How do you deal with aggression and rebellion?

My 96-yr old Mother was never a sweet person and probably had an undiagnosed personality disorder. She lives next door to me in our home state. I'm at the airport with her returning from a 2-week trip to visit her 104-yr old sister where my Mother sniped at her and me and others continuously to the point where I thought about shortening our trip. She would pout, call my sweet cousin a b**** to her face, try to sneak off with the car (and then be enraged when she found out I was keeping the keys on me all the time) and just be a total Debbie Downer.

So, I am practicing ignoring many of her comments, and redirecting the conversation to unrelated or neutral topics. This also makes her mad but she eventually gives up when she can't get me to respond. Or, I walk away without an explanation and then return later. It takes practice to re-learn how to interact with her as a different and ever changing person. She can't help it, it's her dementia. She was never this bad in prior years so I have to keep remembering those days. I wish you patience, wisdom and peace in your heart on this difficult journey.

Have a cognitive/behavioral assessment done by a geriatrics trained psychiatrist/psychologist/neurologist/licensed social worker/behaviorist (any of these).

When you get a clearer picture of what he and you are dealing with, you will be able to understand him better and react or NOT react, to him in a different way, hopefully better for you and for him.

Dementia is a wretched thief of reality. Be good to yourself. He made need more distance from you or perhaps less.

My mother has always been a handful, she acted one way to others to put on a show, and was verbally aggressive to me at will.

So, I laid it out to her, if she started on me I would gather my things up and leave, and I did, I once left her and got my own hotel room when she really got nasty while I was driving her back home from Florida, in my car no less.

I picked up my stuff and secured my own room, didn't have a thing to do with her that night.

She would be good for awhile and it would start all over again, I finally had enough 13 years ago and went no contact, she is now in AL and dumping on my brother.

By the way, she does not have dementia, it is just who she is.

Personally, I would back off, at my mothers' AL the doctor comes in to see her, they have a staff nurse and a doctor who visits weekly. He can always hire Uber to take him where he wants to go.

There is no easy answer to this problem as most likely he has been surly most of his life, you are just his target now.