Four Communication Challenges in the Early Stages of Alzheimer's Disease

During the earlier stages of Alzheimer’s disease, your senior may start to realize that communicating is getting more difficult. She may realize this before you’re able to pinpoint what’s different in your conversations, too. Understanding what she’s up against can help you to learn new ways to communicate with her and to allow her the space that she needs.

Concentration Is More Difficult

Because your elderly family member’s brain is changing, concentrating on what she’s doing and on what is going on around her also changes. She may not be able to concentrate when sentences are too long or there’s too much back-and-forth talking. Don’t be surprised if she frequently loses track of what the topic is, needing to have portions repeated frequently. Something else that you might notice is that your elderly family member might try to play off her confusion about what you’re talking about.

It Takes Longer to Respond

For you, conversations might be pretty seamless. One person says something and you quickly process what they said and formulate a response. But for a person with Alzheimer’s disease, that process takes a lot longer than it used to take. Your senior has to work through what was said and then formulate a response, find the words, and speak them. That’s a lot to manage sometimes.

Finding the Right Word Can Be Tough

Part of the problem with communication can be that finding that one right word gets more and more difficult. Your elderly family member may know exactly what she wants to say but find that the word she needs completely escapes her. While that might happen now and again to anyone, for your senior family member wrestling with Alzheimer’s disease, that problem is going to become more and more common every day.

Frustration Is Common

All of these situations worse over time and they contribute greatly to frustration. Your senior may start to have more frequent outbursts due to this frustration. Worse, she might decide to stop communicating completely. It’s really important for you and for other family members to do what you can to make communication as easy as possible for your senior during this time.

Coping with these challenges is not easy for you or for your aging family member. You might even find that you need to develop some new techniques for communicating with each other. Senior care providers can help your senior with tasks and errands which are becoming more difficult due to these communication issues.

If you or an aging loved one are considering caregivers in Spotswood, NJ, please contact the caring staff at Care Street Home Care of New Brunswick today. Call (732) 607-8870.