Mar 23 • PRACTICAL CARE TIPS
Neal K. S Shared this beautiful story:
Everyone said he had become aggressive and unmanageable. When I visited him at his home outside Charlotte, we found a retired landscaper sitting in a recliner, staring at a television he clearly wasn't watching. His hands were clenched. His jaw was tight. His daughter told me he had been getting worse and she was considering moving him into a memory care facility.
I asked her to show us the backyard. It was overgrown, months of neglect since he could no longer tend it alone. I asked if we could take him outside. She hesitated, but agreed. The moment his shoes touched the grass, something shifted. He knelt down and pulled a weed. Then another. He turned to me and said, "These beds need work."
For the next forty minutes, he was calm, purposeful, and present. No agitation. No resistance. He simply needed to do the thing that had given his life meaning for decades.
We are so quick to label behaviors as "problems" when they are really often unmet needs. He was not "aggressive". He was a man with nowhere to put his hands and nothing to pour himself into. That is not a behavioral issue. That is a human one.
- Notes from a caregiver in the field ❤️
#dementia #caregiving #CareYaya #dignity
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Neal K. S Shared this beautiful story:
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