I’m 35 and have a house. I’m a single mom of an 11 yr old. My mom is 58 and able bodied. She was living with my grandfather the last 10+ years but he passed away this year. I didn’t realize how much his social security was helping her. She is now at a place where she’s saying she needs to move in with me. I haven’t lived under a roof with her since about 16. She’s a major trigger for my mental health. I do not want her to live with me but I don’t know how to say that. I know that if she moves in with me, she’s never gonna leave. I am so stressed out just by the idea. My home is my safe place and having her there will take that away. She also thinks she’s about to lose her job, which means she would be moving in with no income. If anyone has advice I would greatly appreciate it.

TLDR: Lying is not new with her. She's a narcissist in her 80s living on her own. She lies to ppl involved in her care. I have POA, manage her meds, and am with her for every medical or repair appointment. If I correct her, she adamantly holds her position before transitioning to playing the victim.

................

Doctor: Are you taking your meds?

Mom (lying): I never miss!

Physical therapist: Are you doing your exercises?

Mom (lying): Three times every day!

Electrician: Do you ever run your space heater on high overnight?

Mom (lying): I would never do that!

Again, lying is not new behavior but I'm concerned how it may affect her care and put the third person in a difficult position. Mom is also hard of hearing so these conversations are loud, repetitive, and longer than they need to be.

Space heater issue is resolved, BTW, and she is safe.

Her lies and my corrections make appointments awkward. Any advice? TIA. ✌️

My dad passed away in September. My mom (72) over the course of 32 years apparently has not paid a single bill over the internet. She has been on computers, she knows how to use a computer and was addicted to FarmVille and Facebook and purchases stuff off of Amazon etc.

The a week or so week after he passed it became apparent that she was without a paddle in the ocean with bills and whatnot.

I (33 F) sifted through all the utility bills, mortgage, and car loan documents. Set up the pension documents and the IRA rollover process which should be processed by January. Called social security for her to set an appointment and retrieved her SSA password because my dad had set it up for her and she never logged onto it afterwards. Made a binder with all passwords, all certificates, tax documents and loan documents.

I bought a computer for her (my dads gave a bitlocker error and I couldn’t access it) and put all the payment portals for utilities, retirement accounts, and bills on the homepage with saved passwords. Tried to make everything as seamless as possible. Showed her the process multiple times how to pay the bill. Basically click user name, click password sign in, bingo. Saved debit cards for automatic payments etc.

Took her to a probate lawyer and am in the process of getting most of the accounts from my dad’s name to hers.

Most of this stuff, she could do by herself. But now I’m in a pickle where she expects me to do everything paperwork related. She doesn’t read her mail or email, she just off loads it onto me when I visit.

She has never been personable to me in my adult life and even childhood, so it’s a gut punch that there’s little warmth while visiting. Dad was always doting. Now it’s just her asking about paper work, the only time she calls is about paperwork.

I stopped over last Sunday and she just gave me a stack of mail to go through, most of it was credit cards bill that my dad owned that needed settled. She didn’t read them and said “she doesn’t know what they are for”.

I live almost an hour and a half away and she expects me to be the keeper of paper work when I visit, while I have an older brother who lives a mile away. She doesn’t really ask him to help with any paper work, she says “I don’t want to ask him he gets mean”. He did set up an appointment for a repair for her and got the ball rolling on Medicare stuff and that’s about it.

I think I want to just distance myself from the bill payments once the pension and SSA stuff settles in. Automate what I can, and leave her to her own devices, because I pretty sure she’s just offloading all of dad’s responsibilities onto me through weaponized incompetence or forced helplessness or whatever.

And what makes me annoyed is she always complains about the younger generation and how they have it so easy, while these past few months have made it apparent that she has been insulated from any true financial responsibility for the past 30 or so years.

Just a rant, I feel like I haven’t been able to properly greive with all this being thrown at me.

Folllwing the good advice of some Reddit commenters, I called my mom's doctor to tell them I was worried about her for several reasons. It turned out being exactly what she needed because now she's getting the tests she needs. I love my mom and going through this with her has been really hard and it's about to be so much harder.

(USA)

My parents (67 & 58) are BROKE. They have no retirement savings, no house, and maybe $500 in the bank. They have one car worth maybe a few thousand dollars. Even though my mother is only 58, she’s had 2x heart attacks, a stroke, and a triple bypass surgery. It’s a miracle she’s still living. My dad just survived an aortic dissection at the beginning of the year and has returned back to work. Literally the only thing my parents seem to have going for them is the miraculous ability to survive.

