My 86 year old aunt moved in with us since she could not be alone anymore--arthritus and such. She did not have enough money to go somewhere else and her brother and sister did nothing to provide for her either. She lives in an apartment we have in the lower level (bathroom, bedroom, very nice living room, laundry room). She comes upstairs to use our kitchen.
She will not stay out of our end of the house! There is nothing here that is hers. I have a special needs child who needs privacy (she makes my child anxious) and we need privacy too! I've asked her to please respect our end of the house (just 3 bedrooms). She goes along and then makes up some excuse like she was looking for something and goes there when I'm not home and then confesses when I get back. I am so sick of this!!! Trust me, there is nothing in our rooms that is hers. She just wants to be a busy body and look in our rooms etc. I'm ready to put up a door! She gets so offended if I close the bedroom doors.
How do I get her to stop invading our space and to respect our need for privacy. She has half my house and use of our kitchen and living room and dining room. Why isn't this enough? I don't go down to her apartment and snoop around...I respect her space. She won't respect ours. She is stressing out my child and me and my hubby. I'm starting to get stress chest pains. I need this to stop now.
I think that installing a door in the hallway leading to your bedrooms might not be a bad idea - especially if this one thing is causing your family stress. If she becomes offended by closed bedroom doors or a new door, she will just have to get used to it. You have provided her a lovely home - not to mention her own space - so you deserve to claim a little corner of your home as your own private space.
I agree with the previous postings. You must make her respect your space even if that means putting up a door that locks. You might even consider putting a kitchenette (small apartment sized appliances) in the apartment area and keep her out of your living area all together... except when invited to come in, of course. Do not let this go a day farther without taking control of the situation. Believe me, I speak from 5+ years of experience!
Yep, Allshesgot, so much of what you are going through sounds like my aunt also. She goes to have her hair done 1x a week. She doesn't want to do anything else, just watch tv.
She likes to go out to a restaurant, which is fine, but she makes a scene quite often over coffee not coming fast enough etc. so my child doesn't want to go with her anymore. She won't follow protocols when dealing with my child and the autism, so she does things that irritate my child terribly, so now I have to split my time between them and spend lots of time keeping the peace.
My aunt does the same thing...doesn't want to get this or that because she doesn't think she'll live long. The only things she wants to do is to take over my kitchen (she does things that are not clean so I had to stop that) and to clean my house which goes into the privacy issues so none of that either. So it's like she's taken this stand..well..if I can't do what I want all over your house, I'm just going to sit and watch tv. Ugh. We have a senior center with all sorts of activities. A park district with all sorts of activities. Her church has all sorts of actiivites. She won't do any.
She does the tricking thing like "I was only trying to help you look for something" to explain why she went through a closet she knows is not hers and she has no business in. Then she tried to give me things of hers...as in like a gift...and then goes to the place in my end of the house where they are...so I moved all those "gifts" out of our end of the house. It's very irritating dealing with all these tricks and excuses she uses to invade our space.
Yep summer is going to be another issue because then I have the problem of splitting my time again but worse since my son won't be at school for part day.
The other thought I had while reading all these posts, is maybe I could change the rooms...make sure everything is in locked drawers/cabinets/file cabinets/lock the closets and everything cleared off so there would be nothing to look at and all access to our stuff would be cut off. Oh boy, I have my work cut out for me taking any action if I want my privacy back.
I feel the same way. I would have made a different choice had I known what was going to happen. I would have definitely put in the kitchenette and figured out a different entrance which would have been difficult given our house design So I probably would have gone with not bringing her here but looking for a service to help her where she lived. I don't know. I'm definitely not cut out for this, and the mental stress is awful for sure.
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