my DW is bored

jfkoc · December 2023

You have gotten some great advice....i.e. auto payment of bills. You can still go online and look at them. You need to put all needed papers out of sight. A box on a closet shelf would work.

You have identified things your wife can not do. You have also identified some things she likes to do...look at and sort papers, cut out things to paste up. I suggest getting some large drawing paper books from and art store, lots of magazines, colored paper, crayons, clue stick, children's scissors etc. Leave all out on the dining room table.

You can get some colored 4" paper clips from an office supply or Amazon that can be used to gather like papers.

Have you tried laundry sorting and folding?

l7pla1w2 · December 2023

https://alzconnected.org/discussion/comment/191988#Comment_191988

I tried that, bought a book and colored pens. DW said "Why did you do that". She wasn't interested. I just gave them away on Freecycle.

l7pla1w2 · December 2023

https://alzconnected.org/discussion/comment/192001#Comment_192001

I need to try a scrapbook and hope DW will want to organize all the stuff she's cut up in one.

DW already continues to do the laundry and folding... to excess. Nearly every day. I'm not pushing back on that very hard any more. It does seem to be an activity that lets her feel useful. I suppose I could give her clothes to wash that don't need it, at the risk of hurting the clothes.

/STEVE · December 2023

I am kind of going through the same thing. I am finding she does not live in the same world as me. She has been reading the same book for 6 months. She enjoy it, and will tell be about it as she is reading ( I know she can not tell what the last pargraph was about) . She will finish the book and ask me if I want to read it, I tell yes. That night I will put it next to her chair open it to around chapter 3 and she will start to read it again and tell me about different parts as she is reading. I was feeling bad about doing this but I tell myself she is enjoying the reading. I have heard that some like to color in books.

She will take a nap and wake up and ask where her parents are, I would tell her they has pass 20 years ago, and she would get sad, the other day she asked where her parent were I said the had to go home and they would be back the next day. That did not seem to upset her. A gain I did not feel right about it, but we are in different worlds.

She has a sewing room, I am thankful it has a door because it is a mess but she is happy with it so it stay that way.

jfkoc · December 2023

No reason not to just hand her clothes "warm from the dryer.

When I suggested a large piece of paper it was to bypass executive function and to encourage creativity/ It would be really great to have several sheets on the table at one time.

The act of organization is likely a thing of the past and activities will need to be done together. I can be time well spent and also remembered.

The time comes when we must position ourselves on our loved ones page. By watching and listening we can discover the 4 corners.

l7pla1w2 · December 2023

https://alzconnected.org/discussion/comment/192015#Comment_192015

DW seems obsessed with cutting things up. She cuts pictures out of magazines and calendars. Our town recycles "office paper", which includes letters, envelopes, magazines, etc. DW likes/needs/wants to cut the letters and envelopes into strips or large confetti, which I fear may render them useless for recyclling. (Lots of little pieces of paper that flutter around.)

The flip side is she makes copies of lots of things that don't need to be copied. She often forgets she did that and makes another copy. The waste of paper really irritates me, but I suck it up because the cost is small.

CPLinIN · May 16

https://alzconnected.org/discussion/comment/190531#Comment_190531

I love this idea as well. My husband is a musician and he simply cannot retain enough music to be able to play, but I think he still tries when I am at work. I don't want him to get too frustrated when I am not there.

I am a visual artist, so I bought two versions of Ouisi games, hoping he could better enjoy going to museums or looking at my work. He's not too interested in the game, except occasionally when I play it myself and he's feeling left out.

Bill_2001 · May 16

Greetings I7,

Sadly, my wife is past the stage of appearing bored and having a short attention span. These days, she can sit for hours in front of the TV or computer, while I run YouTube videos of travel or animals.

The stage you are describing is difficult, because our loved one still has the awareness of their own desire to do something useful or entertaining. I used to provide towels for her to fold, magazines for her to "read," and coins to sort. She is well past that now, and those things would just sit there in front of her now, untouched.

The best you can do is keep trying to keep her engaged. I never found one activity that always worked, with one big exception: A ride with me in the car. Even if we had no place to really go, this helped calm her, and she was easier to manage once we arrived home.

Bill_2001

sandwichone123 · May 17

When my dh was still driving he closed the safe deposit box at the credit union and removed the contents. I'd already obtained a safe for anything I valued or wanted to keep safe, so that's where I ended up keeping critical pieces of paper including military discharge paperwork that can be hard to replace, original legal papers like POAs, etc.

my DW is bored

Comments

Commonly Used Abbreviations

Community Guidelines

Categories