Join us for a practical, tool-packed conversation about dementia caregiving with Jessica Young, president of Ferreto Young Care Management and dementia care practitioner! Hosted by Nirvana Tari, Chief Patient Officer at CareYaya.
In this empowering episode, Jessica shares why dementia caregiving is not about being perfect but about flexibility, revealing the harsh reality that many caregivers are pushed into this role without choice or preparation and why that makes connecting them to support so critical. Discover why a simple smile is her go-to communication hack when words fail, how to respond when your loved one insists they need to get to work at four in the morning (hint: don't tell them they're wrong), and why she wishes every doctor's office had just one resource sheet with the local Department of Aging number to hand stressed families.
From the importance of detective work (learning what someone did for a living, their hobbies, what brought them joy) to create meaningful engagement at every stage of cognitive decline, to why music is the magical activity that works across all dementia stages, Jessica offers actionable strategies caregivers can use this weekend. Learn why giving a former medical professional random reports to review or a retired teacher papers to grade can provide that crucial sense of purpose, why it's more inviting to be invited somewhere than told to go somewhere, and the game-changing shift from trying to correct reality to meeting people where they are.
Key insights include why everyone is always there, just in a different way, the power of providing something useful to do when agitation strikes (folding towels, organizing cups, anything to shift focus), why YouTube videos of old helicopters for veterans or flower arranging for someone who's never tried it can spark unexpected joy, the importance of processing your own grief about the relationship changing while creating new moments together, and Jessica's magic wand wish for a clearinghouse that condenses overwhelming information into personalized support based on each caregiver's specific needs.
Brought to you by CareYaya, America's number one rated solution for in-home senior care, providing industry-leading quality care at the most affordable rates. CareYaya is known especially for delivering the most reliable and affordable overnight senior care and 24/7 care in many major metro areas including Atlanta, Boston, San Francisco, and Washington D.C.
This episode is essential for family caregivers feeling like they're failing and nothing is working, adult children of sandwich generation parents who want to provide meaningful support, anyone in the early stages of a dementia diagnosis seeking to prepare before crisis hits, or professionals looking for simple, scalable engagement strategies that honor the person behind the diagnosis. Happy National Family Caregiver Month to all the caregivers making the world go round.
Full Episode Transcript:
Hello and good morning, everybody. Happy Friday. Thanks so much for being here with me and the one and only Jessica Young today. She is the president of Ferretto Young Care Management and a dementia care practitioner. Thanks so much for being here today, Jessica. How are you doing? Great. Great. Thank you. So excited to be here. Yes, of course. Thank you for spending this Friday morning with me. I'm so excited to chat with you and get to know you a little bit better. And yeah, we're going to go ahead and kick it right off with our lightning round, how we usually do. Wait, actually, I'm getting ahead of myself. I want to wish, again, a very, very happy National Family Caregiver Month to all of our family caregivers who are watching today. You are doing amazing, amazing work. And I think that you deserve to be celebrated each and every day, not just during the month of November. But now we're going to go ahead and kick it off with the lightning round. So my first question for you is, what is the best gift for a dementia caregiver? A show of support. I love it. I love it. That's amazing. Now tell me one activity that's going to work across all stages of dementia. Music. That is the magical one that kind of covers everything. I love it. That's so cool. I really genuinely, if I like one day, like if I do go into research, I think that is the area that I would definitely want to research because it's so fascinating to me how I guess that's maybe like the last place that's sort of impacted by dementia. And just seeing the way that folks light up around music is so, so incredible. And how can I remember songs from like, you know, two thousand ten. But I don't know what I ate yesterday. Like so fascinating. They've got they've got plenty of documentaries out on all of that. So there's plenty out there to kind of look at and base off. But music definitely is a huge, huge help in the field. Totally. I love it. I love it. My next one for you is what is your favorite communication hack when memory starts to fail? It's smile. People can read that no matter what. And it's comforting. So that's usually my go-to when words don't quite make it to be processed fully. Usually just that smile. