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

Forum Index » Eldercare

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

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It may be an attention thing.  The more help she requires the more attention she gets.  She's not more self sufficient because there is nothing in it for her to be more self sufficient.  As long as she can get others to do for her, she will keep on demanding that kind of attention.

There is a chance that when she gets around other 80/90 year old women who are doing basic things for themselves and she becomes friends with those ladies, Mom will suddenly want to be competent like her friends are.

I would step back and see how things go. [/quote]

I have some dysfunctional family and we hoped so much that a different setting or different influences might let them break free of the dysfunction. But it doesn't really work, they just carry it with them.  OP's mother has been around competent people her whole life without becoming competent herself, so it's not likely to happen now.

I do think you're right about the attention being part of the attraction for her. Maybe it's some kind of a personality disorder.[/quote]

My guess is that it started with a husband who loved to dote on and do for her.  He probably was the type to open doors for her, run her bath, clear her dinner plate, etc.  It was his gentlemanly way of treating his wife like a lady and Mom just ate up the attention.  It all just snowballed from there and wound up with Mom allowing the aides at the assisted living place to basically take over very routine tasks for her.  It was attention plain and simple.

Mom is used to being doted on and done for.  That doesn't mean that she is incapable of dong for herself, though.  She is just VERY out of practice.  This is just a guess though.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics