Reminicence and geriatric care manager Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

10 Ways to Capture Family Stories in The New Year

December 31, 2020

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.

10 Ways to Capture Family Stories in The New Year

January 12, 2020

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.

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

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

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.
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.
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
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

7 Tools to Spark Reminiscence As a Holiday Gift

December 1, 2019

Reminiscence isn’t new.

If you work with older clients, reminiscence can be a cherished gift for their holiday celebration

Before the printing press, storytellers and bards were how history was recorded-

Oral storytellers gave us the Odyssey and other valiant tales. History exists in their family, and Ulysses or Penelope might be sitting at your barbecue this coming holiday- in the form of your aging parents.

But storytelling only works if the teller remembers the lines. Family history has to be captured when the older person still remembers. So holiday events are a perfect time to tap into that font before it flickers. At the same time, you give the older person one to one attention, that they may not get often, someone interested in their past and warm memories of their childhood holidays

7 Ways to Capture That Family Ancestry On Holidays

Here are some tips to use if they want to capture these family tales during the coming festivities with aging parents—a perfect time to do this.

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 did you do on Christmas day? Did you open gifts at a special time?.” What was your favorite food on the holidays” ” ( you might ask before and make that special cookie and offer it to them?

4. Music is just next to memory in the brain shown by Alive Inside So use Alexa, Spotify, to play 40’s 50’s this Christmas music

5. Simple ways to spark reminiscence on Holidays :

Look at old photos together; perhaps from Christmas 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.
Sing holiday songs together or play them on Alexa. Choose carols and songs the older person remembers well.
Enjoy food like a holiday cookie that is a family tradition or specialty, particularly ones that have an element of memory attached from family celebrations perhaps?
Attend a Christmas or Hannaka service where the elder enjoys the sensory experiences of the smells and the bells -the sight of the pageantry, the whiff of incense or, the sound of a choir, quiet prayer said together or the touch of bright paper tearing from a gift.

Here are two technology tools to help you with this legacy-building for your older client or family member

6. Life Bio-

7. Use Quick Voice Recorder to catch the memory on your phone

8. Use some prompts for questions to ask that will help older people reminisce

Subscribe to my Youtube channel

How Can Reminiscence Therapy Make Give an Elder With Dementia a Happier Labor Day

August 31, 2019

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

Holidays are perfect for bringing back memories for someone who has dementia. Labor Day was celebrated by them as a child.They may be able recall walking back to the first day of school , buying school supplies, or the taste of late summer tomatoes on hamburgers at Labor Day barbecues with family.When an elderly person develops Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia, the short-term memory is frequently affected .But long-term memories , like long ago Labor Day memories can remain as intact and as vivid as they have always been during the course of the client’s life. As a result healthcare professionals and 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 spends time recalling memories of his or her life, perhaps telling stories about things that happened on Labor Day and long ago events the person can recall.

Care managers and senior professionals can teach family to use photos, familiar objects, or other such items to help jog the memory of the elder. Some therapists 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 him or her remember who he or she is.

How does this quality of life therapy help?

Almost all elderly men and women can feel deeply 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 the communication skills of elderly people who otherwise may not feel very compelled to open up and share anything with anyone else.

HOW DOES REMINISCENCE THERAPY HELP DEMENTIA

Using reminiscence therapy techniques can give the confused elder a richer quality of life by giving them with time with other people who will actually listen to them. Through this, a dementia patient is made to feel their thoughts and feelings actually matter. To someone who has an elderly loved one suffering from dementia, this benefit alone can make reminiscence therapy a form of joy.

There is even an app called Grey Matters, which caregivers and care managers can look into for reminiscence therapy for elders with dementia. If the senior is a BBC fan, like me, the BBC even has an app called RemArc to help dementia sufferers with reminiscence using old clips from the BBC. You can see in the future an app that has clips from Star Wars for present baby boomers or generations after that.

Books to Help You Open Your Own Program

Geriatric Care Manager Nina Herndon is the pioneer of adding reminiscence therapy to geriatric care management. She authored the chapter Quality of Life in Handbook of Geriatric Care Management .

Nina also created a book on quality of life activities you can use in your work and program called Joyful Moments

Order both and start using reminiscence therapy with your clients.

10 Ways to Capture Family Stories in The New Year

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

10 Ways to Capture Family Stories in The New Year

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

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

Contact

Connect with Cathy

Get Cathy’s “10 Critical Success Steps to a Profitable Aging Life or GCM Business”