She lives in her own house with 24/7 aid. Whenever I visit she asks me what can I do? I just sit here all day I want something to do. I tried puzzles, books, magazines, even bought her crochet needles and yarn (used to do that years ago I thought long term memory would help) but she says her hands hurt her. I'm open to any suggestions.
There is always something some one can do when the activities are put at their level and they have the right support.
I bring over a lot of hobbies to my mom.
One year I brought a Styrofoam wreath and she wrapped all her Mardi Gras beads around the frame. She did so many beads it was too heavy to hang on the door lol. But, she loves that wreath and proudly shows it off too any visitor.
The following year I adapted (that is the key: I must learn and adapt, not her). I bought small 6" wreath frames, and she wrapped them as candle holders.
At Christmas I buy the cheap, dollar store ornaments and we string them on an untwisted wire hanger formed into a circle.
Currently, she's been happily shelling pecans and storing them in freezer bags for Thanksgiving.
I unmatched a bunch of socks in her sock drawer. I left the drawer open and pulled some socks out to put them on top of the dresser so she could see. She, on her own, saw the unmatched socks, proceeded to find the mates and put them together. Yay!
I have a feeling she'll find more unmatched socks tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after...
Inspired by this success, I am going to try having my mom fold small wash clothes. I'm going to buy a big stack of cheap ones.
"I have a feeling she'll find more unmatched socks tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after..." - that was too funny!
Loved the whole story :)
When we were clearing out stuff at mom's condo after moving her to MC, I had hoped to find a lot of pictures. In particular I was hoping there was one of a particular person, who I think was a cousin. I wanted to see if there was a resemblance to my daughter, as mom started referring to her as cousin. Sadly I didn't find many. She had gone through a lot years before and made up albums for each of us with pix of us, which was nice, but where did all the others go? I can only think she tossed them. :-( She brought a couple of pix of dad and her brother and sisters (they are all gone), but there should be MANY more!
Similar happened with one of mom's cousins. She wasn't quite a hoarder, but she saved every greeting card and letter anyone sent and had lots of letters from her brother during WWII along with a number of pictures, etc. Her sister had bagged it all to trash it, but didn't want to spend the money to have it removed. My town still had a "dump", no charge and I had a pickup truck. About 5 loads later... Sadly it all went into the garage and although some bags were gone through, we were busy and there was no rhyme or reason to the bags, just stuff dumped in them. I wanted to sort through it all and save/donate the pix and perhaps the letters to someplace that might cherish them, so veteran's place or war museum. Over time they became musty, stinky and/or ruined and had to be tossed. I recall reading a couple of the letters and was amazed! When you watch old war movies and their speech/vocabulary seems odd to us, they really DID talk like that!
With long-term memory intact, you might help her recall memories of her family life or relatives. Perhaps young mothers might enjoy stories of her own child-rearing experiences, noting how things have changed (not evaluating child rearing techniques) just recalling typical childhood events. They might be encouraged to know how kids survive "in spite of...". To grandchildren: stories about her own childhood, especially telling what life was like when she was their age. They would be interested, perhaps, in what school and teachers were like when she was their age. Or tell of chores that were required of her as a child. She would, no doubt, need your guidance (maybe some unobserved editing). But she would be providing something of true and lasting value to others.
- Get a start on Christmas/holiday cards with applying return address labels, stamps and if she can handle it, signing the card and inserting it in envelope.
- Folding simple laundry items.
- Pretty adult coloring books.
- Easy games.
Love "Cece55's" socializing with dogs (of course that's if your mom likes dogs/animals). My mom is in a memory care unit at an ALF and the Activity Director brings her rescue dog who had been previously abused so it's been great for both my mom and the dog. She also has two-month old Boston Terrier puppies that she brings.
As I mentioned earlier, lots of great and some creative ideas given here by everyone who has commented and hope you will be able to find some things that will work for you and your mom!
In his mild-moderate cognition phase, I would buy break apart cookie dough for him and the aid to "make cookies", which he loved to eat. He'd help me fold the laundry and put it away. Set the table. Make the salad for dinner from a kit. Help me shuck corn, snap beans. Help me pay the bills, etc.
Ask if she will help you organize the kitchen, Would she please:
Fold the kitchen towels ( take them out of the draw and tossel a bunch of them first)
Organize the cutlery drawer: keep it easy for her (ie just forks, spoons, knives or whatever she is able to accomplish)
These can be done while she is sitting at the table.
They can to be done weekly (or daily if her memory is very short).
They can be done with you or while you are cooking.
They can be done while she or you both listen/sing to your family favorite songs.
My Mom is in a Nursing Facility. From them, I've learned that Mom folded clothes, which is what she did when she worked. But the cloths she folded were towels, socks and maybe a few larger items. But it does make her feel useful.
One of the residents there has a duster that she uses to walk around dusting the facility, which makes her feel useful.
I don't know how advanced your Mom's dementia is, but if she's still living in her home with help, her caretaker should be asking her to help in doing the dishes, cleaning up the table after a meal, and just plain everyday things. Mom could pull weeds in the garden; or help prepare meals. The caretaker should encourage her to help with whatever needs to be done. Baking, cooking, cleaning, whatever! Mom might get tired and say that she's worked so hard today, which, yay, is what you want.
Good luck. I hope that you can find a caretaker that is willing to do these things daily. Then, when you visit, you can do the same. She needs to feel useful, even if what she's doing...isn't. Good luck. You can do this. We all have.
My mother's memory care has all sorts of activities for them to do, but none of them last more than about a half hour or 45 minutes. It makes the day go faster, but that's also about the length of the attention spans for any one activity.
