I never thought I would end up in the in the senior living industry. I graduated with a B.A. in Music Theatre in 2009.
I was really going places.
Truthfully, I never even knew that senior living or memory care was a thing, even though my great-grandma lived in a retirement community in Florida.
Now that I have worked in this industry for as long as I have, I’ve learned that it’s a very hush-hush subject to talk about the similarities of memory care and caring for young kids.
“They’re the greatest generation, not children!”
And although this is 100% percent true, they’re not children, now having a child of my own who is under two and the memory care residents I’ve cared for have some striking similarities. It’s generally those who haven’t cared for younger kids in a while that will go down your throat or say “shame on you”, but in safe spaces, I have heard the following:
“I go to my mom’s house and I make sure she’s taken care of, and then I go home to my kids and I do the same things.”
“Bringing them here is a little like sending them off to camp.”
“I put my kids to bed at night, and then I go to my dad’s room and tuck him in.”
Not to mention the whole diapers (briefs for adults), bibs (clothing protectors), and if necessary, altered diets like pureed foods thing.
But through all of this, caring for those who have Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases has weirdly taught me how to be a better mom. I have been caring for those who have memory impairments for the better part of a decade, most of those years I didn’t have kids of my own. I have a knack for treating all people like “normal” people, but after I had a kid, it became much clearer that my training in the memory care world made me a more capable mom.
Let me count the ways.
I am more flexible.
There’s a saying that I made up that probably no one else thinks is cool, but it works for both raising kids and memory care:
We’re surfers and firefighters: we ride the waves and fight the fires.
In the memory care world, we are constantly having a Plan B-Z and changing up a situation if something isn’t working. We work with people whose brains are changing, and we need to change right along with it. We are also putting out fires constantly. There are families that need things, residents that needs things, everybody needs things, and generally no day is the same.
Does that sound anything like parenting? Having only one kid, my focus is solely on him, but for two and above? Does “mum, mum, mummy, mom, ma, MA, MAAA” ring a bell?
You’re all over the place, and especially when those kids start to get older, they’re in tons of extra curriculars. While having structure is the best part of your day, you have to go with the flow if something changes.
Ride those waves, baby!
I can laugh at hard situations.
Have you ever heard the term “If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry”? Working in the memory care field will give you this mentality because we all know someone who has been affected with this disease. So far, no one’s survived it.
But If I’m being honest, there are some really funny moments that come out of such a horrible disease. So we laugh so we don’t cry.
And if I had a nickel for every time I’ve thought that in motherhood…
I’m not saying that I laugh openly when my kid is crying, but I will definitely laugh at the end of a hard day with my husband. How can you not? Making a great nutritious meal for your kid only to instruct your dog to clean it up off the floor 5 minutes later? Chasing around a naked baby while he’s peeing on the floor trying to get him into the bathtub?
It all sucks in the moment, but most of us chose this life, so you laugh at the crazy. And I do cry, it’s just with my Oreos in the closet after he’s gone to bed.
I’m not afraid to feed my toddler differently.
When it comes to later stage Alzheimer’s, your brain essentially is forgetting how to eat certain foods, and ultimately, eat altogether. There are different types of mechanically processed diets that help these people get the nutrients they need without having to cut the food themselves or have to chew so much.
There is also a food group in the memory care world we call “finger foods”. These are for people who either pace a lot and aren’t able to sit for long period of time, or it’s a more dignified way to eat without utensils. My residents who pace are given their food the way a marathon runner would be given water or a banana during a race. This is how we keep their calories and nutrition up.
If anyone also currently has a pandemic two year old, my prayers are being sent your way. It’s not easy feeding kids. I’ve seen “short order cook” thrown around all over the internet. There are the days where my kid will have a sit-down meal, and there are days when putting him in a high chair is like sending him to the electric chair.
If I didn’t work in the industry I do, I would be new toddler mom freaking out that I was doing everything wrong and not feeding my kid “properly”. Now, I don’t feel like a bad mom if I let my kid graze and pass him food just like I would to one of my residents, because I know that he’s at least getting the nutrients he needs while running around the house.
I’ll take every win I can get.
I can have conversations with him that I don’t understand, but he does.
There is a term in my field called “word salad”. This is where the part of the brain called the Wernicke’s area, which is responsible for language, is starting to die. The person thinks that they are holding a perfectly normal conversation, but if you listened to them, it would be a jumbled up mess of a sentence. This is common in a lot of my residents, and maybe it’s because I’m good at reading body language, but I can have a conversation with them and walk away feeling like I had a good time.
This has come in handy when I’m talking to my toddler who is telling me about his day and I have no idea what the hell he’s talking about. but saying a lot of well-placed “no way!”s goes a long way.
The one con to understanding what my kid needs from my training is that I’ve made my kid lazy because I anticipate he needs before he even knows what he needs.
It’s a curse and a blessing.
Above all, I am more patient.
I don’t know that if I didn’t care for those who had memory impairments, I would be as patient as I am today. The truth is that I’ve been slapped, pinched, thrown up on, yelled at, had my hair pulled, kicked, and pooped on in my work. Life doesn’t necessarily prepare you for these events, yet as I said above, you ride the waves. As my son has come to the age where tantrums become more prevalent, it’s easier to take a quick breath and not react so explosively.
All of my training has more or less prepared me for the mom that I want to be. And course, my kid isn’t like my residents and vice versa, but understanding how the brain works a little better has taught me to be more compassionate, understanding, and to just cut loose a little more.
I think we all could use a little of that in our parenting.
