What other caregivers say: tricks from the forums, labelled

Wandering and the front door

• A video doorbell, not a tracker. Four families landed on this. One agency owner reports a tracker showing a man safely at home while he was in town. The doorbell camera let him see the man and talk him back inside.
• One carer's trick: a slide bolt at the top of the door. A 93-year-old could work every normal lock but could not reach it. Free versions from the same thread: a stepladder in front of the door hides the latch, and an unoiled squeaky door announces itself.
• Locking up at bedtime, windows included. Five posters said this finally let them sleep: one wife stopped chasing her husband at night once she knew he could not get out.
• Caregivers raise the fire risk themselves: ask the local fire service whether a key-only lock is legal and safe where you live. We have no fire-service source: this is their experience, not our advice.
• A pressure mat by the bed with a pager you carry. Five posters use one. Several UK carers did not know the council's telecare service often fits these free, or for a few pounds a month.
• What did not work: talking door alarms. Four posters tried alarms that play a recorded message. The person ignored it, got used to it within days, or heard a stranger in the house and became more set on leaving.
• Make the missing-person poster before you need it. One carer's template: a recent photo, name, date of birth, conditions with the life-threatening one first, then VERY CONFUSED, and two phone numbers. Keep a small copy in their bag.
• The car is a risk too. One husband lost his wife from the car outside a library in under two minutes. Others report the seatbelt being unclipped while moving, and use the driver's child locks.

Ours: making home safe. Missing now? They wandered off.

Washing, hair and clothes

• Four posters agree: never let water fall on the head. The fear is the jet and the water in the eyes. They hold the shower head, aim below the face, and rinse with a slow trickle.
• Five carers wash the hair on its own. Many who refuse a shower happily have it done at the basin or in their armchair, and several enjoy it as a head massage.
• No-rinse products are the most recommended buy here, named in six posts: shampoo worked into dry hair and towelled off, warmed shampoo caps, bed-bath wipes.
• Three carers took the bathroom out of it, with a bowl of warm water in the bedroom or front room (the bathroom itself often ended in distress).
• One wife's trick: wash and dress the top half before the bottom half. It keeps him covered, and it worked when nothing else had.
• Three carers drop it for a few days, then offer again as if for the first time. The refusal is forgotten, and trying costs nothing.
• The strongest pattern here: they refuse family and comply for a uniform. Six or more posters, UK and US. My mother, who leads me a merry dance, is putty in the hands of a uniform. Their conclusion: one paid care call a week, just for washing, is not a defeat.
• Two families hung the wash on an outing. One father would only shower for church, so twice a week the caregiver said church was tomorrow. Another family offered lunch out, if he bathed first.
• Three carers change the clothes rather than the person. One father's shirts were all identical, so his daughter swapped them each morning and he never noticed.

Ours: the bathing card.

Meals and drinks

• Four carers swapped the meal for a bowl of finger food by the TV. One list: cheese cubes, cucumber chunks, small tomatoes, cold chicken, halved grapes, satsuma segments. Hot: roast potatoes cubed before roasting, cubed meat with no gravy.
• Before finger food, one carer suggests spoon-only food. A knife and fork is complex to co-ordinate, but a spoon may be OK. Two others found a full plate stops them eating at all, so they serve small and often.
• Carers report the bland ready meal is the problem, not the appetite. They switch to curry and sweet things. Everything else tastes like cardboard. We make no claim about why.
• Several families stopped the water battle and counted the fluid in food instead. Soup, jelly, watermelon, cucumber, ice cream, yoghurt, tea. The line that drew ten helpful votes: Stop driving both of you crazy micromanaging this.
• One father refused shakes, pudding and soup, but would sometimes take Jelly Drops, the sweet-like hydration drops his hospice nurse recommended (named in a second thread too).

Medicines

• Ask the doctor or pharmacist which tablets can be crushed, and whether any come as a liquid or a patch. Carers crush tablets into sweet food and post about it constantly. Some must not be crushed, and we have no clinical source telling you which.
• Two carers asked the doctor to take tablets away. The number of tablets was the battle, and pill time eased once the doctor stopped what he could. Ours is the medicine review.
• One carer stopped forcing. The most important thing was that I stopped forcing the issue. If he wouldn't take them, I didn't press him. She offers again later, and he takes them.

The car

• Three carers moved the car out of sight first. The visual reminder sets off the desire. The cheapest move, and rarely the advice given.
• Three families disabled the car instead of fighting about keys. Disconnect the battery lead or let a tyre down, then sympathise: the garage is waiting for parts. The keys can then be handed over freely.
• Blame an absent authority, four carers say, never yourself. The licensing agency, the doctor, anyone not in the room. Those who made the call themselves got months of daily anger aimed at them.
• One daughter reframed it as a gift. She told her mother she would love the car when her mum was finished with it. She hated that car. The keys were handed over.
• Two people who had refused everything else accepted an independent driving assessment, offered as a way to keep driving and silence the doubting relatives. Neither drove again: one booked it, never went, and decided to stop.
• The wanting fades faster than you expect, four carers say. After dreading this situation for years I was amazed how quickly he stopped hankering after driving.

Ours: driving and the car.

