Takeaways

Tip 1: Preserve Daily Routines

 

The holidays and routines might share the same number of letters, but that’s where their similarities end. While the season pulls us toward special events and gathering, we must remember that routines are the cornerstone of stability for our care receivers. These familiar patterns aren’t just habits—they’re vital anchors that help our loved ones navigate their days with confidence and security.

 

Key points:

• Record and share your care receiver’s daily routines with family and visitors
• Plan holiday activities around established schedules
• Use routines as the foundation for holiday planning
• Be prepared to adjust festivities to accommodate essential daily patterns
• Remember that routines help prevent emotional spirals of fear, anger, or agitation

 

Tip 2: Be Prepared With a Calm Retreat Space

 

In the midst of holiday celebrations, having a sanctuary becomes essential. Think of this space as your loved one’s personal haven—a place where the overwhelming stimuli of holiday gatherings can’t reach. Just as we all need a quiet moment sometimes, our care receivers often require a calm, familiar space where they can retreat and regroup when festivities become too much.

 

Key points:

• Choose a familiar room or space your care receiver already associates with calm
• Keep main activities in a different area
• Ensure the space is easily accessible

 

Tip 3: Set Expectations With Visitors While Also Acknowledging Their Feelings

 

The holiday season often brings an increase in visitors, each carrying their own expectations and memories of past celebrations. While these visits can be precious opportunities for connection, they require careful management to ensure everyone’s comfort—especially our care receivers. Understanding and communicating about the current reality of your loved one’s condition helps create more meaningful interactions and minimize uncomfortable situations.

 

Key points:

• Communicate your care receiver’s current abilities and needs
• Acknowledge that some visitors may feel uncomfortable due to:
  • Lack of experience with dementia
  • Not seeing the care receiver for a while
  • Processing their own emotions
  • Being reminded of their own caregiving experiences
• Give permission for loved ones to opt out of visits if needed
• Show grace toward those processing their own emotions

 

Tip 4: Teach Visitors How To Visit

 

Creating successful visits is about helping others understand how to connect with your care receiver in their current reality. As their ability to process information changes, the ways others can best interact with them evolves too. 

 

Remember that many visitors want to connect but may feel uncertain about how to do so. Providing clear guidance gives them the confidence to engage while protecting your care receiver’s dignity and comfort.  

 

Key points:

• Approach slowly with a pleasant expression
• Speak calmly and softly
• Sit at eye level during conversations

 

Additional points:

• Please don’t test them or ask them if they remember. 
  • Don’t ask them “What’s my name?” or “Do you know me?” 
  • Instead of saying: “Remember when we used to go caroling?”, consider saying: “One of my favorite Christmas experiences was going caroling in our neighborhood.” If our care receiver remembers this, they will comment.
• Do not talk about them within ear shot. We want to protect their dignity whenever possible. We’re sometimes surprised at what our care receiver’s understand in the moment.

 

Tip 5: Introduce Changes Gradually

 

The magic of holiday decorations and traditions can quickly become overwhelming for someone with dementia. What once brought joy might now cause confusion or distress. This doesn’t mean we must abandon all holiday cheer—rather, we need to be thoughtful about how we introduce these changes to our environment. Think of it as slowly turning up the dimmer switch rather than flipping on bright lights all at once.

 

Key points:

• Test holiday lights and decorations gradually
• Observe reactions to decorations both day and night
• Be prepared to modify or eliminate traditional decorations
• Embrace music and familiar holiday sounds

 

Read More in This Blog here

Full Episode Transcript

Sue Ryan

We both wish we had learned about creating a quiet, safe space for our caregiver. We both wish we knew about creating a quiet, safe space for our care receiver during holiday events earlier in our caregiving journeys.

 

Nancy Treaster

Yes, we do.

 

Sue Ryan

In this episode, we’re talking about being intentional in our considerations for our care receiver, family members, friends, loved ones, and for ourselves as we navigate the holiday seasons. We’re bringing five tips. Nancy, are you ready to get started?

 

Nancy Treaster

I am.

 

Nancy Treaster 

The holidays are filled with a lot of activities and a lot of emotions. So we want to make sure, as Sue said, that we’re being very intentional about our planning and preparation.

 

Sue Ryan

Absolutely. And Nancy, in the very beginning, we may not have to do anything special. And yet that time will come.

 

Nancy Treaster 

Yes, so you’re right. At the beginning, all may be good, but your job is to observe and adjust. And part of that observe and adjust is understanding when you need to potentially prioritize calm and familiar. Because we want to be very intentional about our holiday events so that we can create the best environment for friends, family, your loved ones, and make wonderful memories for everybody.

 

Sue Ryan 

Absolutely.

