My mother has just stomped off home

[NoProblem123]

I’ve been self isolating since last Monday with a SEN child with underlying health conditions. Stocked up and organised all good, and wfh.
Mum was flitting round town as late as Friday because she was ‘bored and there’s hardly anyone about anyway’. She has her own underlying health problems and lives alone with not much provisions so I obviously told her to come to me on Friday.
She’s ‘needed’ to go out every day since for one thing or another so I’ve drove her around and gone in. She’s got increasingly difficult since saying I’m OTT and I shouldn’t watch the news and starting fights with either me or DD. I’ve sorted Sainsbury’s click and collects so she can go and get them, she’s taken the dogs out for short walks to stay busy but she just couldn’t settle (although she normally stays at mine every weekend anyway).
Just now she’s asked if there’s any jobs to do so I said my DD could do with her bed changing (not desperately but if she wants a job). She caused a big argument with DD that she should be doing it herself, then packed up her car and left, to go home presumably but no doubt shopping on the way.
I’m sitting here crying now thinking I might not see her again.
Am I being OTT ? Is it ok for her to go home for a few days and come back ? She lives 20 mins away but won’t do internet shopping.
She’s nearly 70 😔

FFS the amount of times i have read 'I am self isolating, but i've just been tthe shops and seen my mum' or whatever. Self isolating means isolating completely. No shopping, no meeting anyone. You need to get someone to drop something on your doorstep and go.

One thing I have learnt over the years is that I have no control over what other people do,they are responsible for their own actions.

Now she’s gone I wouldnt be letting her back. She seems t9 be able to manage just fine. Focus on your and your child

"Is it ok for her to go home for a few days and come back ? "
No, it isn't OK. She's gone home and should now stay there.

"She’s my only other family and you only get one mum."
Your responsibility is to your child, not your parent. Your child only has one mum too .

DO NOT dance attendance on her. And when she contacts you, make it clear that any future contact between you two will be via telephone and NOT face-to-face. You cannot allow her petulance to endanger you or your child.

For goodness sake, she needs to go to her own house and self isolate and not come to stay with you. Yes obviously you only have one mum, but I haven't seen my DM for 3 months; she spent 2 months in Africa before them and now she's back I'm very unwell with probable COVID-19 (moderate case, not in hospital) and she's stayed away since she came back because of that and now she's self-isolating at home, she's 80 years old and catches every infection going round.

These are not easy times. Your mum sounds very selfish and you're enabling her bad behaviour.

contactless "collections" and "slots"?

Just how many food collections has she needed since Friday?

You've had an easy time of it on this thread OP.

You are not self isolating. Neither are you following the government guidelines on social isolation which require individual households not to mix.

Please follow the guidelines.

I actually have no words.
What part of the advice do people just not get?!

My mum is 78, fit and strong (apart from breast cancer and arthritis, both of which she pretends don’t exist) and bored out of her brains. I’m not visiting her. When she needs things like shopping/medications DH drives over and leaves them on her doorstep. No contact. It’s not great but she understands it has to be done.

MIL is 90, housebound, very confused, unsteady and frail. I regularly batch cook meals for her and normally DH drops them round and stays for a chat. Not at the moment - I still cook but the meals are dropped in SILs porch. SIL is self isolating as a precaution and is the only one to enter MILs house atm so she drops the food round. Even that’s not ideal because there is the small chance SIL could be carrying or pick up the virus but the alternative is leaving MIL without food or basic care because the regular carers are at home on lock down so her daily visits are genuinely essential.

Sadly MILs ever increasing loss of grip on reality is her saving grace in all this. She doesn’t know what’s going on and lives so much in the past that she hasn’t yet noticed her lack of visitors and carers.

Anyhow, that’s what isolating means. Staying in UNLESS ITS ESSENTIAL. Protecting the old and the vulnerable. Not dotting in and out and around about because you are bored or scared or lonely.

It is incredible how many older people are behaving like this. Meanwhile they are moaning on about young people....

What? Young people like OP do you mean? Or all those with young families who were pictured flocking to the beaches and parks in their hundreds at the weekend? Give it a rest about older people.

I’m sitting here crying now thinking I might not see her again.
Am I being OTT ? Is it ok for her to go home for a few days and come back ? She lives 20 mins away but won’t do internet shopping.
She’s nearly 70

Well you can't get internet shopping because there are no online grocery deliver slots.
So what choice do we have but to go out to the shops to get food?
We have to or we will starve.

I am 56 and I have no friends or family to go out for me because my mum and dad are both dead.

My neighbors won't go for me.
So I have to go myself.

I have just applied online for the NHS home delivery of food scheme run by volunteers. I filled in their online form but it said I don't qualfy for their help.

So I guess I will just have to carry on going out to get the food myself. Because apparently I don't meet the criteria for the NHS help.
Well I did try.

Well, the apple doesn't fall far from the not getting it tree.

Thanks choli what a treat you are.

Thanks to the other PP (who live in the real world and can’t get deliveries) for their thoughtful and helpful comments.

Hopefully we will have a sharp, hard & immediate lockdown so certain people (& certain enablers admittedly) start to get it.

But you are one of those people!!

Sounds like this is the best thing that could have happened, to be honest. It may well be that she will be more comfortable and settled at home anyway, and won't go out so much if she hasn't got you to take her.

If you are self-isolating then you do not go out at all - not to buy shopping and not for daily exercise.

You may have been trying to socially-distance yourself though. It is worrying that people (I mean you) still do not know the difference.

@MissyJane2 where do you live? There are lots of independent shops and groups of volunteers that are dropping off shopping for people.