Attitude shift with son

Wednesday

Good morning,

My 89 y.o. mother-in-law has lived with us since March. She had a health event in December that seemed to trigger a sharp decline in her dementia and she lived with her daughter for a few months after that while we bought a house that could accommodate her. Some days she's argumentative, others she's compliant, but there is one aspect of her behavior that I find really puzzling.

When my husband is home, she speaks to him almost exclusively. I can be sitting right next to her but she'll call to him in the other room if she needs something. She is uniformly achey and sick and weak, etc. Kind of whiny and lowkey unpleasant but this has been her personality most of her life as far as I understand….my husband and I have been together since 2020 so I don't know her from before her old age.

When he is gone, it's like the fog lifts, and she turns into Chatty Cathy. She's animated, she engages in conversation, she's pleasant. There is a nonstop stream of stories from her past (with a whole lotta repeats to be sure) but she is more active and engaged than when my husband is within voice range.

He went out of town to visit his son and the whole time she was happy and bright. Five minutes after he walked back in the door, she was hanging on him and crying about how much she missed him and how she was so weak, etc. My jaw dropped when I witnessed this.

She acted the same during a recent hospitalization to get a pacemaker. She was chipper and chatty with the staff…until my husband was present.

Is she putting on a show for me? Or is this just a pattern of wanting her children to "care" for her? It's hard on my husband and she cries all the time to her daughter in a similar way. I'm thinking that if there's a time for her to move into MC, that she may actually be happier!

harshedbuzz

@Wednesday

Hi and welcome. I am sorry for your reason to be here but pleased you found this place.

My father had a similar preference for my mom to attend to him. It was laughable at times; I recall him once insisting that I take a sandwich back to the kitchen and have mom bring it to him as he'd asked.

There is another piece to this. Memory tends to be LIFO; last-in, first-out. If you and your DH only married 6 years ago, she may be hazy on how you fit in here. As dad progressed, he forgot my husband of 35 years and would refer to him as "the guy Harshed is shacking up with".

HB

TBird818

hi! Sorry for all you’re dealing with. Sometimes a parent with memory issues will pick a “target”. That’s the person they feel most comfortable with, so they save all the issues for that person. That’s how it is with my dad. He saves all the hard stuff for me. He’s happier when I’m not there as well.

Wednesday

That's a good point, I didn't consider that she may not be sure how I "fit" in her life. She remembers my name — I'm a step up from some of the other in-laws in her life — but I can imagine that why I'm here in her son's house might be puzzling to her. I bite my tongue every time she refers to it as his house…like I'm the interloper here and not the main one paying the dang mortgage.

I struggle with not setting her straight on basic facts. I know I can't make her see reality and that it doesn't really matter anyway. My husband tried to stick up for me, reminding her to thank me for things I did, pointing out how I'm helping care for her, etc., but it just became an opportunity for her to snub me even harder so I asked him to stop. Trying to emotionally cope with being spoken to like a dimwitted servant in my own home has been challenging, to say the least.

But she absolutely does save her whining and most of her wild demanding behavior for him, so he's got the shorter end of the stick.

pamu

I am my mom's trigger person. I am the one she blames for her not being able to leave MC and the one she complains to (every visit). She makes ridiculous demands like wanting all of her teeth pulled and getting new glasses (she just got new glasses a month a go). I have always been her problem solver and she gets frustrated when I can't/don't waive my magic wand to make things happen when she wants them to. I have to gently remind her that I work full time and have kids (and husband, house, etc). Even when we spin our wheels to get her what she wants, the next week she'll have thrown it away or said she doesn't like it. It's been almost a year in MC and I can't tell you how many pairs of underwear, socks, toiletries, arts/crafts, books, cards she's asked for that have been thrown away or lost. With that said, she complains to me that my sister doesn't do anything and only visits for a few minutes. She doesn't ask her to do anything for her so I'm resentful of that. No one wins - as far as I'm concerned both ends of the stick are short. Hang in there!