“Mom’s room is a mess!” Joe complained. “Every time I go in there, we argue about her clothes and her dirty briefs and all of that!”
It was true. Joe and his mom, Bethany, argued nonstop when he came to visit her at our dementia care community.
He’d go into her room, find her dirty briefs stuck into drawers, and get mad at her. “Those aren’t mine!” she’d insist, when, of course, she had stuck them in the drawer only an hour before.
When Joe had moved his mom into our community, he felt like he was doing her a favor when he threw out all of her old tops and got her new ones. Unfortunately, however, he had done just the opposite, for Bethany no longer recognized the new clothes.
“These aren’t mine!” she’d yell, her eyes full of tears, pointing to the clothes in her closet.
“Ugh, mom!” Joe would exclaim. “I just got you those, and look! We labeled them for you!”
Joe came to me, exhausted, looking for a solution to end the battles with his mom.
“Stop going in her room,” I said, matter-of-factly.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean, don’t go in her room when you visit her. Come here, get her to come out in the hallway, and then hang out in common spaces. You can’t help yourself, Joe! You point out what’s wrong with her room, and she can’t help herself, either: she’s confused. She’s confused, and then she fights back. Stay out of her room,” I explained.
Joe took my advice (begrudgingly) and stayed out of his mom’s room.
They stopped fighting, and, finally, started getting along again.
