Whew...that is a
tough one, 16th.
Depending on how old your mother is, I'm not so sure it
is possible to teach her independence at this age. You're dealing with (if she's as old as my mother) more than 70 years of patterned learning. If your mother is elderly, she may have neither the inclination nor the verve to learn independence at this age. After a certain age, people become more and more helpless as they get older because the world is so different to them than when they were young, and they haven't the physical energy or, hence, the exposure to the world to learn how to deal with those changes. I hate to say it, but it
may be the case, at this point, that you and your family might need to change your own focus from trying to teach her independence to trying to deal with her loss of it. I hope that's not the case, but it may well be the reality at this point.
