How to deal with the multiple times a day "urgent" phone calls from parent in AL?

Don’t give him your work cell phone number ! His phone habits probably will not change just because he says it will . You will have to let his calls go to voicemail , and listen to them when you can during a lunch break or after work . You can call back after work . If there is a true emergency the facility will call you. Give the facility staff your work number for emergencies.
After Dad settles down in AL , possibly the calls will become less , but no guarantees because he has dementia .

already gave him it. but in practicality for me it doesnt matter . I see his calls coming through on my cell phone, and I guess if I dont answer they will come through on my work phone now, and he expects i will answer those. . I could well answer every call on my personal phone too. . the question is whether I should allow this? or should I tell him that true emergencies need to be told to the AL staff, and then only they know who to truly reach me in emergency situation?

appreciate other input from anyone. Sometimes the supposed "urgent" scenarios are things like " oh no, I wont have 2 showers in a week and will only get one shower unless you can intervene"......

Tell Dad you can’t answer the phone at work , tell him to leave you a message.
And tell Dad that any true emergencies he will have to tell the staff because they are there to take care of it more quickly than you can .
This may not work initially . The important part is you have to not answer the phone .

We had the same issue with my mother . I stopped answering all the calls and she eventually started relying on the staff more when she wanted something and she called me less.

Do not give dad your work number. That number should only be for staff to call as they won’t unless it’s an actual emergency. The last thing you need is to get fired over this.

Tell dad that you will be calling him every day when you’re not at work, and give him that time as precisely as possible. Keep other calls to a minimum by just saying, “Well dad, I will call you at 7 am ( or whenever your time is) and we will talk then.”

Your dad us still manipulating you and you are still not setting boundaries with him. Set the boundaries now and stick to them. Either dad will train you or you will train him.

If you have vetted the care setting your father is in, the care staff there s prepared to address the EMERGENCY needs of their residents.

LET THEM DO THEIR JOBS.

Are you aware that this is not a “him” problem, but a ”you” problem?

If he is exhibiting cognitive decline, he is simultaneously forefitting by default his “rights” to expect you to snap to attention every time you see his number pop into your phone screen. You CANNOT “negotiate” with someone who is losing his ability to reason.

That doesn’t mean that you are a calloused child, mean person, disinterested bystander. It means that you have responsibilities in your life that you need to meet in addition to meeting your responsibilities to provide capable care for a dependent parent (which you’ve already done).

It means that he has a new life and you have a life to live too.

In a similar situation we answered phone calls ONLY during a specified window of time (ours was 6-8 pm, every evening). LO needed a long (6 month) period of adjustment, but ultimately loved her “hotel” and stopped calling.

She was always allowed to leave a message when she called our numbers, and I still keep one in my phone, and occasionally listen to it. Bittersweet, but still evocative of dear memories.

"You have staff, Mom. Use them.". (That's what we told our mom.) Explaining will get you no where with dementia.

We turned our phones off at work. Tha facility will call in a real emergency.

PLEASE PLEASE READ THIS OVER AND OVER UNTIL IT SINKS IN!

If you have vetted the care setting your father is in, the care staff there s prepared to address the EMERGENCY needs of their residents.

LET THEM DO THEIR JOBS.

Are you aware that this is not a “him” problem, but a ”you” problem? ( thank you AnnReid!)

Please take it from someone who has only just recently been freed from this cycle - ONLY by way of removing the phone (due to unfortunate circumstances).

Your father is NOT going to stop. Nothing that you say is going to matter. Because his world has shrunk down to his needs and his needs only. And it's possible that he isn't even concerned with what time of day it is or who he may be inconveniencing with his calls. EVERYTHING is an emergency to him. (yes...even not being able to find the remote, or his phone charger.)

The ONLY way you are going to change this is to change YOUR behavior. Set a mental "Do Not Disturb" or even an actual one if you have to - during your work hours - on his phone number. Or just let him go to voice mail. Remind yourself he is somewhere safe and if there is an emergency you will be notified.

