My mom was diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer's a bit less than a year ago at the age of 55. She was always a little bit materialistic, but since then, it has become out of control, and my father, brother, and I don't have any real strategies to deal with it. She needs new dishes, a new ring, a new car, trips to Europe, a new blender, a new camera, new clothes, and more. For each one of these things, she fights with my father, and makes his life totally miserable (and ours by extension) until he can do nothing else but give in and get whatever she wants - something we obviously cannot afford. It is absolutely impossible to try and reason with her. The worst part is that we so don't need some of these things at all: the blender, the camera, other things - these are things that would (and do) just sit and collect dust, and, yet, she insists on having them. And whenever my father does give in, it only takes a few short days (less than a week) before she absolutely needs some new thing.
As much as I hate it when people are so consumeristic and materialistic like this, I really do feel for her. She knows she has Alzheimer's. She knows she is losing her autonomy. She is depressed about this situation, and thinks she can attain happiness by simply acquiring these new things. We know that's not true. In fact, we've seen firsthand how simply buying some new fancy gismo never actually does make her happier. She's always the same as she was before. But we just can't seem to convince her of this fact. Does any one have any suggestions? This is a very, very aggravating topic - all we want to do is curb, somehow, this rampant materialism, and, maybe, even, focus on some more positive or healthy ways of dealing with a bad situation.
As much as I hate it when people are so consumeristic and materialistic like this, I really do feel for her. She knows she has Alzheimer's. She knows she is losing her autonomy. She is depressed about this situation, and thinks she can attain happiness by simply acquiring these new things. We know that's not true. In fact, we've seen firsthand how simply buying some new fancy gismo never actually does make her happier. She's always the same as she was before. But we just can't seem to convince her of this fact. Does any one have any suggestions? This is a very, very aggravating topic - all we want to do is curb, somehow, this rampant materialism, and, maybe, even, focus on some more positive or healthy ways of dealing with a bad situation.
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