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I am a live in Caregiver for the sweetest lady in the world! She is almost 90 years old and been diagnosed with Dementia. I want her to always be happy, comfortable and live stress free life, if any of you have some interesting ideas on how to continuously stimulate a mind with Dementia write me back!


Thank you,


Deima

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I've just started caring for my Mom and have been going crazy trying to discover what she can do to occupy her time. Observing her during the day, I notice she studies things such as plants, whether they need water and always moving objects from one place to another. I purchased a 300 piece puzzle that had an image of birds, bird houses and flowers (all things she likes). She frowned at the puzzle, but the next morning I laid out all the pieces and put a few together before she got up and lo and behold before the day was over, I found her at the table looking for pieces. She now spends 2-3 hours a day working on "her" puzzle. Keep in mind that I do put some together, so she feels successful!
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Playing simple card games? Before Mom lost her vision I would play double solitaire with her and a simple version of poker. Ask her if she knows how to play solitaire and if she does I can tell you how to play it with 2 people. We used to have a lot of fun with that.

If she enjoys music, I have an app on my iPad called Piano with Songs that mimics a keyboard. The key turns red to show you how to play many songs. It’s quite simple. There’s new songs which even I don’t recognize but they have many folk and patriotic songs she might like. (It’s 3.99 a month, which is worth it to me, but maybe not in your situation, but you can cancel anytime). To me it’s a barometer of Moms condition if she’s good enough to play the “piano game” on any given day.
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Rehab had some of the interactive video games for the big screen TV. Bowling was one of them.There may be others.
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Music: vocal that she can sing with and old swing bands for dancing.

Movies: TCM and talking about whether she remembers this movie or that star or the old fashioned telephone, telephone booth, etc.

Photos: let her tell you about the people and places in her photo albums or find old pictures of the area (maybe from FB).

Knit/crochet/adult coloring/puzzles: Depending on where your charge is on the dementia journey, she may still enjoy hand crafts. An extended family member was able to crochet a simple double crochet afghan well into her dementia journey.

Books: Even when the person cannot garden/crochet anymore, they will often still enjoy looking through pattern/project books.

Memory issues mean that if your charge enjoyed something yesterday, they may enjoy it again today or tomorrow because they don't remember they have done it before. My mother has MCI and her short term memory is shot; she has enjoyed the same set of 10 books by her favorite authors for more than a year now. The books need to be short now because she cannot remember the plot in a book that takes several days to read. Puzzles need to have bigger pieces too.
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