Lady-Links make visits to ladies in our retirement community who are in various stages of cognitive decline.  We engage them in activities they enjoy.  Each dear friend we visit has unique experiences and interests.  Some enjoy games, some enjoy crafts, some enjoy music, and the list goes on and on.  Currently we have nine dear friends we visit,  and the activities we enjoy with each one are specific to her needs and abilities.  That requires training on our part, including meeting occasionally to practice the activities without our dear friends present so that we can discuss how to make the most of each visit.

For games such as Rummikub or Scrabble or Uno, we want the experience to be pleasurable.  We follow the rules of the game but often make slight modifications such as not setting a time limit on someone when it is their turn to make a play.

We discuss how to offer help when needed, but not too quickly as to be offensive nor too late so that she becomes frustrated and can’t figure out what to do.

With our crafts, we discuss adjusting the complexity of the project by determining which part is best done by our dear friend with our help during the visit or done ahead of time by our craft manager.

We preview the crafts and determine topics of conversation that might be inspired when working on them.  For example, crafts involving the sun might encourage conversation about summer vacations when we were children….or even games we played outdoors in the summer.  We’ve found that our dear friends can relate best to memories we share from childhood or young adulthood.

Holidays, such as St. Patrick’s Day, always are great discussion starters.  Seasons of the year are another.  We try to select crafts that are easy to complete, colorful and pleasing.  Thinking of positive, encouraging conversation ahead of time in our planning sessions helps facilitate discussion at the visits.

Training always serves several valuable purposes.  We want to have the knowledge and skills that will make our visits successful.  Keeping updated on how to communicate with those in cognitive decline, understanding how to encourage them through our visits, and discovering ways to engage them in activities that are beneficial are topics we address in our training sessions.  Training is an important part of the Lady-Links experience and something that is crucial to the continued success of our relationships with our dear friends.

Lady-Links enjoyed plenty of fun as we got in the swing of things at a Valentine’s Day Party at the Assisted Living/Memory Care facility in our retirement community.

It was a great way to have fun while “swinging to the beat” of favorite songs from the 1950’s.  Some of the Lady-Links even got into the spirit by wearing poodle skirts.

Residents enjoyed the the upbeat mood of the party that day and the valentines we made and distributed throughout the week.

Lady-Links have made and shared valentines every year since we began our visits to our dear friends in various stages of cognitive decline.

So…come on and join the fun…invite your friend or loved one with cognitive decline to join you in celebration.  It doesn’t have to be restricted to February 14th.  Having great friends and letting them know they are special can be celebrated year-round!

Getting in the “swing of things” benefits everyone emotionally and physically, and even stimulates memories of enjoyable times from years ago.  According to Lady-Links, that’s what makes a great Valentine event or any event for that matter…enriching lives with love and laughter.

We’ve had a great time making valentines at our recent Lady-Links visits.  Our dear friends enjoy this activity so much.  Not only do they get to make the valentines, but they know their creations are going to be given away to those who will really appreciate receiving them.  It’s such a good situation…special valentines made by special dear friends, designed for special new friends.

As we made the valentines, it was fun to talk about memories associated with childhood valentine parties and events.  Some of us shared how we worked hard as children to create home-made cards for our favorite teacher.  Remember our elementary school parties….valentine box and all?  What fun to give and receive valentines with our classmates.

Conversations about what we did as children are always enjoyable, providing a connection between all of us!

Making the valentines as a team assures our dear friends of feeling successful.  And that’s the real reason behind our visits….to bring joy and love into the lives of each dear friend!

 

The word is spreading about Lady-Links and the meaningful relationships we have established with the ladies in our retirement community who are in various stages of cognitive decline.  As Lady-Links, we have planned for growth in our organization, and now that it’s here, we are ready!

We have spoken, written, and published about our experiences as Lady-Links.  Our community has an in-house television production studio and recently we brought an update on Lady-Links with the offer to train volunteers who wanted to join us.   The response was a room filled with ladies eager to learn more about Lady-Links.

Much of our good reputation comes from our community residents who see a change in the ladies we visit whom we call “dear friends.”  After our visits, these dear friends are typically more social, many even making eye contact and engaging in conversation and activities for the first time in months.  As a result, we have families of those in cognitive decline request that we visit their loved one, as well as we have requests from ladies who want to be trained as Lady-Links and be involved in our friendship visits to our dear friends.  It is a win-win situation.  Everyone enjoys and benefits from our friendship visits.

This is wonderful…we are growing…both in the number of  ladies who volunteer as Lady-Links and in the increased numbers of dear friends we are able to visit.  It’s followed by growing pains that are anything but painful.  It’s amazing, remarkable, and a cause for celebration.  With support from our community administrators, we are improving our training and communication to reach more volunteers and dear friends than we even imagined!

 

 

Friendship is the reason Lady-Links was organized.  The idea began when one of us heard the husband of a woman diagnosed with Alzheimer’s say that the quality of her life would be improved if she had a friend.  That sparked the beginnings of organizing visits to women in our retirement community who are in various stages of cognitive decline.

Our visits are filled with qualities that enrich our bonds of friendship with our dear friends.  We’ve found that encouragement, kindness and helpfulness, sprinkled with love and laughter, make for a meaningful relationship that will stand the passing of time.

