For Eldercare: Routines Are My Secret Weapon
Every weekend, I give Mom a long, relaxing shower. We take our time with good soaps, double-shampoo and condition her hair, and I bring huge, extra fluffy towels for when we are done. I trust the facility to keep her clean, but this isn’t just about being clean: This is about dignity, respect and appreciation for the good things in life. She loves these showers, despite sometimes trying to refuse if her mood isn’t good. No matter what, when we are done, I ask her if she enjoyed herself, and she gushes about how nice it was. That’s part of our eldercare routines.
By the following weekend, she seems to have forgotten.
Or does she? I can’t really tell, because as soon as we get into the bathroom she perks right up when she sees my towels and the supplies we only use when we are together.
It is a routine that benefits both of us. It gives me a chance to assess her overall physical health from week to week, and it gives her a “spa experience” that is quite relaxing and enjoyable to her.
Routines are extremely important when you are dealing with the elderly, particularly those suffering with Alzheimer’s and dementia. Let’s talk about how to set and maintain routines that will serve both of your needs.
The Importance Of Familiarity In Eldercare Routines
Familiarity is the absolute best defense Mom has now to ward off the terror that is dementia. She becomes extremely agitated when she doesn’t recognize or understand what is happening to her or in her space, so maintaining as much familiarity as possible helps her stay calm and relaxed.
Research shows that familiarity helps the elderly battle the confusion and discomfort brought about by aging and dementia, so it is to their benefit to have as much familiarity as possible. Towards that end, we decorated her apartment at the facility with things directly from her rooms at my house. We used nothing new at all—I even found her comforter in a different size so the bedding would be comfortable for her. Now that her area is decorated in a familiar way, I only change one thing at a time, once a month, so nothing dramatic. For example, last month I brought a troll statue, and took away one statue of a goose. Small change.
Creating Eldercare Routines They Will Like
The weekly spa shower routine was extremely important for me for several reasons: I check her physicality, I help relax her, I keep her clean, and I spend a good half hour talking to her. However, the shower routine wasn’t easy for her at first. I had to bathe her—which in her mind could be robbing her of the dignity and independence she desperately wanted. Towards that end, it took a while, some convincing, and some expensive supplies, to get her to agree to it. Now she loves it.
You need to consider what routine you are trying to build in advance, making sure that your loved one will be a willing and perhaps excited partner. If your routine is designed to get behaviors from them that are challenging, it will make the routine harder to develop. One of my routines is bringing her a banana every day, which she loves. It makes me sure she is getting fresh fruit every other day, and it’s something she really likes. This small routine is the most enduring one—she now asks every visit if I remembered the banana!
Remember To Be Flexible
Routines are important to both you and your loved one. When Mom was home, I needed to maintain my sanity, and part of that was developing routines that I could count on to make my life easier. For example, I maintained our routine of having family dinner every night at six o’clock at the kitchen table. It’s how we were raised, and how we raised our children.
Unfortunately, as Mom’s dementia got worse, we started to struggle with her participation in this decades-old routine. We had everything from flat refusal, to pushing the plate away, to trying to disrupt dinner with odd requests and demands.
We needed to be flexible. We changed the time to earlier, before the sundowner’s hit really hard, and minimized how much food was on her plate—ensuring she would enjoy the experience of eating with us.
Make sure your routines have enough flexibility that you can pivot on a dime if your loved one just “isn’t feeling it” one day. Back to my weekly shower routine—if she really refuses, it doesn’t actually matter, because the nurses at the facility are already taking care of her personal hygiene on a regular basis.
They Need To Be Engaged And Help
As much as possible, your loved one will be more engaged in your routines if they play an integral part in their success. Mom washes herself, for example, and I only step in to remind her if she misses a spot, and to wash her hair. The same is true with the snacks and beverages we bring her—I ask her every week what she wants from the store, and even if she forgets she asked for something, I gently remind her so she knows it was her choice.
When you are doing tasks for your loved one, take a minute and see if there is any way they can participate in the activity. For example, I have Mom dust her knick-knacks while I dust the breakable pieces. It gives her an activity that she knows to be an integral part of caring for your home, and gives us additional chances to chat about things.
Engage Their Brain As Much As Possible
Dealing with severe dementia now, it is extremely important to both of us to engage her brain and keep those neurons firing as much as we possibly can. That is why routines are so useful—they keep them centered and grounded, inserting stability and repetition into what is now a chaotic mind.
My biggest suggestion for you is to incorporate conversation in all of your routines. Most of the things I’m asking Mom to do can be accomplished entirely with muscle memory, which is exactly what I’m going for. For example, at the beginning of her shower, it is relatively quiet in the bathroom as she gets comfortable and starts to bathe herself. Once the muscle memory kicks in, however, she becomes very chatty. That’s how I know her brain is fully engaged and she is getting as much as possible out of the entire experience.
For Eldercare Routines: Add Things They Enjoy Doing
Your absolute best bet with making routines part of their daily life is to capitalize on things that they like to do. I would not, for example, try to build a routine with Pop that had to do with cooking or cleaning the kitchen, because those were not things he engaged in during his lifetime. Mom, on the other hand, absolutely loves all things domestic, particularly cleaning things. That’s why we dust her apartment—because it has fantastic memories for her. In reality, the facility has professional cleaners in her apartment several times a week—we don’t need to dust. But she loves it.
The same is true with her activities. This is not the time of life to add too many new things to their plate, since it is hard enough for them to process activities they have always enjoyed. For example, Mom always loved doing puzzles, so that is a great activity for her now, compared to trying to teach her how to play dominos.
Avoid Changes On A Regular Basis
Once you have built up a small list of routines that you engage in with your loved one, try your best to stick with it. When I travel, for example, I have my team visit Mom at the same intervals that I use. She can’t really seem to tell one day from another, but by having people visit at predictable intervals, I’m hopeful that my absence isn’t too big a deal to her.
While there will inevitably be changes in the routines as time passes, or if something new enters the picture, it’s important that you don’t purposely make too many changes at the same time. If you must change a routine, be aware of keeping other routines stable for at least a few weeks until they become comfortable with the changes you already made.
Things are hard enough for them to process; don’t make it worse.
A Suggested Daily Routine
I strongly suggest you build some eldercare routines and schedules for your loved one’s entire day…and make sure it is in pencil. For example, Mom gets dressed and eats immediately upon waking every day. But she gets up between 6:00 am and 10:00 am in absolutely no pattern whatsoever. So having a routine for her to get up by 7:30 every day would be completely doomed. This is why flexibility is such an integral part of routine success.
For the caregiver, though, I know I needed some sense of stability and control over her environment,so I build routines based on different times when she gets out of bed. It includes everything required in her day—personal hygiene, meals, medications—but has tons of flexibility with preferred activities such as puzzles and television.
You need to find something that serves both of your interests. Do your very best for them, always making sure you are caring for yourself, as well.
THANK YOU FOR READING THIS FAR
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