The house they rent is a total slum because the landlord refuses to fix anything. The floors are falling in, the bathroom has mold, they have wild animals living underneath. They can’t easily move anywhere else because rents have gone up so much and their credit isn’t good.

I live my own life a thousand miles away. I have proposed buying them a small, cheap, accessible house to live in. The house will be in my name only. I can afford to do so, but I’m scared of becoming their permanent caretakers. I’m OK with paying for the house and hiring cleaners etc. but I absolutely cannot move back. Will giving them a place to live make me entirely responsible for their care?

My mom has been wildly irresponsible with her finances since I was a child. As in, my siblings and I all went hungry on a semi-regular basis as children because she'd spend money on multi-level marketing and get rich schemes instead of buying groceries. Just months ago she gave $30k to someone she met at a real-estate investment seminar to invest it for her, and didn't get any kind of contract. Our family is not wealthy, that's life-altering money for all of us and she just... gave it away.

My dad has alternately fought with her and enabled her for decades. But dad just received a third terminal diagnosis and has maybe 6-8 months to live.

When he goes, most of their income disappears and there will be no one there to be sure the mortgage gets paid (their mortgage should have been paid off a long time ago but she keeps borrowing against the house.)

My siblings and I all agree that if she is left to her own devices she will give away or lose everything and make herself homeless in short order. None of us expects to have any inheritance, but none of us can afford to pay for her end of life care if she squanders everything she has.

What can we do? Short of getting her adjudicated as a mental incompetent, I don't know of any way to stop her from ruining herself. I can't afford to support her and don't want to leave her homeless.

Do we have any options here? Has anyone else been through this?

My 80yo uncle, who has mild dementia, keeps getting scammed by people calling him and convincing him to give them his cc/debit card info. Telling him to NEVER give his bank info out or even answer the phone doesn’t seem to stick.

I recently was added to his account so I can manage some of his finances. I asked his bank if they have anything that can help put guardrails up, short of not giving him any cards, and all they have is an ATM card that he can use to get cash and MAYBE at limited stores.

I’ve thought of just having him use a prepaid card, so at least we can limit damage. Has anyone else found any creative solutions to this?

I'm ( late 50s M) back home for 10 days for my dad's last days and funeral, leaving me with my Nmum, and I'll leave on Friday. Mum (85) knows I'm not coming back to care for her, I didn't return for 10 years, and this will be likely / possibly be the last times she ever sees me. We had dinner and she was nice to me and we left with a hug and a kiss. It was so unusually reasonable and I'm just crying now.

Anyone ever find their difficult parent just turned your emotions upside down by being nice for a change?

Hi, I am new to this sub.

How do you all deal with your aging parents?

This is mostly for my father.

Over the past decade or so, and more swiftly over the past 5 years, my family has seen cognitive decline in my father, specifically signs of alzheimers/dementia, etc. which is not surprising given our family history of the disease. Even relatives and family friends have noticed him becoming more stubborn, combative, and very difficult to communicate and reason with. He's also losing his hearing which doesn't make things easier.

We have all been extremely patient and understanding for a long time. We've had many fights regarding his behavior and only recently has it gotten a little better.

Even when he was younger and healthier, he had strong signs of OCD (controlling, directing, rearranging things, counting, and generally always wanting to be in other people's business but doesnt like it when we comment, etc.. )which you can imagine has been greatly exasperated by the disease.

When asking my mother why we havent started measures to mitigate the progression of the disease, her reasoning is, in essence, that "he already knows, we cant tell him because that means it is reality and that he is becoming old and that will devastate him."

This means that they haven't gone to a doctor for a diagnosis (for this specific matter), nor are they planning to.

I find this extremely selfish on their part. I am absolutely willing to support and understand, but how do you even start when the person wont even acknowledge the issue in the first place?

• So far I can’t find a way to prevent unknown numbers from calling my FIL’s TCL flip phone. Spammers are driving him crazy. Carrier-level blacklists are not good enough
• I've tried teaching him to use an iPhone in both regular mode (sending unknown callers to voice mail) and Assistive Mode (allowing calls to/from Contacts only). Unfortunately his fingers are too large and arthritic to hit the right buttons regularly

Any suggestions/ideas? I tried a Lively phone with my own Dad but it didn't work well for him for various reasons. Really wish the TCL flip phones had a whitelist feature

My mother-in-law who is in her 70s is an absolute mess mentally. She has been Baker acted countless times but they let her go after just a couple of days saying that she is stable and able to go home. Without a doubt the very same day she gets home she is calling us non-stop talking about her anxiety being awful and how awful her life is.

