age and people just two or three years younger, who came of age in the rock and roll era. In music terms, there's not been a revolution of taste in that way since then - most people can appreciate lots of modern styles of music, and parents enjoy plenty of their kids music etc. But at that moment in history, there seems to have been a big dividing line.

Why not write to them and suggest it then?

Although not SAW. That would likely disturb many residents.

It reminds me of a Victoria Wood sketch where the old gent in the home is taken out on an outing to listen to two well meaning young women sing Ralph McTell's 'Streets of London'.

Later in the sketch the same duo come to the home and sing the exact same song.

Because elderly people haven't moved on in their tastes since the last episode of the Good Old Days, and can't possibly discover anything new.

We thought this too when my dad was in a home recently. It was just constant Vera Lynn. He was a young kid during the war, that’s not his era at all. It’s as though we got an idea of what ‘old people’ enjoy and then just stuck with it, despite it not making any sense as time has moved on.
The 1940s would have been more my grandad’s era, but I’m not sure he would have wanted constant reminders of wartime either, it was a pretty traumatic time for lots of young men.
I would raise it if you can, hopefully they listen!

Ha, my ex has young-onset Alzheimers and is in a care home at 60. Her youth was the 80s on but she still gets memory actuvities based on the late queen's coronation etc.

I agree. My dad lost both his brothers and my mum her best friend. They hated any reference to the war. Thankfully neither had to go into a home.

Let alone the fact that I'm sure many of the older generations have bad memories of the war and this is just bringing it up again as if it's the good old days

I agree mostly! But we have a fab care home locally.
It's got a room that's decked out as a pub (all panelling and a bar). Fish and chip Fridays happens in there as well as twice weekly pub quiz night. (Which residents are asked to run the quizzes if they fancy it). They have a mini bus and go out at least three times per week, think garden centres, local summer fayres, cinema trips etc.
they have an entertainment co-ordinator, they do family quiz nights, proper art classes, knit and natter etc. and a few of the guys got them to use the mini bus to drop them at the local pub for an hour.
I've already told my DD if I have to go in one that's the one I want!! As you can imagine though, it's a very very expensive place.

And even older people won't necessarily want to be reminded of the war or the "good old days". In the 1980s, my grandmother (born in 1898) lived for a while in a retirement village where they created a "memory garden" of olden days stuff. She couldn't understand why anyone would want to look at "a blooming old mangle" when automatic washing machines existed :-)