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think Tipa Snow's positive approach to care, that's like the number one thing that they kind of teach as well is just like, Be happy, be kind, because that is something that your energy can be felt no matter who or what is going through the situation. Now, oh, this is a fill in the blank one. I like these. So dementia caregiving isn't about blank. It's about blank. So it would be not about being perfect, but more about flexibility. I love it. And you know, we're going to get more into that later on because that's, I love that. And then, okay. Oh goodness. I have so many more, but I'm going to pick a couple. Tell me your most underrated tool in the dementia care toolbox. I think, well, I'm going to, I have two. Simplicity. I think a lot of people think a lot of they get too far ahead of themselves. When really scaling things back sometimes is really the easiest tool for yourself and for your loved one. And then I also think humor is a super important piece of this. In all of these years of talking to caregivers, it really, humor's kind of what helps a lot. Being able to smile, it's okay. that piece of it. I love it. That's amazing. And tell me what you think it what you wish more doctors understood about family caregivers. That sometimes that family doctor is the first contact in this and You have a caregiver who is probably very stressed, very scared, in unknown territory, and it's terrifying. And so to give some words of encouragement, to maybe give a few extra minutes and not just check down the list of things that have to be done, and maybe even because doctors know so many things, but they can't know every single resource that's out there. Maybe have something in the office that you can pass to them, even if it's just your local Department of Aging number, just something to give them what how to start getting connected right how do you start getting connected to something right if that doctor because they're doctors they have to handle the medical stuff so um give them something social stuff at least yeah i totally agree with that i Absolutely. But yeah, let's get into our questions. So the first one is, you know, you've been in senior care for what, years now? Almost twenty. Twenty. Well, look at you. And so you're you've kind of been like laser focused on dementia for most of this time. What sort of drew you to this work? I knew and you know, twenty years ago and to where we are now and to where we need to be with this is really. I knew it could be better, right, like I knew. In working with the senior population in the health care field and seeing all that was happening. it could be better, right? There could be better engagement. There could be better ways to communicate. It really comes down to a lot of that. I always say everything's figureoutable, right? Like that's kind of my saying. So in that case, I feel like everything is figureoutable and trying to bring the person some purpose, some engagement. So that is what kind of was like, how do we keep drilling this down? How do we keep getting better at this? How do we, and you know, things are coming leaps and bounds. I mean, we're seeing all the transition with AI stuff coming and all different sorts of games on tablets and all of these things that are coming. So it keeps getting better. But that is really, it was like, let's figure this out. Let's figure out how to provide great interaction and some support to caregivers and let them know, you know, this is, it's rough. I mean, show them some support. It's hard work. It is, you know, it's, it's hard work that no one really ever prepares you for, and no one can fully prepare you for either. Um, because at the end of the day, taking care of someone that you love is, is going to be hard, no matter if you're a doctor yourself, or if you are an investment banker, um, it's going to be, it's going to be tough times, but you know, you've, um, done some really impressive work. You presented at Johns Hopkins memory clinic, annual conference, multiple times. So tell me about maybe what's the one thing that you wish every family understood about dementia before they start their caregiving journey. And I think it's important to hear to kind of establish that not everybody knows they're going to get in that caregiver role. I mean, that that's really the hard part. You know, sometimes this is. this isn't a choice sometimes. And sometimes people are kind of pushed, you know, or out of complete necessity, they go into this caregiver role. So, you know, if on the other side, those that know, hey, I eventually, I know I'm going to help take care of my mom. I know this is, and to start preparing. So that would be start doing some homework ahead of time. What are some resources that are out there? Does mom just need some socialization to start? Just start digging around, doing a little bit of research, figuring out, maybe tapping into caregiver support groups, things of that nature. So those that kind of are anticipating that and getting prepared versus those that are kind of pushed into it or kind of they're, you know, walking in kind of blindly. So it really is, it's going to be, given them very little task list to get done. Okay. Let's figure out, you know, who the doctor is. I mean, sometimes family members are put in such a place. They don't, I don't know who my mom's doctor is. I don't know what meds my mom's on. I don't, but here she's living with me now. And so if you have the ability to prepare, great. If you don't, it's okay. Yeah. Take your time piece by piece, get organized at a slow pace. That's not overwhelming. Absolutely. Exactly. It's so important to not overwhelm yourself. I feel like that is something that's going to inevitably end up happening at some point. So might as well try to protect yourself from it for as long as you can by just, like you said, exactly taking it one day at a time, even one step at a time, even if you just get one small thing done a day. And if you, you know, take some days off and don't necessarily get something done during those days, that's fine too. There's, you know, there's, there's grieving that goes on when you're like transitioning from being a son or daughter or a spouse to becoming a caregiver. And all of that is like completely natural and a normal part of the process. And again, I say this on almost every podcast, but there are more than there's almost fifty five million other Americans