My father lives alone and wants to remain living at home - he does not want to move into a retirement village or into care. He is very frail and has some mild confusion and memory issues at times. Lately he complains about being "bored" constantly despite having a daily program of going out into the community for meals and drives and regular dinner outings with carers we have employed and with us, (his children). I have tried to give him things to do when he says he is bored - but he declines almost everything I put in front of him or suggest and he cannot tell me what he wants to do. Now I am hearing from his friends "your father is bored.".Not sure how to respond to this - as we have filled every day with activities. He declines to socialise with other people of his age in day programs (which we thought would be a good idea), as he says "they are old."
The retirement money is there to spend on his retirement, not for future generations.
I have tried to get him interested in using some senior activities that are available so that we both could benefit, but he becomes hostile and argumentative when I suggest it. So then he is bored and does dumb things like buying a pellet gun so he can supposedly shoot cats and dogs that come into our yard. Or goes downtown to grocery and other stores and wastes money on things like duplicate food items that end up rotting in the refrigerator because he has no respect for expiration dates and argues about it if I want to throw things out. Or comes up with inappropriate ideas like painting our Ben Franklin firesplace, spending a fortune on bodywork for his car and then selling it and there is no way that I would let him drive my car. I also have started going out by myself. He always wants to ride along but I cannot tolerate his verbally abusive and argumentative behavior in the car and feel that it is a safety hazard. So now that we no longer go anywhere together, he has even more unstructured time to deal with.
I feel that he needs something to occupy his mind but he refuses any ideas that I can come up with.