Reply to Excessively dependent mother still completely helpless months after dad's death

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I would pay someone to come in daily with the job of teaching her to do these basic things she refuses to do and also to talk to her and be her companion.  I think if you do that for awhile, with the person understanding that their job is to gradually get her to do the normal stuff on her own, then you won't have to spend all that money forever, maybe just a few months.  After that you could cut back on the aide's hours to maybe just a few hours a day.

If you don't like that idea you could consider what we did with my mother when she was in her 70s and started having heart issues where she would push her alert button in the middle of the night and we had to rush over to her place or the hospital.  (Turned out she needed a pacemaker.)  What we did was buy a house together with mom with room enough for all of us and we (me, sister, brothers, spouses, adult kids, minor kids) all took care of mom until she died at 90.  It was a privilege.  And BTW we paid an aide (out of mom's money) to sit with her 8-4 M-F  while we were at work toward the end of her life but family took care of her the rest of the hours.[/quote]
Yes, it would be our hope that the aide could teach mom about the TV and the shower, but my fear is that she will still refuse to learn, preferring that the aide just do it. I suspect that rather than pare down the hours, we would end up increasing them to where she is attended to full-time.

I didn't fully realize how bad it was. It was masked to a large extent by the attention she was getting from the AL aides all last year, but now, two weeks into this, I see how extensive this problem is. And, she isn't stupid. She was skipped twice in school and graduated HS at age 16, and college (yes, college!) at 20. She married my father a few months later, just one week after her 21st birthday.

[/quote]

So it sounds like "learned helplessness" and it works for a lot of people including elderly and kids.  At 88 it might be tough to unlearn it, especially since she is clearly stubborn.  As smart as she is she might be able to manipulate the aide into doing everything for her, or maybe you can find an aide who is stronger than that.  Neither you or your sister want her to live with you?  Do you enjoy her company or are you mostly just annoyed by her?[/quote]
We enjoy her company in relatively short doses, especially if we are at a restaurant and nothing is required of me. I even took her on a short trip earlier this year so she could have some R & R. But she did require constant supervision and help with all tasks. I could not maintain that on a permanent, 24/7 basis in my house. [/quote]

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