When I was teaching, we had an inservice training session on ADHD. In one part of the training session, one of the presenters gave us a very boring text to read with several difficult questions to answer about it with a 5 minute time limit. During that time she started a number of distractions. One of the presenters began turning the lights off and on. They played a tape (Yes, it was that long ago.) of normal school classroom and hallway sounds, someone sneezing and coughing, tapping a pencil irregularly, an indistinct conversation with intermitent laughing, and other noises and outside sounds like a bird chirping and a siren at a level. All of this was just loud enough that it couldn’t be ignored. At the end of the time, the presenters explained that we had just experienced 5 minutes of what our ADD students deal with for the entire school day. The rest of the workshop was spent on ways to make our classrooms and instruction more accommodating to ADD students. It was one of the most useful inservices I ever had. It made an impact on my teaching.
What sent me on that trip down memory lane was an article I read today titled “I Had Dementia for Five Minutes: Here’s What I Learned.” Both my mom and my mom-in-law had dementia. We saw them decline slowly at first and finally rapidly. We understood what they were going through from the outside. The article describes a simulation that lets care providers experience some of it from the inside. It is a 5 minute read and well worth the time.
https://www.nextavenue.org/i-had-dementia-for-a-day-heres-wh…
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Thanks for the link, PF.
That was very interesting.
Empathy is a valuable attribute.
I found this link, attached to your article, about dementia friendly living space, also interesting.
I know that care givers struggle with how to “house” someone with advancing dimentia.
https://www.nextavenue.org/dementia-friendly-adementia.
One of the suggestions is motion detectors to alert the care giver to movement.
I envisioned the Ring Doorbell Camera and Security system INSIDE the doorways. And an alert sent to the caregivers phone each time someone approaches the door.
Another suggestion was cameras inside the fridge allowing the caregiver to verify a meal was eaten, or supplies needed.
On the safety front, the “automatic fire extinguishers above the cooktop” was interesting.
Create an exterior “signal” that helps the loved one identify “home”. This reminds me of people tying balloons on a fence to alert arrivals to “turn here to get to the party”.
(And, I can just imagine HOAs responses to a resquest to add a “signal”? LOLOLOLOL).
Again, PF, thanks for the link.
ralph
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On the safety front, the “automatic fire extinguishers above the cooktop” was interesting.
The buildings here did that a few years before funding for internal sprinklers was made available.
Create an exterior “signal” that helps the loved one identify “home”.
This presumes the person is capable of seeing–and properly interpreting–whatever the “signal” might be.
Another suggestion was cameras inside the fridge allowing the caregiver to verify a meal was eaten, or supplies needed.
One mfr already offers (offered?) this on at least one unit a few years ago (part of the IoT, I guess).
One of the suggestions is motion detectors to alert the care giver to movement.
A version of this was a wristband in a nursing home (?) for people with dementia or similar. It tracked 24 hrs and was used to help identify medical problems based on behavior rather than verbal conversation.