Understand That Patience Is Paramount
A majority of people underestimate the level of patience you need to care for a person dealing with dementia. Note that an individual with dementia has to deal with the unexpected changes that are happening to their body.
They are continuously struggling to regain some of the skills they lose including thinking and speaking. It can make one feel agitated or hopeless most of the time.
This is why a caregiver needs to practice patience and try as much as possible to relieve the mental and emotional pressure that a loved one with dementia has.
Plan your time accordingly because rushing the individual you are caring for will not help much. It will only lead to more confusion between both parties.
Do Not Be Afraid To Ask For Help
Whether you are caregiving for a relative or you offer expert help, always be ready to accept support. Several support groups for family caregivers exist.
Search for the groups close to your location and pick the one you are most comfortable with.
Such groups are beneficial in that they create a safe space that caregivers can use to talk about the issues they have with other people who are in similar situations.
The interaction that happens in a group setting can also act as a learning environment where you can pick up one or more techniques to incorporate into your care plan.
Support groups are not a preserve for family members.
Expert caregivers can also join such groups where they can ask for assistance from colleagues, mentors, and other able individuals when facing challenging times.
Never feel bad for seeking a hand or wanting to talk to someone when things are tough.
Coping With Changes In Behavior And Personality
As well as changes in communication during the middle stages of dementia, troubling behavior and personality changes can also occur. These behaviors include aggressiveness, wandering, hallucinations, and eating or sleeping difficulties that can be distressing to witness and make your role as caregiver even more difficult.
Often, these behavioral issues are triggered or exacerbated by your loved ones inability to deal with stress, their frustrated attempts to communicate, or their environment. By making some simple changes, you can help ease your loved ones stress and improve their well-being, along with your own caregiving experience.
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Notice And Manage Frustration
Caring for a parent with dementia may require flexibility, resilience, and patience. A person may feel frustrated, but this does not mean they do not care about their parent.
However, if a person is feeling extreme frustration on an ongoing basis, this can affect their well-being and the care they give to their parent.
A person may wish to try the following tips to help manage frustration:
- Learn to notice the warning signs of frustration: These can include shortness of breath, headache, overeating, or increased alcohol consumption.
- Take steps to calm down physically: A person can temporarily remove themselves from a situation and take some deep breaths before responding. Meditation, taking a bath, or listening to music may help a person physically relax.
- Recognize negative thought patterns: A frustrated person may be more prone to overgeneralizing, taking things personally, or ignoring the positives in a situation. Recognizing these thought patterns allows a person to view things more calmly and compassionately.
- Communicate clearly and assertively: People may become frustrated when they feel unable to express their own needs and limits. Instead of suppressing these feelings or losing their temper, they can aim to calmly assert their feelings and needs without blaming others.
Grief And Loss Experienced By Carers
Grief is an emotional response to loss. The loss could be the loss of a relationship, moving house, loss of good health, divorce or death. If someone close to us develops dementia, we are faced with the loss of the person we used to know and the loss of a relationship.
People caring for partners are also likely to experience grief at the loss of the future they had planned together. Grief is a very individual feeling and people will feel grief differently at different times.
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Listen And Pay Attention To Queues
Caregivers will often say you need to listen with your whole body when it comes to caring for someone with dementia. This means that many of their responses may be non-verbal, so you cant simply rely on them answering your question or responding in a straightforward way. By listening with your ears, eyes, and heart, you can pick up on these queues that can tell you what they are feeling or trying to say. Their behaviors and movements may tell you a lot more than what actually gets saidusually not much in the later stages where speech is severely affected.
Its important as a caregiver to not take irritation and sometimes aggressive behaviors personally. This is often a sign of frustration and confusion about what is going on or why certain things are harder to do or remember. Reacting to aggressive behavior with kindness and compassion, and remembering that this behavior really isnt targeted at you personally, will help both the person with dementia and the caregiver better cope with this challenging time.