Nights, sundowning and time

• One daughter's toddler sleep clock beat the purpose-built dementia clock. Blue light and a star: night, go back to bed. Yellow and a sun: get up. Its faults: it needs resetting every evening, with no battery backup.
• One wife stopped saying the time and started saying It's still night time. The clock face and the hour had stopped meaning anything. Night time still did.
• One carer wrote Today is on the left of the mantelpiece and Tomorrow is on the right, in large handwriting, changed over each morning (left to right, the reading direction).
• Two families bought themselves time rather than stopping the person. One wife ties the shower doors together with a rope and a note saying no showers before 7am. Another fitted a stair gate across the bedroom doorway.
• Three carers draw the curtains and put the lights on before dusk. They report the change from day to dark is the trigger. They keep outings to the morning, and the hour before the bad time quiet.
• First, carers say, check the boring things: hungry, cold, in pain, wet, or too much going on at once. Pain relief and its timing belong to the doctor; we have no source for a rule.
• Six or more posters say the same about any sudden new behaviour: get a urine infection ruled out. In these threads it was right twice. Our guidance on sudden change: the emergency page.

Our night routine: the sleep tool.

"I want to go home", and the same question again

• Three posters took the suitcase out of the room. Without the prompt of a suitcase sitting there, the urge to pack has gone.
• Five or more carers blame the weather, the buses, the doctor or the builders. They call it love lies: it is too dark and wet to travel, the buses are not running, we are having work done on the house.
• Agree, then defer: four carers report this phrasing working. Yes, I was thinking the same thing. I'm going to arrange it for you. Or I'm waiting to hear back, I should know by tomorrow morning.
• One family drives round the block and comes back to the same house. Their mother did not know her home after dark, and recognised it when they pulled up.
• Three carers broke a question loop by changing the answer. A father kept asking whether the car was in the garage; the true answer kept the loop going, and saying it was on the driveway ended it.
• What did not work: post-it notes and whiteboards, in six reports. Fridge notes were ignored. A whiteboard with the day and the pickup time was read aloud every two minutes, every detail questioned again. One carer: Being able to read is not the same as assimilating information. Two people did use notes well early on.
• Four carers learn the current hiding place, then find the missing thing together. Under the pillow, in a spare bed, wrapped in the linen, under magazines. The job is to help look and be the one who finds it, not to prove anything.
• Permission a long-distance carer may need: let the answering machine take some calls. Posters told one woman, rung six times a day with theft accusations, to get caller ID and not answer every one.
• Two techniques carers have re-recommended for fifteen years, from Liz Ayres' piece on compassionate communication. Repeat an instruction in exactly the same words. And drop "but" in favour of "nevertheless".

Our own wording: the what to say page.

Getting help through the door

• The most repeated trick here: introduce the paid carer as your friend, popping in for a cup of tea. One agency manager did the whole assessment visit as a friend having tea. Money is never mentioned, and the agency is in on it.
• Or give them a job. Three carers put a proud parent in charge. We told her the carers were in training to deal with difficult people and she needed to report back to me how they were doing. That held for three years.
• One carer's line for sending someone else in: Sorry I can't come today mum, I've put my back out, so I'm sending a lady to do your lunch instead. Another says do not call it a day centre: give it a name, like the Thursday Club.
• When she had forgotten agreeing, one husband apologised to the carers, not to her. He said they should have told her, and asked to try it and see. Months later she loved them.
• Write to the doctor before the appointment. Four carers describe the person holding it together in front of a professional, then being exhausted for hours. UK carers call it host mode, US carers showtiming. This is what caregivers observe, not a researched condition.

Asking for help: the helpers page. Appointment prep: the doctor page.

Busy hands and the long afternoon

• One daughter's rummage box, labelled so it looks like a real job. A shoebox with cotton gloves, an old watch, a beaded necklace, fabric squares. (Leave out anything they could swallow, like buttons or a thimble.) She wrote THINGS TO SORT OUT on the side, so her father could say he found them while tidying.
• If they fiddle with a handbag, three carers say, give them a more complicated one. The fiddling is doing a job. Refill it with a purse, a comb, a copy of a family photo. Nothing sharp, nothing small enough to swallow, nothing irreplaceable.
• One carer built the box from her mother's old trade. A lifelong sewer got a cheap sewing box: empty cotton reels, a pincushion with no pins, a tape measure, lace, ribbon.

More jobs: the activities page.

For you, and for the crisis you have not had yet

• One carer's emergency spares kit, taped inside a drawer they never open. A spare TV remote with batteries in, and an envelope of cash. From 40 minutes away, you can talk someone straight to the missing remote.
• Two complete sets of spare keys, a carer advises: one always with you, one outside the house, with a neighbour or in a shed. From the same thread: an overnight bag packed for them, and one packed for you.
• One big envelope with everything a paramedic would want. Conditions, recent letters, the medication list, latest results, contact numbers. The carer who made it realised she was reciting all of it from memory in A&E.
• A cheap exercise book, on a social worker's advice. Every professional contact, with the date and the name of the person you spoke to. One carer says it became a timeline of her father's illness, and a record of how many people helped.
• Wendy Mitchell, who wrote about living alone with early-onset Alzheimer's, photographed inside each kitchen cupboard and taped the photo to the door. She screenshotted the route before a journey, and reversed the images for the way home.
• One carer photographs where she parked: the street name, a landmark, the car park name. She has no dementia herself. Only me has to remember everything all the time.

Gathered from the Alzheimer's Society support forum (UK) and AgingCare question threads (US), 2026-08-29 to 2026-08-31, and written up 2026-09-05. Ask, and we will point you to any thread.