How To Really Help A Loved One With Dementia Sleep Better Without Fixing The Wrong Problem
In the middle of the night, your loved one is walking the hallway again. They’re confused. They won’t sleep. And when you try to comfort them, they can’t understand your words—or they respond with fear, not calm.
Sound familiar?
In Episode 250, we return to Dr. Beth’s powerful story of caregiving—not from a distance, but from inside the home. A trained pediatrician, Beth shares what she’s learning as she cares for her mother-in-law, who has dementia, aphasia, and unpredictable emotional responses.
This isn’t theory—it’s faith, trial, error, and grace in action.
When Words Fail, Emotions Still Speak
One of the most powerful takeaways from this episode is this:
💬 “She doesn’t always understand my words, but she feels my presence.”
Beth’s mother-in-law has expressive and receptive aphasia, which means conversations often fall flat. But what still works?
Tone of voice
Touch and body language
Mirroring emotions with calm energy
Caregivers often feel helpless when words don’t land. But emotional connection—how you make them feel—often matters more than the actual message. That’s where dignity and peace begin.
Managing Wandering and Sleep Disturbance
Beth’s story also highlights the real challenge of night wandering. Her mother-in-law paces at 2 a.m., won’t return to bed, and forgets that bedtime even exists.
Some solutions shared in the episode:
✅ Red light therapy and morning sunlight to reset the circadian rhythm
✅ Magnesium glycinate for improved sleep support
✅ Quiet activities like folding towels or simple puzzles to redirect restlessness
While not every tip works for every family, the message is clear: try one thing at a time, and observe what brings peace—not just silence.
READ: 251. How To Biblically Reframe Dying with Dementia With Hope
Safety Without Stripping Dignity
Beth wrestled with questions like:
Should we put up a gate?
Should we lock her in at night?
What feels safe vs. what feels shaming?
The answer? It depends. But the approach remains the same: lead with love, then create systems that maintain safety while protecting emotional well-being.
Whether it’s adjusting your home, building routines, or seeking outside help, your goal is never control—it’s connection and care, rooted in trust.
You Can Still Reach Them—Even Without Words
If your loved one has stopped understanding you, don’t give up. They may not remember what you say, but they’ll remember how you show up. God designed us for relationship—and that includes emotional presence, not just spoken language.
🎧 Tune in to Episode 250 to hear more of Dr. Beth’s honest, faith-filled journey—and walk away with practical tools and hope for your own caregiving story.
Join our monthly free workshop!
“How To Immediately Reduce Dementia Caregiver Overwhelm and Stress In 3 Easy Steps”
Transcript
Welcome Back to Beth’s Story
[0:00] What do you do when your loved one is still strong physically, but their mind and emotions are all over the map? In this episode, we’re back for part two of Beth’s story. We talked about wandering, sleep issues, emotional dysregulation, and the hard reality of trying to communicate when language breaks down. But we also talk about what does work, mirroring emotions, building better routines, choosing peace over power, and creating safety without stripping away dignity. If you’ve ever been up at 2 a.m. Wondering how to calm things down, this one’s for you.
[0:45] If you are a Christian and you are struggling with God’s sovereignty or God’s providence, reach out to me. I will have a conversation happily with you about God’s providence and God’s sovereignty and help you along in your journey. If you are struggling as a family caregiver and you’re ready for a little bit more support, hop on a Care Companion success call with me. It will take 20 minutes where you will be able to talk to me, gain some clarity about your very next step that you need to take in this journey, as well as have a conversation about whether or not it makes sense for both you and for me, for us to work together to help you through your dementia caregiving journey.
[1:32] Hey, Christian Care Companion, welcome to Dementia Caregiver Support for Christians, the podcast where I teach Bible-believing Christians how to approach dementia care differently because caregiving is not random. It is by God’s design. And when we focus on our relationships over being reactive, everything changes. And if you have questions like the ones we talk through today, or if you’re facing your own version of this story, I want to invite you to my next Ask the Dementia Coach monthly question and answer session on May 29th at 6 p.m. Eastern. It’s a Thursday evening. It is a live group session where you can bring your real-life questions and get biblically grounded, practical help wherever you are and for whatever you’re facing right now. It is free to register at thinkdifferentdementia.com and come and be in a community
Navigating Caregiver Conversations
[2:40] of like-minded people getting the support you need before your next challenge hits.
