It’s a bit of a confusing situation for me(16). I was at the mall with my girlfriend(16) when we saw this elderly woman by herself. She seemed lost and was wearing a sticker label with a name and phone number. I recalled reading that sometimes caregivers give dementia patients those things so I talked to her. She asked me where she was.
I called the number and the guy said he is her son. Came to pick her up. She denied that he is her son though and protested when he led her away.
My girlfriend said I shouldn’t have just let him take her like that and he might not be who he said he is or might have been abusing her, since she seemed afraid of him. That I should have called the police to verify or something. I just don’t know. It was my first time dealing with this sort of situation.
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It’s a bit of a confusing situation for me(16). I was at the mall with my girlfriend(16) when we saw this elderly woman by herself. She seemed lost and was wearing a sticker label with a name and phone number. I recalled reading that sometimes caregivers give dementia patients those things so I talked to her. She asked me where she was.
I called the number and the guy said he is her son. Came to pick her up. She denied that he is her son though and protested when he led her away.
My girlfriend said I shouldn’t have just let him take her like that and he might not be who he said he is or might have been abusing her, since she seemed afraid of him. That I should have called the police to verify or something. I just don’t know. It was my first time dealing with this sort of situation.
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> I might be the asshole since she did seem afraid of him when he led her away.
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Contest mode is 1.5 hours long on this post.
Dementia patients can forget their family members. If they had been in good mental health and trying to escape an abusive situation she would have taken the sticker off. You did the right thing by calling her family.
NTA you did what you thought was best
NAH your girlfriend’s concern is understandable but you did the right thing. Sadly with dementia not recognizing people or even assuming that people are beating her are all symptoms. My mother suffered from dementia and reported me multiple times to the doctors for refusing to feed her, beating her and being verbally abusive. I was investigated multiple times always found innocent of course and although it made me angry every time I had to deal with it or tell the story over again, I understood.
If you’re still concerned about it you can call the Department of Human Services in your hometown and give them the person’s number and report what happened.
Dementia patients can often have this reaction even to loved ones. My grandmother declined rapidly with dementia and would often run away from home claiming she was being abused when that just wasn’t the reality. They lose grasp of reality when they are going through episodes. It’s incredibly tragic and hard to watch, but is part of the process unfortunately. All you can do is return them to their caregivers and hope for the best.
NTA
Not an asshole because you did what you thought was best at the time but I also see her point as well since the women seemed afraid of him.
Sometimes dementia patients can react that way regardless just because they can become disoriented easily.
I don’t think you’re wrong, especially since she has the contact info on her but I think asking the police to verify could be peace of mind as well.
If she’s impaired enough that her caretakers/family put name & number identifying info on her, it’s very probable that she didn’t recognize her own son, as it’s a common issue in dementia patients. If you’d called the authorities, it would have probably been so much worse, because then they’d have both been detained while the investigation was happening, and she would have gotten so much more agitated. Most family and the caretakers of patients know best how to deal with their confusion and can get them safely returned to their homes.
NAH
It was his name and number. Dementia often means people don’t recognize their loved ones.
Dementia sucks.
next time call mall security
NTA. Your girlfriend’s concern is understandable, but as others have said, dementia patients can forget family members. My grandma could not recognize two of her four daughters on one visit.
Dementia patients can also have incorrect memories. Said grandma once insisted that all six of her kids left her in front of the Steak and Shake down the street in her underwear in front of everybody, and kept driving around the parking lot laughing at her. As you may have guessed, this didn’t happen.
NTA. If she didnt know where she was, what was happening or WHY she had a sticker with a name and phone number on her chest, there is a good indication that she is impaired in some way.
You did the best with the information you had at the time. Namely, there was a contact number readily available and visible and you called.
Allow me a moment to thank you for acting, many people choose to ignore events and stand by watching without action. People who get “lost” can easily get agitated, sad, angry, loud, cry, act out… Their brain is struggling. It is highly unlikely a random stranger is walking around with name tags sticking them on older people with nefarious plans in the hopes people call them to act out their villainous scheme. Usually, a “call if found” number on and elder is placed there by a loved one or caretaker.
