What if they really do want attention?
Understanding connection-seeking, repeated calls, and the balance between compassion and boundaries
I think of a woman I'll call Denise, because I've heard some version of her story more times than I can count. Her mother calls her four, sometimes five times before lunch. One call is about a pill bottle that looks different than usual. Another is about whether Denise remembered to confirm tomorrow's doctor's appointment. By the third call, Denise is in a meeting, and by the fourth, she's caught herself thinking, she's just doing this for attention.
Maybe you've thought some version of that too—about a parent, a client, a spouse. It's an understandable thought. It's also worth pausing on, because it might not be pointing you toward the right question.
Why "attention-seeking" shuts the door
Here's the thing about that phrase: it isn't a description of what happened. It's our interpretation of why it happened, and the two get blended together so easily that we stop noticing the difference.
"Mom was attention-seeking all morning" tells you almost nothing you can act on. But "Mom called four times because she was worried about tomorrow's appointment" gives you something real to work with. It points to a specific worry, on a specific day, about a specific thing. One version invites judgment. The other invites a next step.
This distinction matters more than it might seem, because once we've decided someone is "just" seeking attention, we tend to stop asking what they actually need. And that's backwards—figuring out what's underneath the behavior is exactly what makes it possible to respond well.
What if she does want attention—and why isn't that automatically bad?
Here's a harder question worth sitting with: what if it is about wanting attention? Does that make it illegitimate?
I don't think it does. Wanting to be checked on, wanting to know you haven't been forgotten, wanting another person's time and care—these aren't signs of weakness or manipulation. Psychologists have long described a fundamental human drive to form and maintain close relationships, one that shapes our emotions and even our health when it goes unmet (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). We don't usually call a toddler manipulative for wanting a parent's attention. We understand it as need. Somewhere along the way, we stopped extending older adults the same grace.
What later life takes away
It helps to notice what's often happening around the same time these calls increase. A spouse has died. Friends have moved away or passed on. Driving has stopped. A body that used to be reliable now needs help getting dressed. A role—provider, decision-maker, the one who used to take care of everyone else—has quietly disappeared.
Research on nursing home residents has found that their sense of connection to caregivers, along with their sense of independence and competence, is central to their well-being (Custers et al., 2012)—which suggests that when those things erode, distress tends to follow. None of this is exotic. It's the ordinary math of aging: as more is lost, the people who are still present start to matter even more.
Behavior as a kind of language
In dementia care, there's a well-established way of thinking about behaviors like repeated questions, wandering, or calling out: they're treated not as problems to shut down, but as attempts to communicate an unmet need—for comfort, for stimulation, for reassurance—especially when words have become harder to find (Algase et al., 1996; Cohen-Mansfield et al., 2015). The Alzheimer's Association encourages caregivers to look past the repetition itself and ask what feeling or need is driving it (Alzheimer's Association, n.d.).
I think this lens is useful even outside a dementia diagnosis. A repeated call isn't always "the behavior." Sometimes it's the only version of "I'm scared" or "I don't want to be alone with this" that a person knows how to send.
The complication: reinforcement is real
I don't want to oversimplify this into "every difficult behavior is secretly a beautiful unmet need." Sometimes a pattern does get learned, without anyone intending it. A small request gets put off. An urgent-sounding one gets an immediate response. Over time, without any conscious scheming on anyone's part, everything starts to sound urgent—because urgency is what reliably gets a response.
That's not evidence the person is manipulative. It's evidence that a real need found the only channel that worked. Both things can be true at once: the need is genuine, and the way it's being expressed has become a learned pattern that isn't serving anyone well anymore, including the person doing the calling.
Compassion and boundaries, together
This is where I want to push back on a false choice I hear often: either give in to every request because someone is lonely, or stop responding because you suspect manipulation. Neither one holds up.
Unlimited availability isn't sustainable, and it doesn't actually meet the need—it just meets it on the person's most anxious terms. Withdrawing, on the other hand, leaves the real need untouched and often makes the urgency worse. What tends to work better is meeting the need on a different, more dependable schedule, so nobody has to create a crisis to receive connection.
This is where a bit of research offers something genuinely encouraging. In a randomized clinical trial, older adults who received brief, scheduled phone calls—not therapy, not constant contact, just predictable check-ins—showed measurable drops in loneliness, depression, and anxiety within a month (Kahlon et al., 2021). I want to be careful here: that study wasn't testing "attention-seeking behavior" specifically. But it's solid evidence for something related and important: connection doesn't have to be constant to matter. Sometimes just knowing when it's coming is enough to loosen the grip of worry.
