Words that Work

Posts Tagged ‘dementia’

Offering another view of words that work without words: What do your hands say? What does your voice hold?

Our hands and voice are our earliest, most reliable and effective instruments for connecting. Usually we think we talk with our voices and use our hands for holding. Recent Facebook postings of Tonya K. Freeman and Bill Pinder inspired me to think differently about the multiple uses for hands and voice.

As words create connections, so to do hands create connection. Hands speak and connect through creation: the Pyramids, early forms of transportation and housing, tools, and artwork in myriad media.

Examples of hands being instruments for connecting:

• Hands shake to say welcome to others
• Hands massage to say, “I am providing comfort and relief from pain”
• Hands touch people with dementia who have difficulty connecting to say, “I am here” even though the person does not know you or remember who you are
• Hands touch people who are afraid to say, “You are safe”
• Hands hold people who are dying to say, “Thank you for being in this world,” and to ease the transition into another world
• Hands speak through American Sign Language

Our voice holds much, more than we sometimes imagine.

• Voice holds promise
• Voice holds the power to heal without words through chanting
• Voice holds fear and shock

Communication and connection are essential to business coaching and life coaching and organizational consulting. Thanks to Tonya and Bill I will be exploring how to integrate what your hands say and what your voice holds in my work.

Have some fun and explore reframing the uses of your hands and voice.

• In what ways do you use hands to talk?
• How do you use your voice to hold?

In response to a comment on the Language of Love for Parent
with Early Dementia post asking for examples of questions embedded in
statements I offer first some requirements, followed by examples.

Requirements

• Familiarity with the person’s daily schedule
• Knowledge of the person’s past
• Willingness to repeat within a few seconds
• Joy in the moment of whatever exchange occurs

I begin our nightly conversations with the same direct
question, “How’s my mom?” to which she almost always answers, “Your mom is
good.” This sets the stage for the following examples.

Examples

• On Wednesdays when the center where my mother
  goes offers manicures I say, “You were at day care today, and what color did
  you get on your nails?”
• 
  On Fridays when she usually has dinner at her
  brother and sister-in-law’s home I say, “Tell me about dinner at your
  brother’s.”
• When I hear the TV in the background, I say, “I
  hear the TV; do you like the program you are watching?”

Exchange related to these examples is limited.

For a slightly more involved exchange, I’ve learned to make
statements about something in the past. The exchange is longer because the
topic can connect with an emotional event, as in the example.

• 
  In explaining where I would be during part of February,
  I told mom, “I will be driving on the same windy road on the California coast that we were on during a
  family vacation 40 years ago. Weren’t the views were beautiful?”

What is it like to engage in conversation with a parent with
dementia? I’ve been learning the language of love with my 85-year-old mother
who was diagnosed with early dementia about 2 months after she fell on her back
on her concrete driveway. Up to the time she fell, which was about 2 ½ years
ago, my mother was highly functioning and extremely active, e-mailing well past
midnight. We spoke once or twice a week.

After the fall (sounds Biblical doesn’t it?), which was attributed
to simply tripping, not to a TIA or a stroke, my mother was no longer able to
perform daily tasks independently. She did not know what day of the week it was
or how to count backward from 100 by 3s—standard questions doctors ask to assess
brain functioning. We now speak once a day.

As a curious person I usually enter conversations wanting to
know about the other person: Who they are, what they think, how they approach
situations. As a coach my form of engagement with clients is asking questions.
I learn so much about people using questions as the doorway. For the first
several months after my mom’s diagnosis I struggled with how to best engage in
conversations with her. Our once or twice weekly calls centered on each of our
respective activities. Now my mom couldn’t remember what she ate or if she ate.
I needed to learn a different way to connect.

I made the following changes:

• Created ritual
  

  o       Call
at approximately the same time each day

  o       Offer
her the same blessing during each call—She offers me one in response

•  Ask questions that are embedded in statements to
  which she responds

•  Validate whatever she says, responding with
  “Yes” or “That’s OK”

Our conversations are short, lively, funny and full of love.