Obsessive plant watering
my DW is watering our plants 4 or 5 times a day. They are desert plants. Not only don’t they need it but it’s affecting them adversely. Any ideas how to redirect the behavior without hurting her feelings?
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I have a problem with overwatering and it’s not due to dementia. Both the nursery and the hardware store sell moisture meters that indicate how wet the soil is. Maybe your DW could test the soil and see that the moisture meter says wet and not water the poor plant? I think they cost about $10 or so.
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I don't know where your wife is in terms of progression, but would a calendar that gets marked off when the plant needs to be watered work? My mom and I used a calendar for her meds for years. Maybe something like that can work. Or maybe something can be left by each plant - a card that has what day/date it should be watered? If something like that cannot work, can you put the plants out of reach? Maybe others will come along with better ideas.
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My HWD/Alz does this as well. Last year I tried everything to redirect and this year I just let it happen. It wasn’t worth the fight and we don’t buy expensive plants anymore
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I think these are good suggestions, but the ultimate answer is not to have the plants. Are we talking houseplants or part of your home landscape? the former is easier to get rid of, obviously. Calendars etc. work until they don't. It's amazing what becomes an issue that you don't and can't possibly anticipate...
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This might be very stupid on my part, but if they’re houseplants, could you replace them with fakes? There are some incredibly lifelike artificial plants available now.
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This is a variation on the common overfeeding of pets behavior.
Both a moisture meter and a calendar will require reasoning skills, learning a new routine and impulse control which may be beyond her at this point. Replacing with fakes might not be a workable option if she believes them to be real and continues to water them.It’s probably time to ditch the houseplants and embrace a more minimalistic decor.
HB
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This sounds like the pet overfeeding that some PWDs do. At least it is plants and not poor animals, though I think your strategy to not buy expensive plants for now, is good.
Different issue, but maybe it can help you. I had to hide all but 1 or 2 small cups, once DH started a phase of filling multiple tall glasses with juice, water, etc. and leaving them all over the house. He would fill a giant glass to the brim, take a few sips, set it down, forget it, and repeat. There might be 8-9 glasses FULL in various rooms at any time, wasting expensive juice and generally obsessive behavior looping that he could not stop.
So, when I couldn't change his new behavior, I changed mine. Stopped putting the unopened juice where he could access it. e.g. only 1 bottle of apple juice in the fridge at a time, vs Cranberry, Grape, and Apple plus a water pitcher. And eventually beat him to the fridge so he couldn't keep grabbing things. And as stated, I hid all but 2 of our cups. That way, he wasn't able to fill up so much even if he was able to get to it.
Can you hide the watering can, pitcher, or bigger vessels so she at least can't get so much water at one time? *EDITED to add, "and the hose, etc. for outdoor plant watering? e.g. put a cut off valve on the outside spigot/s that requires a wrench or key?)
Ultimately it boiled down to more supervision and creative validation + redirection. I might try a "STOP! DO NOT WATER" sign on each pot, if she is still reading and comprehending. Worth trying. Good luck!
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your story foreshadows other behaviors I’m starting to see. My wife does fill and forget (fortunately, I guess, we drink mostly water so it doesn’t waste much, just more glasses to clean up). Sage advice. If I can’t change her behavior, change mine.
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thank you all!
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No amount of calendars or explanation would stop my mother from watering the plants 5 times a day, she simply could not retain that information. If we hid the watering can she used something else like a glass. For a while we kept them because it was something for her to do and knew eventually she would kill them but it started to make an enormous mess, water dripping from the saucers and sitting on the wood floor. If you want plants you may have to have a bedroom you lock, out of sight out of mind. Or re-home them temporarily to a friend until your loved one is not so ambulatory. Usually logic and reasoning is useless in this stage, you have to find workarounds.
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My DH has been responsible for watering the plants for years, so I continued to let him do it since it was something he was "in charge of". We have some planters with cylindrical water gauges that have a min and a max line, but the max line has some space above it. So now, DH wants to keep the water level all the way to the top of the bubble gauge instead of just at the max line. I can't tell him it's too much - he won't hear of it. So the plants are probably drowning. I'm sure over time they will die, but so be it. At least it's not spilling out everywhere, at which point I'd find a reason to throw them away or get some large dishes to go under them for the over spill!
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yup. We have to pick our battles.
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move the plants out of reach or restrict access to the room where you keep them, early on with DW, the behavioral variant of her EO FTD showed up in many repetitive behavioral, (sitting/standing, shoes on/off, baths 4-5 times a day, grabbing stuff in reach and losing them. Finally realized I just had to keep things out of reach as much as possible and restrict access to other areas. She's much less mobile now but still has repetitive behaviors, so I mostly restrict her access now and all items she can grab are out of sight.
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unfortunately. These are outdoor, planted plants. They’re unmovable. I think I’ll just let it go. If they don’t thrive then so be it.
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We got a bunch of little cacti as a gift, and DW keeps watering them. She says they feel dry. I tell her they're cacti, they like to be dry, but of course that was a waste of my time. So I figure if she kills them, so be it.
I also have the problem that DW adds too much water to other (indoor) plants, to the point where water spills onto the floor. That's a minor annoyance in the scheme of things, and microfiber cloths work wonderfully to soak up the mess. (DW reaches for the paper towels. We've been going through paper towels at a good clip for this and other tasks that could be served equally well with a good old cloth towel.)
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Yes if it's landscape watering that she's doing, there's probably not much you can do about it—though you might be able to get locks for outside faucets and say that there's a drought, ban on watering? Just a thought. I've never looked for an outdoor faucet lock but I'd bet one exists….yep, look on Amazon they rub about $10
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The drough card might be a good one to play. Here in SoCal that is engrained in us for a long time.
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My DW has been a gardener all her life. We have a large yard with lots of flower. She likes to pull weeds and generally care for the plants. She is still in an early stage so can take care of herself so I just let her. We have sprinklers that go off in the very early morning to let the water siink in to the roots before the Texas heat comes up. But she has taken to watering everything by hand in the evenng because the plants are drooping. I tried to tell her it wasn't necessary but she insists she know better, she has been gardening all her life etc. As some of yu have recommended I have just let it go. Our water bill is large but so be it. Pick our battles.
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My DW loves to pull weeds, too :)
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Our outside faucets have shutoff valves inside the house.
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rplourde, in addition to all the suggestions about taking things away or restricting them…
As an avid gardener who's killed tons of plants, my advice is to either wait for them to die, or not, and replace the arid-weather plants with thirsty ones!
Some ideas:
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Commonly Used Abbreviations
DH = Dear Husband
DW= Dear Wife, Darling Wife
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ES = Early Stage
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AL = Assisted Living
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