Lately, we've been getting the newspapers for my mom to read while she is with us. Today, she became frantic when I went to collect the old ones and put them in the recycling bin. My daughter, who is autistic; can not understand her grandmother's irrational behavior; therefore it irrupted into a shouting match about the newspapers when she went to collect them. Now she is taking the papers we bought her today to read and stuffing them in between the pages of a magazine as if she is hiding them from us. She is now becoming a hoarder on top of everything else.
So don't take them away, give her more. See where she puts them without commenting. Ask or have your daughter ask from time to time to "borrow" some of the papers for store ads or homework, just don't mention it again and don't give them back. If that doesn't work, collect them when she's out of the room or in the bathroom and can't see you do it. It's a way to minimize your frustration
We let the papers pile up by the door where she could see them. Any tidying up or throwing anything out was reserved for Mom's nap times.
My particular pet peeve was Mom's obession with saving those hideous plastic grocery sacks. If we tried to throw them away she would go ballistic. It drove me crazy but she wanted to give them to the church for their book sale. Mind you, the church has one book sale each year so you can imagine how many grocery sacks we had stuffed into cupboards, below the sink and anywhere else with extra space.
I agree with one of the posters who said that the older you get, the less control you have. It's an annoyance but certainly something we can work around. My Mom has been gone 8 months now. Go with the flow, as I look back, was definitely the right way to handle it (or maybe I should say, the way that worked for us). Of course, the priority was her safety but then creature comforts followed right after that.
little annoyances to keep what sanity we have.
There is a scene in the book Still Alice when Alice keeps asking what time they are going to an event. One child says, "Mom, you don't have to worry. we will get you there on time." I forget the second sentence, but the third child says, "Mom can ask what time it is as often as she wants, and I will tell her every time."
Oh, these caregivers in books are such saints.
Full disclosure - I'm an apprentice hoarder myself.
I have to say however that you don't have to have dementia to do this. I worked for a very, very good doctor who horded newspapers. They came in daily but he never had time to read them, when we tried to clean them out he came unglued and they were stacked to the ceiling...still in the plastic wrappers!
Hoarding is hoarding they feel there is a very good reason to keep whatever the item(s) may be. Sometimes they may have grown up poor and everything was kept and reused or repurposed as we now say. Some people are creative or artistic and see the beauty in items they choose to keep. Sometimes they are just unable to rationalize that you read it already and you are getting a new one to take it's place so lets clean up the house and get rid of the old ones.
Why not let your Mom keep a few days of newspapers in her room, perhaps you could stack them on her dresser and then when she is not looking slip out the bottom one and toss it. If you can keep the quantity down I would let her and avoid an argument. If she is aware or wants to keep tons of them, I wouldn't let it get out of hand but ask her why she needs them and see if you can come up with a compromise, like no more than 5 days can be kept.
If she has never done this before, you can be assured it is the illness and she just cannot help herself. These mental illnesses cause our loved ones to do odd things.
Stuff piled up in mounds that could reach 6' high, packing whole rooms but for a tiny area to sit in. She did shuffle thru some piles, but not all of them.
She hid valuables in some piles, which she'd forget, then scream about being robbed.
Food got hidden in piles of stuff, only to be found long later, rotting or rodent messed.
She was symptomatic of bipolar, multiple personalities, history of alcohol & other substance use, had history of a number of head injuries.
Quite a package, yet she always managed to skate by.
Then age & dementia caught up to her as well.
She'd go ballistic if she thot anyone messed with her messes--everything was precious--even the trash.
There was an old guy--very poor, townies here kinda looked out for, who lived in a van he'd stacked with papers & magazines--probably for insulation more than anything else--all he had was a long extension cord from a house nearby, to provide a light. Running a heater was dangerous, with all those papers stacked to the ceiling. When it finally got to the point he could no longer walk to the post office to pick up bags of food left there for him, he finally got moved to a nursing home. Poor thing was a skinny wraith by that time.
People often hoard things to get a sense of safety--if the room is too open, they feel insecure, fearful...so they make nests--even if it means they cannot even fully sleep in their bed.
Some hoard because they were badly affected by going through the Great Depression--paper, food, cloth items--paper & cloth were things one really really wanted when one couldn't afford to get more--stashing them was a safety net. The Dust Bowl caused food to be scarce for a long time, too--hoarding food is popular--all fed by fears.
G'ma , with Alzheimer's, collected small smooth beach rocks, penciled a word or phrase on each one, & set them all over her house on every horizontal surface...she was desperately trying to hold onto words & thoughts.
She got more rapidly disoriented every time one relative periodically took things out of her house [it was never hoarded], or threw away her message rocks.
We've mostly converted to using cloth for things we used to use paper for.
What if your elders who collect paper napkins, had some pretty cloth napkins & hankies? Wonder if they'd still collect paper napkins?
Although...if they hang onto those because they later use them for potty business, that could be a problem...clogged plumbing & such.
[[We finally installed a toilet with a 3" outlet, to match the waste pipe--that stopped clogs from too much paper, flushed old washrags, etc. from Mom's business.]]
I have an adult child with ASD who came home for awhile.
AND Mom was under our roof during that.
Her behaviors upset him hugely--no ability to cope with her madness/behaviors.
We had managed to teach him to cope pretty well, considering there had been no programs to help us until recently--and those are for kids, not adults.
"When you have met one person with ASD, you have met ONE person with ASD".
Each very individual. Each has things they can deal with, and not.
While we were fairly successful teaching him how to cope with the world fairly well, there are still glitches. His roommate also has ASD.
Each has abilities the other lacks or has difficulty with.
Each escalates from various triggers.
Anxiety is constant companion.
The nature of those w/ASD ability to cope with a demented elder, can be difficult.
The Elder can't change, & in some things neither can a person with ASD.
Best idea might be: Keep the 2 of them separated, if possible
--protect your ASD kid from the Elder's behaviors.
A person w/ ASD, even high-functioning, usually cannot make sense of mental scrambled eggs in others!
I know she doesn't understand anything in it, because we had a shootout in our neighborhood last weekend and it made the whole front page of our county paper and she had read and re-read it non-stop and doesn't even realize it was our neighborhood. So sad!! I'm beginning to think it is only as a cover for her watching our every move we make and thinking she is hidden in doing so. I just want to run away! LOL!