Tips for Bathing

CathyABEdwards

My mother has dementia and has recently started to refuse bathing and washing her hair. I live on the other side of the country, but I am in contact via FaceTime at least twice a day and travel home as often as possible. She is living with my father who is her primary caregiver, but they also have a homecare.worker who comes by for a few hours, 5 days a week. We are all trying our best to get her to bathe but it is proving to be very difficult. Does anybody have experience with this, and have any methods you can share? It would be much appreciated :)

mommyandme (m&m)

Hi and welcome to this place… sorry for the reason. Just want to say there comes a time when bathing isn’t so important, once a week may be enough, spot cleaning when needed of course.

You may find some great tips by Teepa Snow and/or Dementia Careblazers on YouTube for issues with bathing and many other things.

I don’t have a lot of advice, my mom was pretty compliant, even when unhappy. She needed help with all of it though.

Hope you find some helpful info.

mommyandme (m&m)

Also this is from BassetHoundAnn on another recent post called Tips for hygiene:

 “My mother not bathing, all the while insisting that she was, was one of the first signs that she could no longer live alone, and she needed assisted living or memory care. 

Teepa Snow has some wonderful videos and advice about how to make bathing easier for dementia sufferers. https://teepasnow.com/blog/11-tips-for-bathing-a-person-living-with-dementia/

She has many other wonderful videos about bathing on Youtube that are easy to search for on that site:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OLrilAeT1U

Dementia sufferers really don't like to bath. Maybe they don't like the feel of water on their skin. Maybe they get cold. There may be many other sensory issues that they are suffering from. 

With my mom I had to be gentle but insistent that "We're going to take a bath." Not make it a question of "Would you like a bath?" and wait for her agreement, because it would never come. Instead I had to be firm that this is what we're going to do. Sometimes she would put up a fuss so I would let it go until the next day and she was in a more agreeable mood. One time I enlisted the help of a neighbor-girlfriend whom she trusted and that went smoothly.”