Reply to young children visiting grandparent with dementia

Forum Index » Eldercare

Reply to "young children visiting grandparent with dementia"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]My grandparents are in their 80s and not in good health: grandmother has dementia and they both have various other issues. They live in South Florida and I've been wanting to bring my kids to visit them, but for various reasons haven't made it happen yet. I was initially planning to take the family down this fall, but I'm expecting our third child and am not sure if we will be able to squeeze the visit in before I get too uncomfortable to want to travel.

My primary concern is giving the kids (ages 5 and 3) a chance to see their great-grandmother again before she really starts to decline. Right now, she seems to be mostly stable--repetitive but otherwise lucid--however, some other relatives have indicated that she's gotten to a point where her "filter" is off and so she'll sometimes use profanity or even racial slurs that were previously unheard of for her. I suppose there's no way to predict how quickly she will continue to decline, so I'm just hoping that whether we go this fall or once baby #3 is old enough to travel that she will be well enough to enjoy the visit and it won't be upsetting for the kids.

For those who have dealt with dementia, do you have any advice on how to handle a visit with young children? Assuming that my grandmother hasn't declined too much, I don't think the kids will necessarily notice anything off, as they've only met her a few times that they can remember. However, I don't really know what to expect. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics