Does your PWD destroy things?

[Linbrusco]

Mums been in care 18mnths. I've posted once before about this but things haven't changed in this respect.

Mums room is virtually bare. A chest of drawers, 2 chrs and her bed, all thats left from when we brought in knick knacks & pictures from home, are two little wall hangings.
Losing & misplacing are common place, can accept that ( staff have just found a vase & one shoe from 4 months ago) but Mum also tends to break or destroy things.

Across from Mums room is a lady who is not long there but has a china cabinet, and stuffed toys & pictures galore

Even Mums clothes, shes going through at a rate of knots.
Buttons pulled, threads hanging off... I bought her a top, with little diamantes, shes pulled them off.
Her shoes she pulls out the insoles and throws the in the bin , manages to rip them in half??
I bought new insoles and superglued them in.. No shes ripped them out.

I bought her new shoes last week, pleased with myself that the insole was stiched in.
Looked at them today and one of them already has the insole ripped out.

What is it you think with shoes & insoles?

 

[Amy in the US]

Goodness, I've no idea. Maybe something feels funny to her when she wears the shoe, and she's trying to get it out?

I wonder if there's anything you could provide to her, to destroy, if that makes sense?

 

[Fullticket]

Hi Linbrusco: I have no idea why they do the things they do. Mum threw some cushions outside in the rain then walked with them down the garden and put them in the fish pond. When you consider that going outside is like a swear word to mum she was very determined...presumably she didn't like the cushions. Stamped post has been put in the Aga, a cup of coffee deliberately thrown down the back of the fridge, electrical items left outside (again, only when it is raining). While she doesn't pull things to bits, she can take a 'dislike' to something and remove it from the house.
Obviously that's a bit different to your problem; is there anxiety or worry that can be eliminated? I also find that things like wet wipes are now a bit of a puzzle to her - she doesn't realise you pull them out individually from the slot at the top. If presented with a pack unsupervised she will work away at it and open it at the side, sliding out all the wet wipes and pulling off the top one. I have shown her so many times how to pull through the slot. This happened in a public loo as well, when the paper is presented through a little hole in the mechanism; she claimed there was no paper. She was in hospital recently and I noticed that although the loos in the general areas had loo paper you pulled through the little hole, the loos in the dementia section had toilet rolls on 'domestic' type holders so they were familiar and could be seen.
Sorry, rambling off the subject a bit...

 

[Tin]

Yes, it has been that way in my house for ages! Over the years I have moved things out of her bedroom and put them in what once was my small, single bedroom, but now is mine, until this weekend that is. I could no longer get to my bed without climbing over stuff I had moved out of mum's reach. Now I have decided to swop rooms and put mum in the small room and myself back into the big room. She has 'broken' my kitchen. Everything in the house is touched, moved or destroyed by her, she fiddles with chair cushions and covers, pulls at any threads and generally breaks what once was in good working order. At the moment she is doing something to the commode in the bathroom! She wanders around for hours, restlessness is a big problem and the 'toys' or activities I have bought or made for her over the years no longer help to distract. She is not housebound and we go out most days! So I have no idea why it is this way. Again I am looking at her anti depressants and hope to talk to gp about these tomorrow.

 

[Tin]

Forgot to say that this fiddling activity has now spread out of the house. When visiting friends homes, café or shops she does the same. She swops towels or cushions, floor rugs for bedding, God I could go on, but have to stop and go see what she is up to in the bathroom!

 

[Beate]

OH was like this: restlessness bordering onto OCD, he was forever straightening pictures and placemats though he wasn't actually destroying things. Then I hit on the holy grail - a pack of playing cards. He would sit for hours sorting them into a system only he could understand, but it occupied his hands and made him happy.

I'm not saying it will work the same here, but I think anything low value that they can fiddle with must be worth a try. I think that's why twiddlemuffs were invented, though those cards beat them anytime in OH's case.

 

[nitram]

Then I hit on the holy grail - a pack of playing cards

In my wife's case it was providing an ample supply of travel brochures to tear into little pieces.

 

[Tin]

In my wife's case it was providing an ample supply of travel brochures to tear into little pieces.

I've done the lot, playing cards, dominoes, old jumpers, table mats, magazines and on and on. Nothing works these days, she heads straight for the big stuff. We have just got back from our morning coffee at the café and she immediately went to the bathroom to remove towels and bring into sitting room!