Help Them Stay Organized But Without Doing Everything For Them
Having a nighttime routine also helps with sleep problems that some seniors with dementia encounter. Doctors suggest non-drug options to manage sleep issues in those with dementia-related sleeping issues. The right room temperature, comfortable bedding, nightwear, and a soft light that isnt too dark can help. So can reading or listening to music to wind down instead of television or a drink which can act as a stimulant and disrupt sleep.9
A person with dementia may need help with their daily tasks and life which theyd managed alone until now. Having a set routine can help. Dont do everything for them though it might make them feel unwanted or useless. Instead, have them do things with you or assist with little jobs around the house. If tasks seem daunting, break it down into simpler steps for them. You could even use notes or little posters at critical locations to help them remember what to do or how to do something.10
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Relationships Roles And Responsibilities
Relationships form a central part of our identity. Relationships often change when someone has dementia. People with dementia can easily become isolated or avoided by those around them. They may lose contact with friends and family, who may not know how to react to them.
As dementia progresses, some aspects of the relationship may become harder, such as the ability of a person with dementia to support those around them. However, many positive elements of the relationship will remain. Carers and those around the person with dementia may find it helpful to focus on these positive aspects.
Carers can help by supporting existing relationships and encouraging the person with dementia to join social groups, community activities, religious activities or hobbies. Dementia cafés provide an opportunity to meet other people, talk about living with dementia and take part in group activities. The GP surgery, local library or council office will also have information about other social groups.
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Carers and others can also help in creating a dementia-friendly community. This is a community in which local people have an understanding of dementia, which empowers people with dementia to feel confident and be able to contribute to their community.
The Challenges And Rewards Of Alzheimer’s Care
Caring for a person with Alzheimers disease or dementia can often seem to be a series of grief experiences as you watch your loved ones memories disappear and skills erode. The person with dementia will change and behave in different, sometimes disturbing or upsetting ways. For both caregivers and their patients, these changes can produce an emotional wallop of confusion, frustration, and sadness.
As the disease advances through the different stages, your loved ones needs increase, your caregiving and financial responsibilities become more challenging, and the fatigue, stress, and isolation can become overwhelming. At the same time, the ability of your loved one to show appreciation for all your hard work only diminishes. Caregiving can literally seem like a thankless task.
For many, though, a caregivers journey includes not only huge challenges, but also many rich, life-affirming rewards.
Caregiving is a pure expression of love. Caring for a person with Alzheimers or dementia connects you on a deeper level. If you were already close, it can bring you closer. If you werent close before, it can help you resolve differences, find forgiveness, and build new, warmer memories with your family member.
Caregiving can teach younger family members the importance of caring, compassion, and acceptance. Caregiving for someone with dementia is such a selfless act. Despite the stress, demands, and heartache, it can bring out the best in us to serve as role models for our children.
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Communicate Patiently Slowly And Clearly
Use physical touch to help communicate. For instance, if a person with dementia is having a hallucination, a gentle pat from you might draw them back to reality and out of their frightening hallucination.4 Sometimes holding hands, touching, hugging, and praise will get the person to respond when all else fails.
Communication or more specifically failed communication can be the crux of problems for many caregivers. Weve whittled it down to some of the key aspects that you could focus on to make it easy for you and the person with dementia:5
Try Some Of These Best Foods For Dementia Patients To Eat
There are lots of fads and daily news on the latest food to help slow down dementia. Advice from the Alzheimers Society and other expert dementia organisations is clear: there are foods that can help reduce some of the symptoms, but mostly its common sense. A healthy balanced diet with treats in moderation of course. Some suggestions include:
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Create A Peaceful Environment
This particularly applies to people with dementia who still live at home. Go the extra mile to make sure that the person who is dealing with dementia gets to live in a serene environment.
Get rid of clutter in the room because this can overwhelm anyone even when they are not ill. Simply create a dementia-friendly home.
You may need to change the colors of the room where the person under your care spends the most time. This is because bright colors normally act as stimulants, while subtle colors promote calmness.
The use of pleasant fragrances from sachets and fresh flowers can also be aroma-therapeutic fostering a sense of peacefulness. If one wants to listen to music, let it be something soothing.
Tips For Communicating With A Person With Dementia
There are many changes that may take place along this care journey. If youre a caregiver for a loved one with dementia, its important to know the kinds of things that could happen. No persons experience with dementia is the same as another persons, but the more you know about the condition, the better.
One of the biggest changes youre likely to experience is in communicating with your loved one. Practical strategies for better communication include:
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Hospital Emergencies: What You Can Do
A trip to the emergency room can tire and frighten a person with Alzheimers or other dementia. Here are some ways to cope:
- Ask a friend or family member to go with you or meet you in the ER. He or she can stay with the person while you answer questions.