out there that are in the same boat as a family caregiver. There's so many family caregivers out there and it's just not talked about nearly enough. So you're not alone. There are so many other people that are going through the same things that you are. And getting them connected, right? Like that's the thing. I mean, that's why these podcasts are so important and that's why there's all these online caregiver groups. It's really important to be able to connect with people that are going through what you're going through. Yes, a hundred percent. And yeah, I completely agree with you. I know I was going to bring this back up, so I'm going to bring it back up now. But, you know, the whole process over perfection thing, you kind of strongly believe that dementia caregiving is about the process, not perfection. So why do you think it is that so many caregivers get stuck chasing perfection? And what does that kind of end up costing them? I think because they think there is a perfect caregiver, right? I think that that is, oh, I'm just going to do it all right. And I'll, you know, I'll read a book and I'll be fine. And, and then there's a bad day. Okay. Now it's OK, maybe not. Maybe this is a struggle. Maybe maybe I'm not such a good caregiver. And then there might be a couple of good days and then a bad day. So I think the important part is really is. Do the best. show up the best way you can, right? You're not going to be, no one's perfect at anything. I mean, period. And then if you add into caregiver, the stress and all of the emotions and all of the things that go in with it, it really is important to understand there's no, there's no perfect, right? So you'll make yourself more stressed. You'll make the person that you're providing care for more stressed in this. And really the, where we're talking about simplicity and just kind of scaling back and you'll get there and there's no perfect. Kind of like what you were saying with, you know, the whole like smiling thing, you know, if they can, stress can be felt too. So a lot of the times that can, I know you can't just say stopping stress because that's, you know, obviously we're going to have stress. But what can you do to sort of like protect everybody from that. And, you know, I can just understand that you're both going through this journey at the same time together and it's new to them too. And scary, like on both sides for both people. So, yeah. That's, I think too, where it really, you know, and I say this a lot to the caregivers is that, the person that you're providing care to is changing without the ability to know they're changing or without being able to control that change. So yeah, you as a caregiver you're going to have to change to go along with that you know to be able to be flexible and kind of because what works today might not work next month and what worked this morning might not work tonight so it really is you know the person that you're providing care for is going through so much and can be very frustrated. Maybe they know they're trying to say something, they want to say something and they can't and they're frustrated. So that's where kind of this whole, building of the toolbox thing that we'll get into about having some music around, some old magazines. We'll talk a little bit more about that, those very, very stressful situations. Totally. And I know we're touching on this as we go, but maybe take a moment to speak directly to a family caregiver right now. And, you know, they come in feeling like they're failing, they're super stressed out and nothing is working well. What's kind of maybe that first thing that you tell them in that moment? It's okay. You're not failing. You're not, you know what, let's just get you some more support. Let's get you some more tools. It's going to be okay. Thank you for reaching out. Because that's huge. I mean, asking for help is hard. And a lot of things. And that is huge. By asking for help, people feel, well, I'm not able to handle it, right? Well, that's not the case at all. So it really is what you're saying is normal. This is very typical of a caregiver. Thank you that you recognize that you need help. Now let's figure out what that is. You know, is it whatever that next step is? Absolutely. I love that. I really, really do. And it's just at the end of the day, all of us just need to hear that we're okay and we're doing okay. And it's going to be okay to some extent because, you know, we're humans are, you know, just by nature, we're our own harshest critics. and sometimes it takes that outside perspective to kind of like get you out of that and be like hey look at all of the positive things that you are doing so what that this one little thing happened you know um but um you know jessica you're you're all about kind of like talking about building this toolbox to allow for that confidence to grow and be built so What are some of the must have tools that every caregiver needs? Now, of course, we got that smile that we should be carrying around. But are there a couple of other things that they should just be carrying around with them? So I think this is where the patient's flexibility and preparedness really come. And I say preparedness not as in you know, there's no way to prepare for everything that's coming, but there is ways to prepare. And I know I, you know, we'll probably get into a little sundown in conversations and things, but how do you prepare? And maybe it's, knowing how to shift the mood of a room where it is a smile and maybe it's dimming of lights. Maybe it's putting an old record on in the other room so they can hear that. And so being able to kind of bend and flex kind of on the fly and the more you do it, the easier it becomes, right? Oh, you know, mom's getting a little, you know, antsy right now, a little agitated. Let me go put her favorite music on and see what we can do. And that's, too, where the activities come in handy. And we'll talk about activities because you don't need to be a cruise ship director. I've heard that so many times over the years. What activities? I'm not a cruise ship director. I don't do activities. I'm like, no, no, no, no. Let's simplify it. Let's scale it back. Yeah. a little bit. So, but I, you know, the flea, the patience, flexibility, and definitely preparedness of being aware of your body language as you've, I mean, that's huge. That, that comes right off of you in those rooms that you walk into. