By seemingly over communicating the task at hand, the individual maintains a sense of personal security and is able to stay in the moment with what is happening to her.
4. Acceptance. Perhaps the hardest step in the process of compassionate communication is acceptance—accepting whatever the demented individual says or does is appropriate for the reality in which she lives. Attempting to force an Alzheimer’s patient to understand “our” reality is a pointless and arduous exercise in futility. By accepting the demented person’s reality, she is able to feel as though she is having a shared experience and is not living in an isolated and scary world.
5. Just Say Yes! Whenever safe and appropriate find a way to say “yes.” We all want our questions and desires to be answered with a “yes;” unfortunately, more often than not the caregiver finds the request to be silly, pointless or entirely too much trouble. Just as children will pout, manipulate, throw a tantrum and countless other behaviors in an effort to elicit a “yes” from the parent, so will the demented individual. Have fun by allowing the patient to have fun too. We all want a yes answer—indulge the dementia patient as often as possible.
Charlotte Parker is the co-author of Return to Joy: A Family’s Initiation into the Mysteries of Dementia. Read more about Compassionate Caregiving at returntojoy.tumblr.com.
This is wonderful, Charlotte. I've written often about what you say here:
"Acceptance. Perhaps the hardest step in the process of compassionate communication is acceptance-accepting whatever the demented individual says or does is appropriate for the reality in which she lives."
My dad didn't have Alzheimer's, but his brain was destroyed by surgery meant to correct a WWII brain injury. I had to learn to get into his head and figure out what he believed to be true, and then, to the best of my ability, make it true. I was taken to task at the time because psychiatrists insisted we bring them back to "reality." It was obvious to me that the only way he could find contentment was for me to make his reality "real."
Fortunately, professional thinking changed during the ten years dad lived in his demented hell. It finally got so I no longer had to fight to do what a daughter's heart knew was right for her dad. You, too, instinctively know what your mother needs.
Thank you for this valuable contribution to the Ouralzheimer's site.
Carol