Holidays & Dementia: Ideas and Suggestions for the Holiday Season – Part One

This is part one of a two-part series focusing on ideas and suggestions for adapting family traditions and caring for yourself, when a loved one has dementia.

By:  Todd Wagoner, MSW, LCSW

While the holiday season is a time for celebration and joy, many care partners supporting loved ones with dementia may feel added stress to maintain traditions while also providing care. To help, The Gayle Wells Foundation for Early Onset Alzheimer’s & Care offers the following strategies to help support care partners this holiday season.

Give yourself permission to under-commit. Under normal, non-care partner circumstances, it’s easy to overcommit during the holiday season, but the pressure is even greater for care partners. Psychologist and author, Dr. Barry Jacbos, PsyD, writes, “Caregivers notoriously overcommit themselves and then feel trapped by promises they’ve made that slowly break them.”1

As a care partner, talking to family members can help set realistic expectations about holiday celebrations, enable discussion for ways to shift responsibilities to continue traditions, or brainstorm ways to make their celebrations more manageable for the care partner and person with dementia.

Here are a few suggestions for the care partner and family members when having a family discussion:

  • Reflect and prepare: Make a list of key talking points before the discussion so both the care partner and family have outlined their thoughts and goals before the meeting. Writing this information out helps organize one’s thoughts, clarify any potential misconceptions, and help to create an agenda for the discussion.
  • Approach with love and concern: Make sure your mind and expectations are in the right place to set the tone for the discussion. Author and speaker, Amy Goyer, notes in her book Juggling Life, Work, and Caregiving, to caution families not to approach a group discussion with a “negative and confrontational attitude.” This allows the family to approach the discussion with a common goal of focusing on the needs of the care recipient and care partner.
  • Listen and validate: Listen to what others have to say with an open mind, and reflect or repeat their own thoughts and ideas to show you’re hearing them. Family members (particularly care partners) might feel scared, angry, confused, or hopeless, so it’s important to remain compassionate and supportive.
  • Include key people in the conversation: Goyer also suggests when having a family meeting to make sure key family members are in the conversation. Some families may benefit in having a third party such as a family physician or care manager to help mediate or guide the conversation, if this is helpful.

Embrace the new normal. While traditions are an important aspect of the holidays, making sure everyone can enjoy and participate in the celebration should take priority. Large gatherings can be noisy and chaotic, which can increase irritability and agitation in a person with dementia and cause stress for the care partner.

Remaining mindful of the care recipient’s energy level and interactions while maintaining their daily routine as much as possible helps to create an enjoyable atmosphere for all. Having a more intimate gathering at the care recipient’s home for a shorter period of time allows the person with dementia to participate in a way that’s comfortable for them.

Don’t feel pressured by the past. As a care partner, it’s important not to compare past holiday memories to what is possible presently. Geropsychologist Dr. Natali Edmonds, PsyD, explains that care partners create added stress for themselves when they compare how “things used to be to how things are now.” Instead, think about ways to build on those past traditions in a way that’s manageable.

This can include:

  • Singing holiday songs familiar to the person with dementia
  • Watching a favorite holiday movie together
  • Baking cookies or wrapping gifts
  • Create a photo album of past holidays and sharing memories

This not only helps the person with dementia participate in a way that’s comfortable for them, but it also helps create new and lasting positive memories for everyone in the process.

Taking the time to have these conversations and allowing the care partner the space to be “present in the moment” lets everyone find holiday joy while making new traditions together.

1 Jacbos, Barry. The Emotional Survival Guide for Caregivers: Looking After Yourself and Your Family While Helping an Aging Parent

Todd Wagoner is a Master’s level clinical social worker with over 25 years of health care experience in hospital discharge planning and, most recently, serving as geriatric social worker for the Touchpoint Healthy Aging Transition Services, a geriatric specialty clinic through the Community Health Network in Noblesville, Indiana.

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