Does anyone else find their aging parents picking up gross habits as the age?

You're frightened OP, you see yourself 30 years from now...it's not pretty.

I do all of these things already and unabashedly so!

R2 = The Duchess of Sussex, trying to appear more relatable to the masses

Yep, I've noticed a similar trend with my Mother OP.

It's a combination of Fox news and gluten. I recommend deleting Fox from their TV and switching out their bread for gluten free.

My mother leaves the TV on all night and doesn't care that even the neighbors complain about the noise in the summer. I sleep right above her bedroom when I visit and it is just so loud. Who the hell can sleep with that noise? My mother also doesn't care if we see her naked anymore and walks around the house naked or in her underwear, but she is highly offended when my brother's girlfriend comes upstairs unannounced (they live in the basement during the pandemic). I don't want to see her naked either! She also sometimes leaves the bathroom door open and you can hear her at the breakfast table in the kitchen. Shut the fucking door, please! My father only takes a bath now once a week and we sometimes have to remind him to take an additional shower. My parents also sometime share the same bathing water. Eww. They have lots of money and could easily afford their own bath water, but they both grew up poor and are still frugal. Ewwww.

My folks also kept the TV on all night. The only other thing that bothered me was them not removing expired food items from the fridge, and this was when we employed a caregiver who stayed with them during the day.

My parents started not throwing away expired refrigerated foods, too, well over a decade ago. My dad was sick with leukemia at the time, and it was a handful for my mother, so maybe that’s why they just started getting lax about that stuff.

They didn’t consume the expired food, they just left it in the fridge. It wasn’t stuff that would get terribly moldy, but it was expired as hell.

Maybe they’re being gross on purpose to get rid of people living in their home?

My late parents didn’t bathe often enough, passed gas without realizing it, made annoying sounds, etc. Guess what? I miss them, and wish I had been more patient about their decline.

Don't read this thread before breakfast.

....

God. My parents are in their late 70s and I can’t be around them anymore when they’re eating. My mom chokes and coughs every time she eats and my dad chomps down hard on his silverware. They also take about 45 minutes to eat what takes me 5 minutes.

Mom also has gotten where she talks at the tv annoyingly. She also moans and doesn’t even know she’s doing it.

At 90 me mum began flinging her poo at me.

^ Actually we started at 50.

All you people complaining about your parents nasty habits this is a window into your future self. Children become like the parents as you get older.

My mother (70) is getting bad enough it's becoming a little hard to be around sometimes. A recent highlight: me, putting chunks of raw chicken into a curry sauce to marinade, mother comes up, sticks her fingers into the marinade-coated RAW chicken, then licks them. I gasped, said: "Mom! What the fuck! That's raw chicken!" and she just kind of smirks and goes, "Woops." I could have puked. She's also getting a bit lax on cleaning, after a lifetime of being a very clean person.

Old people have reached the stage of beyond the point of caring. They do the things they do because they do not give a fuck. Why should they? They're OLD.

This thread is making me laugh. Old people are funny

My dad was complaining about how some of his grandkids don't have good table manners. I was laughing, because he always licks food off his knife and then uses the same knife in the communal butter (gross). AND he likes to piss standing up with the door open, so we're all listening to him while we're watching TV. But that's about it, I guess everyone has some bad habits.

[quote]My mom chokes and coughs every time she eats

As a nurse that actually concerns me because that’s a sign of dysphasia (difficulty swallowing). It might seem harmless enough but other than the obvious choking hazard it also puts her at risk of aspiration pneumonia which can be life-threatening for the elderly. Your mom could benefit from a speech-language pathology evaluation.

*dysphagia

My mom keeps dirty tissues stuffed up her sleeves. It’s revolting. Every time I see her, I have to play tug of war with her to make her throw away the dirty tissues. She hates washing her hands, too.

Please, R21. Enough. It is nature's way for people to "aspire" to heaven.

R13, just make sure you tell your mother to have a good breath in when she is choking on some bit or trifle.

Soon there will be no more of that nasty coughing that bothers you so much.

AND anyone who is sticking a finger into marinating raw chicken for a slurp AT 70 has issues not related to being only 70.

Decay, silence and keeping to the dark or blowing away in the wind are very gross habit among the parents of many of the gentlemen and ladies here.

My late mother got a little lax with the cleaning toward the end. She also let food stick around too long, farted whenever and wherever, was ornery and outspoken. I’d give anything to have her back.

