Teaching dad to care for mom

kmorris528

My dad believes he is ‘caring’ for my mom (who has mid-stage dementia) but I disagree. He/They want to stay at home but his version of care and conditions are deplorable. I want to educate him on what true care actually is. Any recommendations on organizations or services to do so? In home help has been vehemently refused already.

towhee

Hello kmorris, welcome to the forum. There are various educational organizations that offer training but it depends on what you need, whether it is physical care (how to change a brief, how to handfeed) or how to communicate and approach a person with dementia. A lot of the latter are online courses and there is also a fair amount of free info online. For physical things it probably would be best to have a CNA come into the home, although there are some youtube videos. Could you be more specific about the problem areas?

This is not an uncommon problem, to have a child be unhappy with the care given by a spouse. It can be a complicated situation. For one thing, the spouse caregiver is there 24/7, while the son/daughter is not, leading to a certain level of emotional and physical exhaustion, which makes learning new strategies difficult. The spouse may also be dealing with a certain level of mental decline, or may simply not be cut out to be a caregiver. Or the child may simply not understand the realities of dementia or the financial situation. Also not unusual for spouse (for whatever reason) to refuse in home care. In general, one way to provide better care for the PWD is to support the spouse in the way that the spouse says they need, while maintaining the relationship so that you can continue to advocate for a better course.