Happy holidays despite dementia: Gingerbread Houses
When you have a loved one with dementia, the holidays can be particularly difficult. Traditions feel especially important but there’s a real tug and pull between wanting special celebrations to remain the same and knowing your person with dementia cannot handle it.
My mom’s Alzheimer’s has taught me to be creative. I’ve had to find ways to balance my own feelings of sadness and loss, help my daughter create memories with her Nana, and set us up to make positive experiences most likely.
Building memories, creative construction
My mom’s Memory Care does a wonderful job providing opportunities for the residents’ families to be involved. Last December, the activities staff hosted a Family Night where we built gingerbread houses together.
My Dad, husband, daughter and I all attended. The staff played Christmas music while we tackled our houses. Understand that at this point in my mom’s dementia journey, her hand-eye coordination was already quite poor, and since Alzheimer’s began she has had little to no interest in crafts. Some of her fellow residents love to color or paint, but I’ve never been able to engage Mom in that way. I think she hides her coordination difficulties by not wanting to try. However, Mom loves to help. So, I latch on to that when creating connection experiences for her and her granddaughter.
My daughter’s eyes immediately lit up as we unboxed our kit and saw all the brightly colored candies. I had Mom help me sort out our materials as Alicia dug in to set our structure properly on the cute mat included with the kits. (The Memory Care staff had a stroke of genius in purchasing pre-assembled houses.)
An Aside: You should know, I have a history of being hopeless with gingerbread houses. Every year I buy a kit for me and my daughter. We are hardly ever able to get our structure upright. One year it got so bad – we had icing on every surface in the kitchen and all over both of us, candies hither and yon – an elementary-school-aged Alicia burst into tears. (Thankfully at this age I was still able to self-edit the swear words in my head.) All seemed lost until a light bulb went off in my head (a la the Grinch’s heart growing 3 sizes in one day.) I looked into her eyes and said, “I think there’s only one thing we can do at this point.” “What?” she snuffled. “We’re just going to have to put this house out of its misery and eat it.” We dug in and created one of my favorite mother-daughter memories. We devoured gingerbread and licked icing off our fingers. Cue the Hallelujah chorus.
Back to Family Night. Despite my gingerbread ineptitude, over the years my artistic daughter has become a talented decorator. We decided to divide and conquer. She would do the front of our house while Mom and I tackled the back. My Dad and husband were content to enjoy the music, watch and take photos.
Mom has a nervous habit of picking at her cuticles until her fingers bleed, so I engaged her love of helping, asking her to unwrap and hold candies, to keep her hands busy. I’d squirt icing, and she’d hand me the pieces to put on the house. I would ask her which colors she preferred where. All while Alicia was in her element, going to town on the front. The lovely activities staff kept coming by, offering more icing and materials, encouraging and engaging with us.
Parallel play, a concept I learned in my daughter’s preschool days, is a great way to describe successful interactions like our gingerbread night. Alicia is in her element, creating while Mom stays engaged in a different way with me. We are all together, having a great time, but not always directly with each other.
At the end of the night, the front of our house was magazine-worthy and the back was more devil-may-care. Mom, Alicia and I walked around and marveled over the other families’ houses. It was a glorious time.
Helpful Resources:
Need help with some inspiration for activities with your loved one with dementia? Wake County Public Libraries has put together kits to check out, as well as digital resources:
Andrea Osborne is Capitol Broadcasting Company’s director of content. She has daughter in high school and a mother with Alzheimer’s and is a passionate advocate for both. She will be sharing her family’s journey here on WRAL’s family section.
