Dealing with negativity and refusal

[kwaker5]

I know I can't make my mum (80 and widowed) do anything but all gentle suggestions are met with refusal and negativity. Should I just give up?
I went with her to buy a walking stick after she fell over, she won't use it 'until she needs to'.
She's got balance issues and is unsteady on her feet so I suggested a you tube video with some basic balance rehab exercises. She did them for a week but they 'haven't made any difference'. I did point out that they need to be done daily forever and that they might just stop things getting worse.
She's really hard of hearing. Unless you are in the same room facing her, she doesn't respond to conversation. But she won't go for a test. Has TV subtitles on all the time.
House is cluttered and dirty with out of date food, etc. I stopped mentioning this years ago after I removed all the out of date stuff from a cupboard and fridge, told her why and she the just put it all back (we are talking jars of Branston that were 10 years out of date). It's so cluttered, you can't clean (another thing I no longer mention).
I don't live close enough that I could provide any useful regular help but she would probably refuse it anyway.
It's reached the point where I dread going to see her because the state of everything gets to me but there is nothing I can do about it.

My parents’ whole house is a trip hazard. Now my mum has dementia she is clinging to possessions more than ever. I’ve given mentioning. I suspect that eventually it will be flagged or my mum will have a fall because of the clutter. It’s not worth wasting my energy on something that’s never going to change.

Badgering your mum obviously isn't working and continuing to do it isn't going to get a different result. Her accepting disability aids (like a walking stick or hearing aids or even having a cleaner come in) means she has to accept that she's deteriorating (or at least has reached a new phase of old age). And that's not easy for many of us. If you are concerned about her out-of-date food, why don't you just surreptitiously cart a little of it away with you each time you visit, without telling her? As for the fall hazards, I'd just move a few out of the way each time you visit, but do it without drawing her attention to it. It, unfortunately, is going to have to come to a point where she has a fall or some other incident where an outside agency or health person tells her she has to do something (or she comes to accept it herself). Are you her only relative? If there are others, you can perhaps come up with a strategy amongst yourselves to keep her as safe as you can for as long as you can. Good luck. You're just at the start of this difficult journey with her.

Dad’s not doing too badly but didn’t want a fall alarm despite being 85 and living alone…. He then got himself locked overnight in the loo and was freed by a combination of neighbours and the fire brigade. I raised the topic again and he said, “I hear you, when the time comes…”. I said it wasn’t negotiable and signed him up. He did a bit of bitching about it but all his friends told him it was an excellent idea!

For the food, I would just surreptitiously remove some.
How close are you to your mum? My dad is very stubborn but will occasionally relent and change things because he doesn’t want us to worry.

Sympathy. It's all rather shit.

Anyway.
She's hard of hearing and unsteady on her feet, so you can just throw out out of date food. If she's in another room she might not even hear you do it. Put it outside immediately in a big old wheelie bin, and even if she works out what you've done, she can't retrieve it.

Should she have the brass neck to ask if you know what happened to the three year old mayo, you can say, "I threw it out because I don't want you to die of food poisoning" and refuse to discuss it further.

There's not that much you can do. It's hard to come to terms with that. Venting helps - the Cockroach Cafe thread here is good for that.

I totally understand where you are coming from, although my mum had retained all her marbles, but she was a war bride, and got married in September 1939, so nothing was wasted and everything was kept, just in case

My mother worked until she was past 80... because she wanted to, and would give the money to the next door neighbour who would pay him, however this was handed to him in a used envelope and she collected old envelopes for this purpose and placed them under a sofa cushion. When I sat on said cushion, I wobbled because there were so many there and I then found them under the cushion... we got it down to six! As to out dated food, surrepticious removal worked, on the basis if she had not wanted it for over a year, she would not notice and she didn't. We also noted that china was getting dusty, so with my sister we would all do a kitchen Spring clean, saying everything gets washed whether it needs it or not, and that worked well because we were all there togther and she bossed us about.

We also realised that her sight was going, so this had to be addressed, too.

If she has agency, there’s much you can do. Cajole, encourage, use your influencing skills, lol, but if she won’t change that is her right. I’d defo do something about out of date food though. My mum was ridiculously stubborn and I am sure she kept ancient sauce bottles just to stress out my sister, lol. I came over one day and just chucked them out. Oops, sorry mum, done now, I don’t want you getting ill…

Thanks for the replies. It is hard to accept there's nothing you can do to help. I feel as though there it will take some incident (falling and breaking something or a health problem) before things change.
I must not be like this when I am her age!

