Just a little background - I live with my 90 year old grandma and her daughter (my aunt). My mother, my brother, my cousins, my other aunt and my uncle refuse to have any kind of interaction with my grandma and have cut her from their lives completely which makes me pretty sad. My grandma, for the most part, is pretty independent. However, she hates going anywhere (refuses!) and sits in her chair, in front of the tv for 8+ hours. The only time she will leave the house is for a doctor's appointment. Other than that the only time she moves is to use the restroom or to get something to eat (sometimes - other times she demands my aunt fix her something). Her doctors tell her to go for walks or move around the house or her legs will just keep deteriorating but she doesn't listen and so she wonders why her pain continues to worsen. I know she's older but sometimes my aunt and I will ask her if she'd like to help clean up the house by just dusting some things in the living room or cleaning up things around her chair - just to get her to move around and she again refuses to move out of her chair. Instead, she will sit there and make rude, snide comments about myself and my aunt while she watches us work. She does it until she accomplishes her goal of either getting a rise or tears out of one of us - then when that happens she acts like we slapped her in the face and refuses to talk to either of us for days.
My aunt also has a wonderful, supportive boyfriend who truly has nothing wrong with him. However, my grandma HATES him. She will talk badly about him all day in front of me and my aunt and I'm getting pretty sick of hearing it to be honest. She will even interrupt conversations just to talk badly about him! She'll talk about how lazy (he has two jobs) and worthless he is and how he never does anything (he actually came over and checked up on her quite a bit when my aunt and I left the state to look at colleges). My grandma berates him constantly in front of my aunt, and if my aunt wants to spend time with him all h*ll breaks loose in the house. Both my aunt and her boyfriend invite her to do things with them and in response they get 'I would never go anywhere with that dumbass.' My aunt is in her 40s and my grandmother treats her like she's a teenager with a curfew.
Theres quite a bit more that my grandma does to hurt us, and brings up things from the past just to throw in our faces (my aunt's divorce, me totaling my car). My grandma threatens to move out CONSTANTLY and my Aunt has taken her to see apartments and senior living places and my grandma always, always backs out at the last moment because she was just making a threat.
I was just wondering if this was considered being abused by an elderly person? And if so, what we could do to help this situation? Talking to my grandma about any kind of depression or her mental well being is a giant NO - she won't hear any of it and won't even consider something like that.
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I hope you will soon be removed from this environment by going off to college. Hooray! It is up to your aunt how she would like to proceed about this. I imagine that if she is going to set firm boundaries or to remove herself from this toxic environment that she may need support from a therapist. Growing up in a dysfunctional family can be in some ways disabling and it can require some help to overcome that.
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Plus she is afraid that your Aunt and her boyfriend will move on leaving her alone, so trying to break them up would keep that from happening. But it sounds like your Aunt's boyfriend is quite understanding, your Aunt better keep him :)
If your Grandmother was in a senior home, she would make new friends and have other interest. But older people are scared of change, and moving means major change. If your Grandmother trusts her doctor, maybe the doctor could suggest that she move into a retirement village. Some elders will follow their doctor's orders :)
But there is another way to look at this. Suppose you had a cat. Not a cute, amusing friendly cat, but a scratchy, hissy, ragged-eared fighty cat nobody in his right mind would even think about stroking. If it were your cat, and you'd known it all your life, you'd still love it. You just wouldn't expect it to be any different from how it actually is.
If you and your aunt, with her nice boyfriend's moral support, can look out for each other - reminding each other when your grandmother goes off on one of her rants that your grandma is the problem, not either of you - then this household can still work. But do I gather that you're off to college before long? In that case, it might be time for your aunt to get things moving for her mother to be looked after in some other way. This is, I would guess, not an arrangement you'd wish on your worst enemy if she were trying to do it alone.
And what can you do for your grandma? Let her be. She's got to 90, hasn't she, which kind of shows that the way she is works for her. Autonomy has its downsides, but it still has to be respected; and her health issues, her isolation, her attitude? Well, that's a very sad state for you to witness in someone you love. But it's her doing, her problem, and probably much too far gone for anyone to change.
Elders lose their filters and say anything without thought how it might hurt others. They are also sad, lonely, scared and this is why they refuse to be active and lash out.
Here's what I did. Once I was calm and not emotional; I sat with mom and had a frank conversation with her how hurtful her comments were and that if that was how she was going to be, then we were no longer going to take it. I told her that I would no longer visit or call and when she said something hurtful I hung up or if I was at her house, I'd say "there you go, hurting my feelings. I'm leaving now." And that's what I did. If she was like this in a restaurant or in public, I put her in the car, even in the middle of dinner! And I paid the check, took her home and then I left the house.
This nipped it. When she slips up, I just say calmly "I'm leaving now". She IS SO much better.
You live with her, so harder to leave, but I would confront her then leave the house every time it happened. You don't have to go far, the yard, a neighbors, a walk around the block. Think of it as a "time out". Then return and give her the silent treatment for a day or so. Watch tv in another room or go to your room and shut the door.
If it continues; tell her you will not stand for it, and you won't stand by and watch her abuse your mom and boyfriend and if necessary, she will be moved to AL or NH. And bring it up every time. Even drive her by one and tell her this is where she will go when you no longer take care of her.
I know it sounds petty, but sometimes even an elder needs a reality check.
My mom is much better. If she's irritable, I don't poke the bear. I do change the venue, and make her get up and we go for a drive, get a treat like a milkshake or French fry, etc and drive around without getting out of the car. She never tires of driving in the neighborhood, seeing her old town favorites, parks, etc. Try it.
Sometimes I just bring out cheese, crackers and some ice tea and we go out on the porch. That's all it takes to get her in a new frame of mind and take the edge off.
Second, once the meds have improved her outlook, which will take 6-8 weeks, move her to Assisted Living, using her SS and possibly the VA, if her husband was a wartime veteran.
The state of New Mexico considers an assisted living facility to be a group home ... Qualifying seniors may benefit from New Mexico's Medicaid waiver program. Look into that. It will be better for all of you.
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