Yesterday I had the privilege of spending the day with Dad. I can see now why Mom is soooo overwhelmed! She has to constantly be with him for now. Mom took off for some errands so I stayed with dad for about an hour. What to do?
Last night I was working on a puzzle with Ara Lee and dad came up and "helped" us. He would pick up a piece, look at it and put it down. They were small puzzle pieces, a little confusing, so he never found any pieces, but he seemed interested, so today I took out the kids puzzles; the 24 pc puzzle and the 12 pc frame-tray puzzles that kids start out with. He loved those, but the ones mom has are...old and worn and she only has 3 or 4. He liked those (cardboard frame-tray) because he could see the shapes on them. I would let him do the puzzle by himself and he enjoyed it as I encouraged him. He also liked the bigger pieces puzzle, easy ones that he could see easily and had bright designs on them, so if you have similar ones hangin' around home, maybe you could bring them as you hang with dad.
I also got on the computer with him and he wanted to get on facebook, and see sights about guns, and other things he was interested in. He has to click with his left hand and he doesn't have a lot of control, so I took over and he would point at things with his right hand that he wanted me to click on.
I also took the Phase-10 cards (or uno cards would be fine) and I would take out the numbers 1-12 and mix them up and he would put them back in order. He did awesome. When he would get 1 number out of order, I would say, "there is 1 number that's wrong" and he would find it and put it in the right order. He wanted to do this over, and over, and over.
So...he also liked to look at my itouch and all the buttons and pics, so he loves things that he can easily put together or figure out - blocks, numbers, letters, puzzles, games, on a very easy level, but something that will keep his mind motivated and stimulated. If you have any of these things that your kids don't play with anymore, I would say bring them over. Right now, he's not interested in TV at all. He "reads" the paper every morning, so he likes to look at things, he also looks out the window at the birds a lot. He likes things that keeps his mind going.
He wanted to know why the pink chair Scott gave them wasn't working. We looked at it and he wanted me to "change the batteries" but we figured out together it didn't take batteries, so he had me turn the chair over and he would look and look and wonder why it didn't work. We figured out together it was missing a piece that needed to plug into the wall. We "worked" on it for 20 minutes and then when he was satisfied there was nothing he could do to fix it, I put the chair away and we did something else.
He wants to "put things together" and figure things out and fix things, so I hope that gives you some ideas to help your time with him. I slept over Sunday night and spent most of Monday with him and it's been exhausting, eye-opening, overwhelming, and humbling! All those years dad and mom took care of us, now it's our time to take care of them.
We also need to figure out how to make this house more wheelchair friendly. It takes mom 5 minutes just to get him to the bathroom because she has to open the closet door (across from the bathroom), wheel him into the closet, do a 13-point turn to get him where he can fit through the bathroom door. We gave her some ideas last night, but if anyone can help, or has ideas, please! Her back can't take it anymore, but she is worried about costs.
You can definately see his personality still, still a sense of humor, but much more patient now.
Susie
You can definately see his personality still, still a sense of humor, but much more patient now.
Susie
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