Welcome back, Careblazer.

Today I want to address a topic that came up quite a few times during my recent Live Q & A’s. As you may know, a few weeks ago, I hosted several live Q & A sessions where many of you showed up and asked me your questions. Some of the questions I received had to do with the theme of the person with dementia doing something that wasn’t in their best interest, but the Careblazer just didn’t have the fight in them to do anything about it. Two specific examples that come to mind were from Careblazers stating their loved one drinks beer and another one who says their loved one smokes. 

I want to talk specifically about why it’s okay to choose your battles. Why it’s okay to let some things go. And how this doesn’t take away from the amazing care you are giving to your loved one. I hope this video will help give you a framework for how you can decide whether or not something is worth your effort or whether...

Hello Careblazers,

Welcome back!

Today I want to talk about what to do in the very common situation of your LOWD not believing that they have dementia. 

So many Careblazers talk to me about their loved ones being in denial and thinking everything is fine. I’ve sat with Caregivers in the past who have pleaded with me to “convince” their loved one that they have dementia. 

In today’s video, I want to give an explanation

1- Of why your loved one doesn’t believe anything is wrong and 

2- How to stop wanting to convince them something is wrong with them

Before I get started, I want to welcome any new Careblazers welcome. My name is Dr. Natali, I’m a board certified geropsychologist. I also have a YouTube channel Careblazers TV, where you can watch videos on any of these topics. It is the place where we talk about everything dementia. If you would rather watch my video on this topic, click here. 

Okay, let’s get...

Welcome back Careblazer!

Today I want to talk about the stress and grief that comes along with loving someone with dementia and talk about some things you can do to help grieve and cope with each new loss. 

If you would rather watch my video on this topic, click here. 

I recently read a book called Loving Someone who has Dementia and I thought it was a thoughtful and heartfelt account of what it’s like to love someone with dementia. It had many examples of caregivers sharing their experiences and what they did to help cope every time their loved one seemed to take another step further down the dementia disease cycle. 

One of the things that really stood out to me was the idea of how when someone dies, there is usually some type of ceremony like a funeral. People come together. They offer condolences. They bring food, check in, ask how they can help. 

Yet, loving someone with dementia is like a long, drawn out death process. You slowly watch the person you...

Welcome back Careblazer.

Today I want to talk about dementia and sleep. Dementia often times negatively impacts sleep, which makes your life as the Careblazer extremely difficult. Especially when your LOWD won’t go to sleep at night, wakes up in the middle of the night, wanders around, makes noise, and essentially makes it difficult for you to get decent sleep. 

I want to go over some general strategies to implement with your LOWD. Whether they are having a ton of sleep problems already or they haven’t shown any sleep problems, yet, implementing these general strategies can help improve their sleep or make it less likely that they will develop some of the sleep issues that many people with dementia develop. I hope you find it helpful. 

I want to be sure I emphasize how important it is to be patient as you start to implement some of these routines. When sleep is minimal, no one is at their best and it’s easy to get easily frustrated and give up. But if...

Hi there Careblazer.

Welcome back. Today I want to talk about how to know whether or not your loved one with dementia is safe to be left home alone. The decline in dementia, in most cases, is a gradual one. Usually, the person with dementia experiences changes in their abilities over time, which means what they are able to do and not do changes with time. There are some people with dementia that are living at home alone and doing well and there are some people with dementia who are living in nursing homes with 24/7 supervision because they can’t be left alone at all. And of course there are people in the huge space in between. 

If you would prefer to watch my video on this topic, click here.

I’m going to share with you some signs to look out for that suggest that your LOWD may not be safe to be alone any longer, including my number one way I personally use to see if someone should not be living alone and it’s something you can do with your loved one. You...

Welcome back Careblazer.

Today I want to talk about 5 simple ways you can improve difficult dementia behavior. By far, the majority of emails and questions I receive from Careblazers are about how to get their loved one to stop doing something or to change doing something. 

Today I’m going to share 5 general and simple things that you can do to increase the chances that your loved one’s behavior will improve, and in some cases maybe go away all together. I love hearing from Careblazers who start to implement some of these strategies and then write to me excited that their loved one seems to be better and happier. I hope you’ll have the same results. After all, when you LOWD is doing well, you tend to do well too. 

Before I get into the 5 tips, I want to personally invite you to my upcoming live Q & A session I’m hosting in a few weeks. It’s free and I’ll be spending the entire time answering as many of your caregiving questions as I...

Hey there Careblazer!

Today, I’m going to share with you my favorite tip for handling other people’s opinions about your caregiving decisions AND I’m going to give you my 3 step process for deciding whether or not the person’s opinion you are worried about is even someone’s opinion you should consider. I hope this episode brings you a sense of freedom for all your future caregiving decisions. 

As usual, be sure to download your free Careblazer Survival Guide linked in the description below this video to take your caregiving journey to the next level. I’ve put my favorite strategies for responding to difficult behaviors in this guide and I hope it can help you as it has thousands of other Careblazers. Okay let’s get started. 

As long as you are interacting with other humans, you are going to face human opinions. Some of them can be helpful, some of them, MANY of them, not so much. 

Here are the 3 questions to ask...

Welcome back, Careblazer!

I hope you’re all hanging in there through this Corona virus. Since this virus has interrupted so many lives, closed down senior centers and adult day health care centers, reduced or totally stopped extra help from coming into the home, I thought we could spend some time talking about how to make a dementia routine at home. This idea came from Dr. Regina Koepp, geropsychologist in Georgia who told me many of the caregiver she sees are struggling with how to get through the days as best as possible without all the usual outside supports. So thank you Dr. Koepp. She also recently started a podcast called the Psychology of Aging. 

Whether this Corona virus has totally changed your caregiving schedule or whether it’s really made no difference at all, this will be helpful if you spend a large amount of your day with someone with dementia. I’ll go over why a routine in dementia is helpful and how you can make your own daily routine...

Welcome back, Careblazer. I hope you are all hanging in there with the current world circumstance of COVID-19.

In an effort to make my current posts as helpful as possible during this pandemic, I recently asked my Facebook group to submit topics that would be most helpful during this time.

I received several questions on how to handle phone conversations with loved ones who aren’t living in the same home. Maybe they are in a care facility on lock down not allowing visitors or maybe they live on their own and you are not visiting as often as usual.

Specific questions I received included things like “tired of the same phone routine. I call twice a day. I’ve run out of things to talk about. It’s always the same thing.”

          and

“How do you handle the more frequent phone calls, I want it to be a good conversation with good impact but I don’t know what to say.”

So I’m going to go over a way to think about...

Welcome back Careblazer, 

I had another topic scheduled for today but I decided to pull it and do this one instead. With everything going on with COVID-19 I wanted to make sure the topics over the next week would be the most helpful to get you through this time. 

I posted in my Facebook group and asked you what the most difficult part of being a caregiving during his pandemic was and the most common response I received had something to do with a loved one with dementia not understanding what was going on in the world and insisting on still going and doing all the things they would normally do. 

Specific comments included things like: 

--My loved one doesn’t understand why I can’t visit

--My loved one not understanding why we can’t go out to places

--Having a hard time keeping my loved one inside the house 

--My loved one thinks I’m being mean by not taking him out

--One person said her father insisted he had a doctor’s...