[Saltheart]

Now that you've been warned (driving wong way on 128! ) its going to haunt you if he gets hurt or hurts someone else if you do nothing. You have to act.

In my Mother's case i told her she couldn't drive anymore and explained why. Every now and then I would come home from work and notice the car had moved. i would ask her if she had driven the car and she would say no (I don't know if she was covering up or just didn't remember doing it). Anyway , one day on one of her non trips she hit my truck parked in the driveway. i asked her if she did it she said no (of course) but the paint on her bumper at exactly the right height said differently. So anyway , i finally pulled the coil wire. Occasionally she would ask my what was wrong with her car , she couldn't start it. I told her it needed a new part and we had ordered it. That seemed to work until finally she went into assisted living then the Alzhiemers wing at the nursing home. For almost 2 years after taking away her ability to drive , I would see her walking around the whole property at the assisted living place and ask her what she was doing. She would tell me she was looking for her car cause she wanted to go shopping.

Anyway , the point is that you have to take away the ability for them to do it. The will not agree to it and even if one day they do agree , the next day they will forget and just go about there business like going shopping by driving to the store.

You have to figure out tyhe best way to take away their ability to drive. disable the car? Take it away all together? Its a very tough thing to be hard on your mother or father.but at that stage in their life its just like a kid. You would have no trouble making sure your 10 year old could not drive. That's how you have to think of it.

Good luck. There is a long road ahead once this sort of thing starts. You understand waiting for a kid to grow up? well now you have to understand waiting for an old person to grow down until they no longer desire to drive or simply forget they can. I hate to lay the bad news on you but stopping the driving is just the first in a long series of difficult decisions you will need to make. You have to get it straight in your own head that you are not being mean or selfish , you are taking care of them like they took care of you when you were a child. take some comfort in the knowledge that you are honestly doing what you think is best for them.

You are lucky to have a large family to talk it out with and come to a common agreement so that no one person is bearing the the responsibility for the difficult decision. Its awfully hard to have to make the decisions alone to take away their freedom, take them out of their home to assisted living , have them confined to an Alzhiemers unit. Be sure to spread all these hard decisions and actions amongst the family members. You'll all feel better about it being a group decision in the long run.