AIBU to find this even more annoying than performance parenting

[Ifigotherewillbedouble]

I’m in a waiting room at the local hospital and there are 2 adults with additional needs with their carers - one of the carers is talking very loudly, infantilising the lady she is caring for. Examples - ‘if you behave (yes that’s the word she used) yourself you can get a subway’ This carer is speaking so loudly, making sure we can all hear. Saying things like, ‘Yes that’s your favourite isn’t it?’ so we all know how well she knows this lady and what a good carer she is.

I might be hyper sensitive to this as my oldest child had additional needs and I HATED the loud way some people would speak to him - one memory is of an older lady (mid 70s at least, very wrinkled) who approached my very handsome 14 year old boy with, ‘Oh here’s my boyfriend’. My poor boy was mortified but delighted when I replied on his behalf, ‘Ooft join the queue - this boy of mine has suitors queuing round the block.’ My view was well ok this lady ‘meant well’ but my priority was my son, and think how any 14 year old boy would feel if this happened to them - and I stand by that.

So AIBU to be even more annoyed at this ‘Performance Carer’ than the usual Performance Parent?

hmmm I thought she mean 'tube' rather than 'food' by subway...

Carers are paid minimum wage, treated like shit and given virtually no training. It’s no wonder that, despite them mostly being well-intentioned, many of them don’t know what they’re doing

This!

Yanbu.
I’ve worked with adults (and children) with learning disabilities and sadly this attitude is not uncommon.
As others have said, it’s low paid and badly trained and valued, but there’s still no excuse.
I remember challenging one woman - the house manager in fact - for saying “good boy!” to a man in his forties when he cleaned the cooker hob. I still remember the look on his face.
Another person used to sometimes pay extra from her funding for a worker to accompany her out to the pub in an evening. One week I went, and I remember she said to me, “I’ve liked you coming because you let me choose where I wanted to go and we had a chat like real people.”
I’ve sometimes heard similar in hospital, people speaking loud and slow to others in a sing-song tone purely based on, say, their ages. Absolutely sets my teeth on edge. If I get old, I’m definitely going to be one of those old ladies everyone thinks is crabby and awkward, because I won’t stand for that stuff.

Oh god, the Special Caring Voice...

It's very distinctive and not the same as speaking loudly to someone who can't hear very well. And invariably correlates with the speaker not treating the person like an actual person.

If all Special Caring Voice people were shot, the world would be a better place. YANBU!

My Dh has been in hospital a lot on a ward with elderly patients. I find the way they talk to patients with dementia appalling and the way that they talk in front of them. Multiple wards and different teams.

As PP have said, care work is badly paid, care staff are often regarded by those at management level as interchangeable servants who don't merit anything in the way of training or mentoring, and care work is also seen by DWP staff as somewhere to shunt those they want to get off the unemployed list.
So, frankly, better the condescending, performative ones than those who hate the job and their charges so much that they are either neglectful or sneakily abusive. \until this type of work is valued and properly paid, that's as good as it's going to get.

Similar, but not quite the same, is the way people speak to those who have terminal cancer. I was with a terminally ill friend, having a drink at the pub, and someone she knew by acquaintance came over, put her head on one side and said in a sing song faux sympathy voice "how ARE you?' It wasn't what she said, as much as the way she said it. It is the same tone that people sometimes use to speak to elderly people who they think have diminished understanding. It is just so patronising. She got short shrift anyway. Although not as bad as a friend who was being treated for cancer (now recovered) whose fil insisted on stroking her and making soothing noises, as if she was a startled horse. I suppose people think they should act differently if the person they are speaking to doesn't fit their norms.

YABU how do you know anything about the person she was talking to?

Maybe she’s hard of hearing?
Maybe she has a mental age of 6?
Maybe she often misbehaves while out?

I mean, I get the voice is annoying but you know exactly nothing about the person she’s with?

@MorondelaFrontera that’s opinion not fact.

DS2 has Asperger's and MIL has spent his whole life saying things like "It's such a shame." He's 22 now and she still bloody does it!

ElizaPancakes Please, regardless of mental age ( not envy) adults, whether vulnerable or not shouldn't be referred to as misbehaving/behaving.

Then how? Genuine question. Clearly I’m not a carer and have no idea but what would you say under the circumstances?

I totally get where you are coming from. But exactly what JaniceBattersby said. They struggle to recruit people for these jobs, like many other under-valued under-paid jobs, so it's really no surprise that not every carer displays exemplary practice. On the plus side this carer is actually engaging with the person she is caring for. Maybe the fact she is talking loudly is because she is just a loud kind of person and/or really doesn't care what other people around her think, not because she's "performing". Perhaps with your insight you might be able to consider doing the kind of work where you could support vulnerable people?

I was sat in a supermarket Cafe and 2 carers came in with their clients, older ladies both with sight issues, in wheelchairs. Carer 1 spoke to them in that voice, took their orders, after much misunderstanding, mumblings from the clients.

Both carers when to the till and one lady said "Jesus that voice gets to you" the other replied "mine's always on her fucking phone"

Both spoke very clearly and, with knowing smiles, very, very loudly. And then they giggled... the carers seemed to be oblivious, until they returned to the tables, where Patient Voice said "I'd forgotten what you two are like" and smiled along with them.

Her on the phone just sat down, still glued to it. I have wondered who got more joy out if their days.

