A New Way to Help: Eliminate Choices

As my mother declines, I am sometimes left scrambling to keep up, in the sense of knowing how to best help her.  At times, an idea of a way to make life easier for her will come to me, and then I'll ask myself, "Why didn't I think of this before?"  :)

For example, recently I have been noticing how hard it is for my mom to make decisions--really, any decisions.  She is much happier being told what to do, rather than having to try to figure it out.  For example, when she's putting ice in the glasses before dinner, she'll often ask how many pieces of ice to put in each glass.  My tendency is to shrug and say, "As many pieces as you want," because honestly, I don't care a bit whether a glass has two or five or twenty-five pieces of ice in it!  :)  But I'm learning that it is not helpful for me to give her such freedom because freedom demands a choice from her, and choices are HARD.  As much as I hate to feel like I'm telling her what to do all the time, I realize that it's truly better for her if I just say, "Three.  Put three ice cubes in that glass."  Eliminating the choice is a good thing for her.

In a similar way, I have had occasion recently to put food out on her plate for her, and I'm seeing how beneficial that is for her.  Rather than having her struggle to follow the thought process of "we're having taquitos for dinner, so I need to put some on my plate, and then I should have some salsa to dip them in, and here are refried beans to scoop up, etc.", I can do her a favor by eliminating that difficult thought sequence and simply putting the food on her plate.  She still knows what to do with the food on her plate!  :)

Because my husband loves Mexican food, we regularly have tacos for dinner; and virtually every time we have them, my mom has to ask, "Now how do I do this?"  Rather than realizing that you get a tortilla first, then pile all the meat and toppings into it before eating it, she is puzzled.  Rather than looking around at how the rest of us are doing it and copying us, she has to ask, "What do I do?"  When I can graciously and subtly serve the food to her already prepared and ready to eat, it makes life so much easier...and, I think, eliminates some of the mental pressure that she feels.