Sometimes You Just Don’t Know What to Talk About
The other day I was talking with someone who was finding it hard to get a conversation going with a person with Alzheimer’s disease. I told her about a group of ladies at an assisted living all of whom had significant memory loss and who used to sit around the fireplace and doze off until a group of wonderful high school girl volunteers started coming, and the Activity Director gave them a small deck of cards. Each card had a question on it to evoke a memory and start a conversation. I remember a sample of those questions:
- What did you used to keep in your refrigerator? (The ladies mentioned eggs, milk, lettuce, etc. After quite a long time listing various foods and a pause in the conversation, one quiet lady who hadn’t said anything up to that point, in a very soft and hesitant voice, said, “mold.” Everyone just broke up laughing.)
- Baby animals often have names that are different from the grown up animals; what are some of them?
Below are some more memory-evoking questions:
- Did the house where you grew up have a front porch? What did you do there?
- Did you ever ride on a train when you were growing up? What do you remember about it?
- Did you mother or grandmother have beautiful candy dishes? What did they look like? What kind of candy was in them/
- What was it like at your dinner table when you were growing up?
- Did you go on picnics when you were young? Where did you go? What sort of things were “in the picnic basket?”
- Did your family play games when you were out riding in the car? Do you remember any of them?
- 7. Did you ever go to drive-in movies? What do you remember about them?
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