Dad is Not Practicing Social Distancing

LegacyUser

My dad is in his 60s and he keeps breaking social distancing rules. He keeps visiting his girlfriend who lives more than 2km away-10km to be precise. Hes lying to us about where hes going but we know thats where he is-my sibling and I. We have seen his messages pop up on his phone screen, and he makes excuses why he isnt at home like that he has to submit insurance claims in town....at 10pm-1am at night. Hes just not visiting her, she has attended parties whilst this shutdown has been going on-I kicked up a fuss at one point as she had been a neighbours birthday party one day and came around to our house the following day and stayed there for several hours, every time I said it to my dad afterwards, he justified it saying less and less people were there it went from 15 to 10 to 6 to 4 to 3, and he even said a garda was in attendance and therefore it was fine. She even held an 18th birthday party for her daughter just 2 days ago which my dad went to. He insists that its fine that he kept 2m away but we know realistically that is incredibly unlikely; he says he was the only guest at the party but if it was a party for the daughter surely her friends would take precedence over her mum's boyfriend, and even if it was just her family and my dad, that is a large family, 5 kids, who are not be socially distancing from each other as they all live in the same house, we also ran into them accidentally one day in food shopping, and they are not keeping 2m between them-which is fine they are all living in the same household. My dad is not the sort of person who would stay seated in a corner whilst everyone else is gathered around huddling talking to each other.

We live in a county that has very low numbers, and all the cases in the area have been health care workers-neither my dad nor his girlfriend are, so I think he doesn't really care. Its even more frustrating that my dad works the elderly for about an hour once a week, if he has the disease and is carrying it he could pass it on to them unknowingly, his job has them distanced about a meter away from them but obviously if you have the disease that isn't far enough an he helps the older people with their bags sometimes. My dad and I went out for a walk recently and seen our 70 something year old neighbour in her garden and he told her she should go out for a walk on the road, she insisted she couldn't because she is meant to be cocooning and my dad told her not to worry about it. He literally does not listed to me tho. He could not give 2 sh1ts what I say, I am in my 20s, I am fully financially independent and have been for years, I lived in a high risk area with a HCP and another frontline worker so I came home long before the lockdown as I can work from home, but my dad literally treats me as if I am an 11 year old. He's a pretty gullible man influenced very easily by neighbours and friends, but when it comes to his own family he's the most bull-headed person you could meet. My opinions on anything and everything are dismissed so I know I can't talk him out of it.

I don't know what to do. Does anyone have any advice? I wouldn't mind as much if it wasn't that they have been going to parties/my dad is working with people in their 70s. I think its unbelievably selfish to put others at risk like that, but maybe people here will tell me otherwise.

leggo

Ah OP, I’m sorry you’re going through this. The stress you’re under is palpable and I’d almost rather lie and tell you he’s right and it’ll be grand to ease your mind because your options are limited here. And the fact he works with elderly people is seriously concerning.

What’s worth remembering here is that people like to make their own minds up and will always get their back up if they feel someone is telling them what to do. So an approach that may work for you is painting pictures and telling stories (maybe even embellishing some of them to fit if need be) then letting him make his own mind up. One thing that had success for me talking to my own mother, when she was getting ideas to have people over to the house, was talking about the next door neighbours cocooning and how they’d feel not being able to leave their home if they saw people doing stuff that’d risk it going on longer. You can’t argue with that because you’re not making claims that health will be at risk that they can dispute, it’s more of a “What will people think of you or anyone who does this?” question. And a neighbour just isn’t going to think “Ah I’ll stay at home an extra six months so they don’t have to talk to their sister on the phone.”

You can talk about your own fears because he’s also putting you in danger, it’s not just his life he’s taking risks with. A 23-year old in Ireland has died from this, in every country they’re learning the hard way that this doesn’t just affect older people.

There’s other ways you can go to bring it home and make it real to him, eg threatening to move or call his job. But ultimately you can’t chain him up and force him to stay home and, like so many of these threads, the sad conclusion is that you’ll just have to accept that and let him do what he wants, even if it’s wrong.