[2:47] Now, without further ado, Here is the second part of our episode where we talk to Dr. Beth, who is a pediatrician related to her mother-in-law and communication and sleep issues.
[3:05] Well, hello, Ms. Beth. So in the three months that she’s lived with you, she’s learned that her clothes are in your closet. Yes. Okay. So she still has the ability to learn information she wants to know. Is there a particular reason her clothes are in your closet? Well, when she initially came home from the hospital, she was fairly weak physically. And so there is no closet in her room. Her room right now is my husband’s old office. So we’ve turned that into her room. It’s the only other room that we can use on this first floor with us as a bedroom. And there is no closet in there. But the other thing is that for her to be getting up and trying to get dressed on her own and having access to a bathroom with a shower, I don’t want her showering alone. I don’t want her trying to do all of those things. I don’t feel like it’s safer to do all of those things, obviously, without somebody there.
[3:48] So, again, practically, there’s no closet because there’s no clothes because there’s no closet. But the other reason is just to sort of try to keep some of those things out of her eyesight so that she’s not fixated on them when she does get up at 2 in the morning. Okay. What kind of things have you considered to help her with sleep? Are you trying to, I know you guys said you’re pretty active. Are you trying to get her to do some exercise throughout the day to see if that’ll help make her more tired or more sleepy? Yes, I definitely think there’s a correlation there. So the more activity she does during the day, obviously, the better she sleeps at night. Right now, we have a caregiver who comes for four hours in the morning and the caregiver is wonderful with her. She’s excellent with her, but she also, you know, she has bad knees and so she’s not able to keep up with her sometimes, which is, you know, again, it’s almost funny to me.
[4:38] You know, she can outwalk our caregiver anytime. So and then again, there’s just some days where, you know, it’s rainy. And so trying to mentally stimulate her, bought her some different various things she likes to do word searches, even if she’s not really getting the words, you can see the brain’s working. She has these, I have these painting sheets for her where she’s just painting with water, but it reveals the picture. I love those. Yeah. I mean, those are great. She gets bored of them, obviously.
[5:01] So, you know, I think I’m sort of out of ideas. My husband is working from home. So he’s here as well, but trying to work at the same time. So, you know, trying to find ideas for the caregiver to try to mentally stimulate
Enhancing Daily Activities
[5:14] her, physically exercise her has been a challenge for sure. Now, the paid caregiver, is that through an agency? Yes. Is that just a person that you know? It’s a private pay agency. Okay. So non-medical home health. Yes. All right. Would you like to hear what I? I love it. I’m excited. I’ve got so much to say. So the first thing that struck me was about the caregiver and something to consider is actually going back to the agency and saying we really need somebody that can keep up with her so that they can, in essence, tire her out a little, you know, because if if the paid caregiver can’t keep up with the person who’s needing care, that can create in and of its own, you know, challenges. Because what it sounded like is when she’s physically active, so she can’t express herself, but she still moves really well. So if she can, on the days that you guys are really busy and active, she sleeps better at night. So having that built-in caregiver being able to come… Actually take her somewhere and walk with, like, I don’t know how close you guys are to a mall or anything like that. Here where we live, we have a very active senior center that has a lot of activities that are not designed.
[6:27] It’s not an adult day program or anything like that, right? It is truly designed for normal older adults to go and have stimulation. Something like that, where she could go with a person that is taking care of her that facilitates her could be a solution to keeping her engaged and occupied. It sounds like to me that a lot of the language stuff is truly related to her stroke. And so speech therapy would really be a good idea. The challenge that we have
Exploring Therapy Options
[7:01] is that we don’t want to mess up her hospice. So a couple of ways you can play it. Hospice technically is supposed to provide therapy for something that’s not related to the reason they’re on hospice. So if she’s on hospice for the dementia, they’re going to say the speech is related to the dementia, right? So if we want to keep the hospice, which I would want to do because it’s additional help. So I want to keep hospice on as long as hospice says she’s appropriate. I’m not rocking that boat. But what you could consider is reaching out to a therapy department looking for a speech therapist who might do private pay.
