Community Story
By Rachel Reed, Kansas City, Missouri, USA ©dementiacareinternational.com
We were very excited to receive this feedback all the way from Kansas City, Missouri, USA. A big thank you for this empowering story to Rachel Reed and her Mum, Mary Sharp.
I have to tell you about something neat that happened with my grandmother. I went to visit her at the Manor (where she lives in a residential home). Mom and I were working in the backyard on the flowers. I had one woman arranging fresh flowers, which I had just picked; and I really wanted Grandma to come out and enjoy the outdoors with us… but she was very tired. She sat inside on the couch with some others and basically stared at the TV or at the floor while she nodded off.
I approached her three times. The first two times, I used the, ‘Would you like to come outside with us?’ approach and she turned me down. I even offered to take her back to her room afterwards so she could lie down and get some rest, but that wasn’t of interest either.
The third time, when I walked through the living room, I suddenly remembered what you had taught us – to “Invite”. So I said, ‘Grandma, I’d like to invite you to come outside with me.’ She looked at me and said, ‘Okay’. I helped her off the couch; we went outside, and within two minutes her whole body was alive; she was arranging the flowers and singing every word to all the songs Mom and I started.
More than anything I wanted you to know that the “Invite” approach certainly worked for me and I was delighted to test it out and have such positive results! Thank you so much for that!