Dad won’t consider moving

[DulceDeLeche2Scoops]

My elderly dad (a very, very good 90)is stressing me out. I get a daily 45 min phone call from him every day and it’s about the same thing.

My dad is lonely. No one comes near him. What if he had an accident? No one would know. Everyone is out and about having fun, except him.

Well, this is not true. He plays golf twice a week, bowls 3 times a week, goes out for dinner with his mates twice a week, and I kid you not, right now he’s playing 3 elderly women off against each other. All this before I mention his own 3 DC and their families AND his step DC and their families and my cousin running round after him.

That’s not what this thread is about though.

My dad lives in a large 4 bed house with a big garden. He keeps rendering himself immobile for weeks on end because of injuries he’s incurring fixing and doing things. He won’t accept he’s elderly. I don’t live near him and I’ll have to spend hours and hours calling him as he’ll be depressed, crying etc. because he can’t walk, go out, he’s lonely etc. because he’s hurt his back, leg, knee….

My sibling has asked him to move to near him, so his family can help, but he won’t. My dad’s house is falling to bits; fences need mending, rats in the roof, electrics need fixing, it’s not clean, kitchen is a state and more. He’s constantly complaining to me that his DC should be helping him with his house, mowing the lawn, fixing things. We all work FT with families and it’s a job just to get our own stuff done.

I told him last night he needs to move to a smaller place where there’s no maintenance but it’s a hard NO from him.

I only see this getting worse, and feel like I’ve got no option but to just watch it unfold.

What a contradiction…. On the one hand he’s playing golf 3x a week, playing three women off one another and living a very full life

versus

He keeps rendering himself immobile for weeks on end because of injuries he’s incurring

How far are you from him?

So if he’s calling you and telling you how unhappy and depressed he is, he is also telling you about the golf, dinners about and three women on his life?

There was another thread recently where the op decided their parents should sell up and downsize but they didn’t want to. There is not a lot you can do to make them. My parents are in a similar position but feel it’s too late for the upheaval and meanwhile they will ignore keeping the house maintained. It is a worry.

So he is not lonely why does he say he is when he is so busy.
I think you are going to have be hard on him if he doesn't want to move he will have to pay for all the help he needs. Does he have a care alarm if he has an accident he can just press a button anytime someone is there 24 hours a day if he needs any help at all and will send for help if he needs it. Does he have a key safe so the house can be accessed if needed. If he doesn't want to do anything you suggest to help you will have to step away you can't do anymore than that.

It's tough. If he has a full social life (when he isn't injured etc) then I can see why he wants to stay.
So the real issue is he can't manage his house and hurts himself trying.
Get paid help in? Can he afford that? Could the family afford that. I don't mean carers i mean a gardener and cleaners.
Get both to do an initial overhaul/ spring clean and then it could be kept on top of.
Otherwise there isn't much you can do. He can't be forced to move.

And also the 'I am lonely'stuff is probably code for 'I wish my family visited more'...

He's either old and immobile or he's a golf playing womaniser. Both can't be the case.

Anyway, there's nothing you can do.

It's very common that by the time elderly people would benefit from moving to a more accessible/suitable house, they are beyond the stage of being able to actually do it. I don't know how you get round it as your dad is an adult with capacity and can make his own decision.

What we try to do with my dad is speak very clearly about these things rather than sugar coat it. Then you might get tiny progress instead of none!

He doesn’t want to move and you are not going to be able to make him. Does he have funds to pay for a gardener? Cleaner? Fencer? Rat catcher?

As pp said, don’t sugar coat it. He wants to stay in his house, you (& siblings) are unable to physically support that by taking on the chores. So if he insists he is staying, then he needs to buy in help.

Good luck. Old age can make us stubborn ( I am 64 and it’s creeping up on me)

I guess that if I lived somewhere where I was a keen member of the golf and bowls clubs and had lots of friends to lunch etc with, I wouldn’t be keen to move either. If he moves near one of you he will be giving up his whole life - as ever, it might be too late for that.

Moving to somewhere more manageable near him might be worth considering. And otherwise someone, ideally him, needs to spend money to make his current house safer

I don’t understand all your contradictions.
However, you need to be very firm with your father. You do need to tell him that he can stay where he is and his children will not be able to visit him because they work full time or he can move. Say this on repeat every time he brings up someone should be helping him/he is lonely. You could also mention that he can get people in to mow the lawn etc.
If he won’t move you have to accept that he is stubborn and his house will deteriorate or he might injure himself badly.

Getting some help in sounds preferable to moving. If he moves away from friends he won't be less lonely even if he sees more of the family.

My mum refused to move too. She wouldn't leave her garden.

We arranged a gardener one afternoon a week, a cleaner two mornings a week, a weekly taxi to a lunch club, and another to go shopping. A farm foods delivery once a week, All on different days.

