My dad died four weeks ago. My mom has early dementia so we moved her to assisted living facility. She's mad now and wants to move to a different facility. What should we do?

The part I don't understand is "Mom HAD to go to an assisted living facility." Her early dementia causes enough confusion without the added stress of being placed in unfamiliar surroundings AND having to grieve for her husband. Before I make decisions for my Mom I try to mentally walk around in her mocassins for awhile. I would find it horrific to go to a facility with all that is going on in her life. Her dementia does not make her unaware, it makes her more confused and fearful.
Is there no one who could take her in temporarily until she could get used to the idea of new placement? Even if you were moving her into a regular apartment, it would be new and unfamiliar. Also, I would not dismiss her concerns about the facility she is in. Even the best ones do not provide the TLC she would receive from a family environment.
We are not judging your family's decision, but with the info. you provided, I hope you understand that it seems a little harsh that she was moved so quickly.

why cant she has a choice of where she would like to be at ? maybe theres something strange where she s at ,-the other place she may knows some of people that is there and she wants to be there .
did you ask her why shes not happy with this one and why she wants to go other places ? work with her and let her have a choice of her own .
i do agree with xtanice , - not to visit for 3 to 5 days , let her calm down but plz do ask her why shes not happy there ?
my dad has dementia , he still has his mind and gives me good pointers , something bothers him i ll be sure to fix it .

she lost a husband last 4 weeks ago and bam she has to move , it is one big heartbreakin . if that was me i would be so crush !

I would think that your mom would need to be around her family and friends after just losing her husband. That's really sad that she had to go right into and assisted living place with a bunch of strangers. Maybe she'll get used to it someday, or maybe she'll go downhill fast. I feel so sorry for her.

Well, it may be just time to make friends and get used to it, but do check it out thoroughly. It may be a nice place but just not right for your mom. I found that out the hard way with one facility, I thought it was great and if I ever need one, it will be my pick, very homey and busy in a good way. But Mom hated it so bad she was very anxious and gave herself a heart attack - she found it spooky, not well-lit enough, did not like how a lot of residents sat around chit-chatting in the hall, which I thought was a good thing. She liked the place I moved her to a whole lot better, though it was my second choice; I thought it was a bit too sterile-looking and too spread-out, but she was immediately more comfortable there. And it might help to get in there yourself and make sure the food isn't awful and calls are answered reasonably quickly. If your mom can tell you what specifically she does not like about the place itself - rather than just the idea of being any place but her own home or yours if that's not possible - it might be a huge help, but unfortunately mine couldn't until after the fact when she was in the hospital for her MI! I was starting to guess she did not like the style but also (mistakenly) thought she'd just get used to it, but some assosciation she had with it all really creeped her out and made her extremely anxious, more than she really let on, then she started yelling and calling out all the time and doing badly in PT and it went downhill form there. After less than a week, they wanted me to let them take her to a geropsych, but I got her to the ER instead which turned out to be the right move, and of course now I regret not moving her earlier though I can see why I didn't want to overreact either....bless you, and hope you can look into it and get enough ifnromation to make the right call for you and your mom...and condolences on the loss of your dad. It can be hard to help everyone else who needs you to be "in charge" when you are grieving too...

I am a homecare and hospice nurse. I've been providing care in ass't living facilites since 1993. My advice would be, to leave her alone for at least 3-5 days. No visiting or calling. In form all the staff there that you are doing this to force her to become more familiar with the facility. Get them to take her to the activies and report to you daily on her progress. I wish you the best of luck. I would recomment a home health companion to visit with her at least once a week, but make sure you only use a medicare certified agency and even better JCAHO accrediated. Cheryl RN

When my father-in-law died his wife was totally unprepared to make ANY decisions at that time. After she fell and broke her hip her doctor told her that she could NO longer live alone so we took over and found her a really nice place. My mother-in-law was still shell shocked at that point from his death, so she was useless in trying to help us find her a place. So, we moved her lock, stock, and barrel into a very nice asst living place. By that time she was getting her 'sea legs' again and was REALLY upset that we moved her there. She cried and whined about wanting to go back home for 3 -4 months at least. It was terrible, I felt terrible for her, but it was necessary.
Your mother will get used to it eventually. Give her some time to acclimate to being thrown into the deep end so to speak. And after 6 months she still wants to change to a different place, and not just say she 'hates' it there but actually wants to go somewhere OTHER than the place she's in, I'd listen to her.

