Am I enabling neglect by trying to understand where my mother is coming from? My gf (25f) thinks I am and it's causing issues in our relationship.

I'm a 26f and my gf (25f) and I are having a disagreement about the care given to my elderly grandfather.

My grandfather is 87 and in the last year his capabilities have declined a lot, he keeps having falls due to his hardheadedness and has had diabetes for a while. My mom is his caretaker for the most part. Yesterday he was out of the house all day and barely ate between 9am and dinner at 8pm.

He got home around 1 and ate a bit of lunch meat and then wanted to go with my mom and aunt to her appointment that was going to take from between 430-7 that night. It's hard to tell my grandfather that he's not going anywhere, he thinks he's much younger than he is so she let him go. My mom asked him if he wanted her to get him food and he said no, he'd eat after her appointment. So long story short he ended up having some pretzels and soda to hold himself over.

Heres where the disagreement comes in, my girlfriend thinks that my mom is being neglectful and that I am enabling her behavior. I tried explaining to her that my grandfather is going downhill and it can be hard for a child to take control from their elderly parents in terms of meals. I see it as that im trying to be understanding of the transition my mom is going through without judging her too harshly. I have said that I'm going to have a serious conversation with my mom about taking more control from him because he clearly can't make his own decisions because he's putting himself in danger but I don't want to come down on her like she's some monster that doesn't care about him. My girlfriend seems to think that trying to understand why she might be dragging her feet is enabling neglect.

Am I enabling her behavior? Am I wrong to be soft on her with this? Should I take a more hard approach? It's causing issues to the point that my gf is wondering whether we even have the same values and I'm honestly confused...

Tl;Dr: gf (25f) thinks I am enabling my mother's neglect of my elderly grandfather because I said that it is hard for children to take control from their aging parents and I'm trying to be understanding of it. Am I enabling?

Submitted January 31, 2020 at 04:28PM by PicklesWereInvolved https://ift.tt/3b3VZnO