During and after the holidays, you may have a lot on your plate. While things can be good and exciting, you still have to ensure that everyone is all set.
If you have someone in your life that has dementia, you can help to make visits with them easier, as well. Here are some of the tips that can help to improve visits with someone that has dementia.
Planning Just Enough
One of the things that you need to do is to plan for the holiday visits with your elderly loved one that has dementia. With this being said, you don’t want to make plans too strict. You should sit down and talk to all the family caregivers and senior care providers that your elderly loved one has. Make sure everyone is in agreement about when others can visit. For instance, if your elderly loved one has other family members, friends, or neighbors that like to visit them for the holidays, make a schedule for when these people can come over. Having too many people over at once could overwhelm your elderly loved one. Do your best to make sure that the environment will be calm for your loved one when people are over, too.
Maintaining Routines and Staying Calm
Around the holidays, your elderly loved one is likely to become stressed, especially if there is a lot of chaos. For example, people who have dementia don’t usually do well if their day is all over the place. You should work with their senior care providers and other family caregivers to ensure your elderly loved one has routines. Everyone who is involved in their care should help your elderly loved one to follow these routines. If things do happen to fall off the plan or routine, be sure to stay calm. The more upset or frustrated you or others get, the more this will negatively impact your elderly loved one’s holiday.
Building On Traditions
Your elderly loved one likely has traditions they cherish. They have memories from past holidays, as well. One of the mistakes that many family caregivers make is assuming that because their loved one with dementia has memory loss, that they can’t remember their traditions. However, there might be things that your elderly loved one remembers. If this is the case, do your best to help keep these traditions alive. In addition, if your elderly loved one wants to tell you things they remember from holidays in the past, let them do this. It might be good for them to reminisce on the good times they can remember.
Conclusion
These are some of the ways that you can make holiday visits better for your elderly loved one that has dementia. This disease is difficult enough. You should do everything you can to ensure your elderly loved one can still have great holidays for as long as possible.
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