Here's a link to the activity calendar for her place this month. I know it looks like an insane amount of activities, but know that every "social" at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. is just a snack time. They give them some fruit in the morning, and the afternoon one is a cookie or a piece of cake (before dinner, no less!). There's nothing especially social about those times, except they sit four to a table -- at least they did pre-Covid. I doubt they do that anymore.
You'll also notice they don't turn on the TV until 6 p.m., and that's only for an hour of any given movie they're showing. TV is confusing to a lot of people with memory issues, and they can't follow the story well, so try to keep the TV watching to a minimum. My mother never watches now because macular degeneration has robbed her of most of her useful vision, but even before then all she'd watch is Big Bang Theory reruns because she knew the story and what would happen. (My poor dad had to watch that show hundreds of times, bless his heart.)
https://files.constantcontact.com/3b7d1c26101/21b4ba36-e165-437d-a555-5edf2e640df0.pdf
My dad liked to put boxes of cereal into airtight containers.
He also enjoyed thinking he was balancing a checkbook or coloring large pictures with larger markers not the skinny ones. We of course had washable markers. My friends mom liked to do finger painting, sorting out the family socks matching pairs, this was not doing anything more than making a match and folding in 1/2 as they were crew style. Have her organize a drawer in colors. Yellow shirts, yellow shorts, etc.
Hope you will find something she will enjoy or be good at.
My 95 year-old mom (doesn't have dementia) enjoys putting the clean utensils away. I just remove the basket from the dishwasher and place it on the counter. She sorts the utensils into their slots in the utensil drawer.
Bring an inexpensive bunch of flowers every week and let her rearrange them over and over in a few different vases. When my mother still lived at home, I gave her a damp rag and set her to work dusting. Yes, she did a terrible job, but it got her moving a little bit, and she'd go over her knick-knacks and reminisce about them. Oddly, the one thing she loved to do was polish silver. She collected silver serving trays, and I'd set the silver polish in front of her and let her have at it cleaning those trays. Go through every picture in that house and have your mom identify who's in them. Write it on the back.
Your mom's hands might bother her too much some of those things, but you could try variations on any of those things. The fact that her house is already cleaned by someone else is irrelevant, as is the fact that no one will be getting served appetizers on silver trays, but it's something to do. She doesn't need to be entertained so much as to feel useful. Give her some chores and don't worry about how well they're accomplished.
By the time we started this, her ability to repot a plant was non-existent. And the towels always needed to be refolded- outside of her sight, of course. As the disease progressed, her interest in doing these things decreased. But as long as we could, we tried to make her feel like she was useful and contributing to the household. Everyone wants to feel like they are needed.
She also folds anything! Keep a laundry basket of towels and give it to her to fold. Or washcloths, socks whatever. I have dumped full loads of folded clothes !
Sweep with swiffer or bissell or broom. Feather duster.
Even in MC, I find coupons in her room torn out of sale flyers, newspapers and magazines. Some items might be useful to her, but many aren't really anything she could use, just perhaps a nice thing to have!
I haven't had a chance to read all the comments yet but, the ones I have read, have had some great suggestions.
I would look back at all the things your mother used to enjoy doing before developing dementia and see how each of them could be modified to make them simpler in some compacity. She might not be able to do something to completion, but that's ok.
My mom being in a memory care unit and basically bedridden has more limitations now. But, I knew she always like watching music programs on the PBS channel, so I brought her big screen TV and have it set for that channel. She always loved listening to classical music, so I went to Walmart and found a compact radio/cd player and set it to her favorite station (she doesn't know how to work the CD player anymore). She always liked to play little hand held games, so I went to Amazon and found her favorite Poker game and I've been hearing that she plays it a lot now. It's harder for me because I can't go into her apartment and do things with her.
Just like you I tried the word search puzzles, magazines (which I think actually ended up in the reception area for those in the AL part to enjoy and some are quite expensive) and travel books with lots of pictures.
So the only thing I can think of in your case would be to buy a simple craft that maybe the two of you can work on together. With Christmas coming up we used to buy the small kits of a stained glass type looking tree ornaments. You just paint the colors where they tell you and bake them in the oven to harden, add the little hangars and put them on the tree. I have so many of them as keepsakes of all the times my mom and I spent making them together.
As I mentioned in a reply to someone else's comment, I use the Aspercreme with Lidocaine on my strained wrist and forearm from heavy typing and it helped tremendously.
Good luck to you and your mom!
My mom is not as far along with her dementia, so she finds tasks like these boring. She lives in assisted living but doesn't play along with their ideas. She cleans, cleans, & cleans to pass her time & feel useful. Being lonely simply enhances her complaining, unhappy nature. I've searched for activities but unless she's "working on her chores", she's absolutely bored & miserable. Thanks all for suggestions & praying for you, OnlyChildbn.
If she actually wants to crochet, there are ergonomic crochet hooks available with soft, fat grips. You will need to start the first few rows for her. Chose a solid, light color yarn that’s easy to see. Start lap blanket (~3x4 feet) in simple double crochet so there’s no need to count or follow a pattern. My grandmother, a life-long crocheter who was seldom without a project to work on, made many simple blankets this way.
Eventually Gram was reduced to just winding skeins of yarn into balls. It was a familiar task and it satisfied her need to work after she could no longer crochet. You can donate the balls (with the original labels) or unroll the balls into a dishpan or bucket to be rewound. Several colors of yarn make for a satisfying display of a job well done.
Gram was of the generation that was never idle. I remember her telling how she’d do her ironing in the afternoon while watching her soap opera. If she finished before the end of the program, she’d iron diapers to justify the time.
Shredding papers is fantastic. When dad lived with me we even took in papers from neighbors. In some places, you can recycle the shreds. I used it as bedding in the chicken coop, where it composted nicely.