My mother is obsessed with the neighbours

[DPN]

I think my mother is obsessed with the neighbours. She is always looking out the window. Sometimes when's he sees some of neighbours out walking she gets mad if they are dressed up. I suggested before that maybe they are going to the pub and it's not going exercising.

For months she was asking me for a particular neighbour because she noticed she hasn't seen him. As if I am friends with him and know his whereabouts. I am not friends with him. I get a feeling she doesn't care about him. She just wants to know if his marriage is broken up and he's gone.

Another time, the other neighbours had their bins out for collection a while in advance of bin collection day and this drove my mother into a frenzy thinking that there was a change to the bin collection schedule. There was no change and no notification of change. I suggested to calm down and maybe they are gone away and we will leave the bins out on bin they we hen they are due.

A other time at the start of the pandemic she refused to follow guidelines like social distancing until she knew what the neighbours were doing.

Another time, another neighbour was out walking. The lady must be in her mid 70s but she doesn't look a day of 45. She looks very well. She fit too. I reckon she would be a size 6 or a size 8. She's incredible. My mother was peering out from a curtain one day and browse into an anger looking at her bounce and fly like a butterfly walking down the road. My mother was angered.

Is anyone elseels parents obsessed with their neighbours?

With age my DM has become increasingly over invested in the lives of people she doesn't know but may be a friend of a friend if a neighbour. She'll ring me to tell the long story of what's happening to them ask me for advice for these people ( who don't genuinely want or need my advice)
I think it's partly dementia and partly loneliness. Pretty sure most older people end up like this.
The rage at people and inconsequential things is definitely dementia and she never used to be like that.

Something other than herself would be a good start. It would be nice if she asked after us, her grand-daughter, work, home. My dad used to be like this, talking about neighbours,what he’d misheard on the radio, losing attention if I talked about us. Then I realised he wanted to talk, not listen, so I’d email about what we’d done, and he started talking to me about that.

She could easily go to the library, theatre, art gallery, cinema etc Did she do that when she was younger? Not everyone is interested in culture. Maybe you and she just are interested in different things.

I work with some people who are older than her and they're really bright and chatty - talking about literature, art, economy, politics. I spend most of my time with people between 65 and 85, and the thing that strikes me is there’s no correlation between actual years and how old the person seems. 65 year olds who limit their horizons and interests, 70 year olds who go caving, 80 year olds who are active in conservation work or on numerous committees.

They have little to do except look out of their window.

Why are you so bothered , they are curious. And don't get many interactions it's harmless and I guess it comes to us all

Interesting... yes, she did used to go to the theatre, library, cinema type stuff regularly but now I think about it I think she went because she thought she ought to go and wanted to be seen to be going there? So it was more about what people thought about her than an interest, if that makes sense.

I can see she's not going to change now but I can cope with it once a week by doing my online shop at the same time to make it more tolerable.