My mother is 78 and has lived with me for 17 years. This is going to sound absolutely crazy to most of you and while I'm thankful for being in a situation that's still very workable, it remains frustrating. Here's a little landscape: It's me, my mother and my 17 yo daughter who lives here. My daughter and I are very active and high energy, with lots of friends, I own two businesses and we both prefer to be gone a lot and active--golfing, theatre, whatever. Here's what happens DAILY that drives me nuts:
We invite my mother, she refuses to go anywhere or do anything and now it's to the point where she won't go even to lunch with us. She says repeatedly that she's happy taking care of us (and she does, all the laundry, cleaning, etc. for us) but I always say that's not enough. She needs friends. She needs to leave the house. She needs others.
She has hearing loss, a pending prolapse surgery, lots of deaths in family lately but swears she's not depressed. It's TV, books and one phone call a day from family who all live states away.
Tried taking her to the local elderly activities center which is awesome. she refuses. Says she doesn't like it. They go on trips, tours, she can volunteer. She won't go.
My daughter and I are at the point where we don't care to even include her anymore she's so stubborn on not going anywhere. I've tried to explain it puts guilt and unfair burden on us to worry about her. And we don't want to stay home and be bored all day, doing absolutely nothing. Don't want her to be alone but yet she won't join in or anything. Won't go to a picnic. Won't go to a movie. Won't go. No mental issues with her ever.
What can we do? How should we feel? What's going on really? Other than this she's active and reasonably healthy. I've even had personal trainer come to train her, she liked that but we cannot afford it any longer for any of us.
Sounds little probably but still driving me crazy.
Frankly, I think your mother sounds fine - and you sound like a loving daughter who is concerned about a change. Having been there - done that myself, I think you might take some time to reflect on whether the constant activity and need to not be bored might not lead to your own burn-out. I now take time every day to have quiet time with my mother - she enjoys watching the antics of our backyard wildlife and smelling the flowers - and I enjoy the fact that I will always have these memories even after she is gone and I am old & grey(er). I am a better person for cutting back on constantly doing - *and* am more effective in my professional and civic life.
take care & be well. I am not judging, just giving you another view on how to look at things. Heavy load did a great job of covering most of the health & wellbeing checklist
What you and your daughter do is absolutely fine for both of you, but as you age, you enter a stage of contemplation and don't necessarily need something or someone else to entertain you. I hate it when my husband and kids insist I go to the movies or dinner with them. It just isn't fun for me.
The only suggestion that I would have for you is to search the web for the incidence of suicide among the elderly. You will find the signs and symptoms of elderly who are at risk for suicide. But just because your mother doesn't enjoy the same activities as you doesn't necessarily mean that she is depressed. For your own peace of mind, research suicide and elderly and than accept that she is happy with living her life the way she wants (as long as she poses no danger to herself or anyone else).
At least that is my opinion. Everyone should have the option to livetheir life the way that they want.
Hearing problems can make going out hard. If her hearing is corrected to the best place it can be, then you can't help that either.
The thing to remember is that elders have choices and we may not think they are the best ones, so we feel guilty, when in fact they are doing what they want to do.
Give her the option of going with you, make sure she is safe, and then enjoy yourself and let her be. Some of it may be stubborness, and just an invitation and then an "okay, just thought we'd ask," is good. Then, after a few times, she may decide she is the one making the choice and she may choose to go with you.
You are a good, loving person to be concerned, but only your mother can make the final decision.
you might also check if she is getting enough sunlight, and eating properly with real nutrition. Makes the world of difference.
THen, all that said, she has free will to do whatever she likes - even if it means sleeping till she wants to wake up and being a homebody. You can always bring back pictures on your cell phone to share....
Carol
It makes a person look stupid, or disconected when in converstions with others they misunderstand what people are saying. It isn't worth the effort or embarresment to make converstion. When she cooks, cleans etc. she feels competant and succesful. Chit chat is so much work if you can't be sure what you are hearing is what others said. It's even worse if your mother doesn't know that this is what is happening.
