Aged Parents Are Like Little Kids

[poliphilo]

Ailz has bought her parents a new phone. Now they've got two. One each.  So if Dad is alone in the garden and falls and can't get up or Mom goes for a walk and ends up on a street she doesn't recognise- both things that have happened recently- there'll be no excuse for them not summoning help.

Will they do as they've been told and take a phone with them everywhere?

What do you think?

We've given my mother similar instructions. When we remind her about them she goes, "pish tush" and changes the subject. 

Comments

[frumiousb.livejournal.com]

B.'s parents remember to take their phone everywhere. However, they don't wish to turn it on because they don't like to be bothered. So when they actually need to turn it on, they inevitably fail to remember their code.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Wonderful!

Mind you, I can't talk. I hate phones and only carry one if bullied into it.

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

No...if they´re true to their elderly genes they will find any excuse not to use the phone. My own mother in law is 92 and many years ago we tried to get her to carry a phone but she always claimed she just couldn´t learn how to even turn it on and just flat out refused. Her reaction was very much like your mother´s.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'll be the same. I already make noises about not being able to understand phones- and do I make the least effort to learn? Of course not.

I hate phones. They're intrusive. Having one in the house is bad enough, but being expected to carry one around.....

[goddlefrood.livejournal.com]

What do you think?

It's a little difficult to tell without knowing the personalities involved. There is one tale about an aged relative reverting to childhood which I could share.

My Great Aunt, who lived in Swiss Cottage in London and who died some years ago now, had an incredibly loud phone with direct diallers to both her sons, myself and the emergency services. She had a tendency to fall over in her flat so her eldest son installed the system for her. There was a sort of remote controller that she was supposed to wear as a necklace from which a button could be pressed when or if she needed to call. It had a similar capacity to a mobile phone, in other words.

The trouble was she rarely wore the remote unit and when she did have a fall it often went unnoticed by anyone, despite the fact that I was the closest to her during her last years, being about 10 minutes drive away. When she did wear the unit it was effective. Most times she wasn't injured at all, thankfully, and after some sleep managed to pull herself up and then ring usually me. That is until the last time when she wasn't found having injured herself until it was too late to do anything for her. She was 85. By then I'd moved to Fiji.

So, basically, if your mother or your missus' parents are anything like my Great Aunt was, the anser is sometimes they'll remember and sometimes they won't.

All the best with getting them to carry these gadgets with them at all times, though.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think the forgetting is deliberate. Old people are stubborn and independent. And I'm sympathetic with that. We impose our new-fangled technologies on them and it's really for our own peace of mind not theirs. Obviously I don't want my mother falling over on one of her field walks and dying of exposure but I can see that she mght regard it as rather a good way to go.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

My mother was given a Lifeline necklace (you push a button and it activates an intercom response), and she won't wear it because "it accidentally goes off sometimes."

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I sympathise. I wouldn't take kindly to wearing something like that either.