I come from an extremely dysfunctional family and my childhood was horrific. As an adult, I have spent many years in therapy learning to cope with the abuse. With that said, I was recently put into a position where I had to decide if my mother was to move into my home or into assisted living. Mom has severe arthritis in her hips and lost mobility three years ago. For the past three years my mother had been living with my sister, then one day out of the blue my sister said she'd had enough. And then gave my mother two weeks to move out! So I was forced to make really tough decisions very quickly. My mother is not truthful about how much money she has and insists that she can't afford assisted living. Because I was going to have to build a ramp for her to get into my house and do other things to "prepare" myself I insisted she stay in assisted living until I could get ready. I found and moved her into a place close to my home in less than two weeks. But now my mom calls me for everything and she won't use the help at the assisted living. She has only been there a month and I have found that I can't stand being in the same room with her. The resentment is exploding out of me because she took such horrible care of her three children. Her only son hasn't spoken to her in twenty years or let her meet his children. But not only did she not take care of kids but she didn't take care of herself either. For years (10 plus) she refused medical attention for her hip and now it's too bad to really do anything with (I guess because she still hasn't gone to a doctor). She can use a walker to get to the dinning hall and bathroom but that is it. This is a truly sad situation and I'm the last of the three children left with her.
I have decided that mom can't move in with me. I told her how I was feeling and explained that if she wants a relationship with me we MUST go to counseling. My mother said I was attaching her and kept trying to change the subject. I was insistent and asked her to go to counseling with me many times before in the past. Since this conversation mom hasn't spoken to me since (two days ago). At this point, I don't care if we have a loving relationship or not. I just want to be able to be around her without wanting to run away crying. I have decided that if she doesn't go to counseling with me that I will also cut all ties. This was a very painful decision but this last month has taken an incredible toll on me. Since I've been in charge of my mother's care I have realized that she hasn't changed at all and many wounds are being reopened. I am overcome with guilt and many more emotions. I am her last hope and she may not be able to afford assisted living for the rest of her life. What options are out there for me and my mother?
You are not responsible for your mother's happiness. You keep wanting her to be someone she isn't and probably never will be. A good therapist can help you navigate this. We don't get to choose our family but we choose how we interact with them. Spend effort looking for your "chosen" new family of friends, which will enrich your life and future. I wish you clarity and peace in your heart!
As far as your mother going to therapy with you, it's not going to happen. Besides, do you want the hassle of hauling her and her walker to and from therapy appointments?
Are you her POA? HCPOA? It sounds like she is mentally competent. Is she? But then if that's true, then how did you make the decision to place her in AL?
You don't have to answer the phone every time she calls you.
For whatever reason you cannot/do not want your mother in your home.
Accept that as your truth, and own it. Let that be the solid foundation going forward.
Do know that once you take your mother into your home all bets are off. Once she gets mail in your home she is under the law a tenant and cannot be easily removed from your home. It is at that point HER HOME no matter she pays rent or not.
Make your decision and tell Mom: "Hi Mom. I will hope to support you in some ways, but one of them is not your moving into my home. That isn't up for argument or discussion".
Start limiting conversations with Mom. One of two a day is enough. After that there is 911.
In truth, and from your note to us, you are still stuck the abused child syndrome and I quite honestly think that the only way out of that is professional help. On Forum when the question is legal and the wrong move would be awful we suggest a lawyer. When the question is medical we suggest a doctor. When financial, a CPA. There is no substitute when you need solid professional insight, for a professional. This person will help you work through your feelings of the past and more importantly, how to set boundaries that are solid, and make a good future.
I wish you good luck. Remember, the question here isn't how much money Mom has to her care. If she is a ward of the state or if she has no money care can be found through medicaid. That is up to Mom and Social Workers, or social workers.
In all the you do not say who the POA. So please, at this point, just see that it is NEVER YOU.
I wish you the very best. Get good help for yourself. A Forum is good for sympathy, but you need solid real help here.
Once mom moves in with you, getting her out again will be nigh unto impossible.
NO GUILT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You are not doing anything WRONG!
My mom was a much less than 'par' mother, to me. She didn't/doesn't like me, although she will now (at age 92) often say "Now, you KNOW I love you?" No, I do not, and it will be a long time before I feel that she does, not in this life anyway. I think she's afraid I will speak ill of her at her funeral. I don't intend to say ANYTHING at her funeral.
Do what you have to do to come to terms with dealing with her. Counseling at this point is probably not going to be helpful. My mother went to therapy with a couple of the sibs and it was an enormous waste of time.
I have spent FAR too many hours crying over the treatment my mom hands me--driving home and bawling the whole way. Not. worth. it.
I love my mother for what she was able to be/do for me. I have been a MUCH better mom that my mom was. So, it wasn't a total loss--she served as a cautionary tale.