- Be ready to explain the symptoms and events leading up to the ER visitpossibly more than once to different staff members.
- Tell ER staff that the person has dementia. Explain how best to talk with the person.
- Comfort the person. Stay calm and positive. How you are feeling will get absorbed by others.
- Be patient. It could be a long wait if the reason for your visit is not life-threatening.
- Recognize that results from the lab take time.
- Realize that just because you do not see staff at work does not mean they are not working.
- Be aware that emergency room staff have limited training in Alzheimers disease and related dementias, so try to help them better understand the person.
- Encourage hospital staff to see the person as an individual and not just another patient with dementia who is confused and disoriented from the disease.
- Do not assume the person will be admitted to the hospital.
- If the person must stay overnight in the hospital, try to have a friend or family member stay with him or her.
Do not leave the emergency room without a plan. If you are sent home, make sure you understand all instructions for follow-up care.
Devise A Daily Routine
In much the same way that a familiar home environment is reassuring, establishing a daily sequence of tasks and activities also helps keep Alzheimers patients focused and oriented. Begin by observing your loved ones daily routines and looking for patterns in their mood and behavior. This information will help you alter your expectations and optimize your care plan. For example, if they tend to be less confused and more cooperative in the morning, then adapting your routine to make the most of those lucid moments may help the entire day go more smoothly.
Keep in mind that Alzheimers patients abilities and preferences often fluctuate from day to day, so try to be flexible and adapt as needed. From there, consider incorporating the tips below into your Alzheimers care plan to ensure a long, safe and successful home-based care experience for you and your loved one.
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Helping A Person With Dementia
If you’re a carer or friend of a person with a dementia, there are different ways to support them in their everyday life.
You can help by:
- remembering they are still the person and friend you may have known for a long time
- including them in group conversations
- asking them their opinion and not assuming you know what they want
- offering your support, they may not feel confident enough to approach you and may need your help
- being sensitive, for example, understanding and supporting their approach to living with the condition
- remembering they can still do the same things as you with a little help
Learn Alzheimers Communication Tips
Communicating with a person who has Alzheimers disease can become incredibly challenging, but much of what a family caregiver does depends upon mutual understanding. Without clear communication, both caregivers and patients are left feeling frustrated and misunderstood. When combined with ample practice and patience, the following suggestions can improve interactions and facilitate daily care tasks.
- Choose simple words and short sentences and use a gentle, calm tone of voice.
- Speak slowly and clearly, but do not talk to the person with Alzheimers like a baby.
- Maintain respect dont speak about them as if they werent there.
- Minimize distractions and background noise, such as the television or radio, to help the person focus on and process what you are saying.
- Allow enough time for them to respond, and be careful not to interrupt.
- If you cant understand what they are trying to say, look for nonverbal clues and take their surrounding environment into consideration.
- Learn to interpret gestures, descriptions and substitutions.
- Offer choices instead of asking open-ended questions.
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Understanding And Supporting A Person With Dementia Understanding And Supporting A Person With Dementia
Gaining a better understanding of what it is like to live with dementia can help you support someone with the condition to live well. We cover topics such as identity, changes in behaviour, and the practical impact of dementia on the individual and carer.
Understanding and supporting someone with dementiaUnderstanding and supporting someone with dementia .
The way a person with dementia feels and experiences life is down to more than just having the condition. Their relationships, environment and support all shape their experience too. Carers, friends and family can help the person with dementia to feel valued and included.
Preserving Your Loved Ones Independence
Take steps to slow the progression of symptoms. While treatments are available for some symptoms, lifestyle changes can also be effective weapons in slowing down the diseases progression. Exercising, eating and sleeping well, managing stress, and staying mentally and socially active are among the steps that can improve brain health and slow the process of deterioration. Making healthy lifestyle changes alongside your loved one can also help protect your own health and counter the stress of caregiving.
Help with short-term memory loss. In the early stages, your loved one may need prompts or reminders to help them remember appointments, recall words or names, keep track of medications, or manage bills and money, for example. To help your loved one maintain their independence, instead of simply taking over every task yourself, try to work together as a partnership. Let your loved one indicate when they want help remembering a word, for example, or agree to check their calculations before paying bills. Encourage them to use a notebook or smartphone to create reminders to keep on hand.
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