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?

I also think this about their decor and food, updates should be made every so often to reflect how tastes changed per generation.

Potentially there’s still some oldies approaching 100, who may respond well to this but I imagine there will be a wide age range from 70s+. They’d have been in their hay day in the 40s, 50s and 60s.

This should be reflected in the entertainment and activities they are subjected to receive.

I’d like to think there will be some DnB djs, old skool classics and 90s indie nights if I ever reside in one of these.

I worked in a nursing home and complained about the same thing. On days I was in charge we changed it up
I told them to put on music from their youth , not their parents music.
We started using things like Elvis, Abba, Rolling Stones, Beatles. Got a much better reaction. Someone linked their Netflix account on the TV and we watched newer films that they loved too.

Absolutely, and the menus will be a bit more adventurous than meat and two veg all the time!

The menus were harder to work with. We had people from 75 on up and most didn't like pasta or rice so it was difficult to change up much. But their childhood food and all the way to the 1970's it was meat and two veg for most of the country unless you lived near major cities with access to curry and Chinese foods.

i find this hard to believe. My parents, their friends and my aunts and uncles are in their 70s and 80s. They didn’t go into cold storage after the 1970s!

They were in their fifties in the 1990s in their sixties in 2000s. They eat Chinese takeaways, Indians, pizza, lasagne. Spag boll was a stable weekday family meal in the 90s. My grandmother - who would be 120 if she was still alive was of he generation of more simple meat and two veg taste / and even she lived through the ago of regular Chinese take away, pasta for dinner, rice etc.

and to edit that even very rural people had access to supermarkets with rice, pasta frozen pizza in the 1990s and 2000s.

remember the generation you are talking about had kids who were in school in the 1980s and 1990s. Lasagne was a stable pub grub. Lots of pasta dishes

The problem, as this thread very clearly shows, is that everyone has very different tastes and usually very specific. They really can't win.

Same with food. My mum in her 80s was quite happy with pasta or "Chinese" but not curries.

My plan is to avoid going into a care home. Then I can eat what I want and listen to and watch my choice all the time.

What is depressing is the lack of awareness. The assumption that anyone over 65 is frozen in an age of black and white tv, wartime music and war time, rationed meals. That they won’t have ever had a Chinese takeaway, pizza, curry or really experienced anything that was commonly available post 1980.

I have never met someone in their seventies and eighties like that - who has shut themselves off from popular culture for decades whose taste have not in any way been influ need by the massive shifts over the last fifty years.

I am nearly fifty. I don’t still use a bright yellow Walkman and a landline! I don’t watch the goodies on repeat and Bros is no longer my favourite band.

I couldn't agree more.
I started my working life in care homes. That was my late teens over 20 years ago.
We belted out the war songs and the residents tended to respond very well. Back in the early 2000s, the war had only ended 60 years prior, and people in their 80s and 90s remembered it well, even those in their 70s had it as part of their formative years. Plus these songs were designed to drum up community spirit and camaraderie.
Fast forward 20 years and I went to visit a friend in a care home. I was shocked to see nothing af moved with the times. I could see the residents were different, different clothes, different hair, clearly from a whole new generation, but the same music, the same hairdressers offering the same perms and blue rinses.
Yes, they probably all know the war songs, don't we all but FFS. This is their parents' music.
I'd definitely say something, they should have an activities co-ordinator you can speak to.

You liked Bros? Oh, ffs...😆

Listen, we all have buried chapters and dark parts of our past we'd like to keep buried. I thought take that were sexy in their weird thong era 🤣

Yes, me too. But you pay the earth for even a basic place. I'm not sure what you're suggesting exists, and if it did it would be prohibitively expensive. If I do end up in a home I reckon I'm going to stay in my room all the time to avoid the constant generic TV and radio.

I'm not sure anyone plans to move into a care home when they're young and well! 😏 Unfortunately my MIL had no other option, she kept wandering and getting lost.

Her care home is very good though. They gave us a questionnaire when she moved in asking about her interests and what kind of things she enjoys. It's only a small home though and not all of them have dementia so often the residents will say themselves what they want to do.

They have takeaway nights where they'll order in chips or Chinese and people can have what they want and they try to arrange days out that cater to people's interests.

Last time we went they were listening to Bryan Adams and they've watched the ABBA musical and things like that.

My nan's care home had a pub on site. The pumps were just for show and the beer was bottled but it did actually look like a real pub.

Let's hope this is closer to the reality when we are all old.
20 years ago when I worked in care, the norm was still shared bathrooms and even shared bedrooms, with just partition curtains down the middle. At least for funded places. Self funding rooms tended to be bigger and have bathrooms
Now it seems to be standard for all rooms to be en-suite with no sharers.
So maybe in another 20 years we'll start seeing kitchenettes and dining areas!! 🤞

😂 not only did I like them I though I might marry one! I was a very sad pre-teen.

Did you wear grolsch bottle tops on your shoes though ?

Can we get some Wagner in there too?

The thing is, music is such an amazing stimuli to memory. Decades after my first time falling in love, my stomach would still lurch when the opening chords of "our song" came on the radio.
There was a woman at my Mum's care home who was physically quite good but far down the dementia road- barely verbal and always sad or angry looking. At one of their music afternoons, she blossomed... she got up and pulled one of the carers up to dance with her, with a beaming smile on her face. She was so happy for those 3 minutes

😂 I did not. But I had the most amazing neon jelly bracelets that I was waaaay to emotionally invested in.

let’s hope if I go into a care home I don’t have to eat Findus crispy pancakes every night while wearing a bright pink shell suit (yes, I had one of those too).

My DM’s food tastes have simplified as she has got older. One of her favourite places to eat when in her 70s/early 80s was a Thai restaurant. Now in her 90s she is back to much blander food and pretty much the same few meals on rotation

And having kitchenettes in rooms etc could be problematic with cognitive or mobility issues. Handling boiling water from a kettle might become a hazard, leaving oven or hob on. DM has an airfryer which automatically turns off, so we encourage her to use that and not her ordinary oven which she could forget to turn off

😂😂
I was into rock/ indie music so will be sat next to you in my Docs leather Bikers jacket
I was fond of a waistcoat over a body top and long flowy skirt look😅

My 90 year old mum who was a surgeon before she retired had to go into a care-home for a brief period of respite recently. They offered her bingo, The Daily Mail and sing songs. She is very polite and just declined. She was 4 when WW2 started. She didn’t listen to Dame Vera Lynn!

I would have been really intimidated by you! Just too cool for me!

they should put into groups in the care home. Boxes of Microwave chips, mini pizza and pop tarts for breakfast!

let’s hope they have moved on from war time food and music by then.

There’s also an assumption that everyone in that age group liked some of the stuff they were “supposed” to like. Read Spike Milligan’s war diaries when he was a gunner and his and the other troops views on Gracie Fields My dad just missed the war but did 2 years national service in the Marines. He was born in Manchester and couldn’t stand Gracie Fields or Vera Lynn either!

The experience of the generation who remember WW2 was more universal than the younger ones. Most people would have eaten meat and two veg dinners with gravy, on repeat, without complaint.

The boomer generation’s experiences are more diverse. If they travelled a lot or were into entertaining, curries, taramasalata or fajitas….