Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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How Can Someone with Dementia Have a Better Quality of Life on a Holiday ?

April 2, 2021

 

Reminiscence and Story Telling

 

This Easter holiday is the perfect occasion to engage elders with dementia. The role of storytelling and reminiscence is very important for elders, as they look back on their life and holidays bring strong long-term memories. It gives them a chance to socialize as they tell their story. It also means someone usually listens or documents. That magically gives the elder social interaction and connectedness. So many Easter rituals can prompt stories for elders with some level of dementia. The ritual of dying easter eggs, finding easter baskets on Easter morning, dressing up for the local Easter Parade, eating ritual foods at Easter dinner or at Easter Brunch. Whether the older person is actually participating or watching, these rituals can prompt stories from their long-term memory.

 

Elders sharing stories means passing on history.

This gives the older person a chance to give the larger picture of their life and family history to children and grandchildren or extended family, who may have not heard all the details of their grandparents or parents’ life before- what they cooked, what they did on holidays like Easter. So the quality of the older person of both the older person and the aging family is increased through oral history and reminiscence

The aging professional can suggest family or friends just sitting down and prompting a story or oral history using  technology like your phone

Even elders with Alzheimer’s can find new joy with Reminiscence

When an elderly person develops Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia, the short-term memory is frequently affected but long-term memories can remain as intact and vivid as they have always been during the course of the patient’s life. As a result, a family can use a practice called reminiscence therapy to help combat the frustration, confusion, and depression that can often accompany dementia and even bring joy to the older person

What is reminiscence therapy?

 Reminiscence therapy is like a therapy session where the elderly person will spend time recalling memories of his or her life, perhaps telling stories about things that happened and events the person can recall.

Sometimes senior experts or family members can use photos, familiar objects, or other such things to help jog the memory of the patient. Some therapists and family members can a scrapbook of a person’s life, including photos, letters, and other such personal memorabilia. This becomes a visual biography of the patient’s life and helps the older person remember who he or she is.

How does this quality of life therapy help? Almost all elderly men and women can start feeling discouraged and frustrated with their memory issues. Reminiscence can give peace and acceptance of the current situation by helping the person remember that he or she has had a good and full life. It also prompts communication skills of elderly people who otherwise may not feel very compelled to open up and share anything with anyone else.

Dementia and Reminiscence of Easter

So this Easter holiday try reminiscence. People with dementia can receive a richer quality of life when people actually listen to them. They feel as their thoughts and feelings actually matter. For anyone who has an elderly loved one suffering from dementia, this benefit alone can make reminiscence therapy a form of joy for a very confused elder. So when you dye Easter eggs, create easter baskets, do an Easter egg hunt, serve an Easter brunch or dinner, get them involved, let them watch, allow them to help if possible, serve them ritual food or to taste it and ask when how they experienced these rituals, when they were young. If you have old albums of pictures from their childhood of them at Easter, look and the photos with them. Then listen.

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Filed Under: Adult children, Aging, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Dementia, Dementia & Holidays, Easter, Easter and Reminiscence, Easter Rituals, Emotional Quality of Life, Families, GCM Working With Aging Family, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, Good Death, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Quality of Life on Easter Holiday, Quality of Life with Dementia, Reminiscence Therapy, Spiritual Quality of Life Tagged With: aging family, aging parent, aging parent care, aging technology, ancrestory.com, assessing for quality of life, care plan, care plan interventions, family caregivers, Family Caregivers using technology, flip video, genealogy, geriatric care management, geriatric care manager, geritaric care manager, grandfather, grandmothers, grandparents, increasing quality of life, LCSW, oral history, oral history and quality of life, oral history and You Tube, parent care, Quality of Life, quality of life assessment, reminicence and elder, Reminiscence and 4th of Jul;y, Reminiscence and Dementia, Reminiscence on the Holidays, storytelling and elders, technology for caregivers, You Tube, You Tube and storytelling

10 Ways to Capture Family Stories in The New Year

December 31, 2020

Thanksgiving--2003png.png

Tips to capture family tales of aging parents or clients in the New Year 

Have you lost an aging parent and wished you had asked them more questions about their past, your family history, and your childhood. Have you dabbled in ancestry and realized that you could have just listened closely to the stories your deceased parents told you and maybe written them down. Do not look back! Make this New Year the year you collect the stories in your own family plus assist your aging clients by using 10 reminiscence tools, technology, and techniques.

