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

100% this. I used to work for a local Age UK in London and our most popular events were always the 70s discos and stuff like that. We used to do a party for Notting Hill carnival and even the people with crutches were doing the limbo by the end. It was so joyful.

They need performers like this. She's ace.

BBC News - Bolton singer, 63, goes viral performing Freed From Desire - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8x70pjj15go?app-referrer=deep-link

And the first batch of Baby Boomers, all born after the war, turn 80 this year.

I was thinking about this the other day. How what the carers think was the mainstream taste of the clients was and inflicting that. Imagine them assuming everyone wants to hear Robbie Williams' 'Angels' non-stop and you have no-one to advocate to "make it stop!".

Tell them 🤷‍♀️

I go to Care Homes professionally. I am ALWAYS pointing this out! Staff are shocked when I point out that an 81 year old was born at the end of the war, and wants music from the 60s and 70s! It’s like they don’t get it at all!!

My Mum is 85, so was primary school aged when the war ended. She hates all the 'pensioner' songs as she calls them and prefers Motown and M People.

Totally agree, although my 82 year old grandad isn’t in a care home he really likes listening to 60s because that’s the era when he was out dancing. There’s a music channel dedicated to 60s music and he always has it on and retells us tales of the days when he went out.

MIL is the same. She used to eat curries and liked spicy food even just a few years ago. She could eat food hotter than I can. Now she says she doesn't like it if you give her anything 'different'. My friend's mum has dementia too and she won't eat anything but ham sandwiches.

MIL used to keep tripping the electrics boiling the kettle when she'd forgotten to put water in it. Luckily she never even attempted to cook, she wouldn't have remembered to get it out of the oven.

There is some sense in advertising walk-in baths, stairlifts and cremations to those in their 50s. Not because they need them themselves, but because they're often organising that sort of thing for their parents who are in their 80s.

You are absolutely right OP - my DM complained about looking for this when looking at care homes a few years ago for my DF. He was in his late 70s and was born shortly before the war ended so has no memory of it - his music era was late 50s onwards.

It’s absolutely baffling - it’s as if many care homes have been stuck in a rut since the 1970s, when WW2 music/culture would have been relevant to residents.

It seems those who run care homes cannot comprehend that someone can be “ancient” (in their eyes) but have grown up in, or be into culture from, the 60s/70s/80s onwards.

This thread is so interesting to me. I'm in the US, and I remember a conversation I had about 10 years ago with the activities director of the elder care facility my mother was in (she died at 93 around that time). The director said they were in the process of planning changes to better accommodate the expected large influx of Boomers. Different entertainment was high on the list (including live music with tribute bands, with Beatles high on the list) and also different dining options. They had a large dining room with set times for formal meals, and they were planning to shift to more informal offerings, including a coffee shop. And of course, beefing up their wifi.

My dread is ending up in the geriatric ward if I have to go to hospital. I’m 78, but in my mind I‘m mid thirties!

I was born in the mid 1960s, so was a child in the 1970s and a teen/young adult in the 1980s. Even now, I listen to music from the mid 1970s right up to 2020s... I have no interest whatsoever in anything before the mid 1970s.

Why on earth do they think that anyone wants to listen to music sometimes from over a decade or more before they were even born? (and nothing else.......) Many people like music that is far more recent. It's insulting and patronising.

Sick of being treated as OLD. Once you're past 50, you're OLD (in the eyes of some!)

Like the fucking spam adverts I keep getting in my email and on my phone for baths with doors, walk in showers, retirement villages (kill me now!) and bastard direct cremations and funeral plans!

I'm only 60, I am as healthy as some people half my age, mobile and independent, and I ain't planning on dying for a LONG time yet! As soon as I hit 50, I got loads of ads on Facebook for wrinkle cream, teeth whitener, hair dye, and botox. FUCK. RIGHT OFFFFFF! I didn't have a single grey hair then, my skin was smooth and I looked 5-6 years younger, and my teeth were fine ta - still are!

So infuriating.

Sorry (went off one one there! Must be my age!) 😂

My mum is mid 70s and still at home - I've set her up on amazon music and the range she listens to goes from the 50s right up to now.
Shed be horrified by having to listen to all that.
Theres a young singer round here that does a special afternoon rate for care homes and he does all the 60s stuff with a bit more modern thrown in too - goes down a storm with all the old dears.

I'm fully expecting to hear songs from Duran Duran, Spandeau Ballet and Wham! if I ever end up in a Nursing Home!

Does he wear those big, daft, monstrous flares.....? 😄

I've seen a chap in fb reels dancing to northern soul in his care home. Lovely

The experience of the generation who remember WW2 was more universal than the younger ones. Most people would have eaten meat and two veg dinners with gravy, on repeat, without complaint.

The boomer generation’s experiences are more diverse. If they travelled a lot or were into entertaining, curries, taramasalata or fajitas….

There’s also an assumption that everyone in that age group liked some of the stuff they were “supposed” to like. Read Spike Milligan’s war diaries when he was a gunner and his and the other troops views on Gracie Fields My dad just missed the war but did 2 years national service in the Marines. He was born in Manchester and couldn’t stand Gracie Fields or Vera Lynn either!

I would have been really intimidated by you! Just too cool for me!

they should put into groups in the care home. Boxes of Microwave chips, mini pizza and pop tarts for breakfast!

let’s hope they have moved on from war time food and music by then.

My 90 year old mum who was a surgeon before she retired had to go into a care-home for a brief period of respite recently. They offered her bingo, The Daily Mail and sing songs. She is very polite and just declined. She was 4 when WW2 started. She didn’t listen to Dame Vera Lynn!

😂😂
I was into rock/ indie music so will be sat next to you in my Docs leather Bikers jacket
I was fond of a waistcoat over a body top and long flowy skirt look😅

My DM’s food tastes have simplified as she has got older. One of her favourite places to eat when in her 70s/early 80s was a Thai restaurant. Now in her 90s she is back to much blander food and pretty much the same few meals on rotation

And having kitchenettes in rooms etc could be problematic with cognitive or mobility issues. Handling boiling water from a kettle might become a hazard, leaving oven or hob on. DM has an airfryer which automatically turns off, so we encourage her to use that and not her ordinary oven which she could forget to turn off