My FIL called ME at work over 20 times in less than 2 hours. He can't hear unless you scream - so I would have to leave my desk if I answered the call. Early on, I felt guilty and would stop every time thinking surely he wouldn't call while I was working unless it was important.

Here are the things he considered URGENT CRITICAL IMPORTANT EMERGENCIES!
Tiktok was no longer showing on his home page on his phone.
His remote was not working for his TV.
He needed his Verizon password so that he could call and ask them to send a tech out to fix his phone (READ: ADD TIKTOK BACK!!! There was nothing wrong with his phone and he had moved Tiktok to another page)
His phone wasn't ringing (it was - he had turned the ringer down and FYI - I had set his phone to RING, Flash front and back camera flash, and vibrate when the phone rang - so he STILL got notifications when someone called)

Do you see a single emergency in that list? Even something urgent? They were important to him because he was bored. But on the scale of 1-10...it didn't even rate for me.

I had to start ignoring him when called while I was at work. I encouraged DH and SIL to let him go to voice mail every once in a while. It took them literal months to finally start and that was because he was calling screaming at them to call the nurse's station to come to his room because he didn't want to push his call button. He had an actual way (attached to his bed) to contact the nurse's station - which is directly outside of his room - and he refused to do it and called one of his kids to do it instead. That is what finally resonated with them and they stopped answering all the time. And when they did answer and he did that, they told him no.

HE isn't going to change. Let me say that again. HE isn't going to change. Only you can change your behavior and control the situation. As long as you do what you have always done, the situation will stay the same (and may get worse!)

You have to decide how much you are willing to take before YOU decide to make changes in your own behavior.

Make your Dad a poster board of the hours your phone will be ON FOR HIM. (That is to say you yourself are doing nothing with your phone but ignoring calls at other hours that are from him). So you will have "TIMES I CAN REACH STRUGGLIN" at the top of the poster board. Then something such as:
6 a.m. ---------8 a.m.
12 noon ------ 1 p.m.
4 p.m.--------- 5 p.m.
8 p.m.---------10 p.m.
At the bottom of the poster you will put "At all other times I should contact my support system here at the ALF."

Then you start the training. At other hours you will ignore calls. So make yourself do that.
Eventually he will be trained or he is beyond being ABLE to be trained and you must train YOURSELF to ignore calls.
At 81 I come of an era in which we were not attached to our phones.
Trust me. It was GOOD TIMES.

Best of luck, Strugglin. I am seeing you out on the Forum. You are one of the few OPs who stick around to help others. That's so appreciated!

He has dementia. What you think he remembers he probably doesn't. His assessment of situations isn't like yours - his dementia controls his thinking.

He wants you to be his trained monkey. He pushes the button, you pick up the phone. He pushes the button, he pushes the button, he pushes the button and you, by now, realize that you're being played.

If he has an emergency, someone else will call you. Not him.

Time to ignore dad. You're not his monkey and you need to keep your job. Don't give him any more contact info than he already has. Don't trust what he says he'll do or not do. Don't give in to this over-entitled spoiled brat of a parent - and don't ever forget he has dementia. He's not the same now. He will never be the same now. And that's that.

I wish you luck.

You need to control the situation. I don’t think it was a good idea to give him your work number. I would block his calls during work hours. If it is a true emergency you will hear from the AL directly. He can leave a message and you can call when you are able.

He just cannot help it, he has dementia. But you need to keep your job. I don’t think he gets that part.

Good luck to you.

He is in AL so why is he calling you anything? This is they get paid for. If he has an issue he talks to them. They can call you there is a real problem

You are trying to use logic with a man who's brain is broken. It won't work.

You are applying YOUR rules to HIS dementia....ie: he promised me. A demented person is incapable of making or keeping promises, period.

His idea of an emergency is the kitchen ran out of cinnamon bread, while you're thinking his arm is hanging off by a thread.

The AL staff WILL call you in the event of a true emergency. Trust me on that.

You say, "Dad seems on board, so he will stay at current AL I think... BUT"
You are allowing a demented man to run the show here. Soon he may think he's living in a hotel and his caregivers take him and his belongings to a new hotel every night, like my mother did. Yet you're ready to spring into action at the first sign he wants to move. Or get a nicer room. Or go to a "better" AL that may not have his favorite lunch the lousy AL had, or a bingo caller who he dislikes. Then what?