It gave her someone to get up and tidy for, kept her in a routine, helped with general maintenance. Dbrother would visit for a weekend occasionally and replace broken paving slabs or fix gates, mend gutters, I'd do indoor stuff like replacing broken appliances in the house.

It sounds more like your df is missing having a live-in companion. Have you suggested he get a lodger?.

My dad is a very good 90. He’s always been very sporty.

He plays a lot of sport, and he thinks he’s a young man.

However, he’ll throw his back out, needs a new knee, hurts himself up a ladder and then he’s out of action for weeks. Then he gets back to his sport, and repeat and rinse.

Right now he’s been off socialising for a week as he hurt his back going up a ladder. Oct week he’ll be back bowling etc. In the meantime we have to support him feeling depressed as he is not out and about.

And zero clarity

poor chap sound vulnerable and lonely

Can he afford to get in help such as a Gardner, cleaner, repair man? As a pp said, it’ll also be someone for him to make a cuppa for.

I think a lot of people struggle with having mainly their own company. So anytime outside of doing their activities they get very lonely. It is not something anyone can fix.

Does he have and wear alarms for falls @DulceDeLeche2Scoops a smart watch either would allow him to call for help. Does he have money for maintenance? Throw it at the house if he does. Hire him a handyman who comes weekly. Get the jobs done week to week.

If he won’t move he won’t move and you can’t fix that either. I think there is a certain amount of acceptance that adult children need to have in these situations, the human instinct for fixing a problem is there but the resistance on the other side is often overwhelming. You need to manage the feelings of guilt this brings up but there is not much more adult children have the power to do once capacity is still there.

He needs support to stay where he is otherwise he'll lose his social life which sounds great. Look at some options and present them to him so he's no overwhelmed by the thought of finding someone. Sounds like he needs a regular cleaner and maybe a handyman.

You can't make him move, but you can make yourself less available to take his calls.

Your dilemma here is that you or he or both of you are assuming that you have the responsibility in this situation, when you have none of the power.

This is obviously illogical. He is giving you no power to tell him what to do THEREFORE you have no responsibility for the consequences.

Read that again!

I doubt if you can persuade him to accept that he is actually old and vulnerable. My Dad was exactly the same. It isn't clear if he is trying to make you responsible for helping him when you talk, or if that is just your conditioning. But I suggest you work very hard on yourself to AVOID problem -solving mode.

I suppose you and sibs could agree to repeat "well Bill has offered you to move near him" every time he complains about his knee etc. But possibly a better idea is to practice sticking to sympathising, and resisting (HARD) the problem solving.

"Oh yes poor you that sounds sore". "Oh bad luck Dad, how miserable" "Sorry to hear you are so fed up".

You say you "have" to call him daily. Do you? Newsflash - you don't! Or does he call you?

If he tries to get you to come up with solutions, turn it back to him. If he suggests something you can't do (basically, anything more than works for you) just say "you know I can't do that Dad" and if he persists, "don't be daft, you have plenty of options as we have discussed a million times. Let me know if you want help once you've decided what to do".

I get you are worried but he is an adult making his own choices. You are not responsible for his well-being, (indeed you cannot be as he is actively preventing you) -he is.

You are right Koala. He has a really busy social life, but HATES it when he’s on his own.

I moved away for Uni and didn’t go back because he remarried and basically spent all his time with her family. It fractured our family quite a lot. Now he’s elderly and I live mikes away, but the others are close by. He has a lot of people visiting him.

I feel guilty but whenever he comes to stay with me he leaves early, and whenever I go to stay there I’m in the way of his social life and he gets stressed out with me there because I do things like wash a cup and heave it to drain rather than getting the tea towel out.

My DPs refused to get a cleaner in until DM became bed bound, despite me getting full attendance allowance for her previously for just that purpose.

Ultimately if he has capacity then he can live how he likes, unfortunately as an adult DC that is often far from what we feel would be desirable, but it’s not reasonable to expect DCs with busy lives to mow lawns, do basic housework etc. if he has the means to pay for it.

I would maybe work on him to get a cleaner, getting someone into the house is a start. You aren’t going to get him to move at that age, unless it’s due to necessity into a care home. I would focus on trying to introduce small things and you don’t have to pick up the phone and listen for 45 mins every day, put some boundaries in place, it sounds like he has a better social life than I do !

I could have written this and then thought my sister had! My dad does have a cleaner and gardener though. We have to watch his commissioning of DIY etc as people to try rip him off with inflated quotes. He has a lot of contact and sometimes turns down our offers of help or dinner out due to his packed social life. He still tells everyone he hasn’t seen a soul all week or heard from relatives. We can’t do any more than we do. We just ‘grey wall’ and ignore the dirty looks his friends sometimes give us. The house won’t fall down in the next few years. We simply have to pick up the pieces.

Well, I guess he needs to act like yhd grown up he is then and he he’d to pay for help when he needs it.

And you need to cut the convo short