Loosing ability to use/communicate by phone

[Sunflowers23]

Hi all, first time posting on here. I care for my Aunt, 92 with Vascular Dementia. Just wondering if others had had similar situations. She’s fixated with her mobile phone and has to have it with her at all times, is constantly looking at it but gradually loosing ability to use it. She’ll fiddle and press wrong buttons, swipe wrong way, even uses it as a tv remote at times, wondering why tv won’t change (but never tv remote as phone).
She likes big icons so she can just read name, press and call so we change colours for visual ease and deleted everything but the 4 main people she calls and put largish icons on front screen but she still manages to swipe and hit the settings and change them or press too hard and delete icons. That and continuously turning volume down on side, accidentally.
I’ve looked at other phones and they seem similar sizes or you need to press numbers which I don’t think she’ll get. She doesn’t get on with landline as can’t hear through ear piece and can’t have it plugged in near her.
Are we getting to the stage where she is losing capacity to use phone. She constantly says she wants a bigger phone but it doesn’t mean bigger icons or less technology on it. You can’t remove the settings app etc from phone to stop her pressing it.
Just wanted to know if others experienced similar.
Thank you for help in advance

 

[Collywobbles]

Could you find a mobile phone designed for children, where only parents can set it up and the child doesn’t have access to the settings?

 

[northumbrian_k]

Hi @Sunflowers23 and welcome to Dementia Support Forum our friendly and helpful community. I am afraid that what you are describing is all too familiar. My wife never mastered using a mobile phone and even our portable landline phone became too much for her. She would never answer when it rang, expecting me to pick it up. I gave her a list of pre-programmed numbers showing which button to press. This worked for a while. I would hand her the phone to speak to her son. She would put it to her ear for a while, mumble a few phrases, then put the phone down and walk away, leaving him talking to thin air. Losing the ability to use familiar things - and mixing up one thing for another eg phone and TV remote - is a sign of the inevitable and heartless progress of dementia. Recognising that and adapting to it is all that can be done.

Perhaps for your Aunt using a phone has become such a challenge that - rather than trying to compensate - it might be better for it to be 'broken' or 'lost'.

 

[yoy]

I found the same as northumbrian_k. Mum got too confused with her mobile, so after a while it "broke" 😉 and was forgotten about. She also started struggling with the landline, and regularly got the phone and tv handsets muddled up. She would ring to say the tv wasn't working and you could her pressing the buttons on the phone instead of on the tv handset when I tried to give her instructions. It's classic dementia it seems. Just part of the progression.

 

[Sunflowers23]

Thank you everyone, appreciate your comments and confirmation that we’re all experiencing similar traits from this awful disease.

 

[StressedDaughter]

Hi all, first time posting on here. I care for my Aunt, 92 with Vascular Dementia. Just wondering if others had had similar situations. She’s fixated with her mobile phone and has to have it with her at all times, is constantly looking at it but gradually loosing ability to use it. She’ll fiddle and press wrong buttons, swipe wrong way, even uses it as a tv remote at times, wondering why tv won’t change (but never tv remote as phone).
She likes big icons so she can just read name, press and call so we change colours for visual ease and deleted everything but the 4 main people she calls and put largish icons on front screen but she still manages to swipe and hit the settings and change them or press too hard and delete icons. That and continuously turning volume down on side, accidentally.
I’ve looked at other phones and they seem similar sizes or you need to press numbers which I don’t think she’ll get. She doesn’t get on with landline as can’t hear through ear piece and can’t have it plugged in near her.
Are we getting to the stage where she is losing capacity to use phone. She constantly says she wants a bigger phone but it doesn’t mean bigger icons or less technology on it. You can’t remove the settings app etc from phone to stop her pressing it.
Just wanted to know if others experienced similar.
Thank you for help in advance

My Mum (90) has similar problems - she has a more traditional doro mobile phone but she is still struggling. I speak to her every day but sometimes it is over several different calls as she cuts me off, presses random buttons and ‘can’t hear’.
We have removed her tablet as that was even more difficult and she kept breaking it, which is a shame as the grandchildren sent lots of photos to her - her basic mobile doesn’t receive photos.
It’s all so hard - I only travel to see her twice a week in the care home - the inability to talk to her every day, which I can see around the corner, will hit us both hard.