Mums poor decisions and impact on family

Some examples, nurse visiting her at home wants her to go to the hospital immediately, and will arrange transportation as we were away. She refuses, next day I have to find out why/where, organise it and go with her. I was supposed to be working

"That's a real shame that you turned her down Mum, you're going to have to ring her up and re-arrange it. I'm afraid I haven't got time to sort it for you.

repeat

repeat

repeat

If you don't make yourself less available, you will continue to be taken advantage of.

Your experience is much more common than people would believe. Ive experienced it 4 times! I’ve come to the conclusion that for the most part, it is a sign of ageing and therefore not something people can be held accountable for. A bit like trying to reason with a 3 year old.

OP you’ve had lots of great suggestions
all I can add is my experience with DF who came to live with us after first lockdown. He was clearly losing some capacity in some way but able to keep up coping up to a point until a cliff-fall moment when he became clearly demented in March 2021. During the lockdown of 20/21 winter he was more and more unable to keep himself safe - just downright refusing to bear safety in mind and getting really belligerent about it. I remember actually physically demonstrating to him what happens if you try and stand up from a wheelchair with the foot supports in place (dramatically falling forward over said foot supports face down on floor) - but he still carried on doing it, not to mention walking without support or driving his mobility scooter like Sterling Moss.

what I’ve realised in the year since is that some quite complicated thing we’re going on… and sadly doll some of them involved him deliberately putting himself in harms way because he felt he was losing control. I actually think he was disregarding his own safety because sometimes he felt that was an easy way out.

My DGM could be like this. She did accept some help but sometimes it felt like it was always something. We would be running around sorting things out sometimes even after it was resolved.

I think it was about attention which I get but I was a single parent working full time and I couldn't just drop everything.

Same here. Care package would be set up for mum, dad would cancel it.
It was a safeguarding issue in the end but get anyone to listen was a dreadful struggle.
it ended up with both of them going into a care home.

I had a conversation with my DM yesterday on the back of this thread and listening to the Annelisa Barbieri podcast someone recommended. The outcome was that she was absolutely insistent that she didn't need any further help. She said "I'm all right" and I said (a bit tearfully by now) that I wasn't, but this doesn't factor at all in her decision making, which upsets me. It's not so much the little jobs, but the overall holding her well-being in mind, I want someone else to share the load. I have to focus on myself the next couple of months, and will be having an operation, and she said to me that I should stop going round to see how she copes. That's not what I want, I just want her to have someone in an hour a week to start off with to troubleshoot things with her, but what I want seems irrelevant. It's so frustrating, but maybe I do need to walk away. I do wonder whether some of it is cognitive impairment meaning she's not thinking properly.

I think this is true of my mother as well. She has always been like it. I love her but it’s not how I want to treat my children.

I completely totally and utterly understand and you have my sympathies.

@AprilAlready you might find solidarity/help/somewhere to scream on the Cockroach Cafe thread

www.mumsnet.com/talk/elderly_parents/4500497-Cockroach-cafe-Spring-2022

@TalesOfDrunkennessAndCruelty I think it’s quite reassuring when others recognise there’s an issue 😃

I could have written your post April, I've been having the same battles for the last three years, but the impact of the stress on my health has just come into sharp focus as I've been diagnosed with cancer - a usually curable one - but I've got to have an op so will be out of action for a while - but I have no obvious risk factors other than the stress. I did manage to persuade her to have carers after a crisis, that was a fight, but she stopped them because of Covid and is still very risk averse, which I do understand, but it's made me realise I can't pick up the pieces for her choices, sad though it is. I wish she'd moved to sheltered housing but I think she's now left it too late. I called social services a couple of weeks ago, and they can't do a huge amount without her consent, but they will do me a carers assessment and I may get a personal budget to support me. There's a long waiting list, but they did call to see if my mum needed anything urgently.

Passive aggression at its finest!

That reminds me that, when my parent was in hospital and, frankly, being horrible, the nurse took me outside to give me a hug!

It is very very hard, OP.

I have been through it.

I think you need to be a bit tough and very consistent so that her own new reality (needing more help) is harder for her to deny to herself, and your availability has consistent boundaries, so that that becomes her reality too.

Tell her (repeat it with the same script calmly every time) that you cannot take more time off work for appointments: you have had xx days and you will lose your job if you take more.

It sounds as if she could b eligible for Attendance Allowance, which is not means tested and can be spent on any kind of support.

We had to more or less force my mother to accept a carer for an hour each morning, but once she got used to it it was a source of security for her.

Yes, @OhamIreally when my dad was in hospital recently they rang me up ask if he was demented or just horrible 🤣

Oh yes. My parent has had the same traits for years, too. Old age has exaggerated them (and I suppose other more positive traits have faded away, making the less positive traits more prominent) but they’re not new.

This is the thing @WouldBeGood you get a lot of people saying "oh it's the disease it's so cruel you have to remember it's not really her" but you think to yourself well they've always been like this.

My father has always lacked empathy. Nothing to do with age related change.

Hi @AprilAlready so much this! I have pleaded with my mum for years to give me POA she is so obstinate. I have told her over and over that she is just storing up misery for me it's so selfish.

We did set it up eventually but when the final letters came from the OPG she objected! To her own POA. I was so furious. In some ways she's done me a favour though as now she doesn't have capacity and would like me to make decisions I have to tell her that I can't.

She calls me asking me to come up, I have agencies left right and centre calling me at all hours. They literally expect me to drop everything. I'm a single parent with a full time job but the only thing that saves my sanity is that I live 200 miles away so they can't expect me to come every time.

Last time I went up I crashed my car on the motorway I swear she couldn't have cared less. The car has been in the garage for weeks (no parts) and she constantly asks when I'm coming. Maybe it's that frontal lobe thing PP mentioned but it's pretty hurtful that your mum doesn't even ask how you are when you've been in a crash on the M1.

I think by this stage we're just a resource.

She's had a bloody great retirement and if I've got any chance of a reasonable one myself I have to keep working.

Sympathy OP it's evident we're not alone.

Hey @Duchess379 I am 44 and everyone else’s mums seem to be fighting fit and help them emotionally and all the rest. It’s so hard, isn’t it?

I absolutely understand where you're coming from - you've just described my mum!
I'm now a carer for both my parents after my mum had several mini strokes & a triple heart bypass & my dad had a heart attack in February!
My mum is unsteady on her feet & has physio a couple of times a week.
Good Friday, she decided to walk unaided, fell over & hurt her rib cage. Now all I've had all pigging weekend is her huffing & puffing & complaining her ribs hurt (I suspect they're bruised, not broken) She decided today she wanted to go to hospital so I rang 111 & advised mum that because it's Easter BH, staff are going to be on a skeleton crew & she'll be sitting around for hours. She then quickly decided she doesn't want to go now & is happy being propped up in bed. I'm only 46 & don't know how much more of this I can stand. It's been like this since 2017 🤦🏼‍♀️

Same here also!! Totally relate to this behaviour. I’ve had it this weekend and it makes me not want to visit. I do an online food shop once a week. Latest on that is the meals aren’t good enough.