5 Quick Tips for Dementia Caregivers About Wandering
Are you struggling to manage wandering behaviors in your loved one with dementia?
This common challenge can be stressful, but with the right strategies, it can be managed effectively. Let’s explore some practical tips to help you keep your loved one safe and reduce wandering.
Understanding Wandering in Dementia
Wandering is a behavior often seen in people with dementia. It’s important to understand that this isn’t just a minor issue; it can be dangerous. If your loved one wanders away from home, it can lead to serious safety concerns.
quick tips to help you manage wandering at home
1. Secure the Doors
One of the simplest yet most effective ways to prevent wandering is to secure your doors. Use safety latches or slider locks at the top of the door. People with dementia often don’t look up, so this can prevent them from opening the door.
Another option is to install alarms or bells on doors. These alarms will alert you if the door is opened, allowing you to intervene quickly.
2. Identification and Scent Preservation
Ensure your loved one has a way to be identified if they do wander off. Medical alert bracelets with contact information are a good option.
Additionally, keep a scent article, like a dry washcloth rubbed on the back of their neck, in a Ziploc bag in the freezer. If they go missing, this can help search dogs track them quickly.
3. Structured Routine and Exercise
A structured daily routine can help reduce restlessness and the urge to wander. Include regular exercise to help burn off excess energy. Activities that engage them physically and mentally can provide a sense of purpose and reduce wandering behaviors.
4. Use GPS Trackers
Invest in a GPS tracker for your loved one. There are many options available, including trackers that can be placed in shoes, on a lanyard, or attached to a belt. Some even fit onto eyeglasses.
These devices can help you locate your loved one quickly if they wander away from home. Inform your local police department about your loved one’s condition so they can act quickly if they go missing.
5. Visual Cues
Use visual cues to deter wandering. Avoid signs that say “stop” as they might interpret them as temporary. Instead, use signs that say “wrong way” or “employees only.”
Another effective method is to place a large black mat in front of the door. People with dementia often perceive dark colors as holes, which can deter them from approaching the door.
Conclusion
Managing wandering in dementia can be challenging, but these tips can help keep your loved one safe. Secure doors, ensure proper identification, maintain a structured routine, use GPS trackers, and implement effective visual cues. By incorporating these strategies, you can create a safer environment and reduce the stress associated with wandering behaviors.
If you’re looking for more personalized advice, consider signing up for a free one-on-one coaching session.
May the Lord bless you and keep you as you navigate this caregiving journey. Share these tips with others who might benefit, and stay tuned for more helpful advice.
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Listen to the Podcast
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[0:01] Well, what’s up, Christian caregiver? Welcome back to Christian Dementia Caregiving, the podcast where we teach Bible-believing Christians how to use their God-given strengths, and talents to make dementia caregiving easier, where we teach you that you can still have hope as well as where to find help in this caregiving journey. For this week, I wanted to do something a little bit different than what we’ve been doing thus far in this podcast. I thought it would be fun for us to do a couple of episodes on quick tips for dementia caregiving. And this first episode that we’re going to talk about today is we’re going to talk about five quick tips for you to be able to help in managing wandering in people living with dementia. So let’s start with a question.
[1:15] What is wandering in dementia? Well, I’m going to go back to when When I was a student living in South Africa, where I now, 30 plus years later, recognize that this was the patient that got away. This was the person that I was trying to help. But at that particular time in my life, I did not have the skills I needed in order to actually help her. Nor did I recognize that at what I recognize now that she actually was living with dementia. Well, her dementia manifested with wandering. She was a petite little person who was in a hospital setting. And I will never forget her. Like I said, it’s 31 years later, and I still remember her.
[2:19] But when I first met this patient, she was in this hospital setting, and I want you to picture this in your minds, a small, petite little lady with very little clothes on, think a house coat and maybe a little sweater and something on her feet. And she was very, very petite. And probably because she was constantly moving, she never sat down. And I remember her coming up to me and standing right in front of me. All of us working with people living with dementia know and recognize that over time, they lose the ability to have that social bubble we all have around us. You know, think about going to a grocery store or a place like that. People have a social bubble. We don’t get inside our social bubbles in one another’s social bubbles. But people living with dementia have very little recognition of social boundaries.
[3:23] And so she came and stood within inches of my face and she just looked at me and she said to me over and over again, I am tired. I’m so very, very tired. And she just walked up and down this hallway and then would come stand up in front of me and tell me, I’m tired. I’m so very, very tired.
Managing Wandering: Securing the Home
[3:50] And like I said, I will never forget this particular patient. But the five quick tips that we’re going to talk about today related to wandering has to do with how you as a family caregiver can manage or navigate a person who is wandering inside the home and some things that I want you to consider and keep in the back of your mind. So one of the most important things is wandering can be extremely dangerous if a person actually wanders away from the house. That is called elopement. They walked away from the home. It can happen in a facility. it can happen inside a person’s house. The reality of the matter is about 80% of people living with dementia will wander away from their home at some point or another, and it can be extremely dangerous.
[4:56] So five quick tips, and we’re going to keep these episodes over the next week or or so pretty short and very sweet, but five quick tips for wandering-related behaviors at home. The first thing is we need to make sure that the door is secured.
[5:18] There are a variety of different ways of securing the door. They make latches, safety latches that you can put up on the top of the door that you can slide. It’s a slider lock that you can lock off from both the inside and the outside. side. This is effective because people living with dementia will not scan up or down. They will see the door knob and they’ll try to open the door there. They won’t look up to the top of the door frame and find the slider lock and be able to get out of the house in that way. So securing the door is vitally important.