We can't get her into assisted living because she spent through her retirement and only lives on her social security. We cannot afford it because it would take an extra $1,400 a month out of our budget that we barely survive on now. She also has no assets because she spent through over $100,000 in 9 months after she retired. We can't be there constanty, because life.

She either needs to be in a longer-term mental health facility to get actually stable and properly diagnosed or an assisted living, but how do we do that? We have tried her doctor, psychiatrist, psychologist, her Baker act services I don't know eight times at this point? A neurologist, elder source, council on aging. We have gotten absolutely nowhere!

To be quite Frank she's driving us and her neighbors /friends absolutely crazy.

Long story short I don’t talk to my dad. I could tell you why, but we’ll just say he’s mentally abusive and a drunk. I found out through my cousin ( who heard from a stranger at a local brewery) he’s had some health issues. Broken hip, minor stroke and an illness so bad he was hospitalized. Here’s my question, how will I find out he’s died. I’m his only living heir, he doesn’t talk to anyone else in his family or they’ve all passed. Has anyone else dealt with this?? Just to be clear my mom and he divorced in like 86 and the one brother he has left doesn’t speak to him. I’m his only family.

So I found out for sure last weekend at my baby shower that my MIL has type 2 diabetes. A couple years ago, I told my husband about overhearing my in-laws talking about her having an issue with her diabetes, she lied to him and said she was maybe prediabetic. At the time she was twitching a lot and now my husband asked on Saturday what was going on because her face seems like it's almost paralyzed on one side and she clenches her jaw when she talks. She finally admitted to him it's diabetes. To be honest I'm pretty upset she's been hiding it from us and chose to disclose it at our shower, but what I'm really mad about is finding out she isn't even getting treatment according to my father in law. They are super ignorant or uneducated on how serious this is. At the end of the night my father in law was taking leftover soda and asked my mother in law "you like sprite right?", which she replied yes grab it. Thankfully my husband took it away and told his dad that she can't drink regular soda if she has uncontrolled diabetes.

I'm not a doctor, but I know what diabetic neuropathy looks like since I have a lot of family members with type 1 & 2 diabetes. I even lost a relative a few years ago because of gangrene complications from diabetic neuropathy. So as you can imagine I am pretty livid that she is refusing to seek medical treatment now before things become dire.

An extra complication is that it's about to be winter where I live and my in laws live an hour away in a rural community and I'm 7 months pregnant. My husband and I can't hold her hand and drag her to an appointment. I am just at a loss because my father in law is so obtuse to the severity and minimized when my husband explained it, she's refusing to be an adult about this situation and getting care or making any sort of lifestyle change and I am in no condition to be there. It's had me in tears everyday since finding out which can't be good for my baby. I'm just so mad that someone can be that selfish and unwilling to take care of themselves especially when they're about to be someone's grandparent. What can I do? I need some strategies because it's stressing me out thinking how she's (not) so slowly killing herself over sugary food (she's seditary, overweight and eats highly processed food everyday, like chips, soda, boxed mac & cheese, mash & gravy, cookies, etc.) This is supposed to be a joyful time and this is instead what I'm staying up in the middle of the night about.

My parents (early 70s, late 60s) are doing fine on their own for now, but having seen my cousins take on these caregiving roles, I know what can come. As an only child, I know it's possible that I may be taking on a lot in the future.

We've already talked openly about the kinds of care they do and don't want, which I'm grateful for. But I'm wondering if there are other tangible things I can do now to help them have a fulfilling older age and to make it easier on me when I'm the one looking out for them.

For those who've been through it: what do you wish you had known? And is there anything worth doing now to prepare? Or questions to ask sooner rather than later? Practical stuff like paperwork or accounts, or anything else that made a difference.

One of my mom's (83) last living friends is in memory care about halfway between our two places, so she's been visiting her about once a month and then coming and spending the night with me, so as not to have to drive back during rush hour.

She seems to be tireder every time she comes. It may well be the stress of driving, which she hates, coupled with the stress of seeing how anxious and unhappy her friend is, not to mention the stress of worrying that she's seeing her own future. But I worry it may be actual deterioration and I'm not sure how I could tell.

Hi there. My grandparents are in the high 90s and still live alone far away from our families. They are still able to do stuff on their own (to some extent) but we no longer feel comfortable with them being on their own. We are wanting to find someone who will either live with them or move them into a community where people can check on them. Not necessarily a senior living home but maybe a neighborhood where they can still have their own home.

