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She is in the best assisted living she can financially afford, which, after visiting many others, is pretty good.


I don’t think it’s reasonable to ask assisted living to replace the majority of their staff! Her racist attitude (which never surfaced in her active years) is shining through. I’m sure staff see this and resent her.


We try to be positive but it’s gotten to the point where I dread seeing her. I’ve spoken to her about her decision to be miserable. She’s on a low dose of antidepressants. I’ve scheduled a psychiatrist visit and my bet is she will want to change meds to one that works better and has an anti-anxiety effect. We tried .25 of Ativan but even that throws her balance off. Mom will probably not do this.


I am so tired. My brother helps, but isn’t very emotionally available. So I’m it.

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Believe me, the AL staff is not bothered by your mother's racist attitude. They understand all the behaviors that are generational or from dementia. I was a caregiver mostly to elderly for almost 25 years. Believe me when I say, people who tend to be extra sensitive and who get offended over the slightest thing cannot manage in this line of work for long.
If you believe there are any staff at the AL who are resentful because of your mother's unpleasantness and that may retaliate over her racism, then those employees need to get fired at once from their positions. Caregiving is not the right line of work for them. You may even need to go higher than reporting to their superiors at work and take it up with the state or the police.
It does not matter how unpleasant, miserable, or racist a person is. When professional staff is being paid to provide care for them, they need to provide it. Violent criminals in prison are provided care when they need it.
So the staff at your mother's AL needs to get the hell over themselves and their "sensitivity" issues and do their job or go.
As for you thinking that you're "it" about being the one who has to take your mother's miserable, negative, emotionally abusive behavior - you're not.
You do not have to see or speak to her. You are the one who sets the tone for what a phone call or visit will be like. You decide how long the calls and visits will be and how often.
When your mother starts up with the behavior, you end the call or visit. You tell her plainly that you will not tolerate her behavior and let that be the end of it.
My mother is the meanest most miserable person in all of Creation. When she tries to start with me (and she has many different angles), I walk away. I will not engage on any level or on any topic. You do the same.
In fact, it would be easy for you to not engage because you don't live in the same house as your mother. She's in AL. You can hang up a phone or walk out a door. What's she going to do?
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As my bro observed when he was in Assisted Living, complaining is what they do for fun. About the food, gossiping about the caregivers and etc. He said it was much like our communal groups of the 60s. Everyone bickering about whether the shades in the communal room should be up so Myra can paint or down so Irma doesn't have a glare of the TV screen. Every Friday a meeting of each cottage to complain.
If Mom was a happy camper full of the joy of life before ALF, then perhaps things aren't good, but if Mom had a good amount of complaining always, then that's her normative setting. You are certainly doing what you can. I would make visits short and sweet, listen, sympathize, and on you go with your day.
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When so was in training, his partner entered a unit being a knock short of the facility’s alternating two doorbell, two knock protocol. The resident complained specifically, the trainer admitted it was out of protocol. Everyone in the department had to physically sign that they know what the protocol is.
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I would say your problem is Mom, if this us how she has always been. You do not mention Dementia being part of the problem. We all have age decline as we age. If Dementia is part of the problem, not really anything you can do. You can no longer reason with her and the filter drops away. So tgey say whatever comes into their mind.

When I worked for Visiting Nurses we had an aide who came back upset by a racial comment that had been said to her. I was aware that the client had Dementia. I explained that to the aide that she will find that in the older people. Right no, but nothing you can really do about it. So get a thicker skin or don't do this kind of work. Because of another unrelated incident, she wasn't with us long.
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Your brother helps but is emotionally unavailable. That’s the secret. Detach from your Mother’s behavior emotionally. This is the only thing that helps me with my MIL. I have noticed that when we do so…MIL changes her behavior. Try it….
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Your mom is in AL, right?
If so, she’s expected to be able to do her ADLs and be relatively competent and cognitive. It’s assisted living, technically it’s not for those with behavioral issues or needing any type of skilled care or oversight. So if in AL, she should know what she is doing. And she is expected to be somewhat civil & social to others, & that means residents AND staff.

Nobody is asking her to run for social chair at KappaDeltaAssisted Living…. but she is expected to be civil.
At some point in future time she is going to say or do something that another resident or their family finds to be beyond the pale. Something that can be considered within a hate crime. Employees have rights to thier own workplace safety. Being old & living in AL does not give her a free pass. Some resident Anglo son or daughter is going to have an Asian, AA, Hispanic, Indian, LGB etc partner and they have kids & visit & moms racism will be an issue. Or mom’s racism is to the point that she considers staff to instead be servants and berates or strikes them as she views that as her white privilege & prerogative. Unacceptable.

She’s AL and they can easily send her a 30 Day Notice to move under the guise of “unable to provide her level of care” & they do not need to detail why but her actions will be noted in her chart. She’ll be toast to ever getting into another AL place easily.