In practice, that might look like a set time to call each day, rather than an open-ended "call anytime." A visible calendar showing who's coming and when. A regular task or small responsibility that gives someone a reason to feel useful again, not just cared for. Real choices, even small ones, about daily routines. One agreed-upon point of contact among siblings, so responses stay consistent instead of whoever answers first. And often, simply naming the feeling out loud—"you're worried about tomorrow"—before jumping to solve the logistics.
A word for the person on the other end of the phone
I want to say this plainly: if you are the adult child, the sibling, the spouse who is tired, that exhaustion is not a character flaw. Feeling responsible for someone else's peace of mind, call after call, is genuinely draining, and it doesn't mean you love them less. You are allowed to need rest, privacy, and a life that isn't organized entirely around the next possible call. A relationship that only works when one person gives endlessly isn't sustainable for either of you. The goal isn't unlimited availability—it's a rhythm you can actually keep up.
When it isn't attention-seeking at all
Some changes deserve real caution before any behavioral explanation. A sudden shift in confusion or agitation can signal an infection or delirium—urinary tract infections are a notoriously common, easily missed trigger in older adults (Cedars-Sinai, 2026). New irritability, withdrawal, or physical complaints can be depression, which is common and frequently underdiagnosed in later life (National Institute on Aging, 2025). Pain, medication side effects, hearing or vision loss, and cognitive changes can all masquerade as "difficult behavior." And anything involving hopelessness, feeling like a burden, or not wanting to live must always be taken seriously and looked into right away—never brushed aside as someone being dramatic.
Where this leaves us
None of this means answering every call the moment it comes in. And it doesn’t mean treating someone’s need for connection as an inconvenience. It means getting curious about what is underneath the behavior and creating a more predictable, sustainable way to meet that need—one that works for both people in the relationship.
Attention is a human need. Unlimited access to another person is not.
Understanding that difference changes more than how we judge the behavior. It changes how we respond to the person underneath it.
Kelli Pylant, LBSW, is co-owner of Heart to Soul Solutions, where she and Milena Razack support older adults and families with the practical, relational, and day-to-day challenges that come with aging.
Learn More
Alzheimer's Association. (n.d.). Repetition. Retrieved from alz.org/help-support/caregiving/stages-behaviors/repetition — Practical guidance on why people with dementia repeat questions or requests, and how to respond to the feeling underneath it.
Algase, D. L., Beck, C., Kolanowski, A., Whall, A., Berent, S., Richards, K., & Beattie, E. (1996). Need-driven dementia-compromised behavior: An alternative view of disruptive behavior. American Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 11(6), 10–19. doi.org/10.1177/153331759601100603 — The foundational framework for understanding difficult behaviors as expressions of unmet needs.
Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529. doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497 — The classic research establishing that the drive for connection is basic to human psychology, not a sign of weakness.
Cedars-Sinai. (2026, February 23). How urinary tract infections can trigger delirium and worsen dementia.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom — An explanation of why sudden behavior changes in older adults deserve medical attention, not assumptions.
Cohen-Mansfield, J., Dakheel-Ali, M., Marx, M. S., Thein, K., & Regier, N. G. (2015). Which unmet needs contribute to behavior problems in persons with advanced dementia? Psychiatry Research, 228(1), 59–64. doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2015.03.043 — Research linking specific unmet needs to specific behaviors in dementia.
Custers, A. F. J., Westerhof, G. J., Kuin, Y., Gerritsen, D. L., & Riksen-Walraven, J. M. (2012). Relatedness, autonomy, and competence in the caring relationship: The perspective of nursing home residents. Journal of Aging Studies, 26(3), 319–326. doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2012.02.005 — A study of what older adults in care settings say they actually need from their relationships.
Kahlon, M. K., Aksan, N., Aubrey, R., et al. (2021). Effect of layperson-delivered, empathy-focused program of telephone calls on loneliness, depression, and anxiety among adults during the COVID-19 pandemic: A randomized clinical trial. JAMA Psychiatry, 78(6), 616–622. doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2021.0113 — The study behind the "predictable connection" section, showing brief scheduled calls reduced loneliness, depression, and anxiety.
National Institute on Aging. (2025, February 5). Depression and older adults.nia.nih.gov/health/mental-and-emotional-health/depression-and-older-adults — An overview of how depression often looks different—and gets missed more often—in older adults.