Mother with dementia constantly ringing DS

[ilovelidl]

My mother is in her 80s and has been diagnosed with dementia in the last 6 months. I am very low contact with her (haven't seen her for 18 months since my father died and I have only spoken to her on the phone a couple of times in that time) due to controlling and manipulating behaviour since I was a child and throughout my adulthood.

She has been phoning my DS who is 19 pretty constantly. Yesterday she phoned him 21 times, including 6 times during the day when he was at work. 5 of those calls took place within 2 minutes. She then phoned him once yesterday evening when he was out with a friend and then 14 times between 10.30pm and 11pm last night. Some of these were phone calls, some facetime calls and some whatsapp calls. She also leaves a lot of voicemails.

DS works full time 9-5pm so can't usually answer the phone during those hours. He was getting ready for bed and winding down last night and then was inundated by these calls which is very unsettling for him.

Last time DS saw my mother he found it extremely upsetting and stressful. He went to see my mother because he feels he should, but she was very emotional on that occasion and he found it overwhelming and ended up crying himself. She also asked him repeatedly why I wasn't coming to see her which isn't fair on DS. It's a tricky one because there is no one to go with him so he has to go on his own.

How can I support DS with this?

Who looks after her ? I imagine someone with dementia doesn't really understand what they are doing what is her reasons for phoning him ?

I think he needs to block her

Just get him to block her number

I would visit with him, but to support him, not your mother.

Put her number on some sort of ‘ignore’ list so it doesn’t ring and he doesn’t get the notifications.

Short visits are absolutely fine if she’s upsetting him.

Make sure he understands it’s fine to ignore her, and to not feel guilty.

Yes seeing someone with cognitive decline can be upsetting he probably should stop going if he doesn't have support.

You should visit with your son to support him

1. Block her on your son's phone.
2. Delete son as a contact in her phone.

But the bigger question is, does she have the correct level of care for her needs?

I would suggest DS doesn't visit for a while. For whatever reason she has got fixated on him. Maybe he looks like her husband did at a similar age? But it's not fair for him to have this level of intrusive contact.

I really don't agree. They are very low contact. The son can see his grandma if he wants. But OP doesn't have to. Personally I would block her calls when l was at work, in bed etc. I'm assuming she has carers looking after her

Yes, block her calls. We had to do this with MIL in the same situation.

I have every sympathy - I do know how stressful and exhausting this must be. My Dm with dementia used to ring my poor brother literally dozens of times a day. It really did start to affect his MH. Of course she simply could never remember that she’d rung him only five or ten minutes previously.

One thing I’ve seen advised is to have a dedicated basic phone for those calls, with a recorded message to say, ‘Sorry, Mum/Gran, I can’t answer just now, but I’ll ring you back later.’ (And of course change whatever number she’s ringing and hope she hasn’t memorised it. 🙁)

Once my Dm moved to a care home we were asked whether we’d like a phone in her room - absolutely not! For the first couple of weeks she often asked the staff to ‘ring my son’ so they’d pretend to call, but except for once or twice a day, they’d tell her he was out/not answering.

But we were amazed (and very thankful) at how quickly she forgot about it.

Awww. It sounds like her days of living independently (I'm assuming she does as you don't mention any care home?) are coming to an end and/or her Dementia is advancing. Your poor DS