What comes to your mind when you think about an activity to do with seniors at the early stages of dementia?
At some point in life you will get old and when that time comes you will still like to be active but then you won’t be able to do the things you did when you were younger.
Most of the activities listed here are age sensitive. Your love one won’t have to burn up much energy. Others activities require a little effort but this effort is appropriate to their age.
The mental and physical state of the person at the time needs to be considered before engaging in any activity.
Remember the goal of every activity is to achieve purpose and pleasure for the senior.
When our love ones are unable to remember when to take their medications, unable to cook their meals and quite often leave water running all day, we feel worried, frustrated and we give-up on them making them feel drag.
Don’t give up yet!
For there are still fun activities you can engage with them that helps to boost self esteem and sense of belonging and accomplishment.
Here is my to-do-list of activities with person with dementia at an early stage. Some of these activities can be done alone and in a group.
But first let look at …
How to choose an activity at the early stage of dementia
Focus on retaining remaining skills
You want to focus on maximizing what the person can do and minimize what they can’t. Maximizing their potential helps boost self esteem.
Encourage continuity with current life style
You need to keep encouraging them to continue doing what they have been doing like if they have been taking care of the garden you want them to continue at that.
Adapt where necessary
Avoid being to kind to the person by doing everything for them because your goal is to provide a sense of purpose.
12 Activities ideas you can do with seniors with dementia at the early stage
#1. Do a Videotape series – your love ones has seen a lot, lived through a lot and done a lot, so videotape your love ones detailing their life their experiences and opinions about life. This will be good for their grand kids who someday may be curious to know their family history.
Why are activities important for dementia patients?
Re-establish old role
Slows dementia symptoms
Improves quality of life
Manages challenging behaviors
Great way to have fun and social contact
Conclusion
#2. Install a memory wall - install a memory wall in the patient’s room with a collection of pictures of their time with friend and family. Label each person’s name against their picture. For seniors who can still read at this stage, include pictures of their favorite places with stories in their own words about their memories of those places.
#3. Jigsaw puzzle – lots of seniors enjoy puzzles, get a very easy piece of jigsaw puzzle of no more than 500 pieces preferably the ones that have beautiful nature pieces of cardboard sorted by basic colors. Make sure there is always a new one to start working on before they finish working on the current one. Puzzles are great at keep seniors busy and sometimes take close to 2 days to complete.
#4. Watching nature documentaries – national geography would be a good pick for me.
#5. Audio books, recordings of radio programs and podcast - there are tons of audio books available in libraries for you to copy. Your love one may have poor vision or may not be able to read. Audio books especially the story telling ones are great beside who doesn’t love to hear a good story.
#6. Make them a Playlist - Make a playlist of the kind of music they like and save it in a computer or any other multimedia device they can have access to easily so they can listen at any time.
#7. Senior to senior programs – your love one could use some companionship, lots of assisted living facilities offer senior for senior programs too where they match older adults dogs to senior citizens.
#8. Teach basic computer skills – at this stage of dementia, the seniors isn’t completely cognitively down so learning basic computer skills like how to email will connect your love one with friend and grand kids far away easily.
#9. Join a senior sport league - Get the senior to socialize through senior sport league so they can play some golf if they are still physically fit.
#10. Ask them to write short stories and put all the stories in a book.
#11. Reconnect with old friends – reconnecting with old friends may be dinner parties, tea parties, banquets etc can spark some earlier life events.
#12. Gardening - gardening is fun outdoor activities most retired seniors do. It can be every joyful especially as you get to nest and grow your own food. Gardening is self fulfilling, creates a sense of accomplishment and boost confidence.
Being diagnosed with dementia means we are going to have a decline in our cognitive ability but that doesn’t reduce the ability to be active for being active is important for our well-being.
We all have are daily routines to attend to every day of our life, some we can’t go for a day without doing them. But people with Alzheimer’s often isolate themselves, stay lock indoors and shy away from their usual daily routines. Engaging a patient in little things like daily household chores reduces idleness, creates stability and helps maintain skill.
Engaging a senior in an activity daily helps reduces the progress of dementia symptoms. This slowness in decline is beneficial to the senior as it helps the senior to stay active.
Most seniors as there get older often feel like they are a burden to their love ones and have nothing else to offer, but engaging a senior in activities that are productive help boost self esteem and increase their quality of life since they can partake and contribute in a task.
When stress, seniors often turn to be so agitated and angry over little thing, isolation can lead to depression. There have so much positive energy in them with no means to channel it. But understanding what calms them down is very important and most often certain activities can play such calming role. Activities like massage.
Even though the senior is becoming more forgetful, some activities are quite pleasurable, bring up lots of chats, laughter and social interaction which are essential for a seniors well being.
Having an aging member is a real challenge and it requires you to be at your best always to make them happy even at an early stage of dementia you will have to learn how to cope with the challenge and activities are just a great way to go about it. But as you about engaging them in these activities also make sure the senior tries to do them independently if possible.
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