When they hate it — what to do when the move feels like a mistake

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical, legal, or financial advice. Please consult appropriate professionals for guidance specific to your situation.

The phone call comes on week three. Your parent is sobbing. The facility is terrible. Nobody cares about them. They want to come home. They can't stay in this place another day. You're a horrible child for putting them here. Why did you do this to them? The guilt is crushing. You lie awake that night replaying the decision. Maybe you were wrong. Maybe you should move them. Maybe home was actually possible. Maybe you gave up too easily. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

What you're hearing is real suffering. Your parent genuinely is miserable. But what you're experiencing is guilt mixed with a particular kind of despair that comes when you realize the decision you made isn't fixing things the way you hoped. You thought the facility would keep them safe and provide good care. You thought that would be enough. But safety and medical care don't address the existential crisis your parent is experiencing. Your parent has lost their home. They've lost their independence. They've lost their identity as a person who took care of themselves. No facility, no matter how good, can restore that.

This is the point where many families undo the placement. Your parent cries. You feel guilty. You move them home. Maybe it goes fine for a week. Maybe it goes fine for two weeks. Then your parent has a fall, or forgets to take medication, or the burden of providing care becomes overwhelming again. And now you're moving them back to a facility, and everyone is traumatized and angry. Or maybe it goes badly immediately and you're back at the facility within days, and your parent is now traumatized from the disruption, and the facility staff view your parent as a problem.

Before you undo the placement, understand what's actually happening and whether this is truly a mistake or whether this is the normal, expected, painful adjustment that happens when everything in a person's life changes.

Emotional Toll of Placement

Your parent's devastation is not an illusion. Placement in a facility is a genuine loss. Your parent has lost their home. They've lost the ability to make choices about when they wake up, when they eat, what they wear, when they shower, who they see. They've lost their sense of self as an independent person. These losses are real and they're deep. Most people, when faced with such losses, experience something that looks a lot like depression and grief.

Additionally, your parent might be dealing with genuine problems at the facility. The food might actually be bad. The roommate might actually be difficult. The staff might actually be dismissive. Some facilities are better than others. Some facilities are downright neglectful. You need to distinguish between "my parent is grieving and adjusting" and "my parent is in a genuinely bad place." But the first time your parent complains, you won't know which is which.

Start by investigating. Visit more frequently. Spend time talking to your parent. Ask detailed questions about what's happening. Talk to staff. Are there specific problems that are solvable? Is the roommate situation actually making your parent unsafe or just making them uncomfortable? Is the food actually inadequate or just different from home cooking? Is your parent getting lonely, or is your parent refusing to participate in activities?

Sometimes the problem is a specific staff person. Your parent had a negative interaction with a nurse or aide and now they feel unsafe or disrespected. If this is a real problem, you can escalate it. Talk to the supervisor. Request that a different staff member care for your parent. Facilities take this seriously because they don't want families leaving bad reviews or complaining to regulators.

Sometimes the problem is that your parent's expectations are unrealistic. Your parent expected to be home by now. Rehabilitation is taking longer than anticipated. Your parent expected more privacy or more activities or more attentiveness. These expectations are understandable but they're often based on what families think should happen, not on what actually happens in a facility.

The biggest emotional challenge is that your parent is grieving, and nothing you say or do will make the grieving stop. You can't convince them that the facility is good. You can't convince them that this is temporary. You can't convince them that they'll adjust. Because the thing they're grieving is real. They're not going home the way they did before. They've lost that.

Finding Meaning in Decline

This is where the conversation gets harder and more philosophical. Your parent has lost significant function. They've lost independence. They might lose more over time. Life in a facility is limited. Is life still worth living? Is there still meaning? Is there still joy? These are the questions your parent is asking, whether they articulate them or not.

The answer, uncomfortable as it is, is yes. Life is still worth living, not because the facility is wonderful or because your parent has adjusted to loss, but because life has value at any level of function. This is hard to say to a person who is devastated about losing independence. It's hard because it feels dismissive of their real loss. But it's also true.

Your parent's life has value not because of what they can do but because they exist. They matter. They have relationships. They can still experience pleasure, connection, love, even in a facility. They can watch birds from a window. They can hold your hand. They can hear their grandchild's voice on the phone. They can eat a food they enjoy. They can have conversations. These small moments aren't the life they wanted. But they're still life. They're still worth living.

Also, the relationship between you and your parent is shifting in this crisis, and some of the difficulty is about that shift. You've been the caregiver who makes decisions. Now you're both grieving those decisions. Your parent is angry at you for making them. You're grieving for them. The dynamic is complicated and tender. Sometimes just being present and acknowledging that this is hard is what matters. You don't have to fix it. You can't fix it. But you can show up.

Part of what makes this phase so hard is that people around you might not understand. If your parent is on social media complaining about the facility, relatives who aren't involved in the daily reality might judge you for the placement. Your parent might turn relatives against you. People in your life who haven't experienced eldercare might tell you that you should just bring your parent home. The isolation of this experience is deep.

Permission to Grieve

Here's something that needs to be said plainly: your parent's loss is real, even though they're still alive. Grief isn't just about death. Grief is about all kinds of loss. Your parent has lost their home, their independence, their former life. That's worth grieving. And grieving that loss, paradoxically, is often the thing that helps people move through it.

Your grief is also real. You grieved the moment you realized your parent couldn't stay home anymore. You grieved through the placement process. You're grieving now as you watch your parent suffer. Some of your guilt is appropriate guilt. You did put your parent in the facility. Some of your guilt is inappropriate guilt. You did the best thing you could do in a situation with no good options. Both things are true.

The guilt is understandable. You're the adult child. You have agency. You made a decision. Your parent is suffering. These facts can coexist with the fact that you made the right decision under impossible circumstances. Having agency doesn't mean you did something wrong. It means you did something hard.

Also, take care of yourself. This period is exhausting. You're managing care from afar, dealing with your parent's emotional crisis, managing your own guilt and grief, and probably still working and managing your own life. You're not superhuman. You can't be present for your parent twenty-four hours a day. You can't fix their suffering. You can't undo the placement. You can show up, be present when you're there, ask good questions, and advocate for their needs. That's enough.

Some families need to move their parent. Some families make the decision to move them back home or to try a different placement. That's a valid choice, as long as it's based on actual problems you can solve, not just on the guilt and grief of transition. If your parent is being neglected or abused, moving them makes sense. If a specific problem can be solved by moving, moving makes sense. If your parent is just grieving and adjusting, moving them will traumatize them more and make adjustment at the next place even harder.

But also know that if the placement genuinely isn't working, changing it is okay. You're not locked into a permanent decision. If you move your parent and it's better, that's right. If you move them and it's worse, you can adjust again. Nothing is permanent except the love you have for your parent and your commitment to figuring out the best care possible, even when best is limited. That's what matters.

How To Help Your Elders provides educational content for family caregivers. This is not a substitute for professional medical, legal, or financial advice. Every family situation is different; what works for one may not work for another.