TLDR version: 79, almost 80 year old Mom invites problematic younger dudes to stay with her. I don't know what to do.
My 79 year old mom shows natural signs of decline in energy and memory associated with aging, but overall is physically and socially active. She has no dementia or other related diagnosis. She has some symptoms of diabetes but claims to manage it with diet and won't take medicine. She lives alone in our old family home and has done so for the past 12 years since my father died.
During the past two years, she's invited two loser guys to move in with her. The first was her former gutter cleaner who supposedly had just left rehab for a cocaine addiction. She said she felt charitable towards him, and I suspect she was lonely. He didn't pay the rent he promised, stole tools, and eventually she kicked him out.
Now I'm finding out there's another guy who is now spending one night a week at her house. Why? Because he's doing gardening work on her 2 acres. He's 50, and lives about an hour away and doesn't drive apparently. She seems infatuated with him, including texting him constantly while visiting me 5 hours away with my sister and nephews for Thanksgiving weekend. She says how cute he is but claims there's nothing physical.
But here's the catch: dude has an active assault claim against him, and an assault claim in the past along with under $5k theft. I found his court records today and shared them with her simply, with both link and screen shots.
Now she's angry at me because I'm telling her not to let him stay in her house anymore, and that if she continues to, I'm going to question if she's able to keep herself safe.
I'm endlessly frustrated. I don't know if I need to go down there and go to the doctor with her (it would be hard anyways because we're in a province where the medical system is broken.) Do I just accept that she's going to have a steady stream of weirdos moving in and out and causing drama or do I leave it alone? It's worth mentioning that even 5 years ago she wouldn't have done this.
I know she's lonely, but refuses to move into a seniors’ village, and getting her out of our family home is a monolith task that I'm chipping away at slowly but it's hard with my business and my own family. My sister lives nearby, thankfully. My brother lives out of country.
I just need advice. Thank you.
1) Can you get M to come and have a look at a seniors village? The best way would be for some sort of celebration, and for you to say that YOU have been invited to check it out and report to some type of forum (perhaps us). Will she come too, because you think her judgement would be a useful addition to hers. My technique (in other situations) is to ask afterwards what she DOESN’T like about it. After people get through all their criticisms they often get around to the bits they did like.
2) Often a situation has to ‘fall over’ before the senior will find it impossible to fake ‘independence’. Sometimes that’s a real fall, but it might not need to be. Simply turning off the power or the water might make staying there on her own less attractive. If she gets a tradie to come to check, and they find that it’s a simple thing, you can do it again. That seems as if someone is targetting her, which might be quite upsetting. You can have a think about this, and see if anything along these lines might be possible.
The point is that if she is genuinely losing it, it is a very good idea to get her to move somewhere safer, and you are most unlikely to ‘persuade’ or ‘convince’ her until something goes wrong.
This was years before her memory got to the point where it is today.
The members here helped me understand all the ways that her behavior indicated dementia.
Do you have POA? If you do, YOU can tell the guy that he should get LOST.
Mom needs a medical evaluation, broken medical system or not. At least appointing you POA so you can make good decisions FOR her.
Best of luck.
What I think a lot of people don’t realize is dementia isn’t just forgetting things— it’s the loss of executive functioning. Poor judgement is part of this.
https://www.verywellhealth.com/executive-functioning-alzheimers-98596
Poor judgement and stubborness can be worse even before significant memory problems are noticed . I agree with the first answer that Mom may still pass a cognitive anyway at this point .
So, one of the symptoms my mother showed was increasingly poor judgment. A man called her on the telephone with a thick foreign accent, pretending to be from Publishers Clearing House. He promised her millions of dollars and a new car, but she ended up giving thousands of dollars to him. He exploited her loneliness and her weak mental status. She thought he was her new romantic interest.
What your mother is doing honestly sounds little different from my mother. She is lonely and she wants male attention, but she has lost the cognitive ability, the healthy judgment to discern who is safe and who is not.
I was very lucky to stumble across legal documents my mother had hidden, a durable Power of Attorney and Healthcare Proxy. Has your mother made any preparation like that in case she is disabled? In the case of my mother, her personal physician was of absolutely no help, had no interest in trying to help me help my mother. Fortunately, I have those documents so that professionals have to listen to me when I insist my mother needs help.
That being said, here in the U.S., healthcare professionals haven't much respect for seniors, and even less for seniors with dementia, and less still for those who have lifelong mental health issues. The result is, sometimes I've had to be VERY aggressive about insisting my mother get the care she needs + deserves.
Also, I've sometimes had to ask the local police to help me sort out issues with my mother. Perhaps if you visit the local precinct and explain your predicament with your mother inviting criminals into her home, they can suggest a solution. Just a thought.
Best of luck!