Parents not accepting help, even though they need it

There's a lot of good advice on the thread and what @LadyGardenersQuestionTime says really resonates. The biggest problem as I see it is that they don't want to be a burden to you, so they refuse help and insist on doing things for themselves, which then go wrong and cause you far more hassle than if they'd just let you help in the first place.

MIL is very frail and elderly, but can still just about manage to book an online supermarket delivery. She won't let us just go to the shop and buy what she wants, because she doesn't want to put us to any trouble. But when she chooses the delivery slot, instead of picking a sensible time during the day when she is usually awake and either: A - a time when one of her carers is there, or B - checking with DH when he can juggle his work so he can be there, she books it for the crack of dawn because it is cheaper. DH still has to prise himself out of bed at stupid o'clock and drive all the way over there just so he can answer the door. He got quite cross with her for doing it yet again yesterday and she told him off!

A poster on the old board always recommended care.com which can put you in touch with local independent carers- I.e not via an agency.

For my parents they never accepted help willingly @Tricyrtis2022 . I credit the Elderly Parents board as the sole source of my sanity remaining as we lurched from crisis to crisis. But getting a carer in (not an agency, a lady who worked for herself) was a conduit to more things as they came to really trust her and she could (in consultation with me) get them to accept 'someone to pop in and help with the garden' 'someone to take mum out for an hour' and so on, and she had a great local network. But it took dad to decide he would use a mobility scooter rather than not being able to go anywhere himself. And then he told everyone how good they were

In addition to the wait-for-a-crisis approach I have taken the tough "say it as it is" approach with PIL, which is quite effective. eg we'd got to a stage where MIL was asking DH to make payments for her then tell her how much so she could send him a cheque. Next time we went down there we had a talk about letting DH have 3rd party access to her account. She said "but I don't want to be dependent on him, I'm still in control" I said "but you aren't are you? you have to ask DH to do everything for you. This just isn't working". Lo and behold, it happened.

Ditto her lifting FIL when he fell "if you lift him and hurt your back or you fall over and break your hip then where will you and he be? because that is what is going to happen. So when that does happen which care home do you both want to go to? Because we can't come and care for you. No? Right, let's get a falls alarm put in now and you call an ambulance if he can't get up however long it takes".

It helps that

• DH and I are both ambulance service and speaking from a lot of other people's experience
• it's a late second marriage so she sees me as more of a peer, not a child.

It is INFURIATING! But very very common.

Ask GP to refer to falls clinic.
Ask your local authority to do an OT assessment - even things like grab rails, raised toilet seat etc can help a lot.
Apply for Attendance Allowance for both if they don't already get a disability benefit- at least that can help with adaptions or equipment etc.

Yes, in our case it's a complex mix of not wanting to face they're getting old, frustration at not being able to do the things they wanted to do, the loss of control, of having strangers coming into the house, not being able to be flexible about what time she eats and, ironically, not wanting to make a fuss and cause problems for me and my sibling.

My DM went through exactly the same thing with her mother, which she has acknowledged. But we're still where we are, despite everyone knowing what was coming.

I was in that position until a few weeks ago. It was a couple of crises one after the other with my mum. She'd been struggling for years but refusing to accept any help that wasn't me. I had to step back and do less for my own sake, her dementia got worse, the first real crisis saw her back home because she insisted on it and social services were crap but she broke her hip within a few weeks and is now just about to go to a care home as she's deemed to not have capacity (and doesn't seem bothered either way). I am relieved and hoping the phone calls will die down.

What do you think lies behind their refusal to accept help, Tri? Fear, maybe - but of what? People finding out that they haven't been coping? Invasion of privacy? Accepting help when you need it is absolutely horrible at first - I had cancer treatment a lot of last year and needed to ask for help, and I HATED it.

My mother is extremely wobbly physically, largely due to a really virulent form of arthritis plus sciatica, but she is still mentally all there. My main worry is that she really, really needs to sell her big house with its big garden - it's been on the market since the summer, but it's on a main road which has put off a lot of buyers (we don't really notice the traffic noise much but nobody visiting for the first time would believe that). She has found a bungalow in the same village which would be much more manageable, and is also talking about what happens if she can't cope with that either. My brother and I both live a 3-4 hour drive away and we've just agreed to step up the visits.

The way I approached is was let’s put everything in place so you can maintain your independence as long as possible reduce the risk of accidents can we get a cleaner in to do the big cleaning jobs which can be expanded as time goes on.
there’s usually a falls team which consists of physios and occupational therapists who can advise on adaption around the house. I would suggest that you or your brother are there for the appt and be very matter of fact about the positives

Sad as it is I have to agree with CMOTDibbler - often the only way things will change is for a crisis to happen and all you can do is be prepared for it and be there to help them pick up the pieces. You cannot force help on someone who is capable of deciding for themselves whether or not to accept it.

Is their catch phrase "we can manage"? My sibling and I live a distance away from our increasingly frail and cognitively declining DM [83] that means we can only visit at weekends, which we do. She still has capacity though, and I accepted a long time ago that we are waiting for an inevitable crisis of some kind.

In our case we finally got her to accept a daily carer visit this summer. Long story short, she lost a LOT of weight and it turns out she had been masking her cognitive issues, and she had lost the ability to cook and even microwave for herself (despite me stocking her fridge with ready meals). She accepted she couldn't keep asking her neighbours to come over every teatime to make her tea (lovely as they are). It took a lot of nudging and an enforced trip to the GP to get her to see she needed help. Now she accepts "her ladies wot does", although isn't overkeen on their relentless cheerfulness.

She has continued to decline, and could really do with a morning visit to help her get dressed as she won't admit she struggles with that, but that's another ongoing nudging situation.

The other issue is what help you can get them. We made a formal request to her local authority for a social care assessment at the start of July. Was advised on a 6 week backlog for assessments at the time, but it turns out it's actually a 5 month backlog as I only got contacted this week by her assigned social worker. We couldn't wait and identified a local private care company who have been absolutely fantastic so far. I do think they are a temporary solution and we should be looking at residential care, but both my DM and my sibling need to be brought round first.

Something I have learned from my very long tenure on this board is that this is what most of us here go through. It is almost always the way that it is only when a crisis happens that you can get things to change, and tbh you just have to be prepared to make as many things happen when there is a crisis, and the rest of the time remind yourself that they are adults who can make their own choices - even if you don't like those choices.