It is driving me batty. She does this at any given moment. She literally interrupts me from what ever l am doing, for example, while i am cooking to look at her screen..whats this?.."..whats that..why is this on my screen?.."..her phone literally in my face..same questions day in and day out. I have started to just say i dont know but that makes matters worse.. Lord help me.. Anyone else having this problem..what do you do??
Also consider removing her bank app and tell her a therapeutic fib that they are updating their website and she'll be getting paper statements going forward. There's no point in feeding her anxiety daily about her balance.
Consider discussing anxiety meds with her doctor.
FYI there is a great and simple app called RoboKiller that will stop all solicitation calls and texts. I use this myself and it works great and is affordable.
I have read not to answer calls or texts because then they know that they have a live number and continue to call.
I don’t answer. I have tried to block numbers and nothing works. They will call back with a new number. Even if they say to text STOP, it doesn’t stop the solicitation.
It’s very annoying at times because I will get call after call or text after text of nonsense.
I feel sorry for people who have dementia and are easily scammed by those who target someone to rip off.
When her Parkinson’s disease progressed and her dementia became more apparent she couldn’t use it anymore.
She wasn’t addicted to her phone though.
If a phone is causing a problem for someone it’s an entirely different matter. It’s not necessary to have a phone if there are cognitive issues.
Her old smart phone that she'd had for years died. I got her the Lively smart phone and it was a nightmare! She could not remember to charge it. Then she couldn't answer the phone because she wouldn't push and swipe but just swipe and it doesn't work that way. Lots of questions and complaints and after trying to teach her with no luck, I replaced it with a type of landline with the Telecalm service to control who can call her, who she can call, what hours she can use the phone, etc.
Point being - the repetitive questions will continue and YES it is maddening.
Your mom may not want help but you have to think about yourself. I started with having my mom pay for a cleaning lady because she could not keep her room and bathroom clean. Then I added caregivers. She didn't understand why she needed them but liked them nonetheless. We were lucky to have really nice people helping her.
I would lose or break her phone. Her time could be better spent doing something else or even nothing at all. I'm sure she'll be a pain in the butt about it for awhile but have an answer ready that you give her every time she brings it up. Why let her torture both of you like this? She obviously is not enjoying this phone. It is causing her confusion and agitation.
You could look into getting some respite care so you can have a break and work on saving your sanity. I was looking into doing that but ended up placing mom in AL instead. But there are many places near me that you can have your mom stay at for 2 weeks, on her dime of course.
As far as nursing homes go, if she does not have much money, she will need to spend down what she has to (here it is $25000), fill out a bunch of paperwork and then Medicaid will pay for her stay in the nursing home. My MIL only had a small social security check and no savings left so they take her check and leave her $74 a month for incidentals like haircuts, etc.
Best of luck!
Now as the the addiction part of this? You ain't seen nothing until you look at our latest generations. I ride the bus, and in all truth they are ALL of any age on the cell phones. No one looks out the windows anymore. Just as well; quite weedy out there.
The phone, lose it. Tell her u will get her another one. But I think the problem here is Mom needs to be placed. You are burning out. Dementia is so unpredictable. They can no longer be reasoned with and its like caring for a big child. I like order. I don't respond well to unpredictable. Not good at going with the flow. I had my Mom for 20 months. I placed herbin a nice AL. Boy did I love that first nights sleep uninterrupted.
"...her doctor has not tested her for [dementia] yet..."
Don't wait for the doctor to decide to do it. Make an appointment to specifically test her cognition and memory. This is especially important if you are her PoA. Unless you are her Durable PoA then you will need at least 1 or more medical diagnosis of impairment (based upon what is commonly found in people's PoAs).
At this appointment make sure the first thing you do is request the HIPAA Medical Representative form. Write in your name and have your Mom sign it. This gives her medical team the legal ability to discuss her private health info with you without her further consent or her needing to be present for the discussions.
If you aren't her PoA... please find a way for this to happen soon. It will add to your already stressful situation if you don't have actual legal authority to make decisions on her behalf.
I wish you success in getting refreshment for yourself and the appropriate help for the both of you!