We aren’t sure where to begin looking especially regarding where to find an in home caregiver that is trustworthy. For some context they are in west Los Angeles area if anyone has any recommendations! Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

hello! my grandmother recently had a bad fall and broke her hip. she ended up having to have the hip pinning surgery, and seems to be in good spirits now! her energy and mood seems to be completely back, which makes me very happy.

she had been toying with the idea of staying at a rehab center close to where we live. (we’ve been having to drive 1.5 hours to visit her at the hospital where she was transferred to.)

the only place near where we live is full, and the next closest has bad reviews, so she decided on at-home occupational and physical therapy.

i’d love to have her stay at a facility, but it’s just not going to be doable it seems. all i want is for her to get the best care and improvement as she can.

does anyone have any successful experiences with at-home health?

I want to seek advice and opinions from people who have a single parent (my father died) and they dont live with them.
For context my mother lives far from me and doesnt want to live with me (i dont have the most comfortable living space) she is struggling financially and im willing to help but my concern is her detoriation especially health wise. Nursing home is not an option either and I cant move where she is because of my job (the only financial help i can give I can’t afford to leave it)

Anyone who went or is going through same?? If yes what did you do??

I notice my parents are constantly calling me to help them with what I deemed as mundane task. For example, they might send me a photo of a letter and want me to me to summarize it for them like I am ChatGPT. They want me to call customer service for them to resolve issues.

My concern is that I am now the only child. My younger sibling and I used to share duties of handling their request but my sibling suddenly pass away. I have health issues and worry that if something happens to me there won't be someone around to help. Most of my relatives are overseas. I pointed this out to them a few times, but they always denied that something could happen to me even though it's already happen once before.

Are there things I can do to help them be more independant. I have often push back constantly and change procedure to those that they are used to. They have learn do things like Rideshare for example, so it's not impossible for them learn things. I have set up alternate people to help in emergency circumstances, but they are unlikely to be as responsiv,e, but that may have to do?

I'm seeing serious risk factor/health red flags in my partner's parents (65, 69 y.o.) that have been worsening pretty quickly over the last few years. Mainly frequent falls/poor balance, frequent illness/infections, vision impairments (FIL has macular degen., diabetic retinopathy, and glaucoma) and they still drive, including heavy freeway traffic and along a dangerous stretch of mountain roads. MIL is still working FT in a very high-stress job, and they are really pretty young for everything they're dealing with.

They are very independent and generally reserved with personal things, and I think largely in denial of a lot of their health issues and what they mean long term. I've been in the family for over 20 years and have a healthy relationship with them, but haven't seen them as much as I used to over the past few years, so I don't feel like I'm as close as I once was. But I'm a healthcare professional and I can't unknow what I know or unsee what I've seen, and it's pretty distressing to watch this play out with loved ones. They've missed holidays, birthdays, milestone celebrations in the last year d/t one or the other being unwell. MIL has fallen twice in the last month (walking dog/in a tub-shower) and she is putting off medical care for a back issue (also, I suspect secretly drinking again after an AUD-complicated hospitalization in 2020 and she claims she's quit)

I want them to regain some health and maintain their independence for as long as possible! I need to tread carefully, and don't want to approach this from a fear or anxiety based place (although, I'm pretty afraid from what I see-- not helped by the fact that I work in a neuro/ortho IRU). But I don't know how receptive they would be to anything too subtle. Looking for advice on if/how to address my concerns with them.

My mom is 71 years old. I have noticed more frequently her becoming much more forgetful, she doesn’t remember things I’ve told her in previous days. It will just be basic things about what I did, or what one of my kids did. Something else that stood out to me though was how she has completely forgot about something a little more significant.

About 8 years ago I rear ended someone in a big truck and I had a little Honda civic so my car got damaged and to help me out I traded cars with my parents and I drove my dad’s truck while my parents took my car in for a couple weeks to get repaired. At one point I asked my mom if it would be okay for me to go on a small road trip with my dad’s truck with a friend to a state park. They were fine with it.

My mom started talking about going to said state park with a friend as she has never been and she did remember how I went and I told her “oh yeah I went when I was borrowing dad’s truck.” She looked at me like I was crazy and was like what?! I reminded her that I had rear ended someone and my little car was messed up so they had helped me out and I borrowed dad’s truck. My mom then said she did not remember that at all.

I feel like that’s something she would remember. I don’t know if I should be concerned or if this is normal for her age or both. Is there anything I should be looking out for?

