Should I interfere in my mother's social life if she has Alzheimer's?

A fellow caregiver asked...

A man is courting my widowed mother, who has early Alzheimer's. He's coming on strong with flowers and gifts, and my mom says she's uncomfortable but that she doesn't know how to say no to him. It's not my business and yet, because she's ill, I feel it is. I live out of town. What can I do?

Expert Answer

Lisa Snyder is a social worker at the University of California, San Diego, Shiley-Marcos Alzheimer's Disease Research Center

It sounds like your mother is expressing concerns and you're unsure how to respond. Is this a long-standing pattern with your mother, being uncomfortable with setting limits, or is this a new issue that has come up since the onset of Alzheimer's?

If you're comfortable asking her straight out how you can help, do so. Try to figure out exactly how he's coming on strong. This may indicate the level of involvement needed.

Then help your mother come up with specific limits she can set. For example, advise her to say, "Please only call me twice a week" or "I'd like to go out, but I'd prefer just once a week" or "Please don't call me. I don't want to go out."

Can you visit your mother and meet this man in person to get a sense of the situation? Or perhaps you could call and introduce yourself to him. If he's sincerely interested in your mother, he should be fine with that.

Ask your mom whether she has felt comfortable discussing her memory loss with him. Is he supportive? People do develop relationships later in life, and it can be a positive thing. But there should be safeguards in place to make sure she isn't taken advantage of, emotionally or financially.

Because your mother has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, it's important to have some kind of living trust with powers of attorney in place for the time when she can no longer make informed financial or healthcare decisions for herself. If she demonstrates impaired judgment, someone should also be able to make sure there isn't inappropriate activity in her financial accounts. Since it's early in the disease, your mother can make decisions now about a trust and to whom to assign powers of attorney, so she'll be less at risk of being taken advantage of by others.