Personally I think your choices are stark,
- psych is clearly told issues & she goes onto newer medications which sufficiently quell her behavior
or
Medications won’t make a difference so you have a come to Jesus talk with her and if she refuses to change then u wait for the Notice to hit and she goes into a MC or NH facility with a behavioral unit. (Hopefully she can private pay or qualify for LTC Medicaid) By being in MC or NH she will be deemed to have behavioral issues that r not within her ability to control and so staff does move past this; …. or Mom moves into family members home. Again should she want to find a new AL, there will be catch words that any new AL will find out abt so she’s toast…. won’t be HIPPA violation stuff but more like she would not refrain from deliberate ethnic slurs… red flags, she’s toast.

Jobs at facilities lower pay with lots of scut work. Historically staff AA and now overwhelmingly immigrants. Having rude residents gets overlooked but having residents whose behavior threatens staff or demeans others should not be tolerated. Your mom vs safety & security of other (50-100+) staff, residents & their families. It’s not a winning position for mom.

Also please think if there’s TV, radio, print or online that she is watching that’s feeding her racism. Like If she has the TV tuned to AltR white Nationalism leaning stuff, that needs to stop. Too frickin’ bad that from now on she only gets TCM
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"Oh well."
"Oh dear."
"That's too bad Mom".
"What are you going to do about that?"

Cycle through as required.

Experienced AL staff have probably heard every type of insult before. They know some express every emotion they feel, like a toddler & others complain for entertainment like teens. But they also hear much praise & thankyous too from the sweet ones who love their carers.

Sometimes a Grump softens to a Sweetie in time too.
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My mother also became a vocal racist in AL. I had never heard this from her in my life. My father would have never allowed it. But now she is so diminished, that too is gone. Hospice reports she is pleasant and in a good mood. I tell them the dementia has finally taken her personality away and there is a decent human being under there.
I am sure that the caregivers hear all sorts of crazy.
Also, my mom was in psych ward last Spring. They took her off Xanax. Said Xanax and Ativan are the worst drugs for dementia. When they come out of their stupor, their behaviors are worse such as her paranoia and hostility. I only let them use on an emergency basis when fully agitated. She is on other psych meds for daily meds.
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Thank you fir all of your positive posts of dealing with this issue. Mom does have dementia and yes, her filters are going. I am joining a small support group that meets once a month.
I would like to say that there is one post that probably didn’t need to be so strident ~ in fact In this forum of venting and compassion, it was rather ( perhaps unintentionally) harsh. it even was upsetting.
thanks especially to Burnt Cargiver and Alvadear
JoAnn and Burnt and peggysue.
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Is your mother of sound mind? Or does she have dementia? I'm not sure what she did specifically that makes you call her "racist." If she's of sound mind, you can discuss with her how important it is to be respectful of the staff. You cannot ask the facility to change their staff for your mother, unless they are doing something inappropriate. If she has dementia, she probably will not learn to behave differently at this stage in her life. People with dementia often forget where they put things and accuse others of taking or moving their things. They regress back to things they learned in childhood. AL staff are usually trained not to take the comments personally, and at my mother's facility I say a resident kick a member of the staff. I told the staff that I was sorry that it happened but she said that it does happen with some residents. You can apologize to the staff separately, and let them know you think they are doing a good job. Older people sometimes loose their social graces and say anything they think of. My father, with hearing loss, said critical things very loudly! Please don't feel responsible for the things your mother says. Try to accept her as she is day by day and keep a positive attitude when you are with her. It's not easy moving to assisted living when a person has been independent. If she says things like she wants to go "home" it's usually symbolic and means she wants to be the person she used to be. Talk to the staff to find out what is common behavior and what they recommend doing for it. All the best to you both!
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I am surprised by some of the comments here. People have a right to their own opinions and views. They also have a right to hold personal racist beliefs if they choose to. Its morally wrong but not against the law.
Would a LatinX gang member who hates white people be refused care in prison because of his racist views?
No. He would not be. Neither would the neo-Nazi with the schwastika tattoos all over his body.
It's not illegal to personally have racist views. Especially with the elderly. People can have any view they want.
I worked in a very nice AL a while back. I had put on some weight from being at home recovering from a car accident before going back to work and starting the new job at the AL.
Several times a day every day, I was remarked to about my wieght by some resident or another. Some of the hurtful comments were thinly veiled in "kindness" that people so often attempt when making harsh and snide comments about someone's appearance. Statements like, 'If only you could lose some weight you have such a pretty face'. Or 'Did you ever try just cutting down on how much you eat?'. This one being particularly amusing considering that the little old lady who repeated it to me daily had never witnessed me so much as take a sip of water in her presence.
Know how I responded to all of the comments?

