Dealing with Challenging Behaviors

Welcome to caregiver relief. Today's dementia care tip is dealing with challenging behaviors, meeting emotional needs, universal needs. Every human has universal emotional needs.

This remains true even throughout the stages of dementia. Those needs are. The need to feel useful, to have the opportunity to care, to love and be loved, have self-esteem boosted and do have the power to choose.

When Carrie for someone with dementia, it is important to help meet those emotional needs. Failure to meet those needs results in the development of challenging or negative behaviors, some will shut down. Others may act out and become anxious and agitated. You difficult behaviors as an expression of unmet needs, take a mindful approach to care, adopt the point of view that any behavior particularly challenging your negative ones are your family members attempt to communicate distress.

These are using. They are using the limited means of communication at their disposal. Remember, your family member is not being difficult. They are simply telling you that something needs to be urgently addressed. So you do that by assessing the situation. Words may no longer come out as intended. What is upsetting your family member may not be obvious to you at the moment.

Please take time to consider the environment. Is there too much noise? Is the lighting too bright or is it too dark?

Is the TV on with a program that may cause anxiety? Or they may misinterpret as something else. Do a physical assessment.

Do they need to use the bathroom? Do they need to be changed? Are they hungry or are they thirsty? Are they experiencing pain? Or are they too hot or too cold? Or are they simply feeling ignored? Has someone invaded their personal space, become a detective. It's important that you need to become a detective and to try to figure things out before you start though, you must first learn to take your family members distress seriously, but not personally.

If you've been with me for a while, you know that you should have a person centered care profile developed, update the information when you identify the issues that cause the challenging or negative behaviors identified the cause of the behaviors, how your family members behaved and what work did to change the behavior, include that information in your plan to share with us.

Understand that what works today may not work tomorrow, but do not hesitate to try what you've tried to try things that you've tried in the past. Again, because as dementia progresses, different approaches may be necessary. This has been brought to you by caregiver relief. The number one resource for dementia care at home.