It’s been Dementia Awareness Week here in the UK and as this is a disease that I have sadly seen affect loved ones I was really keen to get involved and help spread the word as well as have that difficult conversation with our eldest son about what Dementia is and how it can affect people.
There are approximately 800,000 people in the UK living with dementia, and an estimated 36 million people worldwide, and it can set in much earlier than you may think. We were kindly sent a box of fun, creative things from Active Minds, who provide activity packages to help improve the quality of life for people living with dementia. Our little package was for the boys to get involved in and decorate their pot and plant their seeds – all things they love doing, generally getting messy!
Inside our package were some talking points designed for young children to help them understand what happens to our brain as we age and how a person might change.
To be totally honest Henry is still a little young to really have a concept of what I was trying to talk to him about, and frankly if it’s me up against glitter glue and stickers I know which would always win! But I do think it’s important for us to chat about these kind of things openly with our children, and even if they don’t take it in, perhaps in a year or so if we spoke about it again he might have some questions that I would be equipped to answer.
I found the talking points they gave (see above) helped me talk about the effects of Dementia at the right level for a child, and by making the conversation into an activity it held our child’s attention a little longer than normal!
Pop over to Active Minds if you would like to find out more about the support they can supply when dealing with dementia. Their mission is to improve the lives of people living with alzheimer’s by creating products that are engaging and have purpose to them: https://www.active-minds.org/uk/
This post is not sponsored.
What do you think?