She seems to want to stay in the place where she feels most needed and accomplished, which is home. Was she a stay at home mother while you were growing up? She may just want to keep taking care of her family because that's what she has always done, and she's good at it. It's a terrible thing when you grow old and feel obsolete, but it's a great thing when someone cares enough to make you feel important, useful and valuable. That's a healing for everyone! Even if she still doesn't want to go places with you, ask her to make your favorite dish (which only she can) or complement her on the way your clothes always smell so clean. The point is to notice her accomplishments with gratitude. You may notice a huge change in her as she begins to stand straighter and smile more. Best of luck to you and your family.
Re-reading your email made me smile - remembering a time when my mother cooked, cleaned, cared and did all the mom stuff - like making hor duoevre plates for us when we came home from kindergarten and all of the other stuff. Many of the things she did for us kids that were special, I now do for her -
cherish what you have & give your mom a hug from all of us caregivers who remember when having our mom still doing things and smile a little
Now, women of my generation who came of age when women's rights were finally addressed with any sense, from banking to employment to being able to run a business by herself, have had so many opportunities that our mothers and grandmothers did not have that we have busier lives, more involved relationships (we have coworkers to contend with, for example), and we might look at our mothers today as they age and enter their 70's and 80's and think -- "Oh my, she doesn't do ANYTHING."
Well, back when I was a kid, that's what happened. Grandma was not doing anything. She lived in your house with that nicely decorated room in the back and maybe she met you in the kitchen when you came home from school.
So flash forward and today people still in their working years look at activity and look at society much differently. We have become a frenetically paced world, and women my age (I'm 49) have all the bells and whistles attached to them 24/7, the phone, the email, the fax, the internet, the super safe car or the loaded SUV, the kids in every possible after school activity known to mankind, we have "careers" and not just jobs, we have high community involvement....we're BUSY.
Our mothers were not, compared to us.
Sometimes when I see that women who see their own mothers sitting back and kicking back and hunkering down in their aging years are frustrated with their mothers, I offer a gentle reminder -- your world is more different, more challenging, more hectic that a woman's world ever was before your generation. If you were late 60's/early 70's in junior high school, you have a life now that reflects Gloria Steinem or Bella Abzug or their opposites fighting over what women's roles were going to be. Your mothers had housework, often never attended college, and stayed home and did not have careers. Thus their concept of activity is much, much differen than yours.
Another point I make is that very elderly women did not grow up with minivans and SUVs, tons of structured professionally designed activities for their kids, their own banking or pension for retirement (hubby might have handled all of it), and they certainly didn't have internet, Blackberries, etc. They know WE have these things and use them - they spent DECADES as adults not having them and not even thinking such things would ever be necessary.
I've taken my mother out to doctor appointments enough to notice that she thinks young women dress like "tramps," that certain minorities must not be around her, and that men should always drive the car. Her biases and prejudices remain unchanged from her early 20's in the 1950's. How she was raised, and what she was taught, truly shaped her views on life. And her view is to sit and wait for everyone to rush her to the doctor for her lastest health catastrophe. That's her social life and she will never change. Sometimes her opinions are so crass -- truly, I've watched her refuse to let a doctor from India come near her -- that I have been tempted to berate her, but the bottom line is that at age 79, this is who she is, this is who she's always been, and I accept that my mother thinks it's terrible and scandalous that men are nurses and women are bank managers.
So our parents are our parents, and they might be completely different people than we are. That happens.
The mother in the first post who does not want to "do anything" might very well believe that she IS doing something, and why doesn't anyone notice that? Housework, for many of my mother's late friends, was EVERYTHING to them! I recall realizing that several of my mother's friends literally never, ever read a book once they were out of high school. One of my mother's childhood friends died two years ago at age 80, and her children discovered that she had never once known that her husband had a life insurance policy. She had signed something to receive the death benefit when one of her kids handled estate and other paperwork, and she would have signed a cocktail napkin if asked to do so. The money arrived and she assumed her husband "had it in the bank." She never saw or tried to see a bank statement!!
This is incredible to a lot of people, but it's not rare. I work with seniors in my job, and they can be fascinating people, or they can be so inactive and so disinterested in the outside world, and everything in between.
I'd say to the mom and daughter -- live your lives and get all you can from life -- but the isolation of the older mother needs to possibly just be respected. It might just be her way of living the last years of her life, or she might have been that way ALL her life.
In other words, if she's healthy, eating well, safe, and seems secure and content, is there then a problem at all?
If she's none of the above, and her isolation is fairly recent (was she active before the last five year or so?), then issues like depression can be explored.