 

Nancy Treaster

Now the thing that’s gonna cause a wrench is the lack of routine because that’s the nature of the holidays. So tip one.

 

Sue Ryan 

Yeah, tip one would be about routines and it’s how to keep them. What we know as caregivers is we are working so hard all the time to create and to refine the routines that help our care receivers and us throughout the day. For our care receivers, we’re really focused on helping them keep calm and be connected with the familiar as long as possible. And it’s also about us.

 

so that we have routines that let us practice self-care and also to prevent our burnout. know, holidays, Nancy, holidays, routine, they got eight letters.

 

Nancy Treaster 

That’s about where the similarity ends for sure.

 

Sue Ryan 

That’s about where they’re, it’s so easy during the holidays to get out of our routines. And yet it’s, when that happens, that’s when they lose their calm and they become disconnected from the familiar.

 

Nancy Treaster

And they can spiral, emotions can spiral for your care receiver at this point, creating fear, anger, anxiety, agitation. definitely can be a big challenge.

 

Sue Ryan 

It can be a really big challenge. I’ll give the example with my dad. My dad, for him, quiet and rest were really important. There were times of the day where he could have more activity, but he didn’t like anything loud and he didn’t like large groups. Well, that’s a lot about what the holidays are. He also had his dementia routines. One of them was walking the dog and another one was closing the blinds. What we did as a family is we looked at

 

Nancy Treaster 

Ha!

 

Sue Ryan 

Dad’s routine, we looked at my routine, we looked at my stepmother’s routine, we looked at everybody’s routines and what we wanted to be getting done and all the family members talked together about who would come and when and how we would do everything so that we could keep him calm and not agitated as much as possible. Now, that’s not always possible and that leads us to tip two.

 

Nancy Treaster

Thank you, because tip two is about being intentional. Remember, upfront planning for a calm, quiet, familiar environment that you will take your care receiver into if they become agitated. Our first suggestion here is if you can avoid having the main holiday activity in their calm, familiar place, that’s ideal. Now, you may not be able to avoid that.

 

If you can’t avoid it, please try to have another place in mind. Know up front, okay, he or she gets agitated, here’s the con for me or place I’m going to take them that’s away from the main event.

 

Sue Ryan

And make sure everybody knows what that is. Send expectations with everybody. Have everybody know the importance of it and where it’s gonna be.

 

Nancy Treaster

I like that.

 

Nancy Treaster 

I like that. like making the more you can prepare the people that are at the event so that nothing comes as a surprise, the less of an issue it’s going to be if something does happen. We started having our Thanksgiving meal. We’re in the U.S. So we had our Thanksgiving meal down in our basement as opposed to in our main level. My husband’s calm for me, place, quiet place is the main level. So we took the crowd down into the finished basement and that’s where we had Thanksgiving meal.

 

For a few years, we would bring him down to the basement and he could enjoy being with everyone or at least participate. I don’t know how much he enjoyed it, but he could at least participate. But then there came a time where it was just too much noise, too big a crowd, that was not gonna work. So we’d make a plate, Thanksgiving meal plate for my husband, for his caregiver. They would have Thanksgiving dinner there. And then people could one-on-one go up and have a one-on-one conversation with him and visit with him if they wanted to. Now, that really leads us into tip three, the if they wanted to part, because you need to find a place in your heart to give grace to those who maybe just can’t deal with that.

 

Sue Ryan 

And that’s tip three. And so tip three really, really gets into setting expectations and giving grace and also giving permission for people to be okay if they can’t come be with your loved one. And one of the things that we know at the holidays is it’s reasonable. People are going to come visit. It’s reasonable. There are going to be a lot of different activities and

 

Everybody has different relationships with people who had diagnoses. So for example, there may be some people who are family members even who haven’t seen our loved one since they were diagnosed and they don’t know what to say or do. And they’re very uncomfortable. They just don’t know what to say or do. Another one is they haven’t seen our loved one since the diagnosis. I need to start over again. Hang on. Okay.

 

And that leads us into tip three, which is setting expectations and giving permission for people to not come visit if they choose not to, and then also to give grace to them. The holidays are times when people come visit and it’s a time when there are a lot of families around, there are a lot of traditions, and some of our family members haven’t seen our care receiver for a while, or they haven’t seen them at all. And it’s reasonable that they might be uncomfortable. Some of the reasons would be that they haven’t seen our care receiver at all and they don’t really know what to say or do. Another one is…

 

Nancy Treaster 

or what to expect, Sue. Sometimes it’s just, I don’t know what to expect, so I’m scared to do it.

 

Sue Ryan 

Exactly. They don’t know what to expect. Or they’ve seen our care receiver, they know they were diagnosed, but when they saw them, you couldn’t even tell. And now you can. And again, they just, they’re uncomfortable with it. Another one is they’re processing, it’s a family member perhaps, and they’re processing their own relationship with their loved one. And then the fourth one is some of them have been on caregiving journeys as well, and they’re processing the emotions of their own journey.

