I would appreciate advice about how to deal with this situation. My mother is making dozens of "nuisance" calls to me every day and I can't work out how to stop them. I don't want to take her phone away because I live a long way away from her and it is my main link to her. She is in a care home so we don;t need to be in 24 hour contact with each other, but I still want to be able to talk to her regularly.
My mother says she is very happy in her care home.
She has Doro Phone Easy mobile phone which is designed for people with dementia. It has 4 programmable buttons. Generally I call her and sometimes she call me but normally quite rarely. She doesn't like to talk for long on the phone but she appreciates the contact.
She often calls me in the middle of the night so I set up a special "mum's line" mobile phone/number. I keep it in the sitting room so it does not wake me if she calls at night. It also makes it easy to "screen" her calls during the day if she is calling too often while I am working (I work from home).
Recently she has started calling compulsively, several times an hour, sometimes several times in 5 minutes. She calls on the "mum's line" and also on my husband's mobile. When she calls she has no clear idea why she has called, says everything is fine, but asks me to visit (forgetting that I may already have visited that day). I then call her carers and ask them to take her down to the care home lounge and sit with her for a while till she forgets about calling me.
I have tried removing the pre-programmed numbers from the phone but she is calling using the call log facility. So basically, anytime I call her I leave a number in the phone which she can use to call me back on.
I have asked the care home to remove her phone temporarily while I try to sort out the problem technologically and/or my mother gets out of the habit of this compulsive behaviour.
Presumably a lot of us have experienced this pattern of compulsive calling. Has anyone come up with a better solution. I would very much welcome your advice.
My mother says she is very happy in her care home.
She has Doro Phone Easy mobile phone which is designed for people with dementia. It has 4 programmable buttons. Generally I call her and sometimes she call me but normally quite rarely. She doesn't like to talk for long on the phone but she appreciates the contact.
She often calls me in the middle of the night so I set up a special "mum's line" mobile phone/number. I keep it in the sitting room so it does not wake me if she calls at night. It also makes it easy to "screen" her calls during the day if she is calling too often while I am working (I work from home).
Recently she has started calling compulsively, several times an hour, sometimes several times in 5 minutes. She calls on the "mum's line" and also on my husband's mobile. When she calls she has no clear idea why she has called, says everything is fine, but asks me to visit (forgetting that I may already have visited that day). I then call her carers and ask them to take her down to the care home lounge and sit with her for a while till she forgets about calling me.
I have tried removing the pre-programmed numbers from the phone but she is calling using the call log facility. So basically, anytime I call her I leave a number in the phone which she can use to call me back on.
I have asked the care home to remove her phone temporarily while I try to sort out the problem technologically and/or my mother gets out of the habit of this compulsive behaviour.
Presumably a lot of us have experienced this pattern of compulsive calling. Has anyone come up with a better solution. I would very much welcome your advice.
I know it used to work like that - I'm sure someone will be along to correct me if things have changed!