When my father died we really didn't realize that my mother was in the beginning stages of dementia. For 3 yrs she lived alone with me coming over all the time to help her with everything even though she insisted that she was very capable of taking care of herself. When she finally got to the point were I felt she should not be living alone anymore I moved her into an ALF against her will...Yes it was terrible and the hardest thing I ever did. I also didn't go visit her for quite awhile but my children did. She was very angry with me and told me that I was the worse daughter in the world...It took her almost 3 months before she adjusted to living in the ALF. Now she is very happy living there and thinks all the residents are old friends.....hope you have as much good luck as I did with the placement......just give it a little more time.

I'm so sorry to hear you've had such a struggle - it is stressful to feel as if our parent is at odds with us or just plain unhappy. My mom has never stopped asking to go "home" or to move to a different facility. She would call several of her children up to 8 times a day, leave msg's saying she wants to be picked up from work, taken home, etc. She was moved 2 weeks ago to the memory unit of her assisted living residence, she cries every day. What has helped us is to learn as much as we can about dementia - a road map to guide us through these very common behaviors associated with dementia. To help my 5 brothers understand better, I refer to "mom behaviors" for her lucid moments) and debbie dementia moments, when she is crying & scolding us for locking her up in that place. It's important to separate the two. We reassure her we love her, the redirect her attention. Hope this helps. Best a luck to you.

You comment that your mom has early dementia. Just how severe is her dementia? Early dementia implies to me that she could have been involved in the decision making, you say that you moved her into the ALF. Was homecare not an option to help her through her grieving period in familiar surroundings while making the placement decision?

ELDSYS and Zimlady, Early dementia is a loose term that I use. From everything I've been reading lately, and I've been reading quite a bit, she's probably had dementia over the last 10 years since my dad died. Her doctor told me last June that I should take away her keys. I waited until this past April. As I said she's 87. We started to notice memory deterioration about 5 years ago, but never as bad as the last 12 months. It seems to have deteriorated expotentially. I hired someone to take her to her drs. appts. even though she was driving. I also worked at home one day a month so that I could drive her to her hairdressers. As I said the deterioration was pretty quick. When I took her keys away it was the beginnng of the end. She felt like she was a prisoner in her own home even though we hired people to come to her house three to four times a week. In addition, I went over there every day after work and sometimes on my way to work. She fired everyone that we had coming to her house. She became paranoid and thought that everyone was stealing her things. By the way, when we moved her out, we found over two hundred roles of paper towels and the same amount of toilet paper. She forgot where she hid most of this. She started being afraid to go to bed at night in her own house and some days she would call me and ask me where she was. So we made a decision that she couldn't live by herself any longer and we all incl. my brother and my Mom went out to look at AL. She loved the place she picked and now doesn't even remember visiting it. She said that never thought that we would leave her there. She thought that she would be visiting. Even though she put her house up for sale so that we could afford the AL.
So in looking back to my comment about mild demential, I think we've been fooling ourselves.
Fast forward to where we are now, she is about at the stage of Laurieq200's mom. We are so afraid that she will end up in the memory unit. She called me and didn't know where she was and totally forgot that I had been to see her the last two days. She said that she didn't know why we put her there?? I've been told that you just need to comfort her and not argue with her since you will never win an argument with someone who has dementia. So will the resistance ever end, I don't really know. I was told that it could take from 3 to 12 months for her to feel like it's her home. However, now they're not so sure.
With your mom Zimlady, that could happen. However, I was never told that her dementia would get so much worse. I guess we were fooling ourselves and she was much worse than we thought.