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And I think that that's the cruise ship director thing. I'm still laughing about that. Yeah. That's such a good point because a lot of the times it's, it's, It doesn't have to be that complicated. At the end of the day, the goals are the same, and it can be just as simple as putting on that record that they loved from this era of their life that you know was a beautiful one that they were just joyous during that time. And yeah, that's such a good point about knowing the patient and how well the patient prepared for something like this. think that's a good thing to kind of do just it doesn't matter if you're twenty five thirty five fifty five or sixty five like it might be good to kind of have those goals of life goals of care um fun facts tidbits just anything to kind of uh help that process move along and And that's kind of one of the pieces too, the more we get into talking about engagement and activities, a lot of it really stems from what I'll call detective work, right? tell me about that person. Tell me, what did they do for a living? What did they enjoy? What didn't they enjoy? You know, sometimes people will say, well, my dad just worked. There was zero hobbies. He worked, worked, worked, worked. Okay. What did he do? Right. Well, he was a fill in the blank. Yeah. So how do we translate that to providing him some kind of stimulation now that that feels useful. And so it really comes down to person, person for person. What I might want to do might not be fun to someone else. So that's where you really got to figure out. And not everyone's an extrovert. A lot of people are introverts. So maybe they don't want to do group activities, but Maybe they're happy if you gave them a puzzle to do and sat down with them and just talked about some old school stuff. So, yeah, it really when we get into a little bit more of the engagement piece, that really is where the heart of it is, is figuring out the person and. what what's their purpose yeah totally and don't you worry i'm very excited about the engagement um piece as well and sorry guys that i keep coughing i'm a little bit under the weather today but i could not miss this podcast for the world because i've been excited for it all week long um but hmm i'm wondering if i should switch gears yet or if i should dig in a little bit deeper on this whole building toolbox. Maybe I'll ask this question this way. Of course, we have the good old smile and just positive attitude. tool in our box. But when the behaviors are changing and there's agitation, we've got sundowning, there's aggression, you know, wandering, things like that. These are arguably the hardest moments, you know. So do you have any further suggestions or tools or ideas for families when they're, you know, just going through it and in the thick of it with something like this? Like it's, you know, it's four o'clock in the morning and you're, your loved one is running around the house like trying to get ready for work and they're getting aggressive and agitated when you tell them that it's four o'clock in the morning and they need to go back to bed. So this is kind of a lot of that mind shifting stuff on the caregiver side because in the moment that person thinks it really is time to get up and get dressed for work and there's a really good chance that saying you don't have work at, and it's four o'clock in the morning, isn't, that's not going to work because to them in that moment, it is right. Like they have to get to work. They were never late for work and they're fifty-five years at a company. They're not going to be late today. So that's where some of that strategy building comes from. And Oh, you know, I think the office might be running a little bit behind today. They're fixing the plumbing in the building. Why don't we, you know, sit back down and I'll check in just to kind of confirm. Yes, I hear you. I hear you that you want to go to work. I know you want to go to work. telling them they can't isn't, so it really is, how do you comfort them, right? Like how can they be heard in that moment and be comforted and not, now, might it work in that moment? Sure. Might, ten minutes later, I gotta get to work. I got, you know, these are all things, but the more tuned in to being able to kind of flip some words and flip that body language in those moments, helps. That's where a lot of where I mentioned the detective work and kind of knowing that person because you might say, oh, you know, the plumbing is down in the building or something here. Can you help me fold this basket of towels while I go? So provide something else like what is next what because then you're starting you know then you've shifted the plan right of going to work going to work going to work to oh wait i do have to help with these towels or in the list of when i say towels i mean literally the list of things that you can i mean we have we usually give them out to our family members too i mean like super lists of all of these quick things where you know, putting cups back in the cupboard. If they're clean or dirty, like you can always redo it later. You know, it really, it's, it's giving