I read this article this morning and shook my head. This is a prime example of the absolute stupidity of letting someone who clearly has cognitive decline, call the shots! I'm just baffled this was allowed to happen.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/florida-disabled-mother-rescued-from-flooded-home-former-north-chicago-police-officer-during-hurricane-ian?dicbo=v2-254ce03ba8265518e97e6ef8c43b9764
Adult children are between a rock and a hard place. Stubborn parents can put us all at risk over their stupid pride. More adult children need to learn it is ok to stand up to a parent.
I also sort of pause that the very end of the story is a plea for money, since mom supposedly didn't have renter's insurance...
Just seems a little odd to me. Maybe the whole family suffers from terrible judgement issues. Or maybe this is a bit "staged" to get sympathetic people to donate money.
"What were you thinking?!?" is what adult children usually say before they slowly start to realize they're dealing with something abnormal.
Irrational stubbornness is a first, subtle sign of cognitive decline. Stubbornness is a personality trait in people of all ages, so it gets overlooked as a symptom in the elderly (and sometimes they aren't that elderly... like in their early 60s).
For years I've been trying to figure out how to get my friends, who are adult children, to become educated, care about or be on the lookout for signs of mental decline *before* their parents or LOs have a crisis but it's really hard to do. Even if they succeed in this, they have to then figure out how to engage their parents to make changes in a way that is productive in making safety improvements for them. Many parents/LOs don't deal with aging in any sort of realistic way. No one wants to think of themselves as needy or losing independence. It's so terrifying thought that they prefer to put their heads in the sand.
Some adult children are in a point in life where dealing with their own lifee challenges is exhausting enough, and taking on someone else's crisis is not a priority until things are fully on fire and can no longer be ignored.
In the posted article, the grandson's home probably wasn't wheelchair accessible, which was one problem. The other was how to force your elderly mother against her will when they probably never had to do it before. My 100-yr old Aunt with dementia will sometimes scream for help at the top of her lungs when being made to do something she doesn't want to. Maybe this poor guy's Mom was doing that. Who knows. This guy will be judged all over the internet but many of us here will understand the substory.
While I am glad that all went well I do hope that she understands that she put others at risk making this decision and that the son also realizes he put his son's life at risk.
Makes you wonder how many lives that were lost were due to a poor decision like "riding out the storm"
Her last 5 years were lived in a fine local residential care center, loved by her caregivers, and visited every day by family.
Although she was incapable of independent living after her hip was broken, she did a darn good job before that, even with significantly diminished capacity.
I as her POA, have no regrets.
Her care cost almost a million dollars in the last 5 years, money made entirely by my father and saved entirely by her herself, and I do not begrudge her one cent of it.
”Poor decisions” on the part of the elderly can be a source of despair to the children who love them, but I am content with how the course of her life played out.
We all have to remember that some questions have no easy answers, and not all decisions result in happy endings.