It’s not about how much we accomplish…although our crafts are easy and fun to make.  It’s about the attitudes we share during our visits.

Lady-Links…enriching lives with love and laughter.  Isn’t that what we all hope friendship will bring?

 

What do you value in life?  We tend to ask ourselves that question when we are setting goals as each new year begins.   January is a perfect time to make plans for reaching our goals based on what we value. At our Lady-Links planning sessions, we set goals for our visits with the women who are in various stages of cognitive decline that live  in our retirement community.  We believe that these ladies we call dear friends deserve to be a part activities that create meaning in their lives and to find reasons to laugh, rejoice, and love.

Lady-Links value our relationships with our dear friends and find that our visits enrich our lives as well as theirs.

To demonstrate what we value in the visits with our dear friends, we focus on several areas: Communication, Collaboration, and Commitment.

Communication:

We begin each visit with a smile and keep that friendly body language going throughout the visit.  We’ve found that even when our dear friends don’t fully understand what we’re saying, they completely understand what a smile means!

Collaboration:

We value team work.  We work together as a team to complete a project or activity. That way, everyone contributes and feels successful.

Commitment:

Lady-Links are committed to bringing love and laughter into the lives of their dear friends. We do this by actively listening, supporting and respecting each other regardless of cognitive ability, and by expressing kindness.

We are planning for a very successful year with visits filled with what we value most!  We know it will be a very good year!

As we say good-bye to this year, we have to agree that it was good.  Although we suffered the loss of several we love, we know that our lives are richer and fuller simply because we were friends.  We’ve learned that without love and friendship, life isn’t so good.  We are Lady-Links,  and we visit ladies in our retirement community who are in various stages of cognitive decline engaging them in activities they enjoy.  That’s a good thing for them and for us.  The bonds of friendship are strong, and we all benefit from these special relationships.  We hope you will keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we plan for the next year for ways to continue to add love and laughter to the lives of those special ladies we call dear friends.

Hope you enjoy a look back at a few of our pictures from this year:

Events

Visits

Love and Laughter Shared

Encouragement from Friends, Family and our entire Retirement Community:

Yes, it was a VERY good year.

We look forward each year to changing our song sheets from our usual music to Christmas music at our visits with our dear friend who was once a music teacher.  She has the bells and has taught us how to use them.  Our weekly visits to her are filled with lots of laughter because we enjoy this so much.  It doesn’t matter if we strike the bell at the wrong time or sing out of tune….we are making a “joyful noise” and having fun doing it.

It seems that the month of December finds us all in good spirits, ready for a special time.  The Christmas carols and holiday songs add to the festivities of the season, and are something we look forward to with great anticipation.

Our dear friend is excellent at what she does…playing the piano and leading our efforts as we strike the bells and sing.

Music and Christmas.  Plenty of opportunities to share the love and laughter that so easily flows during our Lady-Links visits.

At our Lady-Links Christmas Party, we knew how to have fun!  There was plenty of love and laughter shared with our dear friends who are in various stages of cognitive decline.  Engaging our dear friends in an enjoyable time was easy to do because we had delicious refreshments and delightful activities available.

In addition to enjoying themselves, we wanted another purpose for our dear friends.   We wanted them (as well as ourselves) to feel a part of the Spirit of Giving.  To do that, we planned activities that were meaningful and easy to manage.  We chose to make simple Christmas crafts to give away to residents who live in our community’s memory care and assisted living housing.

These “peel and stick” ornaments were easy to make.  Our Lady-Links craft coordinator placed a completed craft as an example on each table, along with packets of the craft ornaments that needed assembly.

That made it easy for our dear friends, surrounded by Lady-Links and their guests, to assemble the ornaments as a team.  We all felt like we were contributing to an effort of giving that would benefit someone else.  There’s a good feeling when we give to others of our time and talent, and our dear friends were able to make that positive connection as we talked about how the recipients of our handiwork would enjoy getting these cute crafts.

Our party included singing  familiar Christmas carols and songs, accompanied by a pianist who gave of her time to play for us.

We kept our party to an hour so our dear friends would not get tired or lose interest.  We had a delightful time and felt that our two-fold purposes were met.

Games like Scrabble can help maintain a range of skills for people with Alzheimer’s and related types of dementia.  From cognitive interaction to social interaction, Scrabble can lead to building self-esteem and value in the lives of those who play.

If you have a friend or loved one in cognitive decline who played Scrabble as a child or young person, you should encourage that person to play again by offering to play with them.  “Oh, it’s too difficult,” you say.    No it’s not.  Here’s the SECRET.  Scrabble the way we play it is FUN!

Our Simplified Version:

1.  Just make words.  Don’t count the points underneath each letter.

2.  Connect the words according to the Scrabble rules, but help each other by suggesting what letters are needed.

3.  The first one to play all her letter tiles is the winner.

When you play that way, it’s FUN!

For our weekly Scrabble visit, we play at a leisurely pace.  We talk about the words we make, and even share stories that those words inspire.  Much of the time we make words consisting of two, three or four letters.  But that’s OKAY.  It’s not about setting records…it’s about having FUN and we do that!

Games such as Scrabble that our dear friends played earlier in their lives (and that we’ve modified) and are continuing to play today help them feel like themselves again.  They feel a sense of independence and a sense of accomplishment. And….you know what I’m going to say…We’re all having FUN!