And calling police might have stressed or traumatized a confused individual and triggered an episode. Now, you could have gone to mall customer service and asked for an adult in security to assist you… but I think what you did was completely acceptable and appropriate under the circumstances.
Good job, young lady. Don’t doubt your gut instinct here.
NAH you did exactly the right thing
NTA. I understand why your girlfriend is worried. It’s so much easier to criticize the person who did something than to be the person who got someone done though, isn’t it?
Since the guy answered the number that was on her clothing, he definitely was her son. A good friend of mine just told me recently that before his mom died they went through a period where she didn’t recognize him and would insist he wasn’t her son. She’d say he looked like her son, but he wasn’t him. He even showed her his ID and she still said he wasn’t her son. And then one day she knew exactly who he was and didn’t remember denying he was her son.
Imagine you were running away from home, and some adult called your parents, told them where you were, and did not respond to your display of fear of them or your denial that they were in fact your parents.
YTA.
You did the right thing and yes he was her family. She was just confused. It would have been much scarier for her to have police come.
NTA or NAH
She didn’t get that name tag out of nowhere. Dementia patients can absolutely forget who their family members are and may exhibit fear of them, in spite of the fact that those relatives might be the ones taking care of them.
Dementia is a terrible thing to witness, but you did exactly the right thing. If you had called the police, they would have done the same thing, with maybe the exception of running the guy’s license to see if he had any tickets outstanding or stuff like that. He put the name take on her because, apparently, this has happened before. The only way calling them would have helped is if he had reported her missing to them already.
Most people would have just avoided her. You were a caring person who stepped up to help. Her memory problems are not your fault, you just made sure she got back to her safe place, even if she didn’t recognize that.
As my grandfather’s dementia progressed, he forgot family members. First it was the youngest grandchildren, then middle, then oldest. Then it went to his children. All 5 were just nothing to him even the one who took care of him until he had to go to a nursing home. It happens.
You could have asked him to show you his ID.
NTA
At 16, its commendable that you did anything at all.
Its also unlikely that anyone is going to turn up and confirm theyre the person you spoke to, without prior knowledge of the call.
Sadly dementia patients forget their family, will become violent, lost, only remember themselves as children etc.
She could remember everything 10min later with no concerns.
The only other thing you could have done is ask on the phone for a name, then ask to see ID when they collected her.
Or call police as a welfare call out.
NTA. My grandmother had Alzheimer’s and would wander off a lot before they installed door alarms on all the exterior doors. When my mom would arrive to take her home, my grandmother would freak out and claim she’d never met my mom before and scream she was being kidnapped.
Your girlfriends worry is understandable but when dementia and stuff like that are involved, it’s incredibly hard to prove if anything that they are saying is true.
NTA Just a sad and deeply depressing situation even though you handled it perfectly. There are no winners with some mental conditions, they only get worse.
Last 5 years of my father’s day I watched him lose all recognition of family and friends of his known all of his life He argued with my mother all the time that he didn’t have any idea who in the hell she was for the last 2 years of his life
Since you called him, his number should still be on your cell phone. Call him again and say you just wanted to make sure she made it home.
As someone who has dealt with several family members with dementia, you did the right thing. My auntie doesn’t recognize me at all when I visit her now, and my grandmother used to conflate me with my mom or aunties when she was still alive.
Yikes. Tough situation, but I think it’s highly unlikely that he was NOT her son, as why else would his contact information be attached to her? Tragically, people with dementia can lose the ability to recognize even their closest family and friends. My grandmother did not recognize my father by the end of her life. My aunt no longer recognized her husband after 60 years of marriage and would constantly try to “escape” from their house to go “home” (they retired in Florida, had lived here 20 years, and she was trying to leave to go “home” to Pennsylvania). It’s heartbreaking, but true. They can also get combative and violent because they don’t understand what’s going on, where they are, who they’re with. I think you were probably OK in this situation, but if you ever have a doubt in the future, call 911 and let them sort it out so you don’t have to live with this doubt. Bless you for trying to help to the best of your ability (at 16 years old, no less!)