them a purpose in that moment to get them away from that agitation. A hundred percent, a hundred percent. We, I always say this too, like at the end of the day, humans just want to be helpful. You know, that is something that, and taking and feeling and the sensation of like feeling like that's being taken away from you or that you are no longer helping, or even like, you know, maybe quote unquote, like just for lack of a better word, harming, that can probably lead to like a lot of agitation, even if you don't necessarily know that that's what's the process that's going on. And a lot of times here at Keriaya, where our students kind of go into the homes to provide the services to the older adults, we phrase, frame it to the patient as this is, you're helping a future nurse social worker, doctor, PA get that necessary experience that they need by spending this time with them. You are a mentor to these students, which is one hundred percent the truth. But is that how it's phrased on our website? Not necessarily. So it's really all about just like that perspective that you put it into. And it's it's not it's not somebody like that's going to come in and be telling you what to do. It's somebody that's coming in to learn from you, coming in to, you know, understand better like the fields that are available to them out there and so i think that that that you know perspective shift just like you were kind of mentioning is so crucial and having a couple of like different like like bullet points in your mind of like okay like how can i shift this or like opening then like let me do this and trial and error you know like that's gonna happen and that's totally fine as it will in any other aspect of your life too But just being willing to be like, OK, yeah, I messed that up. That was probably not the best way to go around that. Let me try this next time. I feel like it's really important, too. And again, we're not going for perfection here. We're just going for what works today. And if it worked today, hey, let me put let me add that to the toolbox. Maybe it'll work tomorrow, too. And that's you know, there's it. where you hear, you know, practice, the more you practice these things and the more you practice kind of watching the freezing, but you, and you'll kind of start to see these things transpire where maybe you're starting to get really good at that. Right. But there's a morning where everyone has to get out of the house. Right. We've all got to get to work. And mom's going to the senior center today. I got to drop her off. And it's like, um hurry up come on mom we gotta get going right right yeah okay that sounds bossy right and you don't mean to be like that right um so it's in those moments of you've just gotta kind Mom, all your friends are waiting for you at the center. You know, we don't want to be too late. It's almost that time. You just kind of help. You're rephrasing it. You're saying the same thing. But it's much more inviting to be invited somewhere than being told to be somewhere. Right. So. I love that. Flipping. Being invited somewhere versus being told to. I think that's actually really a helpful tip. Like that is that's that. allowing the decision to ultimately be theirs, even if you're kind of like planting the seed of the decision, I think is so, so great in allowing folks to keep their autonomy and maintain that independence for as long as they can. All right, now I'm going to switch those gears into the engagement portion because I'm really excited about this. Really practical tips and tools that could probably be taken away from this. for our caregivers. So, you know, you are a huge proponent of saying that, you know, all stages of cognitive impairment are important and it's important to engage and maintain that engagement through all stages, whether it's mild cognitive impairment or, you know, Alzheimer's or something like that. Why does this matter? And even in late stage dementia, when someone seems like they're, you know, quote unquote, not there. So everyone's always there. They're just there in a different, a different way. Right. And so those around that person have to just alter how the world interacts with them and so this too takes some especially at the earlier stages you know when we talk about mci the mild cognitive piece you don't There has to be a lot of attention because you don't want to start with an activity engagement thing that is way too hard or way too easy. You really are. And that's where that detective work comes in, right? Trying to figure out what do they enjoy, kind of where are they? Because if you go one way or the other, if it's too frustrating or it's too easy, well, you're not going to get a good engagement. You're not going to get some good feedback with that. So you have more options in terms of engagement because even if you play a card game um and maybe the rules aren't always followed it's okay it's really more about the process and not the end result if they're sitting and you're you know sipping coffee and flipping cards and just playing whatever game rules you've come up with in that moment diy So it's all that social interaction. They're physically doing things with cars. There's just so much that goes with that. I mean, and the more a person is exposed to things, the more, um, opportunities are available. I remember very specifically one lady I was working with, we sat down to do some flower arranging, um, And it was just a, it was just a random activity, right? Like, it was just like, oh, let's, okay. And later that day, the daughter had said, well, how, how did mom do? She did great. She made this beautiful flower arrangement. And the daughter was like, oh, no, hon, I don't think you're talking about my mom. I was like, no, no, no, no. We really did sit down and do these