Our elderly father being starved by our mum

[curtaincall]

She's just not giving him the right amount of food and he is losing weight. She won't listen to us (her grown-up children) about this as she hasn't about anything, ever. He is now vulnerable and weak and I think is scared of asking her for more food. What on earth would you do ?

I also assumed from what you said that your dad was bedbound or at least not able to get food for himself and completely dependent on your mum. It sounds like this is not the case, which leaves me wondering whether his weight-loss is linked to something else and he has in fact a very small appetite. It could even be that your mum has been told to give him small meals to tempt him to eat (but is then not adding additional calories in through snacks). Many older people do get dramatically thinner when they are really unwell, partly because they don't fancy food. Smoking also supresses the appetite.

I think if they are both sociable, getting out of the house, he has a housekeeper and access to food, drinking quite a bit and smoking then you should tread carefully unless you have very concrete proof of food witholding (as opposed to him not wanting to eat/being used to smaller portions). I would try and contact their GP (if you know who they are) and other charities for advice. Can you also talk with him directly and be fairly blunt? Otherwise there's a risk that intervening leaves them estranged from you but not much else, unless there's real evidence of neglect or abuse (which may be quite hard to show given they have a housekeeper making meals and a mobile/active person).

The other option is to turn your back on the pair of them, curtaincall. It sounds as though they've made your life hell for as long as possible and have a sad 'dance of abuse' going on between them. You know how hard it is to step out of that one; I'm concerned that this is causing you so much anxiety.

You do not have to save them (him). I understand why you want to - I'm kinder than I feel like being to my own mother, as I don't want to let her suffer more, and have put quite a bit of effort into drawing my own boundaries.

I wonder if it might be best for your mental health to raise a flag with Social Services, then leave it at that? I'm not recommending one course of action above any other: just giving you permission not to care, in case you wanted it :)

Hi Curtaincall,

It's possible to find out who is your parents' gp. A couple of years ago, I had been trying to contact my uncle for a couple of weeks with no success. I live abroad and he lives in Kent alone.

I don't know the name of his neighbours, so getting rather worried as he was 87, I rang round the local gp surgeries having found them in yellow pages. 1 of the surgeries confirmed that he was registered with them, although couldn't confirm if he'd seen them recently.

There was also a local police welfare officer who would have called round to see if he was ok.

Fortunately I managed to get hold of him, and it turned out that he'd been having problems with his hearing aid and also with his phone.

So, it might be worth ringing round the local gp surgeries to find out where they are registered, or starting with the last known gp and asking them where they went next, and so on.

Good luck.