Can you put your mom in respite for a few days/weeks so you can get a break? Or pay someone to come stay with her so you can get out more? Or have volunteers come from The Shepherd Center, Senior Services, or moms church to visit with her while you get out for a while?
Otherwise you just take her phone away for a while(tell her she must have misplaced it)and let her pout and be "sad/dreary." You can then try distracting her with a puzzle, coloring book, simple card game, going for a drive, taking her for a a walk or ice-cream(that worked for one of the gentlemen in my support group with his father).
Or like Bounce said below, let her friend come visit to give you a break.
I think you're(for whatever reason)making this harder than it has to be. Obviously her phone is causing her more anxiety than enjoyment, and she's very confused with it if she's having to ask you questions about it all the time. So perhaps try just letting her have her phone for a few hours a day and then put it up where she can't find it.
This reminds me of parents that put their children in front of some type of electronics to keep them occupied or babysit them so they can do other things.
Was that your hope when you bought your mom a new phone that it would keep her occupied and be her babysitter so you could do other things too? I'm guessing it may have been and now it has backfired on you.
We have become so accustomed to our modern technology.
Remember when we were all using land lines and we looked up phone numbers in the white pages and the yellow pages of thick phone books?
Or dialing a 411 operator for a phone number!
Or using a pay phone. Oh my gosh, I can’t remember the last time I saw a telephone booth!
When caller ID came out kids couldn’t pull the telephone pranks like we did as kids. Oh, and call waiting and call forwarding were a thing at one time too.
I remember getting into trouble for listening in on the phone calls at my grandparents house!
Kids now think it’s hysterical that we had to dial numbers before the push buttons came on the scene.
I loved watching Clark Kent change into Superman in a telephone booth!
I am caring for my mother, living in my home with age-related decline, alzheimer's / dementia, anxiety, arthritis, depression, diabetes, and sleep disorder.
Why does your mother, who's suffering from dementia, have a cell phone in the first place????
I agree with Margaret. Lose it. Tell her to use the landline to make calls and if you don't have one, get one.
I maintain that he cannot use it properly and I have had to configure, hide almost everything on the phone (including the internet - and just leave Facebook and Tiktok so he can "watch his videos") lock his home screen, and change the touch sensitivity to an astronomically long time in order to make it a workable phone for him (basically it is a fit for a child now).
He can no longer check voice mails (though his sister insists on leaving them and I just basically end up deleting them when we visit - I'm toying at the idea of just leaving them so she gets a message from now on that his voice mail box is full) and I have hidden his text messaging app because he still gets random text messages from scammers that he has no business messing with - and the text messages that we might actually NEED him to see - like say a pin code from Verizon or something - he can't manage - so that's useless and I just end up deleting a bunch of text messages.
So basically his home page is direct dial to the 4 of us, his best friend and his sister, Facebook and Tiktok. And I've set his ringer to ring, vibrate and flash the flashlight and a light on the screen when it rings.
Now, to me - that's a ridiculous amount of things to do to a phone to make it usable for someone (and a tablet would be worse because it would be too heavy). He also forgets who he is calling, will call over and over and hang up and forget to charge it.
I think its doing more harm than good personally - because I think as long as he has the phone - and can call his sister and his friend (who ALWAYS answer) and blow up DH and SIL's phones all day (regardless of whether they answer) - and he can sit and watch videos all day long - he is never going to find any reason to leave that room.
And I'm not sure that its worth the ability to have the direct immediate contact when they have to call him 10-15 times to get him to answer just to get almost no information out of him - or incorrect information out of him. And if its an emergency the SNF will call anyway.
But I haven't been able to convince them of that yet.
I am at the point though if he deletes Tiktok or Facebook somehow (he isn't supposed to be able to do that with the way that I have the phone set up - but he likes to "play" with the settings - which are HIDDEN - but he manages to find them when he's bored and you can't just delete them - and he just starts punching options) one more time - I'm not putting them back on there. He can make calls - but I'm not putting any options on there for entertainment.
(My kids say I shouldn't use the word buttons, shows my age 😁)