 

You know, relationships are complicated and it may not be possible to do this, but wherever you can give everybody grace, give them permission to be uncomfortable and help walk them through it. And if they choose that they don’t feel comfortable seeing your loved one, give them grace and say, it’s okay.

 

Nancy Treaster 

Yeah, so you’re so good at this. This is something that honestly, I really had to learn from you. I’m still not as good at it as you are, but I really had to learn from you because it’s not natural to, it’s not as natural to do. it’s really important because, you know, we can’t be judging everybody’s emotions. 

 

Sue Ryan 

It’s not reasonable. We need to find the grace to let people deal with their emotions the way they best, the best way they can because they’ve all got their own emotions. And I’ll give you a quick story with my husband. He had a dear friend for many years. And this friend’s mom and sister had both passed away from diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and he was really uncomfortable with it. And in the beginning, my husband didn’t really show that he had the diagnosis. didn’t, you couldn’t really tell. As you could start telling this friend’s quit being around him. He was just so uncomfortable with it. And he shared with a mutual friend that he felt tremendously guilty about it. And when I heard that, it’s like, I don’t want him to feel bad about it. So I went to him and I said, hey, please don’t feel bad about it. Jack loves you. I love you. We understand what your feelings are. Please, if you’re not comfortable coming to see him, we don’t feel bad about it. We love you. And it was such a relief for him.

 

And it was a great way to go ahead and give grace because then on his journey with his healing from what he’d been going through, he could also be at peace. And I was at peace.

 

Nancy Treaster

Yeah, well that’s very nice. It’s a great tip.

 

Sue Ryan 

Now, if they are comfortable coming to visit and they are going to visit, one of the things we want to do is to teach them how because it’s true, they may not know how.

 

Nancy Treaster

Yes, so tip four is teach your family and friends how to visit. First, you need to help them understand what to do and what not to do. You know your loved one better than anyone and you’ll know for a holiday event what to expect or what you think your loved one is capable of doing.

 

My father-in-law loved to sit at the table, the dinner table with everyone and just listen to everyone laugh and tell stories. He didn’t really participate, but you could tell he loved it. For my husband, there’s no way, way too much. So he needs to be really more one-on-one. And so, you know, at the point where it needs to be one-on-one, if your care receiver is gonna be sitting down where people are coming to visit with them, make sure you have a chair sitting next to them so that the…

 

Visitor is eye to eye. Explain to them to approach your care receiver slowly and to speak softly. I’m really big on this. Help them think about checking their body language. Check your body, tell them, check your body language. Put a smile on your face. Speak in a, be happy. Put, you know, speak calmly and slowly and just be.

 

Be happy about the whole interaction. Don’t be concerned. You know, that’s a big part of how that interaction is gonna go is that person seeing the look on your face. If you got a big smile on your face, I’m telling you, my husband can get a big smile on his face. If you look…

 

Sue Ryan 

He does, he You walk up to him with a big old smile and he gets a big old smile on his face.

 

Nancy Treaster

Right, right, you look terribly concerned, he’s gonna look terribly concerned. So, body language, huge.

 

Nancy Treaster 

Two more points, really big one. When you’re teaching people how to visit and they’re visiting and speaking, talking to your care receiver, please ask them not to ask your care receiver to remember.

 

Sue Ryan 

Please don’t ask them to remember.

 

Nancy Treaster 

not remember when we went caroling.

 

Nancy Treaster 

Instead, suggest they say, I love to go caroling at Christmas. I love jingle bells. Let the care receiver either participate in the conversation or not participate in the conversation, but don’t test them. That’s really what remember turns out to be. It’s a test. Do you remember when? Do you know my name? Do you know your birthday? I mean, let’s not test them. We want them to preserve their dignity as much as we can. So let’s stop the test.

 

And you have to teach people not to do that because something about that, there’s a natural thing of, you know who I am? So please teach them not to test your care receiver. The second thing that I’m big on is please ask them not to talk about your care receiver within earshot. So you just don’t know what they’re connecting with that day and what they’re not. And so I’m surprised on a regular basis where, you know,

 

Sue Ryan

Oof.

 

Nancy Treaster 

You don’t think your care receiver, my husband’s paying attention and then all of a sudden he’ll make a, he can’t really make a big comment, but he’ll say something that is sort of on track and you’re like, what? So do not talk about your care receiver with an earshot, you or them. That is another place and time for those conversations.

 

Sue Ryan

Absolutely, and I’ll give you an example from our experiences. After we had moved my husband into memory care and he’d been there for a while, two employees were talking in the hallway about something business related going on with the care community. And my husband was sitting a few feet away apparently, and they talked for a little while. And then they said he got up, walked over and said something on point.