YOU are in charge now because dad is no longer in possession of his full mind. YOU call the shots about where he lives and how many calls a day you take from him because otherwise, YOU will need to take Valium along with an antidepressant to manage your own life.

Dementia is a black hole. You can choose to jump down into it with your father or take control of the situation for BOTH of you. There was a time when you took all of dad's wishes into consideration before making any decisions because that's what good sons do. Now things have changed, however, and dad needs something different from you. He needs you to be the adult who makes the wise decisions for him because he's lost that capacity now, sadly, and doesn't know WHAT he wants or what's best for him. In a way, he's the son now and you're the dad; the roles have been reversed. Elders with cognitive impairment have lots of trouble making decisions. The fewer the better. That's where you can be most useful.....to narrow down his choices dramatically FOR him.

When we'd go to a restaurant with mom, we had the choice of sitting there for an hour while she'd sweat bullets over what to order from the menu. So I'd look it over and say mom, what would you like, the combo plate or the fettuccine with meatballs? Then she'd calm down and pick one. Their brains just CANNOT process a bunch of info anymore.

Get the book, Understanding the Dementia Experience by by Jennifer Ghent-Fuller, on Amazon. Learn all you can about dad's condition so you can be most useful to him, and to yourself throughout this journey that progressively worsens.

Good luck.

He is experiencing anxiety. His anxiety feels like an emergency - every time. Please get him evaluated by his doctor or a referral to a psychiatrist, so he can be evaluated and receive appropriate treatment (includes medications).

Your work number is for work, not his calls. Do not give him that number. If he has it, contact your company for a new phone number.

As children, we HAD to do what our parents wanted.

With dementia, we CAN'T do what they want.

THEY are the children now.

We must make decisions FOR them.

Just as you wouldn't let your toddler run the show, you NO LONGER can let your father run his.

Or YOURS..

Put your Dad's calls on "Hide Notifications".

Call him no more than once a day.

Save YOUR sanity.

Best wishes to you.

Do not give dad your work cell number.
let calls go to voicemail.
If it is a TRUE emergency the facility will call you and it will come up on your phone as "Merry Meadow".
Your dad has dementia. For this reason he can not comprehend the instructions to not call you at work or during work hours, or even call only in an emergency....cuz everything is an emergency.

How to Choose an Adult Day Care Center - AgingCare.com

I suggest you set up a time or two you call your dad and check in on him. The combination of anxiety as he realizes he cannot remember things or doubts his own judgment makes him want input from his security blanket - that's you. So give him a time he can count on you to listen. If you Dad still reads well, make a sign posted in his room "I will call you at 6:00p after work. Love you". The sign will remind him you are working (which may or may not impact his desire to call, depending on the stage of his dementia), assures him you are thinking of him and he will have his chance. This helped me when I was working from home as my parent joined me for lunch each day.

If there is a true emergency, the AL staff should call you.

Do not give your work number, he doesn’t have the self awareness to distinguish a real emergency.

Tell your father he cannot call you AT ALL at work. If you reply some of the time (when he thinks there is an emergency) you are reinforcing his calling on an intermittent basis. So doing maintains a huge amount of the behavior in extinction--extinction of the behavior you are trying to eliminate. Tell your father that in emergencies he is to contact the staff and if they think it's an emergency, they will contact you. Let the staff know also. Then, do not answer ANY of his calls to you at work. I know the current problem is with your father, but as a former employer, I would be very concerned with an employee who was receiving frequent non-work related calls that she/he could not eliminate over a reasonable period. This would be true regardless of whether the calls were coming on the work number or on the employee's own phone.

I agree that it's probably inadvisable to give him your work number. But if his memory isn't too bad yet, try working with some of the other strategies offered.

What might work now is unlikely to work later, and it's better for him to have your private number and leave you some degree of control over the calls.