 

[Shedrech]

hi Linbrusco
dad did his own version of this kind of restlessness; he's destroyed pairs of glasses and his slippers too regularly need replacing

I'm just concerned for the new lady across the way, and from the emoji I guess you are too - I guess the staff are aware of your mum's habits and are ready to make sure she has no access to the lady's room and things, which is tricky (well, it would be in dad's home; the staff do their best but the residents who wander somehow manage to get everywhere)

 

[la lucia]

Mums been in care 18mnths. I've posted once before about this but things haven't changed in this respect.

Mums room is virtually bare. A chest of drawers, 2 chrs and her bed, all thats left from when we brought in knick knacks & pictures from home, are two little wall hangings.
Losing & misplacing are common place, can accept that ( staff have just found a vase & one shoe from 4 months ago) but Mum also tends to break or destroy things.

Across from Mums room is a lady who is not long there but has a china cabinet, and stuffed toys & pictures galore

Even Mums clothes, shes going through at a rate of knots.
Buttons pulled, threads hanging off... I bought her a top, with little diamantes, shes pulled them off.
Her shoes she pulls out the insoles and throws the in the bin , manages to rip them in half??
I bought new insoles and superglued them in.. No shes ripped them out.

I bought her new shoes last week, pleased with myself that the insole was stiched in.
Looked at them today and one of them already has the insole ripped out.

What is it you think with shoes & insoles?

Shoes and insoles? Possibly an urge to fiddle with anything with loose edges?

Oh yes..... For 2 years I had to keep my saucepans and cooking gear in my wardrobe. I had to confiscate the document shredder very early on and keep boxes of confiscated objects under my desk. But apart from pouring neat bleach on beautiful pale linen covered sofas the worst was having to hunt for and hide her almost infinite collection of scalpels.

She would also tear up everything tearable... including the 3D paper model I made to scale when I designed her bathroom and her incontinence pads...... The latter drove me nuts.

I still can't find the lovely floor length curtains she removed either so now my very fussy mother has odd ones. When she was mobile you couldn't let her out of sight. It was exhausting.

 

[Amy in the US]

This doesn't help Lin, but I wanted to thank @Fullticket for mentioning the story about her mother not being able to pull wipes out of the container or "see" toilet paper in public loos. My mother has the same problem and while I know it's minor, it is always such a relief to know your PWD isn't the only one. In my mother's case, she cannot get a Kleenex/facial tissue out of one of those "pop up" boxes, where they are dispensed through clear plastic on the top of a more cube shaped box. I have to buy a brand where pretty much the entire top of the box comes off. I had bought some of the smaller cube boxes as they take up less space on her side tables and so on, and then puzzled over the full boxes she had destroyed, before I figured out that she couldn't "work" them. We went back to the other style. And she also can't "see" toilet paper/loo roll if it's in a holder. We had that problem the entire time she was in hospital and rehab last year. She would panic because "there's no paper" and it was really very sad.

Lin, I'm sorry about the tangent. Clearly you are not the only one experiencing this and I guess the consensus is that you can try distraction, but it may not work.

Could you get shoes inexpensively from charity shops and friends and neighbours and give them to her expressly for her to destroy? Or is that crazy?

 

[Peppie]

My dad tears things up but hides things that he thinks are not his but then he says someone has stolen these things. The thing that I struggle with is how can PWD find such good hiding places some of my dads stuff I haven't found yet this is months later yet if I hide something out of his way so I know were they are he finds them no problem then re - hides them and I can't find stuff it's baffling me so much. I can go out of the room for a minute and in that time he will hide something. He hides food I can't keep up with his shopping I'm at my wits end.

 

[la lucia]

Another thought.... Has she got anything to fiddle with? My mother has to have things to fiddle. Or she did - I'm not sure if she will when she comes home.

I give her Duplo which is excellent for obsessive behaviour and arthritic hands. She also has twiddle mits and button tins but before her recent decline it was Duplo that kept her constructively occupied for the longest periods with all kinds of weird and wonderful constructions.

Amy, those tissue boxes drive me mad.. I always end up ripping them apart and as for wet wipes..... They often emerge in great chunks for me too.

We couldn't let my mother anywhere near either she would have destroyed them in minutes one way or another.

Mums been in care 18mnths. I've posted once before about this but things haven't changed in this respect.

Mums room is virtually bare. A chest of drawers, 2 chrs and her bed, all thats left from when we brought in knick knacks & pictures from home, are two little wall hangings.
Losing & misplacing are common place, can accept that ( staff have just found a vase & one shoe from 4 months ago) but Mum also tends to break or destroy things.

