My Dad refuses to make healthy choices while living alone. My family thinks he should move, but we are powerless without POA. Advice?

I know what you are going through. It took a long time for doctors to finally deem my dad incompetent so that POA takes over. My suggestion is to keep at the doctors. If he falls and has to go to hospital, you can get them to do tests. Being a caregiver for a parent is harder than raising children. With children you can make them do what is best for them. You can't make your parents do anything they don't want to do. So unfortuneately, unless the doctors deem them to be incompetent, there is not much we can do to make them make healthy choices. Just keep talking to the doctors till they decide he is a danger to himself.

Hello there :)

Could you give us some 'for instances', a little bit of background, please? It's hard to know how to respond otherwise, but I'm sorry for your family's worries.

What are the "healthy choices" Dad is not making? Is living alone one of them? Why is living alone not a good choice now? Where "should" he move? How old is he? Has he been diagnosed with dementia?

Without some additional information it's almost impossible to give useful advice. Not sure whether I should be giving advice on how to talk with Dad about moving to a senior community or AL or if I should be encouraging you to let Dad continue to eat his favorite ice cream because healthy eating after you are old and sick usually doesn't have much of an impact.

You say "my family thinks he should move", what do you think? POA would not let you decide to move Dad over his objections unless Dad has been deemed incompetent to make his own decisions by at least one and often two doctors.