So my mom lives with my mamaw to help care for her, but still has a full-time job. Mamaw has still been pretty independent for the most part, but the last year or 2 she has begun to go downhill. Her room is becoming full of packages and trash and laundry and just random junk. It has become a fall hazard at times, and it takes days for me and my mom to clean through. We do a good job of keeping her trash out and keeping the fall hazards off the floor, but she is always adding to it.

She has had a problem with falling; sometimes she will keep it a secret because she is embarrassed, and we won't know till days or weeks later. She has been scammed by telemarketers for actual thousands of dollars. She has physically gone out, listened to these people on the phone, bought $3000 worth of gift cards, sent them pictures, and had them stolen. She hid that from us for 2 weeks before her credit card bill came in and my mom saw the transactions. It was a really difficult time for everyone. She has an online shopping problem, signing up for things she doesn't even know about, buying random expensive things from sketchy websites, and forgetting about them or having some excuse about why she needs them. It is a genuine problem, and we have had multiple conversations about it. She refuses to accept she is not mentally capable of handling her finances.

Most recently, about 2 months ago, she had a UTI and was showing crazy cognitive symptoms. Couldn't walk or speak or hold her bladder, and what little she did say was insane. We took her to the ER; she had a UTI. This happened a couple of years ago, so I wasn't surprised. They admitted her for about a week, and they found she has very bad muscle deterioration. She ends up in a rehab facility for 3 weeks, working on physical therapy. Now she's been home for a couple of months at this point, still going to physical therapy sessions a couple of times a week, and she now uses a walker.

This last Friday, she had ANOTHER UTI after being sick for a week. My mom took her to the ER again. They gave her antibiotics and IVs for dehydration. They let her go home if my mom promised to make her drink water. My mom had been doing her best, but Mamaw refuses to drink water consistently and does not see it as a problem. She thinks she is drinking plenty of water. Mom began going through her pills and setting up her pill box. She found mamaw has been incorrectly setting up some of her medicines, and skipping days or nights. My mom set up her pill box organizer so she doesn't get confused. On Sunday, Mom checks on her medications and sees she skipped her antibiotic on Saturday! Mamaw said she took it; my mom said clearly not- it's still in your box. She saw she did not take it Sunday morning either. Mamaw said, 'Yes, I did; I remember taking them this morning.' Again, she is wrong because the pills are still in the box.

My mom just now sent me a picture of Mamaw's credit card bill for the last 2 months. $1000 a month on random things, random sketchy websites, random packages, and some sketchy 'tech support' costs I bet are scams.

On top of this, some other behavior is washing fast food cups and storing them, washing popsicle sticks and keeping them, and plastic straws, and grocery bags, and various other strange behaviors. She mistook the toaster oven for the microwave the other day and stood there for a solid minute pushing buttons. She stays up very late; my mom has gone into the kitchen at 2:30 in the morning to find her wiping off the fridge door or setting up her pill box organizer. Just a lot of stuff.

I know she is sad, I know a lot of her friends are doing better than her, and some are doing worse, and I'm sure that's scary. She wants to travel but knows she can't go alone. I made plans to take her on a little road trip in a month, so I think that will help. I can sit her in a wheelchair and take her to a zoo or a museum or something. Anything to get her out of the house and make her feel normal.

I really don't know what to do. I'm at the point where we need to take her card away and get her a new debit card with a set allowance on it every month. She is going to hate that, and she doesn't think its needed, but I really don't know what else to do. Any advice is appreciated.

My 69 year old aging parent refuses to get hearing aids. They got a hearing test over a year ago and confirmed what we already knew. They miss chunks of information, conversations and her cognitive ability has declined.
This has caused multiple arguments between us. They claim, “you didn’t say that”or “I didn’t know”. They assume I am not speaking to them if they don’t hear me respond, or If I repeat myself slower, annunciate, or ask “did you not hear me when I answered”?, after already responding, then they see me as being abrupt or disrespectful.
For over two years I have been patient but now I’m to the point of frustration.

I kept asking why she wouldn’t get one and she would just shut it down for over a year with no reasoning or discussion or say oh yeah that doctor just wanted 600 dollars out of me. Finally, she told me yesterday, she doesn’t want to because others have told her they don’t like it and was basing it off other’s feedback and one doctor’s appointment.

I need advice. How can I get past my frustration and focus more on helping them? There are other issues occurring but I figure I would start with this one.
I want us to have a good relationship and not have their last years be filled with arguments, stubbornness and frustration.

Any advice? Had anyone else been in this situation?