Across from Mums room is a lady who is not long there but has a china cabinet, and stuffed toys & pictures galore

Even Mums clothes, shes going through at a rate of knots.
Buttons pulled, threads hanging off... I bought her a top, with little diamantes, shes pulled them off.
Her shoes she pulls out the insoles and throws the in the bin , manages to rip them in half??
I bought new insoles and superglued them in.. No shes ripped them out.

I bought her new shoes last week, pleased with myself that the insole was stiched in.
Looked at them today and one of them already has the insole ripped out.

What is it you think with shoes & insoles?

 

[Peppie]

Meant to say as well if I get dad things to do and distract him he hides them sorry I sound like a broken record but I wish someone could help with explaining this.

 

[Amy in the US]

@Peppie, as far as I know, the dementia is the explanation for these sorts of behaviours. Exactly what is happening, I do not know, but presumably the cause is some part of the brain that has been damaged by the disease.

I found this article: http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_ro...cle_d0eeede0-29be-11e7-b800-b36076cdba7c.html

The "hiding" things seems to generally be that the PWD is putting the item "somewhere safe," not necessarily deliberately hiding it from themselves or others (but possibly). This seems to be a very common behaviour in a lot of PWDs. Again, I have no understanding of the pathophysiology that explains this. There's not a lot here but: https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/info/20064/symptoms/87/behaviour_changes/9

This factsheet is from the Canadian Alzheimer's Society: http://www.alzheimer.ca/sites/defau.../fact sheets en/hoarding ascd may 30 2013.pdf

 

[love.dad.but..]

Yes dad used to veer from destroying things to tidying and lining things up in an OCD way. Whichever it was it was was always very purposeful and seemed to satisfy a need in him whilst seeming odd to me...he clearly knew what he was aiming for and completing a task! Over and over again.

 

[Onmyown]

Yes mum has destroyed alot here over the years. Shoes,drinking glasses not one left at xmas had to buy some cheap ones. And yes wet wipes opened at sides?? bread goes off here and is costing a bit now she opens the bread in the middle ? so fed up trying to stick it to keep it fresh. Butter too hard so she puts it in the microwave on too high, milk left in a cupboard instead of the fridge, ornaments broken all over the place. Smashed a plate the other day and blamed the cat? Yes seems to break everything? cuts her shoes with scissors as they dont feel right?

Lucky this is her house and her things, everything i own is in storage in a room locked. My toothbrush,sponge,facecloths etc nothing is safe. I used to be a "NANNY"

 

[Onmyown]

dont know what happened there im soooooo tired............ what i was trying to say was ive looked after lots of toddlers and mums ten times the work? Give me a baby throwing a tantrum anyday.

 

[Linbrusco]

We have tried Mum with twiddle muffs before. She said they were stupid.
Her crochet blanket on her bed is slowly becoming unravelled.
She had some nice tapestry cushion covers. She busted the zips, and would take the cushions out the covers and shove the cushion inserts in her chest of drawers.
We give her old magazines, and they disappear.
Tissues are folded, and shredded.... but thanks to posters I now know why shes obviously pulling all the box apart as she cannot figure out how to get them out if the tissues drop back in.?
As far as toilet rolls, we find them everywhere in her room apart from on the toilet roll holder.


I know its probably from anxiety/restlessness, which she is on meds for.
She used to knit, but can no longer do so. I thought about buying her wooden needles and taking all her odd bits of wool, but another new resident who still knits, Mum took a look and didnt say a word.....? I took it as a sign of being disinterested.
My sister gave her a big teddy bear with a little tartan skirt ( Mum being Scottish) a hat & bow...I can see them all picked to bits soon.
She likes to strip her bec and and remake it. Folds and refolds her towels on her bathroom.
If I took her anything else,. cards, duplo, dominos.. I can see it getting scattered to the 4 corners of her room.

They have activities from 9am to 5pm, 7 days a week. They encourage Mum as much as possible to,participate but in recent months she has taken to her room more, and staff put her TV on for her usually with something musical to occupy her.

 

[mancmum]

Could you give her hand knitted things to unravel for the lady who knits. Or even to wind the wool. I expect you have tried but my father (who does not behave as your mum) found messing with wool to be his most engrossing activity. Depending on age as well making pom poms int he traditional manner can be satisfying and time consuming.