why that jewish lady singing to the christian lady is no big deal (o.k, kind of a big deal but ... not really)

There are a couple of things that are circulating on Facebook that have me more than a bit irked.  First.....

This is an awesome video. I've seen it circulating with the description something like "a Jewish lady sings to a Christian lady." BFD. The lady singing is Naomi Feil. She created the Validation technique, a way to interact with people who are treading water in  the murky slough of Alzheimer's.

The fact that Naomi is Jewish and Gladys is Christian has absolutely nothing to do with anything here. Although Naomi has a graduate degree in something & her title is a social worker, she is basically just an activity professional. And when one is just an activity professional, one is whatever one is needed to be in the moment. Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Atheist. It just doesn't matter. There is no religion when it comes to working w/Alzheimer's residents. All you needs is empathy, patience, compassion and most importantly detachment from a supposed end result.

This is not a  Christmas miracle or even an example of god's greatness. (I think those who think this should read up on the symbolisms of validation technique.) This is is just what any activity professional that is worth a damn would do.

So, Get over it!!

Naomi may well have worked with Gladys every day for 6 months, a year, a week. Maybe not singing these songs, but sitting with her holding her hand, reading to her, massaging her forehead, showing her pictures ..... whatever. Or, this may have been their first interaction. There is no formula nor timetable. Also, Naomi may have seen this response only once. Gladys may very well have retreated back into her memory den, never to respond in this or any other way again.

____
I once worked with a lady i'll call "B". She was deeply confused and extremely anxious. Her disease was not as progressed as Gladys'.  B was still verbal although to describe her speech as nonsensical would be an understatement. I decided i was going to have a poetry group and see what happened. I shut the door, put on relaxing classical music and showed the residents pictures of landscapes. Most everyone fell asleep except B.

B & I looked at a picture of the ocean. I told her we were going to write a poem. And asked her to talk to me about the picture. She asked what it was. I told her it was the ocean.

& this is what we got:

I've always liked the Ocean, 

my mother was born very near it. 

I've always thought my father kept a magical part of it in his soul. 

I've always liked the ocean.

It's wild and uncontrollable. 

Alive, not easily reachable. 

Marvelous waves. Unstoppable.

You can't stop a wave.

My mother and father were close to the ocean.

I didn't know that until they were older. 

Stronger. 

My memories of my mother and father are as of the waves. 

Unstoppable, beautiful.

I've always liked the ocean. 

Yes. She said all that. I arranged a bit. But those were her words. And yes, she did repeat "i've always liked the ocean."

And... this never happened again. I tried ... a few times. But that was all she had to say about that.

 I guess. 

_____

I once worked w/a lady, "L". L loved to stay in her bed and make wonderful works of art on the wall with her feces. She was combative, aggressive, downright nasty & minimally verbal. She was pretty deep into her disease and also very very hard of hearing. One to one time w/L. was one of my one to one assignments.  Yay. :/

Since communication was limited, i simply visited w/L and showed her pictures. By doing this i discovered that she really liked birds as evidenced by the length of time she looked at those pictures and a softening of facial expressions.  I decorated her walls with pictures of birds. 

I decided we would try some coloring. I brought a coloring page of a bird and crayons & showed it to L. 

Nothing.

I colored a bit of the picture then offered her the crayon. She took it and began coloring ... just a little. She said "pretty." Just a word but an appropriate one. When I left she said "Thank you."

Did she ever color again? Hell no. Nor, did she ever really interact with me that positively again. But that one time was pretty cool. And it happened after weeks and weeks of visits. 

_____

I guess what i'm saying is this: no matter how deeply entrenched a person is in her Alzheimer's/dementia. She is still in there. And bringing her out, getting a response, is a lot of work sometimes. And a lot of detachment all the time. But it can be done. For a moment anyway. And if it is done, it will usually be done by those who are considered to be the lip gloss of the facility. Those with the "cake job." By those people who are just activity professionals.

In case you want to go a-Maying

I was going through my photos and came across the pics from last year's Maypole "dance" at work.
A Maypole dance was one of those things that i always thought would be cool to do; then last year finally did, and will probably never do again.

Making the May pole was pretty simple.  There was a piece of some kind of heavy plastic-y piping left from some work that was being done. The magnificent maintenance director cut it down to size that i wanted.

All i did was wrap it with brown duck tape, tape strands of crepe paper to the top of it and stuck some artificial flowers on top. Voila.

Rocks in a beach pail in another pail thing worked to get to stand upright. 

And that was it. 

The whole thing as actually rather successful simple because members of departments were in  good moods (or just curious) that day and helped push people in their wheelchairs around the Maypole. 

We ended up with a rather large number of people who wanted to participate. I ended up adding more strands of paper to the pole. 

So, there ya go. Happy Maying. 

spin the bottle

So, here is an idea that most activity directors etc. have probably already done. However, I am going to share it anyway.

Many years ago i put together this game for Valentine's day. And every now and again we try to play it.

This year we had students from a neighboring school visit on Valentine's day. So, I drug the bottles out of the basement & gave it a go again. & this time it went quite well. So, I would say that it's a good game to play when you have plenty of help.


This is just a simple version of spin the bottle. I decorated my bottles, but that certainly isn't a must do.

We use candy kisses of course. The cards are from a reminiscing game, Shake Loose a Memory, I think. The cards have things like "keep this card if you've ever baked a cake from scratch" on them.
With spin the bottle, we just changed the verb-age - "Get a kiss if you've ever ...."

You could make up your own cards for continuity of the game if you wanted. I've just never been that motivated. 

You could also use trivia cards or you could do something like a name 3 game - where the person has to name 3 types of pie or whatever. You could also have the person roll dice and name ... i don't know... 5 types of birds or whatever. Then she could get 5 candy kisses. Your residents would like that. 

They usually like candy. And again if you feel motivated, you could make up cards for that. 

Anyway - the bottles took a long time and a bit of decoupage for me to make. So, I guess I just wanted to show them off. ;)

Thanks for reading.  Feel free to leave suggestions, questions &/or comments.