Focus on What You Know

In my mother’s care home, a green afghan covered her bed. The blanket was crocheted by a friend of Mom’s years ago. Mom would hang it over the couch after she curled up with it to watch her television shows each night. I wanted Mom to feel close to what she knew, despite how most of what she knew had been left behind in the family home, so I unpacked that blanket and spread it across that bed. Every morning in her new surroundings, she woke with the soft blanket next to her face. Every night, she slept with the weight of it across her shoulders offering comfort.

The point of that effort was to focus on what was familiar. Individuals with dementia or Alzheimer’s, or even older adults, like to eat at the same restaurant and perform the same routines for a reason. They find security in familiar surroundings, in knowing the expectations of an event and knowing the outcome of a certain act.

Thriving in Familiarity

According to the Alzheimer’s ProjectOpens in new tab or window, persons with dementia thrive on familiarity. “Familiarity is important because dementia gradually impairs a person’s ability to plan, initiate, and complete an activity. By creating an environment of familiar routines and activities, it allows them to feel comforted and calm. Hence, if they can perform an activity, they can retain their sense of control and independence. Furthermore, establishing a familiar pattern of events can help transfer the schedule of a daily routine into the long-term memory portion of the brain.”

Control and independence. Despite what we all hope to achieve in our life, the two main factors that motivate us to get out of bed in the morning are the ability to choose to do so, and to choose whether to hit the snooze.

There is value in creating routines. There is also value in creating a well-known environment. In her room, my mother possessed her old rocker chair, used when we were babies. It’s now in my son’s former bedroom where his Mickey Mouse, once a comforting creature, sits and awaits his children.

Entire family rooms, kitchens and bedrooms have been recreated in care homes across the world to honor this notion of familiarity. The picture frames on my mother’s bureau of drawers contained photos from our younger years. Every Christmas, I toted out Christmas decorations to add to her décor, including two Dickensian carolers that she would often speak to as if she were re-staging Christmas in her room. These objects not only brought about a little nostalgia, but understanding too, of who my mother had been, and who she was still.

Items To Consider

At the activities center at my mother’s care home, the director kept a bin filled with PVC pipes of all shapes and sizes. One of the residents had been a plumber and occasionally, he wandered into the activities room, pulled out the bin and began assembling pipes. Another resident enjoyed the beach so much, the director kept a tub of sand on hand with shells and sand dollars. And whenever I baked cookies, a few of them always wound up in my mother’s hands.

Consider the hobbies and passions of your loved ones. They might not be able to swing a racket or a golf club, but old scorecards, tennis balls, pictures from those times or pictures of someone else performing that hobby offer the individual an opportunity to recognize themselves in others, giving them a sense of accomplishment too.

As the website Carewatch.comOpens in new tab or window writes, “A dementia memory box can also open up the lines of communication (something which people with dementia can find particularly difficult), as well as making your relative feel more at ease and providing an activity that interests them.”

Familiar objects and goody bags full of things will not only spark memories or facilitate conversation, but they give the individual a chance to root themselves in the everyday. Something all of us need help with now and then.

As of late, when I text my adult children, they educate me on what emojis are proper to use and which ones have gone out of style. I can only imagine the difficulty of navigating this when I am 80. By then, I hope emojis are a relic of the past and relegated to some tech museum. For now, I focus on the use of the good old smiley face.