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Just a larger question for all of you. What is the appropriate number of visits per week or other tangible examples to prove you are properly caring for someone?


My own personal feeling is - everyone reacts differently to a loved one's illness/placement in nursing home and step up in their own way. As the only daughter, I visit my mother six times a week at the nursing home. She is very happy to see me and we enjoy the time.


Other family members seem to judge others about how frequently or infrequently people come to visit or call. I say to each their own and why keep score? If someone is being judged harshly by others and not treated nicely, then that makes them less inclined to come again. So I am grateful for anything anyone gets.


Any thoughts/discussion?

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People do sometimes judge and impute their own judgment for other people's decisions. I try not to do that. It's difficult to visit nursing homes, Memory Care facilities, etc. It touches on a lot things deep inside us. I get that. I think that I wrote off one entire side of my LO's family, because, they seemed to abandon her when she got sick with dementia. It's not that they didn't visit the AL or MC, but, they didn't call, send note, send a card, nothing, no inquiry about her at all....nothing from them for 5 years! I did all care myself with no help. But, that's okay. So, I take it that they just couldn't handle it. I have my doubts about why they really fell off the earth, but, I have let it go and no longer even think about it. She wouldn't recognize them now anyway.
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If your care is more a public show for others, then you are doing it for the wrong reasons. I've had to struggle with the point of visiting or calling my MIL (as the only local and caring DIL) when her short-term memory is so bad she doesn't remember I was there 1 minute after I leave. I'm not sure the visit helps her in any way but it gives me peace of mind to check on her and practice what I hope others may do for me in that situation. She can't make any satisfying conversation and is more distressed in struggling to remember things. It breaks my heart. Often I will just call or email the staff to get updated if I haven't had time to visit. Score keeping is not healthy, and is often disappointing.
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I think that visiting a person in a facility is likely often tied to the relationship you had in the previous years, perhaps the judgment comes from people who use their own family experiences to gauge the relationships of others.
There are a lot of people who don't visit or even talk to their parents or sibs more than a few times a month, if that, and nobody thinks they are odd or cruel.
Then there are the families who are "in each other's pockets" calling and visiting often, sometimes even living in multi-generational homes.
And of course there are the dysfunctional families we run into so often on this forum, the ones with histories of mental illness, narcissism and abuse.
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