Many times we can find ourselves writing off one of our resident’s or member’s behaviors without truly trying to understand why they are behaving that way in the first place. This is especially true when dealing with someone diagnosed with a form of dementia. I’ll admit, many of our dementia-diagnosed members are very difficult to understand, and it’s almost impossible to walk a mile in their shoes. Personally, I was challenged within this past week while I was attending the first MEPAP class (necessary for an Activity Director Certification) and our instructor, Cathie Coleman (who has really inspired me by the way!), said that 9 times out of 10 a “behavior” means that we have failed to meet one of their needs.
Today at our adult day care, the boilers at the building where we rent from were off overnight! It was a whopping 16 degrees Fahrenheit and the rooms and hallways were downright frigid for most of the day. We brought out a barrage of space heaters to try and make it feel livable, but I fear we barely accomplished even that. Inside our activity and lunch rooms most of our members were comfortable, although some of them grabbed their hats and coats, but our hallways and restrooms are not heated. We kept the doors to our rooms with the space heaters closed to try and conserve heat, but we overlooked the fact that going to the restroom felt like a reality show experiment.
One of our more challenging members, I’m going to call her Mrs. Daisy (because she can really be a sweetheart), cannot express her thoughts through language clearly, and sometimes has difficulty carrying out simple tasks, such as sitting down, although she appears to understand what we’re asking her to do. During and after eating lunch, Mrs. Daisy will get up and wander around, usually into the restroom, and requires a staff to accompany her and guide her through the toileting process. Today, she would leave her seat, wander by the restroom, one of our staff would escort her inside, she’d quickly leave the restroom, we’d have to work at coaxing her back to her chair to eat, and few minutes later would start the process all over again. Needless to say, this was quite frustrating for the staff, and I noticed a slight look of despair on my co-worker’s face.
“What’s going on with Mrs. Daisy in the restroom today?” I asked.
She said, “Well, every time I get her situated to sit down, I ask her to sit and use the toilet, she’ll sit on the seat for a quick second then jump up and grab her pants and yank them up to her belly button and not let go!”
“So then what?”
“Well, she’s not gonna let me help her, so I try to get her back to lunch. She’s been going back and forth almost non-stop.”
Now to quickly add some background info on Mrs. Daisy, she is definitely one of our more challenging personalities, always chattering gibberish, hard to direct, wandering constantly, and it’d be easy to dismiss today’s behavior as part of her dementia symptoms.
I pulled one of our volunteers into the conversation who was also trying to be helpful with Mrs. Daisy. I asked them what they thought of the temperature in the ladies room, and they said it was quite arctic. I asked if either of them had used the facilities themselves, and they both said the seats of the toilets were very cold. In a word of encouragement to them for their tireless efforts with Mrs. Daisy I suggested that maybe the coldness of the toilet seat is so unexpected to her that she jumps up and grabs her clothes to get warm. They kinda chuckled at the thought, but started to nod that it seemed more than plausible for this to explain Mrs. Daisy’s strange behavior. Of course, once she leaves the restroom, begins eating, and realizes she has the urge to relieve herself, she has already forgotten how cold the seat was the time before.
Misidentifying the behaviors in the people we care for as a symptom or symptoms of their diagnosis is a very easy thing to do. As activity professionals, we should strive to understand the resident or member for their whole person or being, and not just simply their diagnosis. My co-workers were quite relieved when they realized Mrs. Daisy’s “behavior” was really just a normal reaction to a situation that anyone would have. They feared that this was a new symptom of her dementia and everyday they’d be toiling in the endless game of back and forth between the restroom and the lunch table. By taking a moment to think through her behavior in this particular situation, we were able to avoid much frustration, confusion, and heartache for Mrs. Daisy.