My parents diets went down the tubes in last decade of their lives. Their eating habits had devolved into eating fried takeout or Chinese restaurant food much of the time, and when they food shopped it was mostly junk food because my mother had stopped cooking unless she had to.

What made it so gross is that they were barely cleaning up after themselves, and then they stopped bathing except for doctor appointments, major holidays, etc.

I dreaded visiting them because I knew the house would be messy and filthy everywhere you looked. It was heartbreaking to see because they seemed to becoming more and more detached from self-awareness by the day. They both had major health issues as a result which probably shortened their lives by 5-10 years.

R27, sounds like your dad isn’t holding up his end of the deal. She cooked for decades and he can’t bother doing it for the last 15 years of their lives?

R28, my parents, especially my father, were very old school. He kept a steady well-paying union job for over 40 years, which provided food, shelter and clothing, and he felt it was my mother's duty and role to cook and clean. It was a very blue-collar, middle class upbringing.

He worked his entire life without ever taking a vacation or time off (his choice) except for when he needed hospitalization for major surgery sometime in his 40s.

My formerly sweet 78 year old mother has taken to disagreeing with every single word I utter. This started about 2 years ago and its gotten so bad I hardly speak to her. The milk could be so spoiled it'd have chunks in it,and if I say "its bad ,we have to pitch it" and instantly its "No its not,youre just wasteful" And she says it very nastily too. I find the whole situation maddening yet heartbreaking. We used to be best friends .

R29, well your mom worked every single day, without a day off and with no paycheck, for those same 40 years

It's funny how many DLers are taking care of aging parents, nice of them, while also living in their aging parents' houses...

If you're living with your parents and not paying rent, then it's tough shit. (Yes, I've lived as an adult, rent-free, with my mom.)

The one thing my mom did that drove me crazy was listen to the TV turned up LOUD. At one point, she sat in a chair really far away from the TV. She had hearing loss & didn't like wearing her hearing aid.

As long as someone has a grasp of what's in the fridge (inventory), I don't see the expiration dates as being "throw away" dates. As long as something smells and tastes good, still sealed, etc., I'll eat it. Haven't gotten sick yet, knock on wood.

That said, I loved my mom and miss her very much.

My dad has started answering FaceTime calls while he’s on the toilet. I guess I should be happy he can finally use his phone but still...

OMG R19, the old lady in that looks like some sort of insect! :)

My mother has taken to being a hoarder - it’s gotten so bad that they are renting a house they can’t afford just to store shit she with not part with. When we helped them try to clean I threw out a jar of green mayonnaise and she yelled at me. To make it worse they live WAY beyond their means. It’s sad, but they have rejected help all the time.

R31, that's true, she did work every day as well for those 40 years. Unfortunately, my father never saw it that way or realized what she went through. And I must say, regrettably so, until I was an adult, I didn't fully appreciate what either of them did to provide and care for a family.

R36, hoarding is always a result of a dysfunctional personal relationship or relationships. Your mother is literally putting up walls to keep from being hurt again. Why would she be doing that?

R30 - a change in temperament, from sweet and loving to querulous and nasty is an early symptom of the onset of Alzheimer’s. It happened to my grandmother. Get your mom to a doctor for a cognitive assessment, and perhaps some drugs to slow the decline.

My dad used to pick his nose and then smear it on the steering wheel.

My mother reuses dental floss & qtips, & also reuses silverware, plates & glasses without washing them. And she takes butter/jelly packets from restaurants, even when they’re lower quality than what you’d buy from the store.

Old people earned the right to be like 2 Live Crew!! They as nasty as they wanna be!!!

LOL R42......

The last decade I took care of my mom, paid bills and ordered groceries and takeout from afar. I lived in NYC and would take the bus to Boston once a month and “reset” her apartment, deep cleaning, restocking, etc. The home care help she got during three times a week was “light duty” cleaning but she lucked out and had a wonderful attendant. They weren’t allowed to accept tips and you couldn’t contact them directly. I always had to make sure there were plenty of rolls of quarters and that she never ran out of them. She DID clean after herself and kept herself up but not reliably. It was very touch and go.

Near the end of living alone she had a terrible incontinence problem. I rented a car and steam cleaner, and several giant lawn bags and washed every cushion, pillow, blanket and stitch of clothing she owned. I literally filled the car, brimming to the roof and drove it to an industrial sized washing machine several towns over.

I spent $200 that day and everything was soiled again within two weeks.

