Every time I go outside to my yard, my elderly neighbor comes out and tries to talk with me. Every. Single. Time. Without fail. I go out to relax and do gardening and yard work, and his presence makes me increasingly anxious & leaves me feeling particularly uncomfortable/unsafe.
He is dealing with dementia, and has become increasingly vulgar and outspoken, and even made some vastly inappropriate remarks about his wife & my other neighbor while my child was right there.
His wife is tired. I know this. Christ, I would be, too. He was kind of insufferable even before the dementia got bad (think him talking about his shitty political views), but, god… I am so tired of babysitting him while I try to unwind in my own yard. He’ll talk over the fence or simply waltz past it and follow me around while I try to do stuff or as I’m trying to talk to my kid.
One thing I know is this: do not piss off your neighbors, because, chances are, you will probably be living next to them for a looooong time.
What can I do? I just want peace without feeling like I’m being accosted.
Something I’d suggest looking into is gentle redirection for dementia patients. Dementia patients respond very poorly to “no”, “you’re wrong”, “that doesn’t exist anymore” type statements. Instead there are techniques where you agree with them, make positive suggestions, and agree with their nonsense to get them to do what you want
For example: when a dementia patient starts trying to walk to the grocery store instead of saying “you can’t walk to the grocery store, it’s 15 miles away and you shamble like a zombie” you’d say “Oh you know what, I need something from the grocery store too! How about I go with you?” Then after they likely agree you say “Oh shoot, I forgot I’m in the middle of cooking something. Can you go back inside and I’ll come back in an hour to go with you?” They forget you said that, rinse and repeat
So for this guy as he’s shouting his nonsense, don’t necessarily agree, but say things like “wow, I didn’t know about that”, “I heard that’s a serious problem.” Then say “I actually heard something crazier than what he said, why don’t you go look into that and tell me what you think later” or if you want to turn it around on his wife you can say that she told you things and that he should go ask her for more information
You had me until
The woman is clearly having a hard enough time, and what exactly is “it” OP should be “turning around” on her? Her husband’s slow and agonizing decline which she has no control over and the strain it is already having on both their lives? Who even thinks like that?
That’s behavior his wife is clearly ignoring, and that’s what I’m suggesting he turn around on her. OP has no obligation to this man and the woman who does clearly is failing at hers. Is it sad what’s happening to these people? Yes. That doesn’t make it OP’s problem to deal with. Likewise, dementia patients often become violent and it sounds like this is an already angry man, why should OP put himself or his family in the middle of it? How will that end well for them?
I’ll also point out I had one of the kinder solutions posted in this thread between “ignore him”, “build a big ass fence”, “fake an infectious disease”, and “cartoon violence”. I made a kind suggestion and offered a slightly less kind way to use it to make this less of a problem for OP