Type of humor that works with PWD

I tried M1's jokes (from the other post) on my DH and they elicited an eye roll and a chuckle. DH and I have always liked silly puns, and even though he can't initiate the joke, he still gets them. It probably depends in part on what kind of humor the PWD enjoyed before dementia. Potty jokes would not go over well with my DH, for example.

My dad must've been the outlier here. His sense of humor remained as acerbic as always well into the middle stages.

Not long after dad was diagnosed, we had Thanksgiving at my niece's house. Said niece, 37, was newly dating a not-quite-30-year-old man after the death of the young man we all expected she'd marry. Dad was stuck on calling her a "cougar" which wasn't fun under the circumstances, and we called him out on it. He got stuck sitting next to me during dinner and when sad boyfriend ran down the stairs and dad deadpanned "It's so nice to have a child in the house, don't you think?"

A year later I saw him exchange joke punchlines in Yiddish with his geripsych. FTR, dad was a lapsed Catholic.

HB

I used humor a lot with my sister, and it usually worked, and worked well into stage 6.

The self-deprecating humor was always good. For me I'd always joke about my hair and nails (always done in colors not found in nature). But old Monty Python jokes worked just as well, probably since she saw most of those episodes in the 1970s. "Peggy is demonstrating how not to be seen. But we know where she is." Always got a laugh. 🙂

I think a key is to use something that is so familiar it's almost rote, but still funny.

DH often laughs at some of the videos on America’s Funniest Videos. He never would have watched AFV before dementia. But the videos of the pets and little kids entertain both of us.