As long as the facility has emergency contact information for you, I wouldn't give him the number. My mother did this for several months, sometimes 12-15 times per day. We finally installed a drop in camera so that I could pop in and make sure that she was ok and then after knowing all was well, just had to ignore the phones calls.

I would reassure him that is why he is in A. there are people all around and he can press his button in an emergency. Let him know they will know how to reach you. I had to ignore some of my mom’s calls too because I would get 20 a day. They are scared in their jumbled world but it can drive you crazy.

I agree with those who say he cannot remember or follow directions not to call. Rather than sternly telling him not to call while you’re at work unless it’s a real emergency, I suggest lovingly asking him to leave you a detailed message about his problem and tell him you will check that on your lunch break or after work and call him back. Let his calls go to voice mail.
Easier said than done. It’s a difficult transition for both of you.
Another thing—my mom moved to a lovely national chain ALF with her own apartment a couple years ago. Brother and I got calls all the time. The place “kicked her out” after a year-ish bc they could not “meet her needs.” They suggested a smaller facility where she could get more attention.
The larger place—200-ish apartments was beautiful. Like living in a resort! But she was not capable of making it there bc of her cognitive decline. The new place, where she has been for one year this Christmas, has 26 beds. She has only a small room and her own bathroom (that was a no negotiable item.) There is no dining room with a menu and chandelier. No pool and hot tub or van for trips—which she could not use anyway. But she gets the attention she needs. I do not get any calls. (Largely bc mum cannot remember how to use Alexa for that.) But, it is working out pretty well.
My point is that I did not understand the limits of ALF care. What I saw from experience is they are great for folks without cognitive decline who just need companionship, meals and cleaning. For folks who need help functioning, they don’t offer that. As soon as the resident needs more, the ALF is declining to take them back from a hospital visit.
If your dad has dementia, things will decline. While you are considering moving him, evaluate whether this place will work for him longterm. Ask them if they keep folks thru the end of life who experience significant cognitive decline.
The admissions person at my mom’s fancy ALF explained to me that the pool, dining room and nice apartment with a screened balcony made me feel better but it was of no value to my mom. Which was true. What matters to my mom is feeling she has someone at her beck and call. The current situation with a single room, door usually open, near care staff station, better meets her needs.
None of it is easy. What we all wish for is to turn the clock back. But that is not possible. It’s a learning curve to see what our current reality is and how to best work within it.
Wishing you peace on this journey.

He is frightened and wants what is familiar to him to 'be there' - you.
Realize that with dementia, he likely cannot make 'promises,' that he can keep. He will say this to appease you.
1ST TO DO - BEFORE CALLING YOU:
- As an/other/s said here, if any emergency he can alert staff. There should be or may be an alert button in his room at facility that he can use anytime.
- He needs to 'get used' to staff being his support, be as comfortable with them as he is with you - to degrees. Of course, you are his family. The relationships are different. It is a matter of him feeling trusting and emotional connection to staff.
GET HIM A JOURNAL ____________________
* Ask him to keep a journal of his thoughts as you REALLY WANT TO KNOW. It will be his 'special' book to share with you.
- If he is able, ask him to write down his thoughts, questions, needs to discuss with you at a later time. His writing do not need to make sense. He could even draw pictures (color pencils?). What this will potentially do:
- give him boundaries and guidelines (and a way to 'shift' from his automatic desire / behavior to call you to picking up his journal and writing/drawing).
- a 'time out,' - an opportunity for him to get his feelings out writing and calm down while re-focusing / easing his obsessive behavior.
- Tell him that you REALLY WANT TO KNOW how he feels by using a personal journey 'just for the two of you.' It will be his 'special' book to share with you.
VOLUNTEERS________________
Lastly, are you able to arrange for volunteers to visit him?
- There are organzations that offer these services.
- Call local high school or college (contact dept heads: nursing, geriatrics, counseling, social worker) and ask if they have a volunteer - or perhaps someone you could pay for an hour visit.
- The more people available to 'befriend' him, the most calmer and safe he will feel (that is the goal).

