Our Mother lives in an AL place and she's a night owl. She's very social and wants to keep going until at least 9:00pm. No one else at her place (or any of these places) seem to want to stay up and socialize after 6:00pm. I've thought about getting her a cat or dog, but it wouldn't be fair to the animal. I call her every night and stay on the phone with her for almost an hour to give her that "social" fix that she needs. It's really a problem because she cries practically every night. Any suggestions?
MJ. Caregiver
Maybe she can sign up for an online class in the evening, something that interests her?
Edit - Just read that your mom has Alz., so probably she can no longer use computer.
You sound like a busy woman and certainly need your rest.
How long do you think would be a reasonable time to speak to your mother on the phone? Try to work towards that goal, otherwise you are going to wear yourself out.
Has your mom always stayed up late or is this a new behavior? Has she told you what she is afraid of during the evening hours?
Unless you have a money tree in your yard, it would be expensive to hire someone to be a companion for every evening of the week, month after month.
Has she tried a mild medication so she can relax?
My friend who lives next door to her mom has the same issue with her mom.
My friend can’t stay up late with her mom. She serves dinner to her mom, then returns to her home to spend time with her husband. She goes to bed early because she has to leave early for work.
Her mom’s doctor prescribed Trazodone. Maybe your mom’s doctor could prescribe something mild for her so she could unwind in the evening and hopefully rest well.
To Emma 1817, your comments are callous hurtful to others. This is not Okay! This forum is supposed to be supportive to others. You are not doing that and so, why are you on here? Your comment, it doesn't bother you because she's not your mother: Whether she's your mother or not, it's sad that you do not have compassion for "anyone" who is in her position.
Your condescending criticism isn't okay either. Emma is right. People often criticize a person for telling an unpleasant truth. That does not make it untrue though. You state that your own mother was placed and that the staff of her facility were available to comfort her every night. You weren't dealing with her hysterics and crying every night and spending hours on the phone calming her down the way the OP has to. So there's no halo appearing above your head, and you shouldn't be judgemental about anybody else. Your mother was lucky she was placed in a facility that could offer this kind of one-on-one attention. Most of them do not. In fact, most facilities are so short staffed that a resident is lucky if someone washes them up and toilets them before bedtime. Living in a care facility can be lonely. There isn't going to be 24 hour activitity and someone staying by a resident 24/7 so they have to adapt.
This sounds unkind and maybe even harsh, but a person has to adapt. It's like with a baby. If mom and dad go running in every time the baby squawks a little bit, he will never learn how to be alone. So what will happen is he'll have no sense of autonomy and mom and dad will end up with him living in their basement at 40 and they'll have to support him until they die.
The same thing with the elderly even with dementia. I see so many people on here at their wits' end because a LO with dementia develops a 'shadowing' habit and cannot be left alone for a moment. This happens because it's allowed to. When it's not allowed, the habit doesn't form. People have to be left alone for periods of time. The OP's mother may very well have to cry herself to sleep for a few nights. After those few nights she will adapt to being alone before bedtime for a while and will be fine. Some hired companionship for a few hours a few nights a week will help too.
Your comment was spot on and you were right. You told what is an unpleasant truth and people sometimes have a hard time when one is mentioned.
* Schedule a massage or foot massage (very relaxing) later in the evening.
(be sure they are certified).
* I would caution you calling nightly as it will exhaust you / wear you out and [may not] help her that much - when needing other interventions.
* Call volunteer organizations (or churches) and ask for a volunteer to call her for a five minute chat in the evenings (several people can do this).
* Consider having her medication adjusted - if she's on any; if not, see if this might help.
* Find out what she is doing after 5pm, i.e.
- drinking coffee?
- any stimulates that would keep her aware / her brain going
+ Ask her to read around 8pm (history? something boring?)
+ Ask staff to support her somehow.
+ Get her some 'calming' tea(s) - ask at a health food store
* Offer / do a visualization with her at night to help her relax. You could likely find these looking up 'relaxing visualizations' on the internet.
- Get her a CD of relaxing music and/or a meditation.
* Ask her what she is fearing. Offer reflective listening (reflect her words back to her, with comfort). "I understand you feel xxx and that must be scary." Let her know she isn't alone. "Oh, I used to feel like that too." --- See if she asks you about it and how you resolved it. If she doesn't ask, tell her how you resolved it (it doesn't matter if you did or didn't... you can share with her some of these ideas).
* Hire a caregiver for two hours in the evening to be with her / get her ready for bed; this could be someone offering a massage or gentle touch / foot rub (wouldn't necessarily need to be a certified practitioner/massage therapist).
Gena / Touch Matters
'Ask staff to support her some how'.
How? The staff has to support her somehow. How?
