Mum will not do her home exercises and every time I bring them up I become the enemy. How do you get someone to do their rehab?

#1Moira G.(Joined Mar 2026 · 14 posts)August 17, 2026, 9:36 pm

Different problem from my husband this time. My mum, 79, had a stroke in March, left side, home since June with a sheet of exercises from the community team and a physio visit once a fortnight. The physio is lovely and says the exercises between visits are where the recovery actually happens.

Mum does not do them. Or she does two of the six, badly, on the days I am there, and then tells the physio she's been doing them daily. If I try to sit with her and go through the sheet she gets short with me, then tearful, then says she's tired and goes for a lie down, and last week she told my brother I was "bullying her about the exercises". I am not. I am reading the sheet out loud.

I keep thinking about all the things on this site about repetitions mattering and it makes me frantic, because every day she doesn't do them feels like a day of recovery thrown away. But I cannot physically make a 79 year old woman lift her arm. So what do people actually DO? Is it nagging? Bribing? Do I just let it go and accept whatever she ends up with? And is it normal for someone to just... not want to get better? That is the bit I cannot get my head around.

#2Geoffswife(Joined Jan 2025 · 38 posts)August 18, 2026, 7:49 am

Moira, I could have written this in 2025 nearly word for word, except it was a husband not a mother and the word he used was "nagging".

The thing that changed it, and I wish someone had told me sooner, was that the physio said it to him, not me. I rang her, told her honestly that the sheet was not happening and that our relationship was suffering over it, and asked her to please have the conversation. She did, at the next visit, without me in the room. Same information, entirely different reception, and I got to go back to being his wife instead of his supervisor.

Also, and I say this gently: two of six is not nothing. It is a third of the sheet. Start from there.

#3Gareth VossAdmin(Joined Sep 2024 · 187 posts)August 18, 2026, 12:14 pm

Moira, the direct answer to "do you nag, bribe or let it go" is none of those, and I say that as the person who was on the receiving end of it.

First the bit you cannot get your head around, because I think it is the key. Your mum almost certainly does want to get better. What you are seeing is not a lack of wanting, it is three things that look like it from the outside. One is post-stroke fatigue, which affects around half of survivors and is not tiredness that a lie down fixes; a sheet of six exercises can genuinely cost someone their whole afternoon. Two is low mood, which affects roughly 27% of survivors and shows up as flatness, irritability and giving up long before anyone calls it depression. Three is that a sheet of exercises done alone in a living room is, frankly, boring and demoralising, and I hated mine with a passion that surprised me, because it never felt connected to anything I wanted. The tearful, short, lie down pattern you describe is what all three look like together at 79. The piece on post-stroke fatigue explains the first one better than I can here, and the reason to care about the second is that untreated low mood quietly drains the energy rehab needs.

Now the repetitions, because I understand the frantic feeling and I want to take some of it off you. Repetitions matter. But they matter in a very specific way: it is repeated practice of a real task, hundreds of times, that rebuilds a movement, and that is not the same as a sheet. If your mum will not lift her arm on command but will reach for her cup of tea, then reaching for the cup of tea forty times a day is the rehabilitation, and it is arguably better rehabilitation than the sheet, because it is the actual task. The site's article on task-specific training is the evidence behind that, and it is the thing that finally made me stop hating my own practice: my physio turned the sheet into "put the mugs away, all of them, with the bad hand" and I did it because there were mugs to put away.

So the practical shape is what Geoffswife said, plus one thing. Tell the physio the truth, all of it, including "she tells you she's doing them daily and she isn't", and ask two things: can she be screened for mood and fatigue, and can the sheet be rebuilt around things your mum actually does in her day. Then step back from the sheet entirely and be her daughter. You cannot make her lift her arm, you are right, and the attempt is costing you both something that matters more than six exercises. The team who can assess her are the ones to set what her rehab looks like; your job is to make sure they know what is really going on.

#4keithb57(Joined Oct 2024 · 51 posts)August 19, 2026, 6:03 pm

The lying to the physio bit. I did that. Not out of laziness, out of shame, because saying "I didn't do them" to a kind professional felt like failing an exam I'd been given weeks to revise for. Once my physio said "most people don't, tell me what you did do and we'll go from there" I stopped lying. Worth passing on.

#5Moira G.(Joined Mar 2026 · 14 posts)August 24, 2026, 8:11 pm

Gareth Voss said:

reaching for the cup of tea forty times a day is the rehabilitation

I have read this thread about six times.

Rang the physio Thursday and told her everything, including the fibbing. She was completely unsurprised, which was both a relief and slightly annoying given how much sleep I have lost over it. She is coming Tuesday to redo the sheet around the kitchen and the garden, which is the only place mum actually wants to be, and she is going to ask the GP about a mood check. Mum was not in the room for the call and I have not told her, which I feel a bit sneaky about, but I think it is the right sneaky.

The tea thing has stuck. I counted yesterday. She reached for her cup with the left hand eleven times without either of us mentioning it. I did not say a word.

#6davew1966(Joined Oct 2025 · 21 posts)August 26, 2026, 8:37 am

Late but one thing for the "let it go" question, because I think there's a version of letting go that isn't giving up.

My daughter stopped policing my exercises and started walking to the postbox with me every morning instead. Took her longer than the sheet would have. But I did it every day because she was there and it was a walk, not a task, and the physio told me later it was doing more for my leg than anything on paper. You can let go of the sheet without letting go of her.

#7Moira G.(Joined Mar 2026 · 14 posts)September 13, 2026, 7:48 pm

Three weeks on, for anyone finding this later.

New sheet is not a sheet. It is: dead head the roses with the left hand, unload the top rack of the dishwasher, carry her tea from the kitchen to the chair. She does the roses without being asked because she has always done the roses. The GP has started something for her mood and it is early days but she is less flat.

I still catch myself counting. But I have not read anything out loud to her since August, and last Sunday she told my brother I had "gone quiet about the exercises" in a tone that I am choosing to hear as approval.