Realize he is scared and needs reassurance that you love him and are there for him. He will not 'want to' abide by boundaries or be able to - (i.e., wants your work cell / phone number) as his fear/dementia override this logic.

Perhaps if too severe, you get another cell phone number just for him.
This isn't a great solution although it may relieve you of ongoing unnecessary calls.

* Do keep your word - when you set a boundary, keep it. Giving in to him, changing your 'rules/boundaries' will confuse him and he will continue to do what he wants (and thinks what will work).

Gena / Touch Matters

Is he calling on a mobile phone or is there a landline phone in his room? If a mobile phone, there is a mobile phone called a RAZ phone that is great for those with Dementia. Uses photos, touch icon to call, great features that YOU can control. One is that you can set up certain times, etc. when you want no calls, so the caller gets a nice message that says I can't talk to you now, I will call you later, etc--I think you customize it. It's a $300 phone, but uses most mobile plans, and the features are very much worth it.
razmobility.com

Isn't the reason for being in an AL is so that there is someone available at the facility for "emergencies?" If there is a larger issue that requires an approval or decision from you, the AL would contact you. Is the AL not helping appropriately or is your Dad just asking for more atteniton and reassurance from you? Just telling him not to call so often is not going to make any diffeence at all.

I have a similar problem except that my husband is a sundowner -- his panics mostly happen between about 11:00 PM and 4:00 AM. And he truly does panic: the calls are almost always "Where am I? Who are these people? When is this hospital [he's in a nice AL] going to let me go home?" [I had to sell his house to afford AL -- home helpers were MUCH more expensive]. During the day he knows where he is, although he still doesn't regard the AL as a permanent arrangement. But the nighttime calls are genuine panics. I can get him to push the nurse button but only after I've answered the call and calmed him down a bit.

Meanwhile this constant interruption of sleep is making me sicker and weaker than I already am.

I do have a solution...but it's temporary. Our doc, who monitors hubby at the AL, got worried about ME -- physically I'm in much worse shape than hubby. Doc raised hubby's dose of Seroquel and right now I'm getting full nights' sleep. But the Seroquel dose is reaching the top and at some point I may have to hire a helper to stay all night with him -- a situation we can't afford for very long.

Other than meds I don't have experience with solutions. I know that his panics are real to him, a nightmarish state in which he controls nothing and understands nothing. Suggestions or demands won't work. I think you need to think about changing the phone connection as some have suggested so that he truly can't get through and you can call him every evening. But there are also problems the AL facility may have with handling constant calls...ALs all around the country are short-staffed. It is important to understand the dark world he lives in, and know that he suffers, but you can't throw your own health or professional situation into the fire too. That is a problem with dementias of various kinds: the patient is truly frightened or angry or unable to judge situations -- a terrible state to be in; but the loved one in charge is making the situation worse if he/she ruins his/her life or health trying to make the patient's life more pleasant.

My solution for my own future (if I live longer than my husband, which is not a given) is to use a stash of money to go to Zürich if I become aware of first signs of dementia. It's a horrible, terrifying world to live in. I love my husband so much...seeing his fear and the panics breaks my heart every time and I cry and can't help answering the phone. When the meds stop working I can't imagine what his world will be like. A few weeks ago hubby was more lucid than usual and said he wished he'd taken advantage of our state's right-to-die laws. He can't do it now because you have to be "in your right mind" to request this. But he's aware of his own constant pain. It doesn't look like physical agony but it's just as awful.

I'm sorry, I know how frustrating it is because I experienced the same with my Dad. Once he called me over 23x in a 24 hour period. I often received multiple calls throughout the night as well. They are lonely, scared, afraid they will be forgotten. But we have to keep our jobs and honestly, our sanity. I kept my phone on silent with the exception of the facility. I called Dad every day at lunch and would speak with him as much as he needed after work until I went to bed. I felt horrible for doing it but I didn't know of any other way. My Dad died just over a year ago and I still feel guilt and will for the rest of my life. But if I had to do it again, I'd have to do it the same way. Of course I'd give absolutely anything to get a call from Dad, or Mom.....I wish you the best, it's a level of difficulty we could never be prepared for.