I feel the need to point out that there are some amazing, kind carers out there who are paid shit wages to do an often difficult job.

That said, I absolutely recognise the "performance carer" and agree they are annoying, though not always intentionally unkind.

Training for carers is as woeful as the pay. It is seen as a job for those with limited qualifications, and due to high demand, people with little empathy or insight find themselves in a role they are patently unsuited for.

Vulnerable people deserve better.

ElizaPancakes Talk to them like they are an adult and not a naughty child.

Ok but specific words. If they are doing something annoying which is perfectly within their capacity to not do, what do you say? Or if they aren’t but have a habit of doing it in particular settings?

ElizaPancakes Well if it was annoying but not otherwise dangerous, upsetting or illegal I'd probably just leave it. "Please stop that" would usually suffice though

Even if someone has a learning disability/brain injury you don’t talk to them about behaving/misbehaving ffs. They are adults and so deserve to be treated that way.

People with disabilities just process the world in a different way to those without. They don’t need to be infantilised, shouted at, used for performance or anything else. It drives me up the wall that there are people defending that behaviour.

My parents own 2 residential care homes for people with learning disabilities, and they have found it an almost impossible battle at times to train the staff to treat the residents with respect and kindness. So it’s not always bad management or training, people STILL seem to see people with disabilities as second class citizens who they can get away with treating badly. I hate it.

YANBU, but unfortunately it's not just carers. My friend's Dad (who has since passed away) was physically disabled after an old injury flared up. He was a wheelchair user, his speech was slurred and it took him a long time to get words out, but he was a sharp as a tack. Mentally 100%.

However his (horrible) DIL (my friend's DW) used to treat him like he was a small child. I was at their house on one occasion and she came over to him and said "Would you like a tiny little bit of cakey?. Not too much now or we'll have a sick tummy, won't we?", as though he was a naughty child.

The same day (I had only met him once before) I discovered that he used to know my grandfather years ago and so we started talking about that. I could see his own daughter watching us from across the room (not the horrible DIL) and she came over to me later in the day and said "Thank you so much for talking to Dad and for treating him normally. He was talking to me about you afterwards, he really liked you and the fact that you sat down to chat to him"

She told me how much he hated been spoken to like a child by his DIL. That he always ended upset after her because of the way she treated him. There was absolutely nothing wrong with his mind. This man had been an MEP in his younger years, he was a very very intelligent man and I always think that it must have hurt him so much the way his DIL spoke to him.

Ok, thanks.

I remember when my grandmother, who had severe dementia, had to be hospitalised in a geriatric hospital (don't think they exist any more!) and the nurses were so like this - they'd talk to her as though she were a naughty child all the time.
Almost no one called my grandmother by her first name outside of immediate family. Even her best friend called her Mrs X! and yet the nurses would all call her by her first name, no dignity allowed.

They at least weren't "performance caring" though.

Taking a snapshot is unfair. Carers can't win these days.

A: Talk normally - accused of not adapting their communication as the service user mightn't fully understand.

B: Break everything down, talk a bit louder etc - patronising got who's probably an abuser behind closed doors.

C: Sit in silence - ignorant.

And with those horrendous abuse cases making the news, is it any wonder some people go totally over the top being song-songy kind so some randomer who has seen a snippet and has no understanding of the situation, doesn't film them doing A or B and upload it to FB where they might get sacked?

Volume or type of voice maybe what suits the person they are working with but using behaving or misbehaving is unacceptable.
Ds used to have an escort who referred to him as being naughty when he was in distress. Slightly different but annoyed me.

Bloody hell- some assumptions going on here. I've never heard the expression performance carer but its patronising and stereotypical. Carers generally work incredibly long hours with few breaks- twelve hour shifts are the norm and they don't have access to Mumsnet to chat on in between emails in the office.

Most of us put on performances at work. Does any one think that wait staff or till checkers or nail bar workers are naturally so relentlessly chirpy. And its a misconception that the majority of care staff lack training and leadership. Of course there are crap ones- but there are in any role.

I've worked in care with adults with challenging behaviour or very limited cognitive capacity. Slightly raised voices, repetition of key words and over use of names are common techniques when you are trying to engage. Its not about showing off.

Carers are paid minimum wage, treated like shit and given virtually no training
That's not quite true. Only the luckiest carers are paid minimum wage. Agencies and direct employers have loads of different ways to make sure carers aren't paid that much. Live-in carers are regularly made to work 15 hours a day, seven days a week, while being paid for eight hours. They can be sacked on the spot without any reason or recourse. First and last days on the job are "hand-over days" and carers are paid £25 for the entire day; local authorities don't provide funding for first and last days' work on the basis that the carers "don't do much" ( at least, that's what one client's husband told me they'd said). They are supposed to have three consecutive hours off per day but this rarely happens.
Visiting carers aren't paid for the time they spend travelling between clients. They are employed on zero-hours contracts and sometimes have their hours cut if they so much as ask their co-ordinators about taking an unpaid day off months in advance.
As for training, the more established agencies receive government money for every potential carer they train. So they recruit in places as far away as South Africa and Australia for people to train. They don't necessarily have work for them later, and certainly not secure work with a liveable wage and a career path.
As one of the foreigners recruited, I think clients and carers would be better off if local people could afford to live on a carer's pay.
I don't like to think of myself as a monkey being had for peanuts but I have to admit there's some truth in what PPs are saying.

The part about being treated like shit is true.