I have accpeted that we will not have a decent, healthy relationship. It is what it is, but I refuse to bring her in to my home to toxify my life and the life of my DH.
Do not move her in, Do not let the innapropriate emotion of guilt eat at you.
Of course you will find her the nicest place SHE can afford. You will visit. When you have hit the limit with her (actually about 5 minutes before!) you leave.
Will she be mad? Oh, without question, but can you possibly make her see that she has already ruined any chance at a decent relationship with any of you and that is the reason she cannot live with you. Period.
I wish for you the strength to stand up to mom and be loving, yet distant. It's a challenge so many of us face.
1) She's beyond counseling. At a certain point, people like your mother are just too old. She'll never go, and it wouldn't change her if she did, so try to move past that idea.
2) You're not her only hope. The state takes over in cases like this, and they will appoint a professional guardian. These people know what to do and how to handle someone like your mother. I promise you that if you walk away, she will never be living in the street.
3) When people can no longer afford assisted living, Medicaid takes over. It is a complicated, long process to get on Medicaid, though. But that is what happens when one runs out of money. If she ends up with a state-appointed guardian, that person will handle it well.
3) Your feelings are perfectly valid and normal for someone who has come from that situation. You're not a bad daughter. You're a survivor. And please, be forgiving of your sister, too. She's been through hell, and she did what she had to do to preserve her own sanity. If you can get along with her, perhaps she'll team up with you to at least see what the options are for letting the state take over. I highly recommend to anyone that you try to get along with your siblings—look the other way for the small stuff—because it's so much better to have that extra help.
Good luck. I'm sorry you're in this situation.
STOP jumping when she says jump.
"Give" her a day a week where you will help her with the things that AL will not do. Take her to the store or doctor visits or whatever. If you can manage 1 day that would be great. BUT if you mentally can't then that is reason enough to say that you can't do it. There is no reason for you to YOUR health in jeopardy caring for another.
YOU are NOT her last hope...YOU are YOUR last hope. Take care of yourself.
If your mother cannot afford AL her choices are not the street or living with you.
She will get placed in custodial care in a nursing home. Or get put into a board and care home. Both will accept Medicaid and she will get it if her income is low enough. If she has assets they will have to be spent down and the proceeds going towards her housing and care.
Your mother is not going to go to counseling with you. She will also not accept any responsibility for what your home life was like when you were a kid. I'd be willing to bet that your mother has talked herself into such denial that she sees herself as a victim of abuse rather than as the abuser. Your childhood, the abuse, and the neglect are not her fault because she's a victim too.
Sound familiar? I come from a situation very similar to yours. The only way you're going to be able to have any relationship with her is if you find a way to accept her as she is. Protect yourself from her abusive guilting and toxic denial. Create strong boundaries. Please go back to therapy. Guilt and negative emotions are hurting you. Go back to counseling for yourself not your mother.
Google the term F.O.G. It stands for Fear, Obligation and Guilt. It's they way in which your mother is manipulating her.
You are NOT your mother's "last hope". The State will take over her care.
Decide how much contact you want with her (like maybe one hour a month, or not at all. This is YOUR choice, not hers)
Tell the AL to call you only in an emergency and STOP ANSWERING AND RESPONDING to her phone calls.
Since your mother never went to jail for her neglect of you and your siblings look at this as justice with her being in the assisted living.
Stop doing anything for her. Stop visiting her and stop making yourself responsible for her. Let her handle her life herself.
If she cant afford assisted living then that's her problem. There is always a state run nursing home or facility she can go to if she is broke. You and your home are not options for your mother.
You said she hasnt changed. Which means she is still the same abusive and neglectful mother she was when you were a child. And she should get what she deserves in my opinion.
You do not have to be at Moms beck and call. If its constant phone calls, tell her it needs to stop or you will block her. If she is getting 3 meals a day, has all her toiletries and depends, snacks in her cupboard and drinks in her frig she is fine. And if visiting is nothing but her complaining, don't visit. This woman needs to realize that how she treats others is how she will be treated. Being nasty and demanding and entitled should get you nothing. Think of her as one of your kids, would you do for them if they demanded it.
I am all for respecting parents but it should go both ways. One of your boundries is "I will not put up with this". And the boundries are yours. You have to stick with them. You can't sway because Mom will take advantage of that. Because she will push it and you need to stand firm. You have told her what you want and she has pretty much said no. I would not pursue it. She has made her decision and thinks you wouldn't dare leave her in an AL or a NH. Surprise Mom. You have shown me that I can't live with you so your choice is you pay for an AL or apply for Medicaid for a NH. When she bulks be honest "If you treated your children better, you may still have a home with sister." That not being disrepectful its being honest. Her time in an AL or LTC will be so much better if she excepts "this is now my life". My Mom was easy to care for. Staff in both the AL and LTC loved her because it was always a "thank you" when they did anything for her. She never demanded or expected. This is where ur Mom needs to get. You will never make her happy. She has to do that for herself.