NAH
Your friend is right to be worried and ask questions. Good on her. Calling the police would not have been a bad thing in that situation. They could confirm the son’s details.
You did the right thing. The name and number were right there, and good on you for calling, and making sure she was safely returned.
Dementia can make people say stuff like that. They don’t remember their family, so from the point of view of the person with dementia, some stranger is wanting to take them to a strange place and lock them up.
My aunt used to run away from home when she was in the earlier stages of dementia. My poor uncle was so embarrassed about it. One night we had to get the police to help look for her, and when they found her she cried and said he was cruel and kept her locked up and he wasn’t really her husband. Once when I took her to the doctor she told her I was poisoning her. It’s an awful disease.
If you are ever in that situation again, have a look at the person with dementia. Are they clean? Wearing clean clothes? Is their hair brushed, fingernails trimmed? They will often still be pretty messy – they might fight the nurse about hair or spill food on themselves – but you can see the difference between “today’s lunch” and “haven’t changed their clothes in weeks”. If the person with dementia looks fairly well cared for, it’s likely just the disease talking. And if you’re worried, by all means call the police or an ambulance.
NTA. I work with dementia patients for my job and a good amount of them don’t recognize family and respond fearfully/uncomfortable to them. It’s sad but it’s a harsh reality. Several of my residents often revert to their childhood so it’s quite possible that’s what was happening in this situation and she didn’t even remember she had a son, let alone what he looks like.
NTA
My dad had early onset dementia. It is a brutal disease that I literally would not wish on my worst enemy.
At the end of his life, after he was diagnosed with cancer, he would sometimes talk about me, to me. In the third person. He recognized me me as “Lindsay”. But he would also tell me about “his daughter, Lindsay” and had zero recognition that it was me.
You did the right thing, you did the courageous thing, actually. You helped. You got involved when most adults would walk right by. It is quite unlikely that someone who wasn’t involved in her care managed to put a sticker on her and agreed to come get her.
Loving someone with dementia will break your heart into a billion tiny pieces, you did a kindness for a family that needed it.
So I was driving thru a back road & noticed an elderly lady walking along the side of the road. In her jammers (night gown). Mid December. Lil chilly. So I stopped beside her to ask if she was okay & she only said hello & waved. I was like okay- maybe,,,, this is something she does. Went to the gas station up the road & circled back to check if she had possibly made it back inside (where it’s not 30°). Nope. Lil further down she’s still walking. I pull up again I asked if she was okay or if she needed any help. She just looked at me & smiled. Then proceeded to walk off along the road again. Call local authorities. Chatted with him around a bend in the road & last I saw was him gently asking questions of how she got here & where she was going. Very sad reality- stay diligent for those who can’t.
NTA
I think you did good. I mean your sixteen.
What is weird is where was the caregiver? I mean she had her sticker on like she was part of a group. I would think the son wouldn’t drop her off in the mall.
Don’t you worry. I am glad you helped her.
NAH
My only concern was how and why this poor woman was by herself. I do understand the difficulty of caregiving for someone with dementia. The challenge of being a sole caregiver is real. Your LO doesn’t want to go to a facility or can’t afford one or are waiting to get into one. You, the caregiver, has to pay the bills. Thus, working is needed. You can’t be in two places at once, and paying for another person to watch is often hard. The LO might not be easy to care for.
Sometimes, the family resists outside help. Unfortunately, LO’s do wander off, and that can be deadly.
I hope this poor woman and her son get the help she needs to be safe.
You guys did the right thing. We need more kids like you!
NTA. She probably didn’t remember her own son tbh
Did you or did you not call the number on the sticker? Obviously, it’s her son.
My mom had Alzheimer’s and she would go to their long time next door neighbor to tell them my dad was beating her sometimes. My dad adored her and took care of her at home until she fell and broke her hip. She couldn’t be taught to walk again and declined over a few months. He stayed with her all day, every day in her nursing home room taking care of her.
I just wonder at that lady being in a mall all alone and was her son looking for her at all? I would have notified mall security or police. Let them Handel returning her in case her family isn’t taking proper care of her and just dumped her in the mall.