flowers together. It's just because she hadn't been exposed to it at home. So the exposure piece is good. she didn't want to flower range before, but this kind of piqued her interest at that point. So that it's things like that, that really make it important. And totally the, as progression kind of happens, you just kind of got to keep scaling everything down. You know, you just, you're going to make it, they make adjustments, you make adjustments and even right down to where maybe you, um, put on some music. You might see some foot tapping going on. You might see a hand move a little bit. All of that is important. Absolutely. A hundred percent. And that's, and that's the thing too. I do feel like even, even with something like this, like if flowering or flower arranging is not the answer, then it might be you know, going on a walk and collecting different colored leaves. It might be, you know, like putting on like a really like engaging like chair yoga exercise on YouTube or something like that. Yeah, YouTube videos are huge, especially people who have had careers, a lot of the military folks, sometimes some do want to see pictures of the old helicopters and all sorts of that stuff. We've had a lot of folks that were in the medical field and OK, here here's just, you know, we pulled some reports, just random reports off the Internet. And we're like, hey, can you just review these and tell us kind of what you're thinking on this or giving a school teacher some papers here? Can you can you grade these or tell us what you think, how these third graders are doing or things of that nature? All that is, yes, that's their purpose, right? Like that's what they did. And so you're just bringing that joy back to them. I mean, is that medical report going anywhere? No, but you know what, in that moment. It actually is going somewhere because it's going, it's proceeding to making your life a little easier. Hi. Hello. Hello. Oh, my goodness. It's not the twenty first century if there isn't a technical glitch now, is it? For some reason. I was telling Jessica earlier, for those at home, we are having a mighty gloomy, rainy day here in North Carolina. And I think that might be interfering with some of the Wi-Fi, but my Wi-Fi just completely cut out. But I appreciate you for holding down the fort while I was gone. Oh, goodness. What we were talking about. Activities and how to really drill it down to them specifically. We it's so interesting because we this patient we have that books care with us. He was a I believe like a like a blood specialist and he worked until his like seventies, like very, very much like Loved his job, loved what he did. And it's so interesting how our brain works. But, you know, there's days that he can't recognize his grandchildren. But if you give him a lab report of a blood test, he will accurately describe that to you. Lickety split. Oh, yeah. It's pretty remarkable how that happens. Hey, Jessica, are you still there? Yeah. Sorry. I don't know what's going on. I know it's, it's tough. Um, and I do, um, okay. Oh goodness. I don't know. I'm going to ask you one more question. And I know that there's some questions from our audience as well that I definitely want to get into. Um, I knew this episode was going to be a little longer than expected, but that's all right. Talking about important things here. Um, so let's do, let's do this one. Um, Yeah, yeah. So some, you know, a lot of the time, continuing on that, like, same engagement, energy and like vein, what, what do you say to families? Or what are you kind of hearing? When someone says, that just sits there, he doesn't want to do anything he I try to engage with him, and he doesn't really even want to engage? How do you sort of redirect in those situations? So that's where a lot of the questioning comes from, to try to extract as much information to be able to think of things that dad may want to do. Because what you think dad wants to do and what dad may actually want to do may be very, very different. So you hand him a crossword puzzle book and a pencil, And he's like, I'm not doing this. This is silly. And sets it down. You don't want to do it. But in having conversations and maybe knowing some of the things that he did enjoy, maybe he enjoyed like old Westerns or something. Maybe there's some old picture books around to kind of have these conversations about reminiscing and things of that nature. It really is. being able to see kind of what would be of interest to him. Maybe he was a golfer. Maybe he was really into sports, you know, whatever that was trying to figure out what is that purpose? What is that interest? And then kind of drill it home because you think it's important. Doesn't mean dad does. That's such a good point. That is such a good trial and error. We just keep coming back to this. I should have renamed that podcast. Yeah. Next time, next time. The next, the next, the follow-up episode that we record in a few months here, because I'm sure there's going to be so much more left to talk about. We will call it that. But I do want to give some time to our wonderful members in the audience and ask some of these questions to you as well. So let's start off with this one. We have, oh, Someone said, thank you for the insightful information. As a child of the sandwich generation, how could we support our parents whose parents are in the early stages of dementia or brain change? OK, so if I heard it right, so it's a person who's sandwiched in between taking care of their kids and their parents are starting to have some memory issues. So it's so for example, so it's the daughter of a sandwich generation caregiver who I assume the situation is, you know, they have younger siblings. So their parent is taking care of those younger siblings while also taking care of their