Mum won’t accept help

[CycleWoman]

Does anyone have any good advice to offer me about helping a parent who doesn’t want to be helped!?

Me and DM have a tricky relationship but on the whole a good one. She’s an excellent grandparent, is very supportive (practically but not emotionally) of me and gets on well with my DH.

I’ve had a lot of therapy over the years as I have PTSD from some traumatic experiences I had as a child. Nothing dramatic but it was to do with DMs poor mental health which resulted in some not so great parenting. Through therapy I’ve come to accept it and understand that she did her best as a vulnerable person herself.

Our major sticking point now is that she needs help with things around her house but point blank refuses to accept it. I’ve given up sweating the small stuff but right now she needs a major repair which requires involvement of her insurance company. She has buried her head in the sand and stopped communicating with them. I’ve tried everything to encourage her to deal with it, offered to deal with it for her, as had my DH. But no luck and it’s been going on over 12 months.

Has anyone else been in this position?

When my mil had early stages of dementia we had a lady from a care agency come round who was clearly very used to talking to stubborn elderly people refusing help. She managed to get her to understand that if she accepted help she’d be able to stay in her home longer (and not go into a home). Social services had previously been but not achieved much.

@Honeyroar Thanks for responding. DM is in her 60’s and nowhere near needing any type of care. She’s on the whole a capable independent adult (just a bit eccentric and difficult!). So I don’t think I can get external help for her and doubt it would go down well!

She just has this habit of burying her head in the sand when problems arise as she finds things too difficult to deal with but won’t let anyone else deal with them either.

Unfortunately you cannot force help on a capable adult who will not accept it even when it is obvious that they need to do something.

For the sake of your own sanity you will have to step back from this one. Let your DM know that you're there if she needs you and leave her to it. It sounds like the situation will slide into crisis before anything happens but if she won't accept any input there is really nothing you can do.

What RatherBeRiding wrote. You need to have boundaries here.

I would also suggest you post this in the Elderly Parents forum of this site as you will get replies too.

@RatherBeRiding You’re right, I really need to let go (and so far have approached it as you suggest having learned from previous similar situations with her).

But I think I’m trying to mitigate the impending crisis as I’ll have to deal with it eventually when it comes to a head (probably financially as well as practically).

I think I’ve just run out of energy for watching these things unfold when I know ultimately I’ll have to step in when things have gotten really bad. I fairly recently had to untangle her from a legal situation and had a few months break before this one arose.

@AttilaTheMeerkat thanks for your suggestion.

Stop bailing her out at all now, hard as that is to do perhaps because of you still feeling obligated towards her (and she likely has no-one else around to do it). She needs to fall and not have you pick up any of the pieces. I presume given how she is and has been she would not do the same for you if the position was reversed.

I would contact Social Services here re your mother. It matters not that external help won't likely go down at all well with her. You need to walk away from this for your own family and sanity; you've tried and likely have tried all your life with her too. You cannot fix her pain.

[quote CycleWoman]@RatherBeRiding You’re right, I really need to let go (and so far have approached it as you suggest having learned from previous similar situations with her).

But I think I’m trying to mitigate the impending crisis as I’ll have to deal with it eventually when it comes to a head (probably financially as well as practically).

I think I’ve just run out of energy for watching these things unfold when I know ultimately I’ll have to step in when things have gotten really bad. I fairly recently had to untangle her from a legal situation and had a few months break before this one arose.[/quote]
This isn’t true, you won’t ‘have to’ mitigate the impending crisis financially or practically, or step in when things get really bad. You chose to untangle her from a legal situation, that was your choice to make.

Your language suggests you view your mum as your responsibility to save when in reality she’s a grown adult with the right to make and resolve her own decisions, however unwise they might seem to you. You have the capacity to take a step back and allow her to mess up and sort her problems out herself, even if she doesn’t do it in the way that you would do or would like her to do.

You have every right to step back, have a mother daughter relationship where you speak and spend time together but don’t get involved in trying to prevent or solve problems for her. You’re not responsible for her. It’s really sad to see that you’ve both found yourself in this position where you believe it’s inevitable that you are in this role of saviour. It isn’t, and just as you are choosing to behave this way with her you are also able to choose to behave a different way if you want to.

The consensus seems to be that I need to let her get on with it. Which I guess I’m really going to have to try for the sake of my sanity.

It just makes me sad to see her living situation fall apart (not so badly that she is in danger but significant disrepair that makes her life needlessly difficult) and not be able to do anything about it.

I do feel responsibility to solve her problems. I sort of imagined everyone felt like that towards their parents to some degree but perhaps I’m going too far.