If you have ever sat in rehab or NH you will notice the residents who are pains don't get waited on quickly. So, how the rest of Moms life goes, is up to her.
Unless you have the legal authority - i.e. durable power of attorney - to help your mother, it is a bad idea for you to take on any responsibility for helping her. And yes, I would have writen that even if she had been the best mother in the world to you and your siblings. But with someone like your mother, it's even more important to get DPOA.
Limit contact. Let her leave a voicemail. Respond at your convenience. Do what you can with love and be honest with both her and yourself about what you can and cannot do to help her. If that means once weekly, monthly, or never, so be it. You are not responsible for her poor life decisions. You are only responsible for your own choices.
Keep us posted!
In order for in home, hands-on care to work, it has to work for EVERYONE involved; for your mother, for you, for your husband and children, for everyone. And in this case, it would not work for you, so therefore, it does not work. Period. Other arrangements have to made, in this situation, so make sure to do just that.
I myself made the decision decades ago that I would not be doing ANY hands on care for my parents when they got old, as their only child. I grew up with my grandmother living in our house & as a result, my childhood was ruined. My mother and she went at it like animals all the time, and I had a chronic stomach ache as a result. I vowed I'd NEVER put myself or my family thru such a gruesome experience, and so I did not. I let my parents know right from the get-go that I'd be happy to help them get set up in senior living, but that they would not be living with me inside my home, or me with them inside their home. End of story.
So when dad couldn't drive anymore, I moved them to my state to be close to me, found them a nice senior independent living apartment 4 miles away, and set about to help them with everything they needed help with. My mother did everything in her power to drive me crazy, as always, b/c she and I were always oil & water: not a good mix. To know that is to save your sanity! Know it and deal with it rather than fantasize that it will somehow change with 'therapy' or 'counseling' or with magical thinking or some such thing. It won't. If a dysfunctional relationship has been going on your whole life, guess what? Nothing is gonna change it. Certainly not in old age, when behaviors worsen as dementia and illness set in!!! Ain't no pill or therapy session on earth gonna change your mother into a loving/nurturing soul after all this time! #Truth
So when dad broke his hip, I had to move them both into Assisted Living, and I did. Then dad died and I moved mom into a smaller unit at the same AL. I managed her entire life FOR her but on MY terms. This went on for 10.5 years. I had to move her into Memory Care AL in 2019, where she lived until she died this past February. Almost until the day she died, she asked to come live with me, but I told her that would be impossible. She had way too many serious illnesses for me to even CONSIDER taking care of her, and she was best off in managed care. I managed to save MY sanity, and likely lengthen HER life, by that decision, not to mention I saved OUR relationship in the process. Had I moved her into my house, we'd have been at one another's throats 24/7, I guarantee it. In MC, I could go visit her on my terms, bring her gifts and photos of her great grandchild, and leave when I was ready to. It worked out for both of us, the way I see it. She was beautifully cared for there by an attentive team of loving caregivers, too. The train of people thru her room when she was dying was a testament to how much they cared about her.
So set your mom up in AL, and if/when the $$$ runs out to private pay, apply for Medicaid and get her placed in Skilled Nursing. That was my plan with mom, who lived till she was 95 and was this-close to running out of $$$ herself.
Make your decisions and then stand by them. Don't do things out of a misguided sense of guilt, either. Stand your ground and don't look back. You owe YOURSELF a good life after a bad childhood. Remember that.
She died at 98 sadly in a NH that wasn't very good. I would cry each time I left after visiting her. I hope I am the grandmother I am due to her.
In one situation , an elderly mom, a resident of Greece, was admitted to nursing home in Pennsylvania. She had applied for Medicaid but left the NH and the country before Medicaid kicked in, leaving a 90K bill for her care. Her son, who was quite wealthy, was found in court to be liable for that bill.
NO ONE can force you to take your mother in and care for her.
If your mother has funds, they will be used for her care. When she runs out, the state and Medicaid will step in.
The good thing is that your mom can't lie to the state about how much money she has, or where it is.
If the son was held liable for his mother's $90,000 nursing home bill, he signed documents agreeing that he would accept financial responsibility for it if needs be.
The nursing home my father was in tried to push these kinds of documents off on me. They will often lie and say that Medicaid is the one insisting on them and that they're just a "formality". Nothing a person signs their name to in a contract is a just a formality. It is legally binding.
The guy with the mother who went back to Greece signed documents agreeing that he would assume the debt.
My brother & I have placed her in assisted living, she is safe and cared for, I manage her money to make certain that she will not outlive her assets.
Otherwise, she does not exist to me, my brother visits her a couple of times a month to make sure everything is ok, and it is.
We both do our part, me without even talking to her.