What would your mother say?
As mentioned in The Slap, the Care Home have been very tolerant of dad’s recent increasing sexual appetite and his ‘flirtation’ with a ‘young lady’ who is a resident at the Home and who also has dementia.
However, in the last week things have been getting worse and a couple of times dad and the lady have been so explicit in their ‘cuddling’ that they have been asked to stop, as it was upsetting some of the other residents.
Dad tends to react poorly to being told directly what to do. He shouts and even waved his fist at one of the carers!
We agreed with the Manager that a more indirect approach might work better. So she started to fill the settees up with ladies so that dad and his friend had to sit in separate chairs. That worked for a few days until dad worked out that Violet could sit on his lap, which as you can imagine, lead to even more explicit cuddling!
This week the manager and the mental health worker sat dad down and told him it had to stop; that his behaviour just wasn’t appropriate in public and it was upsetting other residents.
They explained that the lady was very old and may not be fully aware of what she is doing. Dad’s response was that they were talking nonsense as Violet is young, only 18 years old, 23 at most!
Quite what he thought a 23 year old was doing with him is not clear? He was shocked to learn that she was 84. “Well, she seems much younger”, was his response.
“What would your wife think if she came to visit and saw you doing those things with Violet?” they asked. “Oh, I don’t think she would like it”, was dad’s response. “And my mum would like it even less!”
I had to giggle at that. Obviously the manager and mental health lady were a bit baffled until we told them that dad sometimes gets our mum (his wife) and his own mother (of course no longer with us) muddled.
Hmm, perhaps this may be a means of stopping him? They could threaten him with a visit from his mother! Ha, ha!