How can I keep my Mother out of the rooms in my parents home that I pay rent for so I my son and I can take care of them?
My Mother is becoming very invasive of the space that I pay monthly rent for, and that is our only space available in the house that we can get away from her constant picking. Really, at the moment, my son's room is mostly the problem. She went into his room while I was asleep and started to clean and make his bed. He is 20 years old and well able to take care of himself and considers the space, as I consider mine to be my home within their home.
Really, I think my parents should consider themselves lucky to have us her to take care of them. Otherwise, they would have to sell the home they have been living in for the past 25 years and move into a part-time progressive care facility that would devistate their finances, and take my father's wood shop away from him. He builds furniture, and other art/craft items that make him very happy. My Mother is mostly the problem, she is progressing through Alz/Dem. and it is becoming more difficult to control her. When I deem it necessary, I will make an appointment with her Dr.(with Dad's permission and have her medications (which I totally control) adjusted to try to alleviate some of her symptoms.
It is difficult to be in the house with her 24/7. My dad, who is 80 is still working in the summer, and I will not leave her here in the house alone for fear of her setting the place on fire. She has already almost done it twice, and we have forbidden her to use the stove unless someone else is present in the house to supervise. Eventually, if I have a situation where I must leave her alone, I will shut the breaker to the stove off so she cannot use it to protect the property.
At this point I do not have a POA for either of them, but the time has arrived that this must be done. I have two brothers in the area that visit around once a week (it's intermittant, but I've expressed to them AGAIN that they need to visit more often and help with things around the house.
I am disabled myself with Frbromyalgia, COPD and Chronic Cyclic Depression, a bout of which I'm attempting to deal with right now, but it isn't easy watching my parents fade away every day, but I signed up for this and I'm gonna complete it come hell or high water.
Anyway, how, short of calling the police again to have this explained to her, can I keep her from entering our rooms.
OH, BTW, she'll clean his room and thow other stuff into mine! Go figure.
I've written here before and gotten many good suggestions on how to deal with these situations.
Anyone got any suggestions to help short of putting a lock on my door because they do need access to me in case they need help.
5 Answers
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This may be a bit off-topic, but I think that you need to see an attorney who specializes in elder law sooner rather than later. Please do not merely fill in the POA papers on a do-it-yourself basis. I suspect that you paying rent to stay in your parents home and not charging them anything for your caregiving services might backfire if they need to apply for Medicaid down the road. Please discuss the financial aspects of the situation with a professional who can guide you to not only do the right thing by your parents, but to do it in the most advantageous way for the long haul.
Thank you for the suggestion about speaking to an elder law attorney about rent vs.being paid for watching and caring for them. I've been thinking about this since I first started to read stories on this site.
I can put a lock on my door and put a wireless door bell on the door jam, and give a key to my Dad. He's the most kind and reasonable person I've ever met and does his best to protect me from her. We've always gotten along.
My brother (my big little one, cause I have two, one is big little brother, and the other is little big brother, cause he is younger but is 6'4"), anyway suggested I put a lock on my door a long time ago. My room is a wreck, and I really wish it wasn't. It is depressing to walk into it, spend all my down time in it, and have a fair quantity of my jewelry making supplies in it, but it is the only place i can work in comfort. I have bench space in the basement, but it gets boring and my creative juices just don't flow down stairs, So the sewing machine is in here too, I have an antique one too, but I haven't brought it back in from the garage. So basicily my room is stuffed with stuff and it looks cluttered but it really isn't.
I'll stop rambling now, I think I can go back to sleep so I've gottta lay back down. I'll write more later. Thanks for your helpful suggestions, you are all in my prayers- Be Well,Sue
As for your room, I think you should still get a lock. Eventually, your mom MIGHT become the violent Alz person. It's best to plan ahead. They need easy access to you while you're sleeping? Buy one of those baby monitors. They can come with one monitor plus 2 units which you can place strategically around the house. These do work wonderfully - as long as you don't have an oxygen machine (which I found out the hard way Interferes with the monitors.) The monitor I had bought can be placed on a table (end table on your hallway outside your door?) or it can be hung by a nail (which is what I did.) You can keep one unit in your room and the other in the kitchen, etc....You can buy the one with the most distance to work (in case you need to go outside). But, the further the distance, the higher the cost.
Hope this helps...It's the only thing that I can think of...
They have video baby monitors now! I have heard they are great to be able to watch your LO when they are in their room but I still would never lock my door. The baby monitor will help you in the event something happens (a fall for example) while they are in their room so you can hear it.
Get the POA in order soon. No doctor nor you is going to be able to reason with your mom about coming into the rooms. My mom has learned alot of things new with AD but their reasoning button is broken. Save your breath and your doctors breath. Mom's behavior, for some, is part of the disease. Hopefully it will pass but I don't think tilll it passes you are going to be able to explain it to her and have her understand it.
Do talk to an elder law attorney. Espesically in the event they need to apply for medicaid; medicaid will consider xyz assets/income that may disqualify them; althought you might say you will never use medcaid, one never knows unless they are billionaires. If you can, look at the brightside, mom is trying to clean/help.
You can put a lock on your door in case she were to become violent but I would not use it now. If she becomes violent, not all AD patients do, then you can lock your door temporarily..what needs to happen is to get her on the right meds so she isn't violent or she would need to be placed if the meds aren't helping.
Locking a door is like locking a child out of your room which none of us would ever do...that would be a disaster waiting to happen. I like the idea of turning off the breaker to the stove! Some people have unplugged their stoves but I always wondered what they would do when they had to cook.
Since mom is on a cleaning frenzy get rid of all chemicals; do lock those up. As soon as I learned this I locked everything up. Those washing pods that you drop in the machine look like candy; children are eating them and so can someone with ad.
Keep us posted on the solutions you implement. Good luck