My father will not stop ringing my phone and hanging up...

What I found with my mother and a few of my clients who have done this (I am a psychotherapist), is that they gained some comfort from the sound of my voice and were calling my machine for that sole purpose. With my clients I set specific limits. With my mother who has always been demanding but isn't capable of honoring any sort of boundaries (now because of dementia,) I had a separate number that she can call and I check it once a day.. She has people there so I know if there's any sort of problem I will be alerted to that on my regular number but this way she got to hear my voice and be comforted in some way and I didn't have 40 calls coming in every hour. I hope that helps.

Does he really need a phone? Are there other people he calls? If its just you, lose the phone. Make sure the DON is aware of it so they don't go looking for it. My daughter says in the facilities she has worked, a report needs to be written up and they must look for the phone. Only to find a family member took it away.

The facility staff will make you aware of any emergencies. The staff should not be calling you for every little thing. I always stopped at the nurses desk and ask how Mom was doing before I went in to see her. You should have a Care meeting every 90 days, in my State anyway.

If Dad is calling ur cell, then block him. I have my phone set to "Do Not Disturb" with only my contacts ringing thru. All others go to VM. I really don't see why u need to change ur phone #. That will cause so many problems.

Either take away his phone, or just leave his number blocked on yours and tell the nursing facility to call you if they need to for any reason. Hopefully that will do the trick. Good luck.

Change your phone number and don't give it to your father. Make sure the nursing home has it so they can reach you if they need to. Then you call your father only once a day and talk to him. Or every other day, or whatever call schedule you will be comfortable with.
If your father hasn't been in the nursing home for long, he could still be getting acclimated to his new living situation. All the calls could be because he doesn't understand why he's in a nursing home and it's a strange place to him. So he's calling you continually because you're what he remembers is familiar to him.
He needs time to acclimate to his new environment. Once he does the constant calls will slow down. Having sleeping medication prescribed is a good idea. Another good idea would be to speak personally with the activities director of the facility and find out if they're making any attempt to engage him in any of the social activities they may have going on.
Believe me when I tell you that a nursing home will tell a family they're always trying to engage residents and get them to take part in social activities. That's not usually true. What they actually do is ask if they want to join in and then walk away if they say no.
Elderly people can often be like children. Sometimes with kids you have to coax and be insistent to get them to do something even if they want to do it. The same with elderly people. Only in a nursing home they don't have enough staff where they can use the aides to coax and conjole a resident into joining in. The aides have actual work to do.
So it comes down to family to do it. Next time you go visit your father, go when there is a scheduled activity going on. Then attend it with him. This might get him comfortable enough to join in if he has someone with him. You might have to do this a couple of times with him. Try it.

Your phone number is in his long-term memory. If he's calling you, he may be calling others whose numbers he remembers. We found out this is what my MIL was doing when her old friend called my husband to tell let him know she was calling her a lot and at inappropriate times (this woman lived in Hawaii and MIL is in MN -- so many time zones away). We had to get her address book and erase the numbers out of her book, which broke my heart but short of removing her phone, we didn't have any other solutions. Now MIL only answers her phone and no longer calls us unless she asks the aid to call for her. So, you're dad's behavior won't last forever.

It's such a hard place to be when your dad can't really help his behavior but you are justified in being annoyed by it. I wish you success in finding a solution that satisfies you.

In my dad's worst times of dementia he would call and call and CALL! This is when he still lived at home. I finally had to turn the wringer off sometimes when it got so bad. He spent some time in skilled nursing last year and they were able to calm him down a bit by adjusting his meds so the calls slowed down. What you need to remember is that he is being taken care of in the nursing facility. If he needs something, they will get it for him. You need to set somee boundaries by turning off the phone when you need to.

This is unacceptable - either keep the phone off the hook and respond to voice mail and messages or get an entirely new private phone number and do not give it to him. And stay away before he destroys you. If he was/is a narcissist, walk away or do your thing at a distance and keep away from him.

He's not doing it to be malicious. If he's got dementia, sometimes they do not know what they're doing. Believe me, I went through this with my mother. She had all these beautiful little light up village houses on her living room table. One day I went over and it looked like a complete mess with all of the bulbs removed and all the cords tangled up. I said, "Mother, what happened to your little houses?" And she replied, "I don't know what you're talking about...I didn't do that!" And then my dad said he watched her do it while he was watching TV but didn't say anything to her...they're in a fog and have no idea what they're doing. My mother used to "root" around for stuff too but she didn't know what she was looking for. She passed in April and I miss her terribly. Hold your daddy's hand. It won't be long...

Your dad has been asked to adapt to a new nursing home environment in “several weeks” and “doesn’t know” why he’s compulsively calling. Could he have developed OCD in response and needs psychiatric evaluation?

Is this a cell phone or landline phone he’s using? My FIL had a Jitterbug phone and had the numbers to family programmed in. Sometimes he would go thru a phase where he did that same thing. All hours of the day/night. His days/nights were turned around and he would go down the line pushing the buttons for each one in the memory bank. He couldn’t understand that it wasn’t just bringing up names but actually dialing. We finally had the AL help us with a little therapeutic fib and tell him that they had a new rule that they needed to be turned in at night after medications so they could go on the chargers to be re-charged. Fortunately/unfortunately he had been very random about charging it and several times thought it was “Worthless because it kept dying”. He just wasn’t remembering to charge it. That stopped the late night calls. And miraculously “fixed” the worthless phone that kept dying for no reason. 😅