My MIL acts differently when she is with me alone. I want to support my husband, but she wants to touch on my butt every time I go to visit her. She is always saying turn around and let me see your behind with an obsession in front of people in the facility. It makes me feel so uncomfortable. It makes me not want to go visit and check on her. She does not do this when I come with my husband. My husband is an only child and we had to place her in a care facility in May. I try to just go check on her, but I don't really want to visit her with this type of behavior. The staff just laugh, and I really don't find it amusing. No one else in the family is reporting this type of behavior about her. When I and her sister are there she is as quiet and as sweet as a button. Any suggestions on how to handle this behavior? This makes me think that she knows what she is doing.
I agree that since it’s triggering something inside of her that is making her have off behaviors that are troubling, it’s probably a gift if you stop going to visit for a while, perhaps a long while.
If you don’t want to visit for hours with him, then don’t join him. You say that you want to show support and want to know how she is.
Ask your husband how she is. Tell him in a loving way that you care but that you aren’t able to have a pleasant visit and that you have decided not to go.
If she cries and carries on for hours while he is visiting her then surely he knows that the visits aren’t very meaningful. Why would he expect you to bond with her? She isn’t capable of bonding with you.
Maybe you could provide literature for him to read or ask a nurse or doctor to explain the situation to him.
Why is he staying for hours? He could leave after an hour or so.
The very last thing that I would do is to waste my time arguing with a person who wasn’t able to comprehend. Why torture yourself like that? You don’t sound like a woman who has an argumentative personality to me.
Stay home or visit a friend while he is with his mom. When he returns say, “Hi, honey. How’s your mom?”
Best wishes to you and your family.
If anyone asks, tell them that your presence appears to be robbing her of her dignity.
I am with you, I would not be sitting there all day either. My limit was no more than an hour unless there was some kind of entertainment.
Bonding, you can't bond with someone with Dementia. If you hadn't bonded before the Dementia, not going to aft.
Elderly people, even ones with dementia, have different behaviors for different people.
For example, an elder in a facility even one with dementia may be the life of the party. Engages in every activity, is very pleasant and has many friends. The moment a certain person (usually their adult child) comes in, they completely change. It becomes all about the gloom and doom, complaining, crying, and begging to go home.
I was an in-home care provider mostly to elderly for 25 years. I was a supervisor in a very upscale AL too. So, I've seen this a million times.
A friend of mine placed her mother in the AL I worked in. Every time she visited her mother started with the guilt-tripping, crying, begging, telling her that the food is so bad she's starving, you name it.
So I said to this elder in front of her daughter that not five minutes before she came in mom was up at the buffet for a third helping of food and was having a real laugh with the people at her table.
This angered her and she stopped speaking to her daughter for a stretch and took her off the visitor's list. She got over it.
I had an elderly male client with dementia years back. He also had two other female aides who worked for him. He used to say very sexually innappropriate things to me and try to get handsy with me. Not the other two. I complained to his son and my agency and they dismissed it as him having dementia and doesn't know better. I would have quit that client, but I needed the money.
One day I was doing the dishes and he put his hands on me. I turned around with a knife in my hand and pointed it at his throat. I told him that if he ever tried to touch me again it would be the last thing he ever did.
He never laid a hand on me again. He never made another innapropriate comment either.
Funny, he supposedly had dementia and didn't know what he was doing yet he somehow rememebered three days a week when I worked for him to not touch me or talk dirty.
I would suggest that if your MIL does it again, call her out on it. Make a scene and embarrass her. Then she if she ever does it again. It's likely she won't.
If she does, then she really doesn't know better and you should not visit her alone again.
I CAN tell you that in dementia folks sometimes, for utterly no reason, pick up these odd tics and habits, almost a sort of OCD thing. And once they "take over" a malfunctioning brain there may be no fix for them.
So there may never be an "answer" or "the answer". It is something you have to work around.
If you enjoy reading do try the books of the late Oliver Sacks. Start with "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat". He was fascinated by the brains of the impaired. He always said that they had an entire and complete world, but that it just wasn't OUR world.
When my brother was diagnosed by symptoms with probable early Lewy's Dementia he spoke with me at length about how different his world was. It was utterly fascinating.
I wish you luck.
Accompany your husband when he goes to see his mother.
Have you told your husband what she does when he isn’t there? Does he expect you to visit her on your own?
Have you tried saying "no" and remaining seated?