@kwaker5 sympathy. Please join the army of us in similar situations with a vast amount of knowledge and sympathy over at

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/elderly_parents/5543019-cockroach-cafe-summer?page=23

Thanks, will do

I think accepting that you can do very little is the way to go. My mother is 88, has fallen several times, will not have a falls alarm; the mouldy food in her fridge, will not allow anyone to clean it out; wears stupid shoes that she slips in, will not change them . She is stubborn, negative, self obsessed and refuses to be proactive about a future she does not want to face. I’m sad, compassionate, frustrated, resentful and resigned all at the same time.

OMG my people …

Have spent the last few days clearing out DM kitchen, getting her a cleaner, putting all her stuff through my dishwasher etc etc.

I’m not asking for bended knee gratitude but the criticism for interfering, for ‘I’ll come and do the same to your house’ (she’s welcome) and to top it all off I had to go to the bank with her to sort out paying the cleaner and I am utterly blown away by how much money she has stashed away. She’s absolutely frugal and has more than enough to make her life more comfortable.

My local area holds free exercise sessions for the elderly. It is to help build their balance, help prevent falls & socialise too.

After so many weeks, the participants can continue the classes, but they pay per session.

You could ask the GP, library, Citizens Advice or social services for suggestions of groups to join

Recommend applying this for your DM
It is not means tested
Can spend on anything to make her life easier

https://www.gov.uk/attendance-allowance

I have found my people! My 89 year old mum is similar in so many respects. She can't see very well, can't hear and her mobility is not good. She can't go out on her own as her eyesight and the steps outside her house make it impossible.

Me and my husband go twice a week but because of the shitty parking round by hers we have to park in her local supermarket which only allows us up to 3 hours parking. Some would say that's enough, but by the time we've gone round and done her shopping, and taken it down the round we only manage to stay for a couple of hours at a time.

She tells me what she wants in her shopping, and then I go and find it's out of date because she 'forgets' it's there - DH thinks she just can't see to cook properly. We end up bringing things home with us, or throwing bits out.

She is exhibiting some very worrying behaviours - she thinks the neighbours are out to get her etc. I try to tell her that it's the vacumn in her brain created by the lack of sight and hearing which is causing her imagination to run riot and create all these scenarios she keeps coming up with, but she won't have it.

She is very resistent to making a will or having POA's in force. She has, finally, conceded that she will need to see the doctor, but the problem is we are going away on holiday for a month so it won't be until we get back. At least it's something.

My DH says that if you'd told her a couple of years ago that she'd be like this she would have be so upset. It is upsetting because I can talk to her on the phone and you would think nothing has changed. She's always asking what we're doing, and how our friends are etc. It's just the physicality and the slipping into worrying behaviour. I'm trying to get her into sheltered accommodation at the moment, but it will be through the Council, not private, so that's going to take a time. Hey ho, it will all come right in the end I suppose.

DM has hoarding disorder. It's really not worth the bother of trying to clean out absolute hazardous crap as she will notice and the fall out is unpleasant then she entrenches in even worse. She has been like it for decades, but with age it's got worse and she can't smell how putrid the cat litter trays are... I say cat litter trays loosely... that includes the carpets too, and the house reeks. She doesn't believe it as she has no sense of smell after over 65 years of smoking.
On my last visit, DS had to go outside to the garden every 3 minutes to avoid an asthma attack as the stench in the house was tightening his chest.

The time for change was 20+ years ago. She talked the talk, but never took any action to improve her living conditions for advanced old age.

DB is local so does regular small useful jobs like her shopping but it means that he doesn't have to spend long in the house at a time. I'm far away enough that it's a couple of hours to do the return journey, so you don't want to carve out that amount of time from a busy working/ family life to spend 10 minutes down there. She's past travelling and very rigid about what she will and won't do.

I just can't fit her conditions (time keeping, places she will/ won't go) into my life easily, and the reward of listening to her racist rantings, and recycled old digs about family members are frankly not rewarding enough for the effort. Last time she was moaning about how messy my bedroom was 30+ years ago... it was clean mess, but didn't even have dirty plates in it; it's her who has made the room a bio-hazard since!)

DB is a bloody saint (although he was the golden child for years, but she's even getting negative about him now)

She's still an adult with agency and not at a point where decision making could be done by others for her. Family agree that the only way she is leaving the house is in a stretcher/ box, and leaving her to it is less cruel to her than intervening.