re: Taking the car keys away from your parents

I hope they show you this when you go to have that talk Rex

If Nobody believed in you

MIL in early stages of dementia got lost driving back home from her favorite restaurant a route she took all the time. She drove 15 minutes past her street. Lucky she stopped at a store and called my wife, and said she didn't know where she was. We figured out what store she was at and went to pick her up. She said it was just driving at night. We ended up getting a Dr. to tell her she couldn't drive anymore after trying to get her to give the keys up. She still bitches every now and again about not being able to drive her car.

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I was lucky in that my dad's (88) license expired. I told him he couldn't drive without it and when he said he can get a new one I informed him he'd be required to take the test again.

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I thought this would work for my mom, but the people at the driver's license office bent over backwards to help her get it renewed.

Everyone will be different. You can ask her doctor for help. You can also talk to local police to get help from them. For my mom, we had to get my dad's name off the title, and I told her she couldn't drive it until I did. Then I took a long, long time to do that. By the time I did, she had forgotten about driving.

And then some are easy. My grandaddy came home one day, handed the keys to his car to my dad and said, "it's yours now." Never explained why he did that.

Mom's doctor told her a few years ago, she had to stop driving because her reaction time was too slow. It didn't have anything to do with her mind, so it was a difficult pill for her to swallow. She still brings it up from time to time, but either we or her sitters take her wherever she needs or wants to go whenever she wants in her car, so she's gotten used to being Miss Daisy.

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Crowe Peel

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He was the man! 6 of us were at LSU at one time or another and we frequented Crowe Peel's place for everything car related and cashing checks. One time, my Dad was in town and made it a point to go meet Crowe Peel since Dad was sure he'd either put a few of his kids through school or paid off the man's mortgage.

A neighbor's children took her license away; she was so pleased when she found an old one that she could use.
My FIL's doctor encouraged him to keep driving even after my husband followed him one day as he ignored red lights. We did get the car dealer to "have problems getting parts" after he left his right front bumper some where.

Then he forgot how to put the car in reverse. My husband pulled some wires and left a message where a repair person would see it telling that the owner has dementia and if you fix this you will be liable for any wrecks he causes.

We also made small summaries of who to call with multiple ways to contact family and hid them in his wallet and several places in the car.

He sold us the "unlucky car" and we found he was hiding money and was going to buy a junker from a neighbor. He lost it even more before the neighbor could sell him the disaster.

It's like taking away someone's last little bit of freedom. It's like the final blow to knowing your time on earth is coming to an end.

We unhooked the battery and told my grandmother it needed to be repaired. We then sold the car. She asked about it for a few weeks, then forgot about it and really any of us... Its sad but she was running stop signs and driving to places she shouldn't have.

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we had to steal and hide my grandmothers car. She was livid (not out of character for her) and blamed it on me, which my dad was happy to let her think

it blew over after a couple of weeks, wasn’t long after that she didn’t know who I was anyway

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I took the fuel pump relay out of my grandmothers car when she started losing her vision.

I put a note in the relay box under the hood explaining it and asking any mechanic who looked at it to tell her they couldnt figure out what was wrong.