grandparents. And so this person is asking, how can I support my parents and their caregiving journey for my grandparents slash their parents? So that sometimes is a conversation with the caregiver. So maybe it is a conversation. And you need to think about what is it that you would be able to support them with? Because your strengths and your time could be very different. And so maybe it's... Hey mom, you know, I'll go pick up the groceries if you order them every Monday and bring them to the house. It can be something simple like that too. Oh, do you need me to help take, I guess it sounds like grandma to a doctor's appointment. Do you, these kinds of things where it can just, maybe you just go and let mom go with me where she wants. run an errand, get her hair done and just maybe hang out with the grandparents and do some kind of engagement. Maybe look at some old photo albums, but any little bit of show of support is huge to caregivers. Absolutely. A hundred percent. Again, just, just, it's all about making sure that they don't feel alone in that journey. And, you know, there's definitely still going to be times where you are going to feel alone. but just knowing that there is that support system behind you and that they got your back at the end of the day and someone's shoulder to lean on, I think is really, really important. So we have another question here that says, oh yeah, we touched on this a little bit, but yeah, maybe we could go into a little bit more detail as well, but memory loss sometimes feels like you're losing this person that you knew and grieving that relationship. So how do you help families grieve that loss while still finding connection with who their loved one is now and, you know, the person that they're kind of like becoming? So I'm going to say there's a couple of answers to this because everyone's a little bit different. So, yes. Is there that? grief that, you know, where the relationship you had has now kind of converted to this type of relationship. And there's some of that grief. Some people do, they start a therapist that specializes in that or support groups to talk through that. So that is really where some of that can be processed as the caregiver. Now, the person you're giving care to is still that person, right? They're just different now. And so your interactions are going to be different. As long as they're meaningful and you enjoy the time with them, you as the caregiver need to be able to process that other stuff in whatever way is available to you, whether it's you know, talking to various support groups, finding a therapist, any of that piece of it, because that, yes, you know, there is that huge emotional piece to it. But also drawing in those moments that you're sitting there with your loved one and what can you do to create some new moments together? Totally. I love that. That's, that's really, that's really, really great. What is, the new moments aspect of it is something that's really, really beautiful, I think. And how can you create new memories and like a new, you know, how can you adjust to this like change and dynamic and things like that? love this one this next question is kind of like a magic wand question um so if you had a magic wand and you could design the ideal support system for family caregivers uh who of folks who caregivers of those who have dementia um and you have no constraints again you have this magic wand what would it look like and what's like the first thing that you would go ahead and implement maybe today so um I would love a magic wand. I will say that right off the top. I think that would be fabulous. I think no constraint, no anything, that there's so much information out there, right? Like there's just so much. There's all of these. I think it would be really good if there was a way to condense things to where Because, you know, this podcast is great for certain people and other people might not connect to this. They might connect to a different type of setup. Some people like to read more of the medical side of dementia and others don't. So it really almost like a clearinghouse would be helpful in the fact like this is what I'm looking for. And then being able to generate the support for that caregiver right then and there versus, you know, you know, going here and going here and going here and going here. Um, there's a lot out there. Yeah. I mean, as, as an aging life care manager, that's our role in a family when they bring us in, we become that hub, right? So whatever they need, they just say, or actually we will say, this is what it looks like you need based on assessments and things of that nature and connect them now in a night, deal world, um, you know, everybody would have be able to have access to this kind of information in one place. Um, and like, yeah, there's, I just feel like there's so much out there. Right. Right. I think that that's, and it can be overwhelming, right? Like, um, if there's caregivers are already making so many decisions on a day-to-day basis. making the decision of what resource should i look into now or like what podcast should i list that's just another thing that's being added to their plate and i know of course every situation is like different but this is why i think technology can really come in handy and allow like if they're oh give me some ideas i'm gonna i'm gonna go talk to our tech team after this and see what we can do but what if there is just like an ai that learned your situation and your current like family caregiving and like, you know, the health conditions that your loved one is going through and, you know, your priorities, um, and kind of created that resource hub for you of like, okay, I pulled from this podcast and this medical journal and here's this resource that you can go talk to in your area. And