Alzheimer’s or any other types of dementia cause damage to our brain cells that results in various cognitive impairments. Due to dementia, our senior loved ones face difficulty with memory functions that disrupts normal behavioral and thought processes. As a result, they cannot lead a normal life and get disconnected from the people around them.
However, keeping our senior loved ones engaged and active can help them in various ways to lead a better life. So, we should always try to have fun and do interesting stuff with them.
There are lots of benefits of keeping our senior loved ones engaged in activities.
● Activities help to keep irritability and anxiety away.
● Through various activities, we can stimulate their cognitive abilities to slow down the progression of the disease.
● Various activities can stir their memories.
● Participating in interesting activities together strengthen bonds among the seniors and the other family members.
● Being involved with various tasks will help self-expression in seniors suffering from dementia.
● Being active and engaged will improve the overall quality of life and the meaning of existence as a whole.
So, with these benefits in mind, we have brought to you some of the easiest but interesting activities that you can do with your senior loved ones.
● Listen to music together. Or even better start singing in chorus.
● Engage in creative activities like painting or making handicrafts.
● Do gardening together.
● Do some simple cooking or baking together.
● Do the household chores like cleaning, dusting and organizing stuff. Such easy tasks can give an immense sense of accomplishment to our senior loved ones suffering from dementia.
● Visit the nearby park or the botanical garden.
● Read books that they used to like or read newspaper.
● Play various games like puzzles or word making that involve the cognitive faculties.
● Watch old family videos or photos together.
Always remember that not all the seniors will love the same kind of activities. So, you have to be discerning and have to do some improvisation. Try to recall what they used to like to do when they were adults and have a go with those activities with some modification that may be required for safety or practicality of the current situation.
Moreover, you can always start with something and keep improvising on the way taking the cues from how it is going and exactly what sort of activities are drawing the most attention and interest from our senior loved ones.
Above all, always focus on the actual activity that you are doing not the result of it. As example focus on playing and having fun with puzzles instead of actually solving it. It is not that you have to succeed at every task that you take up. The act of being engaged and active matters the most in this case.
So, hopefully, with these ideas and suggestion at your disposal, you will have some great time ahead with your senior loved ones. For any kind of help and support regarding senior care and well-being do not hesitate to contact Comfort Keepers Silicon Valley.
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