1. Use empathetic listening. This means to make all the messages you are are giving the older person— tone, how fast you speak, how they are sitting-  all saying, “I want to listen to them.”

2. Ask questions that prompt the story but don’t make judgments. If there are going to record the family tale, do it in a way that doesn’t distract or stop the older person from talking.

3. Start somewhere. If the elder isn’t going to tell stories on his or her own, start the story and see if they will follow along.”What was a New Years Resolution that you made and kept” ” Do you remember your favorite doll ” What was your first day of school like”

4. Music is just next to memory in the brain shown by Alive Inside So use Alexa, Spotify, to play  40’s 50’s music or especially the music of the era when they were teens Simple ways to spark reminiscence when you visit older family members :
5. Look at old photos together. Photos trigger memory even with dementia. Choose ones from a period of time the person currently remembers, which could be the person as a young adult, teenager, or even a young child.
6.Play music from their teenage years. It is the background to the most emotional period of anyone’s life and deeply lined into memory.
7. Enjoy food they like or food that is a family tradition or specialty, particularly ones that have an element of memory attached from family celebrations. like Mom’s Briscut, Dad’s Sunday Supper lasagna, or “Aunt Helen’s Lemon Cake”.

8. Story Worth was started by Nick Baum, a tecky who was, and in a way, a long-distance care provider for his parents in Sweden. He was curious about their past and invented the app based on his own need to gather his family history. My husband is a teller of past tales as a California Highway patrolman, then Hippiedom, then as top marketing director for Pacific Cookie Company, the best cookies here is the west.

Our daughter Kali gave him Story Worth as a holiday gift a year ago. In the past 12 months of the plague, he recorded 40 stories or memories from his past. They are being published by Story Worth Book, saving in print the precious reminiscence that would have been lost but now saved in a  book that will be given to our adult children and then generations to come.

This is a brilliant way to capture reminiscence and I  recommend it to adult children who want to enshrine personal memories in print that otherwise would be lost when they reach back for them..

9. Life Bio-  provides an online template of biography and autobiography questions that have been carefully crafted

10. Quick Voice Recorder to catch the memory on your phone

Use reminiscence a part of a whole new domain in aging called quality of life or attending to the older person’s need for joy through activities that stimulate the mind. Reminiscence does that- so find out more about how you can increase the quality of life of older people after the holidays and all year long by building a quality of life reminiscence program like Lifespan’s Well Being program in Santa Cruz, Ca.

Filed Under: Aging, Blog, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, Legacy Tools, Reminiscence Therapy, Senior Legacy, Story Worth Tagged With: aging life care manager, ancestry, care manager, case manager, geriatric care manager, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, reminicence and elder, Reminicence and geriatric care manager, Reminicence Therapy, reminicsence technology, Reminiscence tool

How Storytelling Can Give Elders A Happier Family Thanksgiving

November 21, 2020

Want to increase aging parents and everyone’s enjoyment at Thanksgiving? Try storytelling using Thanksgiving memories.

As an aging professional, you can bring joy to an older person  through reminiscence, storytelling, and oral history even elders with dementia

This Thanksgiving, if you really do travel to a family home or grandma’s house, travel safely  If not make the safest choice, stay home and use zoom and include your elderly

parent. You can do this if they can use a computer or have a family member or friend who visits often and who lives nearby and is in their bubble serve and share Thanksgiving dinner at their home and use zoom with them to see other family members on the holiday.

Share Your Thanksgiving Story

If you are at a family member’s holiday dinner, ask everyone to tell their favorite story about a Thanksgiving dinner. Start with midlife members to get the idea and then ask

again parents to share their story. It will bring extra thanks to Thanksgiving by learning about an elder’s past and giving them the opportunity to share, which sometimes they do not do in the hubbub of family talking.

  The “telling ” also means someone documents. That magically gives the elder and a child social interaction and connectedness. Elders vividly recall their past by telling

from vignettes in their life – especially life in their 20’s, which sparks the richest recall called the “20’s bump”, according to researchers.

Elders sharing stories means passing on history.

So try this at Thanksgiving and it becomes intergenerational. The older person is given a chance to give the larger picture of their life and family history to children and grandchildren or extended family, who may not have heard all the details of their grandparent’s or parents’ life before. My 10 grandchildren have grown up with their now 80-year-old grandfather telling them exciting stories of when he was a California Highway patrolman.So a dual dose of a BeccaJulia-94.jpghigher quality of life for both the older person and the aging family is increased through oral history and reminiscence.

