At our Show and Tell visits with our dear friends, those ladies in our community with cognitive decline, the Lady-Links find ways to engage them in conversation. We look for items that will prompt a memory leading to a connection. Dolls are some of the best ways to connect, because most of us had dolls we played with when we were children.
Many of us remember the Matryoshka dolls, better known as Russian nesting dolls. The concept of these hand painted wooden figures decreasing in size, fitting inside one another always brings surprise and laughter seeing how tiny they become. The joy of sharing such a special toy for our dear friends to see is a great thing…but the Lady-Links don’t stop with just “seeing” an item….we find ways to let the item prompt memories. We’re “dolled up” and we have “somewhere to go” with the use of open-ended questions.
Questions like “What types of dolls did you have?” brought various responses from baby dolls to Madam Alexander dolls and everything in between. Questions like “Did you dress your dolls?” brought memories of mothers and grandmothers sewing doll clothes. That memory “of sewing” led to conversations about wedding dresses and how some mothers made beautiful hand-sewn bridal gowns for their daughters. Our “somewhere to go” with our open-ended questions always leads to more and more memories that connect us through conversations filled with love and laughter.
The Lady-Links always have somewhere to go with our Show and Tell visits. It’s never just about the item we bring…it’s about engaging our dear friends through shared memories that the item inspires. Such connections encourage a sense of belonging, promoting feelings of being valued and understood. That’s what makes Lady-Links visits different from the “all dolled up” song with the lyrics of “nowhere to go.” We always have “somewhere to go” with our Show and Tell visits, taking us to a place where connections with love and laughter are found.
Very well put!