Pros and cons of a safety gate

dancsfo

I've read other posts on safety gates, such as the ones used to prevent falling down stairs.

Do you have experience in using a gate to prevent entry of a PWD to a kitchen? I suspect it will cause intense anger, but let me hope I can control that. I've tried to use distractions to prevent PWD from entering the kitchen and causing problems but does not work all the time.

I've done actions such as to remove stove knobs, hide dangerous materials in another locked room or a separate fridge, but there's so much I can do, as the kitchen is slowly becoming difficult to use, to be honest, is starting to hamper my ability to use it. I have not experienced danger, such as fires or ingesting inappropriate materials through those precautions, but it's the numerous small things that is pile up as annoyances, such as PWD re-arranging things stored in shelves, and I can't find things quickly, or things disappearing.

My other concern is whether any attempts to climb over a gate can result in injuries, or that a PWD can somehow unlock (let's say I forgot to lock it) and enter the kitchen, but can't figure out how to exit. This may be an issue if one needs to escape if there's a fire. One option is to get a tall gate made that one can't try to climb over, but I'm still concerned of other potential safety issues.

I understand that some gates or confounding locks to prevent wandering outside the house are often seen, but that is not yet my concern but it may be the same thing to create boundaries, and may also share similiar safety issues.

Given a broken brain of a PWD, I realize each situation is different, but would like to hear of your experiences.

I've done simple things like writing signs to try to direct PWD, but they don't work, or causes anger and are removed.

terei

I would prefer a locked door

harshedbuzz

@dancsfo

I'm with Terei, a locking solid door sounds like the better option. For most PWD, out-of-sight is out-of-mind. Removing the visual trigger might be the kinder and more effective way to address her creating additional work for you with these behaviors. If she likes to rummage and rearrange about, perhaps a guest room dedicated to that activity could limit the behavior elsewhere.

One question, is the gate supposed to replace your supervision in a bid to keep her safe if you're running errands or is it to buy you time to react if you're in the yard or another room? A friend had a mom at home who required supervision. She installed motion detection mats at the sides of mom's bed and at the doorway from mom's suite into the foyer. The alarm went to her phone. This allowed her to come and redirect mom if she woke in the middle of the night or was padding around the rest of the house.

Before my friend's high-tech mats arrived, she used a simple bear trap to alert her when mom was headed for the front door or garage. These traps were a chair with pots, pans and lids stacked precariously on them. Another low-tech strategy that makes use of a PWD's poor visual processing is the use of a black floor mat the width of the doorway. At a certain point in the progression of the disease, many PWD will "read" the mat as a gaping hole and avoid going near it.

One last caveat, if you are leaving her home alone, you need to be certain that is safe. I like the DBAT for stage/equivalent age for gut-checking this sort of safety issue.

DBAT.pdf

Back when dad was in the latter part of stage 5, my mom had a new HVAC installed. She had an appointment that afternoon, so she asked me to come over in case the techs had any questions or concerns. She didn't trust dad to not interfere in some way. When they did some soldering, the smoke detectors went off. They'd warned us both this would happen, but dad immediately forgot. When it happened, dad sat there for a good 20 seconds before asking me what the god-awful racket was. I explained and he sat for several more seconds before standing up and toddling off to the bedroom (away from the main egresses) to find my mom who he'd forgotten was out. I was gobsmacked— dad was still continent and very verbal— in an actual fire he would have died. It's not surprising though, DBAT would have staged his age equivalent at 4-8. Mom never left him alone after that.

HB

dancsfo

Thank you both for your reply @harshedbuzz and @terei

In regards to: "One question, is the gate supposed to replace your supervision in a bid to keep her safe if you're running errands or is it to buy you time to react if you're in the yard or another room?"

It's a bit of both. Sometimes I'm out running errands and may not always have someone helping to keep an eye. If I'm in another room, I can use a bit of alerting too but I'm usually not away not for too long.

Another need is to keep PWD out of the kitchen when I'm cooking and would prefer to avoid any "help" that can cause problems. So maybe I can create some set of activities elsewhere.

I'll use the DBAT to determine if I need to get some additional help. I'm aware that a PWD does not progress equally in all characteristics, but it's still a good general guideline.

A friend told me of another person's father living alone who fell out of bed, and could not get up, call for help or answer a phone, and would have died if nobody eventually came to visit to check. I think the elder did not have dementia (certainly not a later stage), so the problem was due to injury, and illustrates that with the smoke detector or fire situation written earlier, a physical ailment can cause problems of not being able to escape in time if there was a fire or falls trying to escape. Although there are fall detectors, cameras, etc., they are not as reliable a person keeping an eye. This person is thus now in assisted living. It shows that eventually, one cannot be left alone for long, with dementia or not.