Capture Your Families Past Before It Is Gone

 Many midlife adults now do ancestry and regret that they did not ask questions of older family members when they were alive. Capture that past now on this family holiday. An aging professional or a geriatric care manager can suggest family or friends record the Thanksgiving story as oral history using technology like an i Phone or i Pad.

StoryWorth For Thanksgiving

Another great idea to capture reminiscence when elders are safely sheltering in place is giving them StoryWorth. 

Last Christmas my daughter, sent this gift to my her Dad and both he and I love it. Each week  StoryWorth sends a question to my husband that prompts him to write about his past. He writes his reminiscence out longhand and I easily use the dictation on my phone and email his story to Story Worth.

At the end of the year, my daughter will order a bound book of all the stories- a whole collection of memories that she might never think to ask and will be saved for her and her children to pass on family history. I will order a copy for all her three siblings. Equally important, my husband, who has been sheltering in place since March with me, really enjoys writing about his past and the prompts have brought many vivid memories back to him.

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8 Ways to Tame the Turmoil of the Holidays & Twindemic in the Aging Family

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  • How to sell services to the desperate Aging Family during the holiday surge
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THIS FREE WEBINAR IS Thursday December 3, 2020 FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST

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Find out more in the YouTube for My YouTube, Channel  Geriatric Care 1

 

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, care manager, case manager, Coronavirus safety elders, COVID & HOLIDAY SEASON, Covid 19 Webinar, Dementia Activities, elder care manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Oral History, Quality of Life, Quality of Life and Reminicance, Quality of Life and Thanksgiving, Quality of Life for elders, Quality of Life with Dementia, Reminiscence Therapy, Remote Thanksgiving Family Visit, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Parent crisis, Thanksgiving Safe Visits to Grandma, Thanksgving visits during COVID, Therapist Specializing in Aging, Webinar Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent, aging parent care, aging technology, ancrestory.com, assessing for quality of life, care manager, care plan, care plan interventions, case manager, family caregivers, Family Caregivers using technology, genealogy, geriatric care management, geriatric care manager, geritaric care manager, grandfather, grandmothers, grandparents, increasing quality of life, LCSW, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, oral history, oral history and quality of life, oral history and You Tube, parent care, Quality of Life, quality of life assessment, reminicence and elder, reminisicsence technology, story telling elders, storytelling and elders, technology for caregivers, You Tube, You Tube and storytelling

10 Ways to Capture Family Stories in The New Year

January 12, 2020

Thanksgiving--2003png.png

Tips to Capture family tales of aging parents or clients in the New Year 

Have you lost an aging parent and wished you had asked them more questions about their past, your family history, and your childhood. Have you dabbled in ancestry and realized that you could have just listened closely to the stories your deceased parents told you and maybe written them down. Do not look back! Make this New Year the year you collect the memories of your own aging family or clients by using reminiscence to increase the joy of your own again clients through 10 reminiscence tools. 

1. Use empathetic listening. This means to make all the messages you are are giving the older person— tone, how fast you speak, how they are sitting-  all saying, “I want to listen to them.”

2. Ask questions that prompt the story but don’t make judgments. If there are going to record the family tale, do it in a way that doesn’t distract or stop the older person from talking.

3. Start somewhere. If the elder isn’t going to tell stories on his or her own, start the story and see if they will follow along.”What was a New Years Resolution that you made and kept” ” Do you remember your favorite doll ” What was your first day of school like”

4. Music is just next to memory in the brain shown by Alive Inside So use Alexa, Spotify, to play  40’s 50’s music or especially the music of the era when they were teens Simple ways to spark reminiscence when you visit older family members :
5. Look at old photos together from the past or can be anytime. Choose ones from a period of time the person currently remembers, which could be the person as a young adult, teenager, or even a young child.
6.Play music from their teenage years. It is the background to the most emotional period of anyone’s life and deeply lined into memory.
7. Enjoy food they like or food that is a family tradition or specialty, particularly ones that have an element of memory attached from family celebrations. like taco Tuesday, Sunday Suppers, pizza night

 Three technology tools to help you with this legacy-building for your older client or family member including a new one my husband just received from our daughter Kali for Christmas

8. Story Worth was started by Nick Baum, a tecky who was, and in a way, a long-distance care provider for his parents in Sweden. He was curious about their past and invented the app based on his own need to gather his family history. My husband is a teller of past tales as a California Highway patrolman, then Hippie, then top marketing director for Pacific Cookie Company, the best cookies here is the west.