 

They said it was really great advice as though he didn’t have dementia or anything about exactly what they had been talking about. And they said it absolutely startled them that he was so clear and so specific. So we don’t know. We don’t know what they connect to. We don’t know when they’re connecting. Assume they can connect to everything.

 

Nancy Treaster

Mm.

 

Nancy Treaster

Agree, agree, assume they can connect to everything. So speaking of connecting to things, our last tip, you may find whatever holiday you’re preparing for, you may find you want to decorate for that holiday. Seems reasonable, that’s what you do every year. So tip five is about how to do that successfully.

 

Sue Ryan

And I’m sharing this tip because I’m a great example of not doing it successfully. And I want your experience to be better than mine was. It was a great learning experience. Whatever holiday it is and you’re getting decorations out.

 

Nancy Treaster

Ha ha.

 

Nancy Treaster

Yeah

 

Sue Ryan

Decorate gradually make changes gradually now that I am wiser I recognize why this is and it is partly because They have changes in their vision. They have changes in their depth perception they see light and shadow differently and for example, a You know a big old Santa Claus may seem like a monster to them. We don’t know that My husband loved and this is the Christmas holiday. I’m going to be talking about could be any holiday, but Christmas. He loved Christmas. And we had all kinds of decorations strewn different places in the house. It was Christmas time. I get all the decorations out. get the trees out. I put the lights on. get all the ornaments on. Cause this is going to be such a joyful time for him. We’ve got spinning trees with blinking lights, all that stuff. get all this stuff going on. He comes in and he goes over to the tree and he starts taking the ornaments off and throwing them in the trash. Then he’s trying to pull the lights off of the tree, then he goes over to the nativity scene, which he’s taking apart. it was the way he took it apart could never be put back together again. But like, so I’m kind of like, what, what, what? Okay, it didn’t occur to me, you know, that all of these things were so overwhelming to him. Well, the blinking lights were flashing and they were sparkling off of the ornaments.

 

So he’s seeing all of that. So it was really very agitating to him. As soon as he went to bed, I undecorated absolutely everything, took all the tree down, took everything down. And I got one little nativity scene, one that was all one piece. I got one little nativity scene and I put it out. I also got one strand of Christmas lights out to test out. And I just put it across the table so there would just be that one string of the lights. And I put them out just for me to kind of see what might work. When the lights were on by themselves, and not blinking he was okay with it but as soon as I had them blink it was very agitating. Whatever holiday it’s going to be practice very gradually changing their environment with it. On the other side, one of the things that didn’t go away, so this part of the holiday he really struggled with, other holidays, the thing that he always connected with was the music. 100 % Irish, St. Patrick’s Day, he would sing with all of the music. So, test out the things they connect with and do it very gradually.

 

Nancy Treaster 

Do you like the Christmas music still?

 

Sue Ryan 

he loved it. And I would play Christmas music for him in July. He had certain, you we know what songs they like. Well, didn’t care what, whether it was holiday specific or not. I played the songs he enjoyed at different times of day and on different days. And he connected with them and it was great. He connected with the music.

 

Nancy Treaster 

That’s awesome. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Okay. Are we ready to summarize? All right. So today we talked about being intentional about your preparation and planning for the holidays. Hold on. We’re going summarize again.

 

Sue Ryan 

Yes, ma’am.

 

Nancy Treaster 

Let’s summarize. So today we talked about being intentional about planning and preparation for the holidays. We talked about five different tips. First, know your routines so that you can work around them as best as possible. Tip two, when the routine falls apart and agitation occurs, make sure you’re prepared with a calm, quiet familiar place to take your care receiver. Three, give grace and permission to friends and family who are not comfortable visiting. I hope I can do that. Four, when people do want to visit, teach them how to visit. And five, if you’re going to decorate for the holiday, decorate gradually. Don’t do what Sue did.

 

Sue Ryan 

Please, please don’t. But play music while you’re doing it.

 

Nancy Treaster 

If you have tips, play music while you’re doing it. Play music while you’re doing it, perfect. If you have tips that you think others could benefit from, please go out to our Facebook page, our Instagram page. Links are in the show notes and give us your tips. That would be great. If you like this podcast, please follow it or subscribe to it, rate and review it and share it with your friends.

 

You know, getting ready for the holidays can be stressful enough on your own, but when you’re also dealing with trying to make sure that your care receiver gets through the holidays as good as possible, getting through the holidays can be stressful enough on its own. Now you have someone else to worry about. So be intentional with your preparation and planning and you’ll get through it okay.

 

Sue Ryan 

We’re all on this journey together.

 

Nancy Treaster 

Yes, we are.