I worked in a nice assisted living facility for a long time. This place was high end. No one was forced to go to sleep at a certain time. They could stay up in their rooms and do what they wanted.
We did not have enough staff to sit with someone for hours on end holding their hand or calming them down or entertaining them until they fall asleep. A facility not as posh and swank as the one I worked in will have even less staff. Especially at night. That's the reality. Your suggestions aren't reality. They are not going to apply in an actual AL facility.
Best case scenario (in reality) is the OP can get some hired companionship to stay with her mother for a few hours in the evenings. Or her doctor can give her something for anxiety so she doesn't have to cry to her daughter for hours every night.
Did mom have any crafting, sewing or such that she liked to do? Maybe it's time to restock those items to see if she'll get going on them again.
Every night after dinner (after dad died) mom would go back to her apartment, change into her nightgown, make phone calls, write cards out, and then watch tv until bed time. That's a standard thing to do for most people. Once in a while she would schmooze with her BFF at the AL, Ann, in the evenings, but not as a rule. The residents were allowed to use the library if they wanted to, but most residents were in their apartments after dinner.
According to your profile, your mom suffers from Alzheimers/dementia. This is likely the reason why she's scared of being alone at night and why you need to talk her off the ledge for an hour long phone call each evening. When my mother's dementia progressed to that point, I segued her into the Memory Care building of the same ALF she'd been living at for 4 years.
It's a shrunken down world in Memory Care; much less overwhelming than having a full service apartment is, with cooking apparatus and the like. Lots more caregivers to help the residents with 100% of everything. In mom's MC, they had a movie going every night in the activity room, and residents doing puzzles, etc. It was a very small (23 people) environment which lent itself to being more family like; the activity room had a big fireplace, so it was more like a big family room than anything else. That's where the residents gathered to do everything, including eating meals. That's how most MC's are set up; to provide that cozy family room feeling to the residents who want to stay up later or socialize.
If my mom felt lonely or scared in the evenings, she had 'her girls' as she called them, who'd come into her room and sit with her and talk about their children and their goals in life, etc. They'd comb her hair and just sit on her bed and shoot the breeze. That doesn't happen in regular AL; there's too many residents and too high of a resident to caregiver ratio to make such a thing plausible. In MC, the resident to caregiver ratio is much better; mom's MC was 7:1, or somewhere in that neighborhood.
Your mom just needs more attention in the evenings than she's getting right now. You can hire a companion to sit with her, or look into moving her into MC, although nobody can guarantee she'll be 'kept going until 9 pm'.
If you feel it's anxiety mom is experiencing, perhaps a call to her PCP is in order for a low dose of calming meds. My mom did well on .25 mgs of Ativan when her Sundowning got bad.
I see in your comment that you're moving mom to a different ALF: A full activities calendar during the day is a MUST. Hoping for the best outcome for all concerned.
Wishing you the best of luck.
I really would suggest that you make it a quick call that tells her to turn on her TV. Then give it a couple of weeks and see if things are different. Why keep this up indefinitely?
I think you had a good idea about an animal companion but maybe not a real one. These cat companions have good reviews:
Lifelike Robotic Cats for Seniors - Joy for All – Ageless Innovation LLC
https://joyforall.com/products/companion-cats
My friend had a soft floppy one she could take with her.
Other ideas are:
In your conversations be sure to give hope and talk about positive things like good things about the day or something to look forward to the next day. It helped my Mom to pray with her. Maybe read a story or positive poems or short stories.
Background tv with soothing shows or images to fall asleep to. We would put a fave oldies do-wop CD on for my Mom. It cycled through the intro a few times repetitively, and she would fall asleep right away.
Soothing music to fall asleep to.
Best of luck!
I read some of the comments below. Is she active during the day, she might be more ready to chill out come nighttime... Do they have an exercise class there? Is she in a wheelchair?
I don't like cats, personally, but I know a lot of people who probably love their cats as much or more than their families. A warm cat to snuggle next to at night might really allay her anxiety.
As far as the smell--my YB has about 8 cats (at last count) and you cannot smell a thing from them. Their litter boxes are cleaned daily, they are brushed, bathed and cared for. They're weird, as 'packs' of cats can get, but they are always ready to jump in a warm lap. Even tho I am not a fan of cats, I can see the positive side of having one.
Some family members could perhaps create a schedule to assist with this taking turns. Or volunteers from a faith community of choice. Or other volunteers from Agency of Aging or available via the AL facility if they have a list ... You would of course want any outside volunteers to properly screened ( back ground checks etc etc. )
Or hire a companion for these hours. Have the family contribute to the cost .
Someone who will watch tv with her, play cards, or just talk. There are people who volunteer to do this sort of thing for free. Ask at her AL if they can put you in touch with any organizations that volunteer to do elder companionship. Many times churches offer this service.