My 93-year-old mom is looking for children she was supposed to be babysitting. Are these dreams or hallucinations?

My mom went through a phase like this. Hers was always in the afternoon. She would say the was a little boy and he was lost and now she can't find him to help him get home. We would reassure her that we located his mom and she came and picked him up. She would bring it up multiple times each day. I would just reassure her each time that we found him and him mom came to pick him up. It worked and overtime, as with all the behaviors, this too passed. Maybe you could tell your mom that they already went home, their mom got a day off, they are at school...

Hrm. I'll guess and say it's hallucination, but my grandmother sometimes had similar experiences of worrying about her long-deceased daughter going to a party, grandma wondered if there would be chaperones. I got the feeling at the time that my grandmother was remembering something from long ago that worried her, so she fixated on it. Could that be the case with this obsession/idea that your mom has? I found the best thing to do is something along the lines of reassuring your mom that the children have been taken home by their parents and they're safe now. She (your mom) doesn't have to worry about them, because they're safely back home. Would that help ease your mom's agitation/obsession over this issue?

It is interesting that it happens at same time of day, early in morning, right after she wakes. My grandmother would have obsessions/hallucinations any time of day. Sometimes about same thing (the one about her daughter was reoccurring), but sometimes new things, like needing to get to the bank and go pay her car note. She was 103 when she was saying these things so it was delusions... or maybe... some worry caused by past memory and when she was agitated, the worry would come up and she would obsess about it.  It was difficult to reassure her that things were ok.  Sometimes I wasn't successful in getting her to feel better.