We love good food. In the kitchen is a place where Elda can do simple things, keep busy and feel good about herself. She gets tired much quicker so the time we pass together is much shorter, however, we now work for a brief time but more often.

Elda has several jobs when it comes to cooking. One is to prepare her bunny’s dinner. She uses scissors and cuts his vegetables. I have found this job has helped in two ways, it improves her dexterity and helps me get her to focus when she is angry, but it is not always easy to begin.

She forgets every day that this is her job and tells me she doesn’t know how to do it, and she is afraid to make a mistake. I can tell by her timidness, but that is ok. Every day is a new day to explain and show her how it is done. I give her the scissors and sooner or later she picks them up and tries to do it herself. Cutting things is a great way to occupy her because she likes to cut things up, and she is good at it! She can cut the smallest sliver from whatever it is she is cutting; her eyesight is fabulous. Her only problem is that she will grab whatever is close by like a sponge or dishrag and cut them too, if no one is watching.

I also give Elda a knife and let her cut up vegetables. She has her own knife that she is comfortable with. Like always we show her what to do and let her go. There are many times where she will ask every second “is this ok?” or on the contrary if I say cut them a bit smaller, she will tell me to go away. We let her do what she wants, and we cook around her.

I will let her stir the food that is cooking, but as time is passing, we must watch her because she likes to try to grab the hot pans with her hands, or move food around with her fingers, but we are still trying.

All-in-all we keep in mind her time capacity. If she can stand only 5 minutes, then it is 5 minutes, if it is 20 it’s 20. If she gets obsessive with an action such as stirring food, we know it is time to change what she is doing because otherwise she can’t stop herself. We will sit her at the table, and she will rub the tablecloth in the same motion she was stirring the food. When she surpasses her limits, she will get angry because she does not understand that what she was doing is done, and now it is time to do something else, like eat.

Discerning her limits is so very important in helping her to move from one thing to another. It is up to us to distinguish her mental states and recognize how to ease her from one state to another without upsetting her or confusing her. Considering people with Dementia and Alzheimer’s forget quickly or should I say can get distracted easily, with a little patience and compassion the transitions can become smooth.