Sometimes, the “home” people ask for isn’t the one they moved from last year; it’s the one they grew up in.
I sat down with a resident at a memory care facility recently, and, within seconds, she asked me if I’d take her home. For me, a stranger, I could ask the question, “Where do you live?” and distract her with questions about her home, but distraction doesn’t come as easily for family members, who often feel sad, frustrated, and even guilty when the repeated theme of “going home” comes up.
Going home and getting out of here are common themes if you love someone with dementia. As family members we try to reassure by saying things like, “This is your home now,” or “You don’t live there anymore,” but often these reassurances have the opposite effect.
Imagine if you woke up tomorrow in a home you vaguely recognize but know is not yours. You might see a few possessions you remember, but you know that the important stuff—your memories, the people you love most (your parents, your children as you remember them, your pets) are still somewhere else, in that home you can remember but no longer go to. Would you feel better if someone said, “This is your home now; don’t worry about it”?
Deidre Smith-Horton, a licensed clinical social worker for North Shore Physicians Group, reminds families that the “home” their loved one is asking for is often a childhood home—not the one he just moved from or the one his children grew up in. Supporting loved ones through their sadness, Smith-Horton says, is more important than rationalizing or trying to reason through their emotions. This is something Smith and her team at Union Hospital’s Senior Adult Care Unit help families through.
When Dad asks for home, it’s more than physical walls he’s asking for. It does no good to reassure him that what he’s saying is irrational or irrelevant (“You ARE home.” “We sold your home.” “You haven’t lived there for years.”). It’s better to focus on his anxiety and what’s making him feel that way: “Why do you want to go home? What’s there?” Rather than trying to brush off the comment with a “This is your home,” spend some time talking with him about that home he remembers. “That was a great house, wasn’t it?” “Remind me, how many bedrooms did it have?”
I worked with a wonderful woman once who had just moved to an assisted living. Every time her family visited, she’d cry and say she wanted to go home. And so the family took her home. And everyday she was at home, she’d cry and say she wanted to go home.
The point here is that often, although loved ones with dementia want to go home, what they’re looking for goes deeper than that—they want the feeling they get from home—calm, peacefulness, safety, protection—or they want their childhood home or they want something all together different. It’s up to us as family members to support our loved one in her sadness and find ways to help her through it, regardless of the frustration, impatience, sadness, and guilt we may ourselves feel. It’s not easy to do, especially if you’re hearing, “I want to go home” repeatedly every day, but supporting your loved one through it might make her want to go home less.
Molly Rowe owns FirstLight Home Care with her husband, Steve Rowe, and lives in Swampscott with their two sons. FirstLight provides non-medical in-home care to adults in Swampscott, Marblehead, and all over the north shore. For more information and help caring for your loved ones in the comfort of their own homes, please visit FirstLight’s website at www.northshore.firstlighthomecare.com or contact Molly at 781-691-5755/mrowe@firstlighthomecare.com