[7:39] Okay. Come in and get an assessment and have them see if there are anything related that they can help with to try and figure out how much is stroke related and how much is due to the dementia. And the reason I say that is because obviously in the three months that she’s been at your house, she learned where her clothes were. So that tells me she might still have a small window where she actually can do some rehab.
[8:04] It may not ever get back to where it was, but I don’t think it hurts to try. It’s going to take a special speech therapist to be willing, and you may have to do a little legwork to find one. But I think from a communication perspective, that would be a very helpful thing to try to do to see if there’s an alternative way that they can help, like a communication board or something. Yeah. That is going to be so specialized to her. It would need to be something that you guys would do. But if we know the items or the things or the tendencies that she has.
[8:40] They can come up with a very simple communication board that she might just be able to point to. So, if we know she always loses her coin purse or a pair of glasses, we put Put those items on communication board so that when she starts to do that, looking for something, you guys can say, you know, give her two. Is it this one or this one?
[9:00] You know, and see if that helps. And a very easy, quick experiment would be
Communicating with Compassion
[9:05] to just put together something and see if she’s able to do that. But that may help a little bit with the communication. A lot of it when somebody can say is guesswork. And so I think a lot of it is going to be just in the communication piece. If she looks like she’s afraid, then, you know, we need to be worried. But if she’s just looking like, you know, she’s just can’t get it out and it doesn’t look like it’s bothering her. What I’ve done really, I’ll use this as an example. I went on a dementia supported cruise. One of the best things I’ve ever done was go on that cruise. And there was a gentleman on that cruise. He didn’t have aphasia per se, but he just had word salad. Like everything coming out of his mouth, nothing made sense. Like you could not figure out for love or money what he was trying to say. But when we stood there, when I just stood there and he would talk and I would just mirror, I’m like, really? That’s so interesting. And he would just keep going. And we had it. We connected. We had a communication. I still have no idea what he had to say, but he wasn’t unhappy. So if she’s coming in and she’s trying those words, the more frustrated she gets, the worse it’s going to get. So if she’s saying just words are coming out or whatever, and you’re just matching her tone.
[10:22] Her body language and mirroring her emotions, if she’s looking concerned, saying to her, oh, I’m so sorry that, you know, you seem frustrated or let me give you a hug. You look like you need a hug, you know, meeting her emotionally where she is will go a long, long way. because the big thing is just trying to bring down her frustration.
[10:43] That was that. Now back to the sleep. I think activity level is going to play a major big role for you guys.
Sleep Strategies Unveiled
[10:50] Have you thought of or looked at some light therapy? I have not. Okay. They make specific lights for people living with dementia. And off the top of my head, I forgot what it’s called. But there’s some specific light boxes and things like that that you can get. The premise behind that is, you know, it takes about 90 minutes before bedtime for your melatonin to kick in, you know, blue screens and blue light and all that kind of stuff. So having a, doing light box therapy, I think it’s called red light box, red light therapy, earlier in the day to suppress melatonin and then later in the day taking it away to let the body’s natural melatonin kick in. So light therapy is something that came up, but then also magnesium. Okay. Agnesium can help you sleep. And if you find this, you might enjoy this book.
[11:40] Have you heard of Dr. Dale Bredesen? D-R-E-D-E-S-E-N. Dale Bredesen. He wrote it called The End of Alzheimer’s. I would recommend you get that. It’s not a heavy read, but it’s not an easy, easy read either. And I know that she doesn’t necessarily have Alzheimer’s, but they use a lot of naturopathic, homeopathic types of supplemental things to help manage symptoms instead of pharmaceutical medication. And so I think you’d really enjoy that book, The End of Alzheimer’s. The magnesium that they recommend, I believe, is magnesium glycinate because there are different types of magnesium supplements.