By doing my job. Some residents had to be told plainly that I couldn't care less about their opinion because that was the God's honest truth.
I really couldn't care less about the opinions held by the elderly residents in the AL or those of my many homecare clients over the last 25 years.
Really the only opinions I ever paid the slightest mind to were what and if someone wanted lunch or what they wanted to watch on tv. Other than that I pretty much could not care less.
I worked with a few women of color from Caribbean nations who overreacted over just about everything. Their over-sensitivity was not so much due to the racist-leanings of some residents at the AL. They used that as an excuse to justify their laziness and extremely poor work ethic. They wanted to sit around all shift in the break room on their phones or be outside smoking and not doing the job they were being paid to do. If a resident made a complaint to me (I was the shift supervisor) and I spoke to them about it they cried racism against the resident. When it was apparent that I did not buy that BS story for a second, they tried to accuse me of witchcraft, beg my pardon. I mean racism which is to our times today what an accusation of witchcraft was to the residents of Salem, MA some 300+ years ago.
I knew that wasn't the reason why they weren't doing their jobs or why all three were let go. They tried to sue for racial discrimination and got nowhere. I had to testify in court when they tried to sue. I spoke plainly and told the truth about them.
They were fired because they were lazy, rude, and had zero work ethic. Late all time. Calling out sick all the time. Not helping the residents. Their race played no part in the firing.
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she is not wrong I have seen the way some workers are toward some patients
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I feel so sorry for anyone in a nursing home because that what it is. what a shame and people cant stay in their home and get help. I dont blame your mom I have seen that attitude in action and the workers are lasy horrible
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Her racist beliefs were always there but now she doesn’t care about concealing her true colors anymore, antidepressants etc are important when necessary for depression but there’s no connection between depression and being a racist. I can understand why the staff isn’t fond of her as it sounds like she’s making racial slurs at some staff. I would tell her you won’t visit until her inflammatory language stops
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Could it be the onset of Alzheimer’s?
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She's a changed person. When your mom was well was she a compassionate and respectful person? Maybe like folks with Tourettes syndrome she's saying things that would never have entered her mind or heart were she well.

Bring in music. I'm not tech savvy so I bought a Simpl (no "e") radio for my husband. It's very helpful for his mood.

Can you put up photos or little posters (maybe printed-outs) of famous black and white friends in her room like; Dean Martin, Sam Davis Jr and Frank Sinatra; Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe; Michael Jackson and Liza Minnelli? Take photos of your mom with aids, black and white ones, and put those up.

Tell you're mom that you had a DNA swab tested and guess what.

I dread the thought of how I may change that will have nothing to do who I am.
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ummm... Sounds like a form of dementia or mild cognitive impairment. YOU need to stop with labelling it a "racist" attitude. you have to understand that the brain damage allows for the forbidden words to be used and suddenly being surrounded by people of a different culture and race compared to her younger years would be upsetting and angering for anyone.
The problem is the lack of understanding and training for most in the care industry.
You should probably look at Teepa Snow's older (longer) videos on youtube to understand the actual BRAIN changes and thus Behavior changes that can occur.
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I finally read to the point where you said your Mom has dementia.

I went through it too. It was embarrassing to me. She wasn't embarrassed. She said she was speaking the truth. She tried to get those caregivers out of her home by making things up things that they did. I wanted proof that they were doing those things, and she had no proof. So they continued to come and eventually we passed through that phase. This was during the early/mid stage of dementia when she could still interpret people's emotions.

What we did do was NOT react angrily or with surprise to her racist comments. We would just calmly challenge her truth, and when she began to get agitated, we stopped the conversation, walked away from her (every one in the room except the caregiver) and waited 10 minutes before interacting with her again. Because time is warped, she would ask us why we were not speaking to her, and we said it was because she was saying bad things about people and that it was making us angry.

After about a couple of weeks of "stop of the conversation", the racist comments stopped. It wasn't completely because of the dementia. She didn't like the fact that she was in "time out".

I'm sorry you are going through this. It is emotionally very painful and embarrassing.

P.S. Nothing was off-limits to my Mom's comments. I just made sure that she didn't get an emotional rise out of me and I sure didn't agree with it. Sometimes, she really meant to say something else, but couldn't find the words.
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Joannepr: I am so sorry that your mother suffers from dementia. Love and hugs sent.
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Geriatric psychiatrist will use different medications than the usual short term anti-anxiety medications used in hospitals. Those medications usually work better but may take a short period until they are most therapeutic. She has lost her social filter so the uncouth thoughts she has are all expressed without the benefit of "thinking before speaking." The staff may not like her words but are probably used to this type of behavior from others.

For you,
1 - Apologize to staff about your mom's harsh words, send thank you card to them, and maybe goodies. (Let's them know you don't condone this.)
2 - Stop owning your mom's bad behavior as a failure on your part. Her attitude and behavior are her responsibility.
3 - Consider that the staff at her facility and her doctors are part of your team - a team committed to helping you give your mom her best life possible.
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