Like the Groundhog Day movie... any advice for getting Alzheimer's mom to move past a daily recurring delusion of a painful fake event?

You have to get in touch with her doctor right away and let him/her know of this delusion your poor mother is suffering from. I'm sure there is a medication that can be prescribed to calm her down.........immediately. It's too sad for her to be going through such a thing on a daily basis...........and hard for YOU as well.

Wishing you the best!

Poor baby! My 91 yo mom so convincingly gets like just that. She "has to go because her parents are waiting for her". Over and over and over. I tried rationalizing and finally the hospice staff helped me by telling me to be with her in HER reality.

Sweetie, I disagree with the "medical model" of dementia... sure there are scientific reasons for it but from another perspective ... these twilight world imaginings (to me) represent the spiritual/emotional transition to the next plane. Without being heavy or weird or religious... what I found was that my mom was working through her unresolved fears/guilt SYMBOLICALLY through these imagined events. Like a dream world where the story is fabricated, but the underlying pain is real.

My mom had enormous guilt for abandoning her parents in her home country when she fled to America at 20yo. She never saw her parents again.

I began to understand this and in a very matter of act way, I responded to her anxiety. I told her that her parents knew she was at the hospital (ALF) and they wanted her to stay there. They were concerned about the COVID and felt it was in everyone's best interest.

I told her she was a good daughter and her parents were happy with her.

She looked at me and said "you talked to them? You did that for me?" I said I did. and she said "You are such a good daughter". It was over until the next time. One great thing about dementia is you can use your rap over and over and they don't get tired of it.

So find the answer she likes best and use it each time. Try to remind her of the solution to the UNDERLYING fear/guilt. Perhaps that's "You were such a great mom" "you took care of so many kids so well" "everyone used to say what a great mom you were" etc

Remember, its not really about the lost kids, it's about her guilt and heightened sense of responsibility that still generates but through a scrambled memory. In some sense her instinctual defense of her brood is totally natural. Your solution to comfort her so creatively that those kids were picked up is perfect. It may need to be said everyday.

Yes. It will pass. It will pass with the next stage. It will be fast but not fast enough having to distract her every minute of the day. But it will. You are doing great with what you are doing. We did exactly the same. Everyone was on board to get my mother through it. We have took care of her and my dad for the past 5 years. She passed this March from her 3rd stroke in 18 months. I miss her but I know she is whole again and with her savior.

You have hit on the way to help her, join the reality that she has. But you should contact her doctor and inform them that she is going through this and they can prescribe a medication for the anxiety and that should help. It might take a little while to hit on the right medication and or dose if it does not work right away, and it may take time to get into her system so be patient.
As with any form of dementia this may pass and she may be on to a new source of anxiety. You just kind gotta go with the flow.
By the way does she have any baby dolls? If she is focused on babies this might help her if she has a baby or more within her reach.

After my mom's dog died, she tended to see dogs trapped in cars when there were no dogs in the cars. I had to go look in the windows of the cars and show her they were reflections. I got her a stuffed toy dog that looks very much like her old dog. She takes it everywhere with her, kisses it, cuddles it, scolds it, etc. So that delusion is gone, but there are others. They go away then circle back around. There aren't as many now that she is in assisted living. At her house there were so many ranging from not having any money, so she was going to be put in jail, to that she had to trade houses with a neighbor because she could no longer afford her house, to there being a robber across the street in the neighbor's house. Going along with your mom's story and adding a happy ending to it is the best you can do until it goes away. I think the doll suggestion is very good. It might be a dream she is remembering. My mom remembers her dreams, but not the reality that just happened.

Get her five baby dolls right away! It helped my friend's mother calm down so much! She tends to those babies and gives them love and care. I'm at the point where I'm almost ready to do that with my mother too. She spends lots of time worrying about bad things happening to her 5 children, remembering, barely, traumatic events from our childhoods where she was powerless to help us. The damage she caused us as an angry, over-reactive, emotionally immature and narcissistic parent are coming back to haunt her now. She's always been aware of her poor choices, but never had the guts or resources to be accountable to us or to do any self-exploration. It's left her feeling guilty and locked into shame. With the increasing dementia, it gets expressed as this weird anxiety and delusions about bad things happening to us which are not real but affect her mind as though they are. Not much we can do about it at this point. It's like a living hell. I keep thinking when she dies, it'll be better for her - she'll be able to see things from a different perspective. It's as though she thinks that the only thing to do now is to try as hard as she can to do for her babies - the little wee ones who don't talk back, or give her pause to consider her behavior. The "safe" ones, the innocent ones. The real, adult children who needed her to be an adult are too intimidating. We've all had to work hard on our mental health in order to just be around her. Part of her care now is to provide the "prop" to allow her the illusion of being a 'good' mother to help her calm down in her madness about what an abusive person she was, to assuage her guilt. If that comes in the form of a bay doll, so be it.

If things don't start getting better, I would definitely contact her doctor to see if a medication can take away some of the anxiety and panic.
You could try a visual board to have pictures of the scene she is "seeing" and instead of it being so unpleasant, make it into a pleasant picture. If she is seeing her children lost in a forest, then find a picture of a nice cozy cottage and attach it to the board. Post a handwritten letter from the children stating they found the train tickets and are making their way home.
This anxiety and panic may be driven by a former event which may never leave her memory. Having a board with visuals may distract for awhile. She may even be able to help put it together with you. Then you will have a "tool" to use during the day when she is most upset. Give her the board and talk about it. Let her pick out things that comfort her such as a piece of clothing from the past, baby doll, picture of her with her children from years ago.
Good luck! This is not easy. She may be trying to process a former event and that could take awhile. Enjoy the good times and know you are helping her on her road home.

joining her reality would have been my first recommendation. Does she take medication for anxiety?

I knew someone who had similar behavior (her kids were going to get off the bus from school and she needed to be there for them). She would get in a full on panic attack about it multiple times a day. She could be redirected temporarily (your neighbor is meeting them at the bus today, etc) only to descend back into panic hour or even minutes later. She was in terrible pain over it. The staff felt helpless. Her family was adamantly anti-meds. She usually didn’t get anxious when family visited because it was such a disruption from her routine, she would be just sort of confused, but not anxious. Eventually, her family allowed the doc to prescribe. Once the right combo/dose was determined, her quality of life improved. She was able to engage with others, enjoy activities, much happier in general.

I've gone through this as well. But just like memories, their delusions are forgotten as well. I've found the more anxious my mother is, the more negative the delusions, so I try to keep her calm as much as possible.
It's tough to see a parent so frightened by something we know isn't true. Sometimes I think I'm more upset by it than my mother.

Read the book “the 36 hr day” which will help you to understand why just going with her delusion is the way. The actual situation with her is a past event that she is transposing into this. But coming to ‘resolution’ is apparently blocked (perhaps others can explain this better than me). Please just go with her delusion she’s not in the real world. Can’t one of siblings call and say Hey mom it’s me, we’ll all see you soon.......