The fact that you're asking this question says something important: you're still trying to do right by them. You haven't given up. You're exhausted, and you're looking for a way forward that doesn't require you to choose between your own survival and hers.
Before taking the phone away, most families try KindredMind. Rather than removing the phone — which removes your parent's lifeline and typically increases anxiety — KindredMind answers repetitive calls in your voice, resolving the separation anxiety driving the behaviour. Your parent still has access to you. You get your life back. The phone stays. The problem changes. See how it works → A 2025 peer-reviewed randomized controlled trial (PubMed 38646703) showed significant reductions in dementia-related agitation and caregiver burnout when a familiar family voice responds to repetitive calls from someone with dementia.
That's the right question to be asking. Here is the honest answer, both sides of it.
The Case for Taking It Away
There are situations where taking the phone away is the right call, and any honest guide needs to acknowledge that.
If the calls have reached a volume that is producing genuine health consequences for you, if you are sleeping fewer than five hours a night consistently, if you are unable to function at work, if you are experiencing symptoms of depression or severe anxiety, then your health is part of this equation. You cannot care for someone if you break down. Caregiver burnout has real consequences for everyone involved, including the person being cared for.
Some care professionals do recommend removing phone access in specific circumstances: when the person with dementia is regularly calling emergency services without cause, when incoming calls from bad actors are creating significant distress, or when the phone is being used in ways that create safety risks.
There is also a version of this that is less all-or-nothing: restricting calling hours using phone management tools, so that calls to your number go through only during certain windows. This is less destabilizing than full removal and may be worth exploring as a middle step.
The Case Against Taking It Away
The phone may be the last piece of independence your loved one has.
Think about what it represents to them. They can pick it up and call you. They can reach you when they needs you. They is not entirely dependent, not entirely without agency, not entirely cut off from the person they loves most. That matters, not just symbolically, but functionally. The feeling of having some control, some ability to reach out, is one of the things that reduces the pervasive anxiety of dementia.
Take the phone away and you take that away. You may reduce the calls. You will very likely increase the agitation, the distress, the sense of abandonment that dementia separation anxiety creates. Dementia doesn't resolve the need for connection, it intensifies it. Remove the outlet and the need doesn't disappear. It just has nowhere to go.
There is also this: if they is living at home or in a setting where they might need to reach emergency services, removing the phone removes a safety net. You may create a situation where a real emergency can't be reported.
And there is the guilt of it. The removal of the phone is something they will experience as loss, perhaps over and over, each time they tries to call and can't. They may not remember why they can't reach you. They may interpret it as abandonment, as you not wanting to hear from them, as something they has done wrong. That is a significant harm.
What Most Families Find
Most families who have faced this question, the ones who have been through it and come out the other side, land somewhere that isn't the binary the question seems to present.
The goal is not fewer calls. The goal is answered calls.
The calls come from a need that removal doesn't address. Taking the phone away silences the symptom. The underlying fear and loneliness remain, expressed in other ways, agitation, distress, wandering, behavioral changes. The problem doesn't go away. It changes form.
What changes things is when every call is answered. Not necessarily by you, not literally, not every time, but answered. Warmly, in a familiar voice, with patience and love and the things only you would know. So that when they calls and feels the fear, the fear is met. They hears you. They calms. The call ends. And the next time it comes, the same thing happens.
That is the shift most families describe as actually making a difference. Not a reduction in calls. An answered response to what every call is really about.
A Practical Decision Guide
Ask yourself these questions when deciding:
Questions to ask before deciding
- Is the call volume a safety risk to you? If yes, if your sleep deprivation is severe or your mental health is in genuine crisis, address that first, including speaking to a doctor. Your health is not a trade-off, it's a requirement.
- Are the calls creating safety risks for them? Emergency services calls without cause, calls to numbers that may exploit them, calls late at night that are waking their from needed sleep, these are specific problems that may warrant specific interventions, not full removal.
- Has everything else been tried? Routine, consistent check-ins at predictable times, addressing sundowning triggers, ensuring regular staff or companion presence during high-call windows, before removing the phone, these are worth exhausting.
- Is there a way to make every call feel answered? This is the question that most families don't ask because they don't know it's available. If you had a reliable way to ensure every call, including the ones you can't take, was answered warmly in your voice, would you still need to take the phone away?
For most families, the answer to that last question is no.
Every call. Answered. In your voice.
KindredMind handles the calls you can't take, warmly, patiently, with everything they needs to hear, so the phone stays in their hands.
See how KindredMind worksWhat to Say When the Calls Come
Even if you decide the phone stays, and most families do, knowing what to say when the calls come is its own challenge. The repetitive nature of dementia calls means you are answering the same question dozens of times in a day, and finding genuine warmth for it each time takes more than good intentions. It takes a strategy.
What doesn't work
Correcting them. "I just told you that twenty minutes ago" is accurate and completely counterproductive. They has no memory of twenty minutes ago. What they hears is that they has done something wrong, that they is a burden, that they has made you impatient. The anxiety that drove the call doesn't go away, it intensifies, sometimes producing another call within minutes.
Explaining the situation logically. "You're in the care home, they take good care of you, everything is fine." This may all be true. It addresses none of what is actually happening. The call isn't about information. It's about fear. Logic doesn't resolve fear, presence does.
Making promises about time. "I'll see you on Sunday" only works if they can hold Sunday in their mind. They often cannot. The promise lands, briefly, and then disappears. Promises about future time can actually increase anxiety if they can feel that something was said but can't retrieve what it was.
What works
Validating the feeling beneath the call. Before anything else: "I'm so glad you called." "It's so good to hear your voice." They called because they needed you. Starting with warmth signals that they made the right call, that reaching out is always the right thing to do.
Anchoring to the immediate present. "The nurses are right there with you. You're in a warm, safe place. I love you so much." Short. Present tense. Specific. These sentences are easy to hold, easy to feel, and easy to receive even when full sentences are hard.
Redirecting to something sensory or immediate. "Is there a window near you? What can you see outside?" A sensory redirect moves their attention from internal anxiety to external observation, which tends to reduce agitation. It also gives the conversation somewhere to go.
Ending warmly and specifically. Not "okay, I have to go now." But "I'm so happy we talked. You're always in my heart. I'll be thinking of you all day." The close of the call is the last thing they will feel, even after the content fades. Make it something worth feeling.
These approaches apply whether you answer the call yourself or whether a system like KindredMind answers in your voice, the underlying principle is the same: meet the feeling, not the question. This is the foundation of our approach to dementia phone care.