The fact that you're asking this question says something important: you're still trying to do right by her. 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.
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 parent has.
Think about what it represents to her. She can pick it up and call you. She can reach you when she needs you. She is not entirely dependent, not entirely without agency, not entirely cut off from the person she 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. 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 she is living at home or in a setting where she 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 she will experience as loss — perhaps over and over, each time she tries to call and can't. She may not remember why she can't reach you. She may interpret it as abandonment, as you not wanting to hear from her, as something she 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 she calls and feels the fear, the fear is met. She hears you. She 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 her? Emergency services calls without cause, calls to numbers that may exploit her, calls late at night that are waking her 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 she needs to hear — so the phone stays in her hands.
See how KindredMind works