spinoff -- when do you force a move on your aging parent(s)?

I would move her into assisted living very soon ... in one state or the other ... maybe let her choose?

My mum is 77 and chose to move into a seniors residence late last year and she absolutely loves it! She has her own suite with privacy but can join in activities when she wants. She has someone in to clean once per week and eats dinner in the dining room every evening.

I'm so glad that she didn't leave me to make the decision ...

Take your mum on some tours and let her see what the places are like!

What I have discovered is that if your parents are plausibly competent and refuse there is nothing can do, even if they are in a precarious situation. I hope you find a way to persuade her.

This

If she’s not willing to move and she’s still of sound mind then you’re going to have to let her make that decision and live with the consequences

My mum always said that the only way she was leaving her house was feet first (meaning not unless she was dead) and she got her wish

It wasn’t ideal for the rest of us and had she lived longer we probably would have gone to court to force the issue as she did have some dementia but …

You’re in a tough spot. With my mom, thankfully she wasn’t a hoarder but she did NOT want to move to an assisted living place. When it became clear that she couldn’t handle being home alone anymore (Alzheimer’s) and it was too much for my brother to look after her 24/7 (wandering in the middle of the night, sundowning, a good deal of general confusion throughout the day, etc.), we had to force the issue. We chose which pieces of furniture she was going to need, clothes, etc. A couple of my siblings took her out to lunch one day while others of us moved her stuff into her new place. After lunch, they brought her to the new place and said, “It will be okay for you to stay here tonight. See, your bed is here, your dresser and your things.” and she seemed okay with that. We visited her a lot and within a couple weeks she really came to enjoy having lots more activities and things to do, new people to hang out with, places she could go on outings.

In hindsight, it would have been much better to move her sooner than we did because her life at home had become very isolated and lonely even with my brother being there full time and having some of her other kids come visit in the last couple years. Being at home didn’t give her nearly enough interaction with other people. It was also really hard on my brother to be her live in caretaker in the last couple years. It’s more than a full time job for one person to take care of someone with advancing dementia.

The place we moved her to had varying levels of senior living, from fully independent apartments on the lower levels of the building (residents could still cook and drive, do their own laundry, etc.) to graduated levels of care up additional floors. By the time we moved my mom she had to go straight to the memory care level because she was already past all of the self care aspects. The really nice thing was that all the building layouts were identical from floor to floor so residents didn’t have to learn where everything was if/when they needed to go up to a higher level of care.

We’re in that situation essentially with my Mum in law. She’s fully competent mentally but fairly frail now at 92. She has 2 Dds and my Dh but we’re all an hour plus away from her. I realise that’s pretty close comparatively for many of you 😊
We did spend a month or so a while ago talking with her about moving closer to us, showed her apartments, warden assisted places etc but she prevaricated and clearly didn’t want to move. So that’s that 🤷🏼‍♀️
We couldn’t (nor would we want to) ‘make her’ move - how do you even do that? But she has to accept that Dh isn’t going to pop round after work to change a light bulb, she won’t see her grandchildren or great grandchildren as often as she might and I honestly don't know what would happen if she fell or anything like that.

But it’s her choice. We have given her all the positives but I guess none of them beat being in the home she’s lived in for 70 years and where everything is familiar.

Kudos to your mom for doing this for you! After dealing with my parents I swore -- and I made my dh promise -- that we would never do it to our kids. I suspect he'll be reluctant when the time comes but I won't back down.

The problem is in many cases they want to stay with the familiar even if it’s bad, not realizing their life could be so much better and fuller if they did make the move. That was the case with my mom. We waited as long as we could to try to accommodate her wishes to stay in her home but we really should have pushed harder to move her sooner. Her last few years would have been a lot happier and more active if we would have moved her when we wanted to vs. when we actually did.

The bottom line is they don’t know what they don’t know and a lot of older people still assume that assisted living of today = sad, smelly nursing home of the 1970’s and that’s just not necessarily the case. The place we moved my mom to was so nice and they had a lot of activities and outings and different things for the residents to do. The staff would send me notes every month with photos of my mom smiling and laughing, enjoying dances and ice cream socials, doing crafts and sing alongs. I was really surprised myself when my siblings and I toured some of these residences by how great they actually were.

The short answer is you CAN'T force them to move.

My parents refused to discuss leaving their dream home on a lake in northern Minnesota, 2 hours from all of us. Well, my dad refused to discuss it and mom won't do anything but what he wants. It was completely unsafe for them. He hadn't left the house in 2 years. Doctor visits were virtual, but one of us had to go up there to facilitate them.

Finally he broke his hip and agreed he could not go home. We moved him into a care facility nearby, then started the discussion of moving them closer to us. They finally agreed, after a lot of drama.

Now mom is in assisted living and dad is down the hall in long term care. BUT, we are STILL having to provide nonstop care, because my mother won't let the staff take care of my 100% helpless father. They are both 87. It is making us all crazy and resentful. Mom is trying to do everything, including bathrooming a guy who needs a lift.

So much this. We did rounds and rounds with my mom trying to get her out of her house and into a senior living apartment. She flat out refused to even look at places and I had to drag her on tours. We were looking at one apartment complex and she was literally watching the football game on the community screen vs talking to the woman escorting us around. She had become unstable in her home and was calling me repeatedly to come help. at that time I was working full time with 2 elementary aged kids. She finally had to admit it was too much, we got her stuff moved into the apartment and she died before moving in. There's no way I could have forced the issue (she was mentally competent, physically falling apart) There are days when I think what if I had been more forceful? but the answer would have been she would have dug in harder on not moving. It was an object lesson in how I want to approach my senior living years.



Hugs, I'm sorry.

Sorry for the weird quotes - my 'quick quote' option isn't playing ball.

But...I wonder if our aging parents thought they would be reasonable when the time came but time had a way of re-shaping things in their minds? There are inevitably some who delight in making life hard for their offspring but not the majority I wouldn't think. I guess we just become more set in our ways, and perhaps a little fearful of life when we get old.

I know with my mum - her father died at home after 10 years of illness cared for by her mother and her mother had a heart attack, was admitted to a hospital, and had another one within the week that took her. And she grew up with her maternal grandparents in her home being cared for by her mother. So she assumed that she could live at home until she passed also. Unfortunately there wasn't anyone living with her to caregive (she was widowed in her 50s and my sister works fulltime and lived 90+ minutes away while I lived a 2 day drive away and had children at home still) AND she developed dementia which made her much more stubborn as well as very paranoid. In the end she DID die at home but...that wasn't ideal for anyone.

DH and I are in our mid-50s - I would like to think that I'll make choices (or let my children make choices) that are best for everyone when the time comes that living in our home isn't the best choice for me or us any longer. BUT I realise that I might not feel that way in my 70s or 80s. Plus DH watched his mother live with family (including us) while she was on hospice and his aunt stayed home on hospice as well. His grandma lived with first his aunt and later his cousin until she passed at 103 after many years of dementia. So he may be more like my mum...expectation wise.