Our daughter Kali gave him Story Worth as a holiday gift a year ago. In the past 12 months of the plague, he recorded 40 stories or memories of his past. They are being published by Story Worth, saving in print the precious memories that would have been lost but saved in a  book that will be given to our adult children.

This is a brilliant way to capture reminiscence and I  recommend it to adult children who want to enshrine personal memories  in print that would be lost when they reache back for them..

9. Life Bio-  provides an online template of biography and autobiography questions that have been carefully crafted

10. Quick Voice Recorder to catch the memory on your phone

 

Reminiscence is part of a whole new domain in aging called quality of life or attending to the older person’s need for joy through activities that stimulate the mind. Reminiscence does that but find out more about how you can increase  the quality of life of older people  after the holidays  and all year long

 

Filed Under: Aging, Blog, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, Legacy Tools, Reminiscence Therapy, Senior Legacy, Story Worth Tagged With: aging life care manager, ancestry, care manager, case manager, geriatric care manager, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, reminicence and elder, Reminicence and geriatric care manager, Reminicence Therapy, reminicsence technology, Reminiscence tool

4 Reminicence Holiday Activities for Dementia Using the Four Senses

December 10, 2019

 

Looking for dementia activities?

Reminiscence activities provide a way for caregivers or care managers of people with dementia to learn more about them as individuals and begin to see them beyond dementia. Compared to different activities like music, reading, task-oriented, activities that increase live social interaction with the senses have the most impact on effect in persons with dementia.

Reminiscence therapy is a treatment that uses all the senses — sight, touch, taste, smell, and sound — to help people with dementia remember events, people and places from their past lives. As part of the therapy, caregiver or care managers may use objects in various activities to help individuals with a recall of memories. This can give seniors with dementia a feeling of success and confidence because they are still able to recall and have success with some activities.

Reminiscence therapy can include simple activities, such as conversation, as well as more advanced clinical therapies to help bring memories from the distant past into present awareness. Storytelling about past events they recall through the senses can help people with dementia feel less isolated and more connected to the present, experts say.

 

Some activities the can activate memory in different parts of the brain and help individuals with dementia to reminisce

  1. Looking through photos and keepsakes of prior holidays. Photographs are keepsakes because they bring back memories that help individuals recall- the place where the photo was taken, who was there, even the occasion where the photo was taken. The visual stimulates the part of the brain that holds that memory. Getting out old albums or high school yearbooks and looking at them with the person who has dementia can stimulate good feelings and a time when they were happy and safe.
  2. Listen to their favorite Hanaukka or Christmas music. Music memory and emotion are located in the brain right behind our forehead and are the last parts of the brain to atrophy. That’s why reminiscence is recommended with even the most advanced cases of dementia. If you do a quality of life assessment and find music as a form of joy in a person ‘s life, you can bring tambourines’ shakers or bells or use headphones that play their favorite music. Alive Inside is a famous example of this.
  3. Smell different scents and taste favorite foods. Our sense of smell is embedded in our brain next to memory. So some activities that might work with elders with dementia are making scent cards or  bringing scent bringing their favorite food to taste  like Hanukka Cookies decored holiday Christmas tree cupcakes  have them help prepare simple recipes
  4. Touch is another sense that evokes reminiscence is all of us but is really helpful with Dementia. Knitting, sewing or other crafts in a quality of life assessment show a past skill. Just touching yarn or fabric can bring back memory A walk in the woods or the beach or bringing them to the client with dementia, with a shell from the shore sand, seaweed or keep, bark from a tree, pine needles, pine cones can replicate the touch of these places  

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Blog, care manager, caregiver, Dementia Activities, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Oral History, Quality of Life, Quality of Life for elders, Quality of Life with Dementia, Reminiscence Therapy Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent care, assessing for quality of life, care manager, case manager, Dementia Activities, Dementia Quality of Life, emotional quality of life, Four senses dementia activities, nurse advocate, quality of life assessment, Reminicence and Dementia, reminicence and elder, Reminicence and geriatric care manager, Reminicence Therapy, reminin, Reminiscence and Dementia, reminiscence technology

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