How To Deal With A Loved One With Dementia Who Asks To Go Home

Maybe you have a loved one with dementia who lives in a nursing home, or an assisted living community, or a group home and they are constantly asking you to bring them home. You may also be in the situation where your loved one lives with you and they're constantly asking you to leave or go home, or it's even possible that your loved one with dementia is actually still living at home, yet continues to ask to go home. If any of those situations sound familiar to you, then it's important to understand that your loved ones requests to go home often have more to do with fear, anxiety, frustration, and discomfort rather than the literal translation of them wanting to go home.

A request to go home often times has more to do with a feeling, rather than a place, so the first word of advice is to please try not to take it too personally. If your loved one is living with you and they're constantly asking to go home, we know this can be unsettling and hard to hear, but often it is a feeling that your loved one is trying to convey rather than an actual place your loved is seeking to get to.

Making the decision to put your loved one in a facility or home of any type comes with a lot of effort, a lot of thought, and when your loved one's asking you to go home every time you visit or every time you call, that can be especially heartbreaking. It also comes with a lot of guilt, which can cause a family to second-guess whether or not they made the right decision.

So What Can You Do?

Try to explore your loved ones request to go home a little bit deeper. Consider asking your loved one questions;

·       tell me about your home?

·       what's your favorite part of your home?

·       what you do in your home?

At some point in the conversation you're going to have find a window of opportunity to try to redirect them, so if your loved one with dementia starts talking about how they really loved gardening at their home, then you can start talking about what kinds of things did they like to garden? Flowers or vegetables? What was their favorite snack or drink while they were gardening, and then eventually lead them around to giving them a snack or drink, so that you're taking them off the topic of moving to a different place. You will then need to gently redirect the conversation onto something else.

The conversation might go something like this, if say, your loved says they missed gardening, then you might start the conversation with:

“What did they like to garden? What are their favorite snacks and vegetables, speaking of snacks, let's have a snack right now”

Then give them a snack. This approach may even give you some ideas and insights into what specifically they're missing from their home, if in fact they really are missing the actual home, so if your loved one starts to bring up how they miss gardening this might prompt you to bring over an indoor pot of herbs, or an indoor pot of tomato plants, something that the two of you could grow together. It’s important to keep your ears perked for anything your loved one mentions that you might be able to incorporate into their current living environment to help make them feel more comfortable.

What Not To Do

Whatever you do, you want to avoid the pitfall of trying to explain to your loved one all of the reasons why they're not living at their home, or worse, trying to convince them that they are at home, but they are not understanding that they are home. These type of actions usually tend to lead to arguments or disagreements, and that is absolutely what we are trying to avoid. You want to try to redirect them. Explore with some questions instead. Try to get behind some of the anxiety and fear that might be causing them to want to go home in the first place, which leads to another tip, and it has everything to do with comfort.

Sometimes there is nothing that can be done about where your loved one is living. Your loved one might have to stay living exactly where they are. Instead of listing off all the reasons why they have to stay there;

·       it's too dangerous

·       there a safety risk

·       they can't live alone

·       their house was sold

Instead you want to try to focus on the emotion behind their request; loss of control, feeling scared, having to deal with an unfamiliar environment, or just not being comfortable with any of their surroundings. These are the things that we're going to try to focus on helping them, deal with;

For example, instead of saying your house was sold - you might try instead saying something like – “you miss your home I wish things were different, but I'm so happy to have you here with me.” “I like having you around”, or if you know or you think that they're asking to go home because they're scared you can say something like, “I know it's scary, but I'm going to be right here with you.” Then knowing what you know about what soothes your loved-one, try giving them something to soothe them; a snack, a stuffed animal, a dress, or even a simple hug.

Remember It’s All About Them

This is focusing on how the request to go home has a lot more to do with feelings of anxiety, fear, confusion, and a lack of control rather than the true literal message of wanting to go home. Remember your loved ones discomfort probably is rather a reach out than a literal request to go home. Exploring with your loved one what going home means to them and not being afraid to get into that discussion about their memories of home, can eventually give you a goal to redirect the conversation, and may even give you some ideas of how to make their current living environment a little more reflective of what that home would be like for them.

Finally we discussed how comforting your loved one by responding to their emotions rather than their requests and offering them something to soothe them can be a nice approach to handling this request. Notice how none of the options have anything to do with listing off your rationale and reasoning for why your loved one's living where they are, or for explaining to your loved one that their memories is so bad they don't realize that they are living at home. These kind of explanations are just going to lead to more arguments and frustration, both on your part and with your loved one.

It's An On-Going Conversation

Understand that your specific responses and your approach to your loved one asking to go home is something that is likely going to need to change over time. You are probably going need to mix it up as your loved ones disease progresses, so just keep an open mind, be creative and try different approaches. Try to never take the requests by your loved one to want to go home personally. We know that it can feel hurtful. Realize that even with having these approaches, it doesn't mean that your loved one's never going to ask to go home again. Dementia by definition oftentimes comes with pretty significant memory impairment, so just because your loved one asks to go home again, it doesn't mean that your way of responding to them isn't working. It just means that they just might need to be comforted again.

Having These Conversation Is Not Easy.

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