Addressing Wandering Concerns
[12:20] So those are a couple of things you can try for the sleeping. Now, we didn’t touch on this and you didn’t mention any of this, but have you got strategies in place for her in case she wanders?
[12:31] Yes. So she has wandered already. So we’ve made changes. She actually wandered out of the house. I was out of town at a conference and she wanted to go see her husband who was staying at an Airbnb about three miles away. And this is how we know that she can learn. So she went out of the house. My husband had been up with her multiple times through that night and was exhausted. So fell back asleep. She got up, put her shoes on and walked out of the house and walked three miles at four in the morning. And she walked three miles. It took her two hours and the police found her wandering and she was fortunately okay. So now, of course, we have a security system in the house. So we set the security system. Anytime a door is opened in the middle of the night, it’s right next to my head. So it’ll wake us up and we can go get her. So and she it’s funny because she actually knows she’s talked about how she went walking and, you know, we’ve said, yeah, and we won’t go walking at night anymore. And we’ll we’ll come get you at the door if you go walking.
Considering Assisted Living
[13:31] So last thing that I want to have you guys considered public. Putting her and him in an assisted living together? They have talked about that. I struggle. Again, I’m the daughter-in-law, so I don’t want to be the overbearing daughter-in-law. For the last probably three years of this, every time they’ve come down in the winter, we’ve talked about, you know, we’d like you to move down here. We will be able to help you. He actually last year went to assisted living facilities to look and see, and we thought he might actually make the move. His comments when he walked into places is he said, this makes me feel old. And so he, I mean, he’s able-bodied. He does not have dementia. They’re quite young. They’re in their early 70s. So he didn’t like the feeling of being confined himself and feeling that himself. And so again, he’s looked this year at places where there is a memory care area, but also an independent living area. The memory care center that we’re currently looking at, where I think she could probably go to a day program, which I think would help with her daily activities and that stimulation and help with the sleep. Also, she could transition to being a resident there. She’s more reserved. And so she does have a hard time accepting help from strangers. She’s not gregarious and she won’t just walk up and talk to anybody. So I think that would be a nice transition for her. They don’t have independent living at that facility. But again, I think my observations are as well that they butt heads and he pushes her buttons a lot. And so it’s actually we should benefit from having sort of a little buffer, a little buffer. Yeah.
Key Takeaways for Caregivers
[15:01] Okay. Well, that makes sense. So Miss Beth, what’s one thing that you can take after today’s conversation that was helpful for you? The whole conversation was very helpful. I’m going to go search for this book, The End of Alzheimer’s, that you recommended. I definitely have enjoyed reading and learning about dementia and just how to help help people and help her specifically. So I’m excited to find that. If you really, like, I’m so, I’m a little nervous to say this, but I’m going to say it anyway. If you really want to read, an earth-shattering book about Alzheimer’s specifically.
[15:31] And, you know, your mom-in-law, everybody’s assuming, just has vascular dementia because she’s had these strokes, right? There is a book, it’s called Breaking Alzheimer’s. It’s written by Dayan, D-A-Y-A-N, Goodenow, G-O-O-D-E-N-O-W-E. If you just look up Breaking Alzheimer’s, he is a chemical biochemist or something.
[15:55] He’s not a physician per se. But he’s into, he does medical research from a chemistry. Like a PhD or something maybe. Yeah. He’s found a thing in our body, a natural thing in our body called plasmalogens that like from a medical perspective, I had never heard about. And he’s got like 25 years worth of research showing that people who have low plasmalogens in their blood, kind of like cholesterol 100 years ago, nobody knew about, do not are the people who actually get dementia. And when the plasmalogens are replaced, that just from an, you know, since you’re a medical doctor, it might be interesting. It is a heavy read. It’s a science book. Yeah. It’s well worth reading and just learning. And, you know, maybe considering that as an alternative, if she or you guys have the resources to see if it can impact a difference in her life. Okay. Yeah. I’ve enjoyed learning about, I mean, I feel like it helps me advocate for her, you know, and it also helps our relationship with her. Do you have any quick tip for helping the people around you? I know sometimes I have a hard time. You know, my father-in-law tends to argue with her and tell her when she’s wrong. And she certainly doesn’t like that. And I struggle to not be true to you again.
