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I would like to get some advice please

4 replies

RainbowColourcake · 10/11/2023 16:30

I am concerned about my mother who is in her early 70s. For the past few weeks she has been attacking sections of her home and deep cleain them. On the surface of it, it xlloks like deep cleaning but I think there's something much more to it. I think there is some other problem.

I live at home and I contribute to her and the home and I help a lot too. I don't expect her to do anything for me, I do my own laundry and I pay the bills abd I buy groceries. I work hard too. I fortunately my wage doesn't cover a rent in my area.

The cleaning, she has spent weeks doing some sort of a manic cleaning. It's actually unreal. I came home one afternoon to find her emptying out a room. A whole entire room. Another day last week she emptied out another room of every thing. This week she emptied the kitchen and cleaned absolutely everything from the glasses to the mugs to polishing the pots. The pots and pans could have been used as mirrors.

That lever of cleaning is just not normal. She's in her own world and there very little speech or conversation from her and there is something just not right. She's extremely highly powered with energy like this and with aggression almost as if to passive aggressively - tut tut against me. But I have an underlying condition of crohns and I also work so I do get sick and so tired easily too. I do help a lot of the time too.

Over the past 2 months or so, I haven't really got any proper rest period at home. It is exhausting seeing my mother doing what she's doing. 6 days a week usually and it's hours and hours and hours at a time. There is something just not right.

I am trying to redirect her and encourage her to come out walking with me or to go to the local coffee shop with me but she refuses and declines. This isn't healthy, to spe d so long doing what she's doing. It's almost as if one pair of curtains are just hung and within a few weeks she's taking them down again to wash them again.

This is not normal behaviour. Anyone from the outside would claim - it's just cleaning - but it is the intensity of what she's doing. It seems as if she has no real structure to her cleaning. In that she was boiling glasses (drinking glasses) and she still had a whole entire table full of glasses ahead of her and just like that she moved to the corner of the kitchen to reorganise the fridge magnets to the side of the fridge.

This is not right.

I don't know what to do and how to get her help. I think maybe this could be the onset of dementia due to her tone and aggression and behaviour but I might be wrong too about it. There's something exetremely off about her.

Her planning and organising is poor. Her comprehenion is shit. She asked me to get a recommendation for a plumber from a neighbour and I came home with a plumbers name and number just for her to shout at me not to be talking about our problems to the neighbours and I wasn't. She asked me to get a recommendation of a plumber.

Anyways every week I do online groceries for her and me for home delivery because it is so handy. When I am working she's all week and I get sick easily too and tired as well, the online groceries and home delivery is so handy.

I am thinking about stopping the grocery shops. Just until I get a diagnosis for her or what not. I am hoping maybe it might help redirect her in some way. In that instead of me buying all the groceries for home delivery she can take a walk to the local village and interact within the community. Even if it's just meeting a cashier in a shop and even if it's just a transaction at a till. Or even taking a walk in another by the nearby beach. Just get her out from the house and away from her obsession of cleaning.

She wasn't always like this so I don't know where it came out from.

Do you think I should stop the home delivery of groceries to get her out from the home more often.

OP posts:
GalileoHumpkins · 10/11/2023 16:34

Encourage her to see her GP, go with her and discuss your concerns. Stopping a grocery delivery isn't going to achieve anything.

Tulips78 · 10/11/2023 16:34

I'm sorry to hear this, it sounds really difficult for you. Does she have any history of mental health issues? Sometimes manic episodes can be an indication of bipolar. Would she see the GP? Have you told her you're concerned about her?

RainbowColourcake · 10/11/2023 16:49

I ahve genuine concerns. I haven't talked to her because I don't think she will take any of it on board and I think she will only just argue with it.

I encourage her to go to her GP all the time for anything in the hope that something could be picked up but she's not going to her GP.

I feel I am unable to sit down with her and tell her what I am seeing and tell her that I am worried about her and ask her to go to her GP.

OP posts:
RainbowColourcake · 10/11/2023 16:50

Tulips78 · 10/11/2023 16:34

I'm sorry to hear this, it sounds really difficult for you. Does she have any history of mental health issues? Sometimes manic episodes can be an indication of bipolar. Would she see the GP? Have you told her you're concerned about her?

No known history of mental health disorders with her.

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