She had to go in for surgery before Covid hit and never came back out. She’s in a nursing home and the toughest part is that if she didn’t have such a problem with incontinence, we could’ve kept her at home or with my brother or myself. There’s no way I could agree or allow my husband to deal with that under our roof.

Really sad, R44, you sound like a good son / daughter.

Who is paying for the nursing home R44? Have you moved your mom's assets and got her on Medicaid? In NY state deems any money and assets over $15,000 are "too much" to keep anyone in a nursing home long term.

Health insurance plans only cover up to 100 days, after that, you either spend down you parent's assets in addition to giving the nursing home your parent's SS check and if they have one, their pension.

One of my elderly neighbor's was almost forced to sell her co-op! The nursing home her husband was in cost them their life savings, then, the nursing home tried to go after the co-op which the wife was still living in. Thankfully, the husband, who had Alzheimers, died and she's still in the co-op. She's now in her mid-90s.

I find that so many old people, especially the lower middle class, have no clue about the high costs of nursing homes. Most of the people I met when my parents were in nursing homes short term, after surgeries, were all wealthy people who managed to get on Medicaid by moving their assets years before the needed in a nursing home care.

It's amazing how many well off comfortable people are on Medicaid. One woman I spoke to owned three apartment buildings, another owned five houses, one house was in Europe! They were all savvy enough to move assets so they wouldn't have to pay anything to the nursing home but their SS checks and any pensions they were getting.

Upper middle class and rich people who want to remain at home, also game the system to have their daily home aides covered by Medicaid, they move their assets to a family member. They even put their homes under a family member's name.

In NYC, our property taxes cover these programs. I recently read an article about this, think in was in The NY Times.

There should be a limit on how much money and property people can have to be eligible for these Medicaid programs. All these well-off people are doing is essentially hiding their money and assets and it's legal. Essentially, my property taxes are being used to help the rich save millions on their Medicaid covered healthcare.

A lifelong friend of mine had old crank parents that were in their 70's while she was in college. She told me, "once day your parents will be old and crazy". I think of those words all the time...everyone's parents become old AND crazy.

I think your parents start to become annoying in their 60's. Then the crazy train ramps up in the 70s.

My mom is 82 and thankfully I don't have a TON to complain about - except that old person smell that permeates everything in her apartment. It's suffocating and I can't figure out where it comes from.

After years of being sharp and a no-nonsense bitch, she is now the PERFECT target for any and all scammers. Every piece of mail asking for donations gets a consideration. She has almost been scammed of thousands of dollars by these scammers in India. We've had to change the phone # three times in the past few years.

If I end up like that, I'm going to be fucked. No kids to take care of me - I don't know what I'm going to do.

R48 - I wonder about myself too - Alzheimer’s runs on my dads side of the family - he’s a frail 86, but no where near as bad as his mother was at that age. My mom is a sharp 82 and still does everything - she refuses to even hire a cleaning lady - her parents were fine into their 90s.

There is a McDonalds on 8th Ave and 56th street - before it was renovated there was a plaque thanking everyone in the restaurant from the family of an elderly man with dementia who would show up there every day with no money - the manager made sure the staff always gave him food.

[quote]A lifelong friend of mine had old crank parents that were in their 70's while she was in college. She told me, "once day your parents will be old and crazy". I think of those words all the time...everyone's parents become old AND crazy.

Don't forget, this will happen to you too. We are all going to get old.

It's amazing how self centered young people are, most think they'll be 25, healthy and hot forever.' Lmfao..!!!

When visiting my mom out of state a few times yearly when she was was widowed and in her 60s, 70s and early 80s, I noticed her living room carpet sometimes had stains from diarrhea. Yuck. I guess she'd walk around without underwear when in her nightgown.

Even worse: she picked me up at the bus station on my visits and eventually I noticed an awful smell in the car. Yep, she had had diarrhea on the fabric driver's seat and likely never bothered to clean it properly, or all all, and it had dried and discolored the seat and left the car smelling putrid. I wonder what the poor mechanic thought! She was over 80 at that time. I never told my brother out of state, as I didn't want to embarrass her.

When I received her car when she had to move to assisted living after a fall, I eventually, somehow, was able to eliminate the smell.

...

Yet I'm 61, and in the past 20 years, several times a year I poop my pants just as I arrive at my apartment! Good thing I don't live with a partner, roommates or friends. Sometimes it seems it happens if I've had pizza and ice cream, etc., earlier that day. Yes, so disgusting of me!

Stealth scat thread!