AIBU to think care homes need more age-appropriate entertainment?

[myislandhome]

My MIL is 91, born 1935. She has recently gone into a care home. So far, all of the entertainment in the home has been so dated - lots of WW2 focus, songs including roll out the barrel and white cliffs of dover etc. I do realise it's currently the D day celebration but it hasn't been just this weekend.
It's driving me mad, MIL was 10 when the war ended. She was in her 20's in the rock and roll era in the 50's. My own mother, who was in a nursing home until she died, was born in 1940 and had the same experience in her home; despite being in her prime in the late 50's/swinging 60's
AIBU to think that nursing homes need to up their game with their entertainment themes?

If I'm in a care home in my 90s, the age appropriate stuff will be The Osmonds, Slade and Sweet. Maybe not great singalong music but if they add in ABBA we can all join in.
I imagine that I won't be able to recognise my husband but will still know all the words of the long version of Don McLeans American Pie

The 1912 Titanic or the 1997 Titanic?

They're, in about 99% of cases, on minimum wage with no extra allowance for overtime, backshift, or nightshift, and they're worked to exhaustion. They're not experts in music, nor do they have any particular access to age appropriate music. That's on the management and owners.

I think a mobile disco would work better, not everyone in a care home could get to a club but you could take it too them.

Sign me up!

No Leo to be seen

I’m unsure, my mum was born 1936 so was a child in the war and an adult in the 1960s.

However she’s now at the stage whereby she’s forgotten most of her adulthood and just keeps talking of ‘home’, her parents and her siblings do maybe for her war time stuff isn’t that inappropriate

My MIL was born in India in the 40’s and came to the UK to go to University in the 60’s and was part of the hippy movement in the 70’s still loves George Harrison, the Beatles and Led Zeppelin. She has said she feels so old in a care home.

This is a residential care home so non dementia though....

I agree. My mum (now dead) was born in 1940 and was all about the rock and roll era like Elvis and the swinging 60s. Her and my dad even met the Beatles by chance once. The last thing she wanted to hear was the effing white cliffs of Dover! She couldn’t even remember the war!!

Yes I totally agree. They should consult the residents on the type of entertainment they would like and they might be surprised. My dear mum wasn’t in a home (she died last year) but I know if she had been she’d have wanted to listen Ed Sheeran, dance to T-Rex AND the Zutons Valerie, do some choral singing, bake and watch reality TV ❤️

I work as a cook in a care home we have lots of different music we have ABBA days where all the staff dress up , Rock and Roll days , different activities, exercises, residents help choose the menus. We do celebrate VE Day because our residents want to. They also love karaoke because even with dementia they remember the words to their favourite music

I’m honestly quite shocked by this. I visited a care home 15 years ago and they were in the process of updating their WW2 era decoration and activities because they were aware it was becoming increasingly irrelevant to their clientele. Maybe location is pertinent to an extent as this was in an area with lower life expectancy than somewhere with a wealthier population where people tend to live longer but even so there must be very, very few people alive for whom WW2 forms a significant part of their experience.

It's not just care homes. I attended a chair exercise class for old people and what was the music played? Michael sodding Buble - which I know about because a contestant on Come Dine With Me was a Michael Buble tribute act. When the third track began I couldn't take any more and left. The residents in care homes can't just up and leave of course.

Meatloaf and Blondie for me. And some noise cancelling earbuds so I don't have to listen to some of the other stuff some of you have listed 😁

😆 Music and lots of “medication”.

My Nan was born 1925, was 20 at the end of the war. She went to dances with American GIs & all the teenagers liked swing / big band music like Glenn Miller; she said Vera Lynn was for ‘older people’ & ‘too boring’ !! She’d have been 101 this month if was still alive. She lived to 91 & liked random stuff especially Westlife & Engelbert Humperdinck.

Hmm, my dad was in a care home and it wasn’t like that. They had an Elvis impersonator (which my dad loved) and various singers visit who sang 60s / 70s stuff. They had an ABBA tribute band play, and a folky type guy who did Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell songs etc. The music they had on in the background in the lounges etc during the day was usually the kind of thing you’d get on Radio 2 or Heart or Hits Radio I think. Or residents would sometimes request things they liked - my dad was a big fan of Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, jazz singers like Stacey Kent and Jamie Cullum etc and they used to play stuff like that for him. He also had an Echo Dot in his room and we wrote down all the music he liked so the care workers could ask Alexa to play things for him if he was struggling to remember / articulate the names himself. (He didn’t have dementia but he struggled with speech sometimes and his medication meant his recall was slow.)

you may have already answered how they do this, but I'm placemarking.

Personally, I don't want most things that are considered entertainment. I want nice places to sit in well decorated spaces with lovely views and a good dining area, and then a very nice personal room with bathroom and kitchenette.

My granddad was in a care home with a snooker table, it seemed popular. The nuns who ran it seemed good fun and could play snooker and happily gave granddad a regular glass of whisky. They would laugh and say it was wonderful how his hearing improved if you said whisky. They were right, I thought it was the equivalent of always having a space for pudding even if you couldn't eat another bite of dinner so his hearing was poor but there was a special ear for whisky. He was very well cared for and had a great relationship with the nuns who also lived in the home.

Me too and a good dose of silence. I have a relative in a home currently and it is so noisy.

Oh yes noise cancelling earbuds might be a lifesaver.

Love the correct spelling for Scotch Whisky
😘

Well he'd probably blame for not being specific so here's to Johnnie Walker Red Label Whisky.

I have seen a lot of videos on tik tok of care home ‘entertainment’ and it’s awful - so patronizing. Poor quality, awful and largely aimed at children.

I dread ever having to go into a care home. It would make me so angry to have to endure this.

my parents are late seventies and recently finished four seasons on Netflix - I can’t imagine them signing roll out the barrel - they weren’t even born during the war!