Sam - glad to hear you had a good holiday, back posting a little for now.
Glad to hear your mum is in a good mood. Hope you've told her it's midnight and she's gone to bed.
With the clothes, do you think the time has come to limit her access to her clothes? I know you want to keep her as independent as possible, but this includes minimising your stress and hers for as long as possible.
I think some of this sorting and looking and getting rid of is part of the confused brain knowing it needs to do something, with these clothes, but not what that something is. So by removing clothes to the minimum, you reduce her anxiety as she can't process and what to do with them, which includes the charity bag chucking. It does mean you need locked space somewhere else to put them.
Also with the food choices, I know my mum struggles with food choices, so I just put things on her plate. If you still want to give your mum a choice is it worth giving a choice of two things rather than an open question.
It took me ages to explain to OH that children need closed questions - ie do you want to have fish fingers, not what do you want, and I can see with my mum that closed questions minimise her anxiety, and she knows how to answer, with an open question or too many choices she either gives up and says 'whatever you think I should do' or gets anxious knowing she should answer, but doesn't know how. I quickly change the subject when this happens and she quickly forgets.
I know it seems wrong to treat our PWD like this, and but in total it is about minimising stress which leads to the best outcome possible. I think trying to make PWD with dementia happy is not always possible, but minimising stress and anxiety, and choosing something as simple as toast or cereal can be stressful, is the route to making them happy.
Keeping her calm might mean taking away choice but it gives her more dignity if choice upsets her. You have to work out how to make her perceive she has control I think, a bit like guiding a teenager.
And re earlier comments I'm another whose mum doesn't live with me, I couldn't have ever had her live here, I would have just spent all day every day being cross with her. So you have done a fab job for your mum ever since you moved in and before with your neverending weekend journeys.
I'm glad you've had your initial counselling assessment and hope you get the dates for your 12 sessions soon. Just tell a love lie when you go out which mum will accept, it will go down better than telling her nothing. Maybe a smear test every week (can't get the smileys to work to insert here)
Glad to hear your mum is in a good mood. Hope you've told her it's midnight and she's gone to bed.
With the clothes, do you think the time has come to limit her access to her clothes? I know you want to keep her as independent as possible, but this includes minimising your stress and hers for as long as possible.
I think some of this sorting and looking and getting rid of is part of the confused brain knowing it needs to do something, with these clothes, but not what that something is. So by removing clothes to the minimum, you reduce her anxiety as she can't process and what to do with them, which includes the charity bag chucking. It does mean you need locked space somewhere else to put them.
Also with the food choices, I know my mum struggles with food choices, so I just put things on her plate. If you still want to give your mum a choice is it worth giving a choice of two things rather than an open question.
It took me ages to explain to OH that children need closed questions - ie do you want to have fish fingers, not what do you want, and I can see with my mum that closed questions minimise her anxiety, and she knows how to answer, with an open question or too many choices she either gives up and says 'whatever you think I should do' or gets anxious knowing she should answer, but doesn't know how. I quickly change the subject when this happens and she quickly forgets.
I know it seems wrong to treat our PWD like this, and but in total it is about minimising stress which leads to the best outcome possible. I think trying to make PWD with dementia happy is not always possible, but minimising stress and anxiety, and choosing something as simple as toast or cereal can be stressful, is the route to making them happy.
Keeping her calm might mean taking away choice but it gives her more dignity if choice upsets her. You have to work out how to make her perceive she has control I think, a bit like guiding a teenager.
And re earlier comments I'm another whose mum doesn't live with me, I couldn't have ever had her live here, I would have just spent all day every day being cross with her. So you have done a fab job for your mum ever since you moved in and before with your neverending weekend journeys.
I'm glad you've had your initial counselling assessment and hope you get the dates for your 12 sessions soon. Just tell a love lie when you go out which mum will accept, it will go down better than telling her nothing. Maybe a smear test every week (can't get the smileys to work to insert here)
