Mom lives in a assisted living home which she dearly loves. The problem is, when they don't have any activities that she is interested in, she spends the day on the phone calling me. It had stopped for a good while but now she has started calling me every 5-10 minutes to tell me what time it is. Yesterday she started calling at 9 am. and didn't stop till she went to bed at 9 pm. They are installing a new elevator and that has a lot of the activities she usually goes to on hold for the next several weeks. If I don't answer, she will call my cell and if I don't answer that call, she begins calling several of my elderly neighbors wanting them to come up to my house and tell me to answer the phone. This was a problem before and the activities she was involved in took care of it but now they are on hold for the next several weeks and I cant get anything done for answering the phone. Any ideas how to get her to stop this while her activities are on hold?
She will not join any social groups, she dislikes the one call a day from carers I'm at my wits ends!
Have tried ignoring most calls but still speaking to her three /four times a day and see her most days
Any advice
As I tell my mother, you can play all the games you want, but I'm not playing with you. The only way to not get in the game is for her to have no way to contact you.
Rest assured if there were a real emergency, the AL would get a hold of you, they don't want to make any decisions that might crop up in an emergency.
I would say "Do not answer the phone." "Leave the phone in the car." Etc.
My sister was totally disabled from RA and I am sure that the stress killed her. She was buried one day before her 70th birthday. As for mother, she will be 96 and is living happily ever after in the NH. She does not call me and she cannot hear, any more.
Don't answer the phone just because it's ringing. You can control this much.
You have to put boundaries in place and honor them yourself.....or you will be in the home next door to mom!
If necessary, you could get a whole separate voicemail to do that.
Good luck!
Oops, whatever would she do if she "lost" her phone book? (Get it?)
If she does recall some for memory in the beginning, have the neighbors block her number and you should block her number on your landline. Let it go to voicemail if she calls your cell phone. When you choose to call her back, don't acknowledge any messages, just say you didn't get any and you'll have to check into it, maybe there's something wrong with your phone, etc.
Her dementia has progressed to a pretty high level; you're going to need to be thinking outside of the box on a regular basis now.
I have parental controls on my kids' phones through AT&T. I can block all activity between certain hours. I can block specific numbers. My phone has a "do not disturb" setting separate from AT&T. If your phone is a cell phone, look into the controls your service provider offers, and think outside the box. I wouldn't know about the AT&T ones if I didn't have kids because they're called SmartLimits or Parental Controls. When the time comes, I can setup blocks on *my* phone to limit access during certain hours as needed.
I'm probably going to be in your shoes in the upcoming year or two. Maybe sooner. After enough therapy about my own mom, I took away that you have to give yourself permission to enforce your own boundaries. It's perfectly acceptable to have these boundaries and to put controls in place that enforce them. E.g., my mom STILL calls me all the time, but now she can't remember she already did. I answer when I can. If I can't - I don't. This is not me being a naughty child. This is me being a responsible adult who has many competing demands for my time including my obligations to my employer, my family, and myself.
I think you need to change your phone number. Seriously. I mean it. I would/will when necessary. Not to hide from her, but to preserve your grown up sanity which does have a very high value. You also need to have an arrangement with those neighbors she calls if she can't get you. They might need to have her phone number blocked. It sounds mean, but it isn't. This is unacceptable behavior, she isn't going to quit it because she can't, so other solutions need to come up. Like somebody else said, see if the facility can block all outbound calls except to the emergency line.
LOL.....