[17:14] Backdoor strategy. One of my clients that worked with me, I have a group program that worked with people in to go through this process. And when people join, they usually join for the remainder of their journey. So I get to know people really well. And Angela was in my, her mom passed away November last year, and we worked together in that group for over a year and a half. And mom and dad lived with them, with her and her husband. And her dad was very reluctant to, you know, the same situation. It’s like her daughter couldn’t tell him what to do with mom. But the strategy we employed was Angela’s kids live in the house. So Angela taught her kids what to do, and Dan picked it up. It was a backdoor way of educating, so not directing him at all, but talking about what you’ve learned on the podcast and telling your kids, hey, you know, when Granny did this, we tried this and it worked this way. Those kinds of conversations actually go a very long way. So it’s a good backdoor way. Great. Awesome. We’ll try that. My kids have been very proud of my kids and how they’ve been helpful with her. One last question. How did you find me, Beth? I have to be honest, I don’t remember.
[18:27] So I am a big podcast listener. I have about a 30 to 45 minute drive on my way to work every day. I work at different clinics all the time. And I think I just put in Apple Podcasts, I think I just typed in something like, you know, it must have been something that we were having difficulty with. I think I put something about, you know, fixations and dementia or something like that. And I think you were one of the first podcasts to pop up that looked like it could be helpful. So interesting, because I do come from a Christian worldview.
[18:53] Sometimes, you know, people are typing in dementia and then Christians or something like that. But my approach is very different. Like, one of the big things that I’ve really started to figure out, yes, my background is in OT, but since I’ve stepped out of OT, all of the other stuff has kind of come together, is the best thing you can do is maintain the relationship.
[19:16] Everything goes from there. Yeah, I have to say, you know, the doctors and the nurses at the hospital when she was in the hospital were very nice people, but they were the most unhelpful people in that equation. And the palliative care doctor who came in and spent an hour with us, you know, kind of walking us through what we needed to do to get her home was, you know, that was the turnaround. And I’ve seen for sure, I mean, your advice, just focusing on her emotional state, focusing on reassuring her and we’re not going to argue with her. And, you know, we’ve realized she, if you put a hand on her shoulder and kind of rub her shoulder a little bit, my husband and his father have very similar tones of voice and can sound very directive and she does not respond to that. And my husband has completely changed the way he’s interacted with her. And I mean, he’s even telling his dad, you know, she’s not difficult. Like this is actually very simple. Like you said, it’s just simple. Yeah. You just need to change how you do it. Yeah.
The Importance of Relationships
[20:08] Yeah. So again, you’ve been very, very helpful to us. I appreciate your podcast. I’m so excited to have you in my world. And if you ever need help again, just let me know, because to be honest, what I’ve been finding really interesting is how many healthcare providers are actually seeking me out. And to me, like, I actually thought healthcare providers would be the ones that are like, no.
[20:32] And they’re the ones that are like, oh, give me more, you know? Yes, yes. I mean, you know, you can get all the medical education in the world, and it doesn’t prepare you for actually interacting with people. And to me, as a physician, I feel like it makes me a much better physician to be able to say, you know what, I’ve worked with someone who has dementia. I’ve been through this. I know what techniques are helpful. You know, we don’t have to talk about medicines and molecules and things like that. What do you need practically for your day-to-day? Practically day-to-day, nuts and bolts, rubber meets the road. Yeah.
[21:04] Well, thank you, Beth. I really enjoyed this. I will be thinking about you guys. Reach out again if you ever have another question. I’d be very happy to speak to you again. Okay, great. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. You’re welcome. Be safe. And as I try to end all of my episodes and woefully forget so many times, may the Lord bless you and keep you. If you like these episodes, please subscribe, share them with one other family caregiver to make this journey easier for you. As a Christian, we can make it easier. It does not need to consume your life. God gives us means. Thank you for listening, and I will see you in our next episode.