these are a few support groups that I found that are like related to this and this one's online and this one's in person and this one is asynchronous. So, um, Yeah, I think that would be really, really amazing and such a game changer too, just helping. Again, at the end of the day, one thing that's taken off is one less decision that you have to make of like, what do I look into now? Decision fatigue is real. I mean, it's real. And you're not just a caregiver in habit. I mean, a lot of people, but then it's just more amplified when you're making decisions for multiple people. And I think that that kind of like going back to that question about daughter of a sandwich generation caregiver, maybe like in those instances, instead of saying, what can I do saying, can I do this or can I do this? Can I go grocery shopping or can I go pick up little brother from like, you know, school? And it's like that. That's just like even like maybe that is like that slight phrasing difference can help. It's just two options instead of what can you do? Oh my gosh, here's a laundry list of ten million different things that you could do right now. Well, and honestly, that is one of the things too. So recently we, as a team have been working on what we call the CEO book, the caregiver's easy organizer. And it's just, I mean, things we put together, it's not, you know, published book or anything. It's just like a, and one of the things in there is list a few tasks that you could give out, right? Because everyone's, what can I do? What can I do? What can I do? And it's, You pick whatever you want to do off of it. Yeah. Like here, here, here are, you know, medicines always get picked up on Monday or, you know, I need my grass cut every Tuesday or whatever that is for you. Having it marked. Cause in the moment you're already frazzled, you're running around. Well, what can you do for me? I don't know right now, but people want to help. It's good to have. It's definitely good to have those options for those. I love that. Having it. maybe on a day where you're not as frazzled, sitting down and just being like, all right, what are the things that I'm going to need to get done this week? And this is how I'm going to delegate them if someone is offering to help. Or again, don't hesitate to ask for help either, because at the end of the day, you're not alone. People are a lot more willing and open to helping than it can feel like in those moments where you're just like, ah, everything is so much right now. We are way past time, but there is one more interesting question in here that I want to try and ask. And that is, because I like this one too, but, you know, because a lot of the times folks with dementia or Alzheimer's can lose their words too. We see aphasia come up often. So what are like communication tweaks that can make the biggest difference when someone is struggling to find their words? Like Is it, do you fill in the words for them? Do you just like, you know, are you kind of just like patient with that? Or do you, you know, do you find new ways to communicate? What have you kind of, what do you recommend to families in your professional role? Finishing is not, you know, usually that's makes it a little bit more difficult. Sometimes it is just a matter of, okay, let's sit down. Let's just wake this, you know, and see if, that the words come to that point. Other times people may, again, everyone's so different, so this can't be like a blanketed thing, but sometimes communication maybe the ability to write or point to things can come in handy too. So there's a lot of different ways to kind of look at the communication piece because they're probably processing everything that's coming to them, but maybe not being able to project out. So if that is the case, there's different ways to look at all of yeah that's great that's that's really really wonderful just starting with the basics of yeah just like pointing and you know there's so many apps out there now with ipads and stuff like that that um you know help with that as well and what i can do is i can try and come up with like a resource list and i can share it um with the audience as well and if you're if um you're open to sharing that list that you showed with us earlier of like oh yeah um i can uh send that over and i could share that with Um, the, our audience to make sure that, you know, they have, so they can add that to their, to their tool. It's simplistic. It really, like, it really is. Let's draw this down to simplicity. That's exactly what it is at the end of the day. How can we make this as simple as possible for some people who are going through a not so simple time right now? Um, but Jessica, I can go on and on and on, and I've had such a wonderful time chatting with you and getting to know you better. Is there any last piece of, you know, knowledge, tidbit, anything you'd like to leave our audience at home with? Reach out, right? Like, make a connection. Even if you're not completely stressed, start something now. Don't wait till you're in the thick of it to find support. I would say that. Yeah. Reach out. Just simply, if it's as simple as that. take that step and you know if we will be here to support you um and there's so many other people out there millions of people out there like Jessica and I who would love to support you and your caregiving journey as well um but again thank you to everybody for being here happy Friday and you know it's Thanksgiving season so I do have to say again but I'm so grateful for each and every single family caregiver that's out there working day in and day out and you're strong, you're amazing, and caregivers really do make the world go around. So thanks for doing what you do. Have a great day, Jessica. It was lovely chatting with you. You too. Thank you all.