[5:59] Another way of securing the door is with an alarm or a bell, like a window alarm that when the magnetic component moves away from the one door, then there’s an alarm that can be heard inside the house. So that’s quick tip number one, is securing the door. That is the first thing. The second quick tip today is making sure that the person actually has is some way of being identified. A medical alert bracelet with contact information on a way of being identified, a good strategy that you can use. And shout out to Pam, one of my clients who has given me this recommendation that was given to her from the local police is to take a dry washcloth and rub it through the back of the neck of the person who you are helping so that the scent is on the washcloth, dry washcloth, not a wet one, so that the scent is on there and put it in a Ziploc bag and throw it in the freezer.
[7:22] That way, If the person wanders away from home, you have a way of providing the dog, the canine unit, a way for them to track the person from scent. So having an identification bracelet with contact information on and then also having a way of keeping the person’s scent isolated and protected so that you can use it again.
[7:54] A third quick tip is make sure, as best as possible, specifically for people who are wandering, to have opportunities for a very structured daily routine.
[8:08] That can help with decreasing or reducing restlessness, but also making sure that the person exercises because maybe they need to be moving a little bit more in order for them to burn off some of their excess energy. The fourth quick tip for today is very strongly feel that any person living with dementia should have some form of a tracker on them for safety. They make so many different kinds of GPS trackers. They make GPS trackers that you could put in a person’s shoes. They make air tags that you can put on a lanyard around their neck, or you can attach something to a belt. I’ve even read of tagging systems for eyeglasses. The variety of GPS trackers that are available for somebody living with dementia
Safety Measures: Identification and Tracking
[9:09] or a child who is at risk for wandering away from home are limitless now. And in concert with that, I want you to consider.
[9:25] Strongly consider, letting your local police department know that you have a person living with dementia that you are taking care of at home because the police are mandated for an adult adult to leave them for 24 hours before they can be considered a missing person. In the case of somebody living with dementia, we do not want 24 hours to go by before we find them. So I want you to, go to the local police department and let them know and provide them with the information they need in order for you to be able to quickly get the police involved because this is now an adult who is at risk. And then the last quick tip for today related to wandering is you can use some visual cues by the doors, which is just the big fancy word for putting a sign up or something close to the doors that is a reminder for the person living with dementia to not go out the door.
[10:43] Do not use the word stop on signs. Signs the reason you do not want to use the word stop on signs or even make it even worse make it look like a stop street is because a stop street we are trained from being very very young that when you get to a stop sign you stop but then the very next action you take is to go through the stop sign once you’ve looked for the cars you stop and then you go a better strategy is to use a common signage like wrong way or employees only or something related to like danger. Anything that would be normal in society for us to not actually access that space. So that is a better sign to use on a door. Another consideration as a visual cue close to a door could be to provide a big black carpet or exterior place to wipe your feet off that is black on the inside of the door. Because a person living with dementia, they lose the ability to perceive depths.
[12:09] Depth perception is lacking. And so a big black surface in front of a door, they sometimes perceive that to be a hole and they may not actually go all the way up to the door. So these are five quick tips for you to use in managing a person in the home who might be wandering as one of the challenging behaviors that we tend to have.
Inviting Listeners to One-on-One Coaching Experience
[12:48] I’ve started a new segment once a month. I’m inviting people into an opportunity that if you are open to or looking for a free one-on-one coaching experience where you sign up and you come on and we coach through one specific problem that you have, I’d love to invite you to reach out to me. I’m calling them a flight audit, a dementia flight audit. And next month is the first month I actually want to invite somebody from the community to sign up and be willing to be coached through a particular problem.
[13:34] We’ll come up with a goal for our time together and we will come up with a solution for your specific problem. So if you are open to being on the podcast, if you want some free coaching so that you can see, so that we can get your own audit of your own situation, then please reach out to me via email at lizette at thinkdifferentdementia.com. And I will schedule you for a one-on-one and we can audit your particular situation and you can get real-time help. So that’s an open invitation for you to sign up.
[14:18] Email me at lizette at thinkdifferentdementia.com.
[14:27] To repeat. You know, make sure that there is a way that the door is secured. Make sure that there’s a way to identify the person using contact information or even scent. Make sure that you establish a daily routine and incorporate exercise to decrease restlessness. Consider adding a GPS tracker as well as letting the local police department know that you have somebody who might wander away from home. And then lastly, use visual cues and not the word stop.
[15:08] But things like wrong way or employees open on exterior doors or a black mat in front of the door to allow the person to not actually get up to the exit door. And I just hope that you will find benefit from these short 10-15 minute episodes over the next couple of weeks. And I invite you, if you have not yet considered joining me for a dementia audit of your caregiving journey, then I invite you to be a co-creator of this podcast by signing up for a free dementia audit using the link in the show notes. Or by messaging me on either Instagram or on Facebook, just the word audit, and sign up for a 30-minute free audit of exactly where you are right now in your own dementia care giving journey, and I will help you prioritize exactly where you need to start first if you feel like you are struggling in this journey.
[16:35] And thank you for being here. Like I end all of my podcasts, may the Lord bless you and keep you. And I trust that you have found significant value in this shorty episode. Share with your friends and family and come back for this mini series on quick tips for dementia caregivers.
