My elderly mum can't tell the time and bright mornings cause her to get up hours before her carers arrive.
Are there any colour changing light bulbs which can be programmed (perhaps by a tablet) to change colour according to the time? Perhaps I could have one colour at night and then fade it to another colour when it's time to get up.
Theer are some smart bulbs which hint they could do this but don't quite say it. Anyone know any suitable products?
Neither analogue nor digital display clocks? What about a speaking clock? Or does she not understand the time at all? Or a radio which comes on with a recognisable program at a specific time? Would she understand enough to stay in bed until the radio comes on?
Wouldn't blackout blinds or curtains be a better solution? At least they would stop the room being flooded with light in the early hours.
I have a LED colour changing bulb with IR remote. You can buy learning universal remotes with timers in. It should be possible to set one to control the lamp at certain times.
Maybe you need blackout curtains so she doesn't see the light mornings.
Not quite answering the question, but my mum had the same problem which we solved with a speaking clock. One tap and it spoke the time, another tap the day and date, I think. Mum loved it, and eventually had one beside her bed, and another in her living room.
Remember visiting my old mum, and she came into by bedroom in the middle of the night - pitch black - and asked if I was going to stay in bed all day. ;-)
Won't help much for the occasions when she has already woken up early but is confused about the time.
FIL went this way as he aged, the OPs Mother may be different but Father in Law even after we got various large screen clock displays in place still either got confused or did not believe them and still rang up at say 3am asking why we had not turned up for the morning check visit or to take him shopping. The shopping trip was always Tuesday but latterly the phone calls" is it time to go shopping yet ? started around Sunday afternoon . Other times he knew he was confused time wise but still rang up and said he was "Bored". Fortunately it was a relatively short period of 15 months out of his long life he,still had a part time job till 90 and coped with all his own needs including the getting the bus to go shopping on Tuesdays till he was 94 a routine he had done for about 50 years. Wife took him as normal to a towns market day and unusually he felt physically unwell that afternoon and was admitted to hospital , he woke briefly next morning and then dozed off again never to awake. Saved us implemeting the decision to move him to somewhere else despite his wish to stay in his own home. The one night in hospital was the only time he had ever stayed in one .
The problem with my mum, Brian, was that she could not see well enough to read a clock. She was not completely blind, and kept a magnifying glass to read correspondence, but only with difficulty, and in a strong light. Similarly with a clock, she could probably read the hands if she took the clock to a window on a bright day, and tilted the face, but just tapping a reading clock was so much more convenient, particularly at night, or during overcast days.
The radio became a problem. She would invariable move the wrong dial, and when she eventually turned it on, had detuned it and could not see well enough to tune it properly. TV was OK, although she admitted the picture was just a moving blur, but she could listen. She had a talking book CD player but gave up when she could no longer distinguish the various controls. She stopped making tea or coffee because she could not trust herself to pour the boiling water accurately.
Part of the problem was her loss of self confidence, but as she died 10 days short of her 92nd birthday, and was still travelling 500 miles to see us up to her mid 80s, she didn't do too badly.
Unfortunately my mum can't tell the time nor understand it.
We'll probably get blackout blinds. However she can still wake early, even if the sun isn't causing it, and I would like her to have an idea that the usual getting up time is either soon or a long way off.
My mum goes to bed early. Around midnight, she might hear me going to bed but she starts to get up thinking I am making a noise because I am getting up!
The problem isn't to ensure my mum wakes at the right time because her visiting carers will do that.
The problem is my mum might get up because she mistakenly thinks it's almost time and then wander the house unsupervised. She is extremely unsteady on her feet and could easily fall especally if she is groggy.
You mum seemed physically fit! Unfortunately my mum's type of dementia is starting to give her mobility problems ewhich have come on quite quickly.
If my mum could somehow understand that it's 6 o'clock after being told very clearly, she still couldn't work out how many hours it is until 8 o'clock. So the actual hour of the day is rather irrelevant to her. The thing she really wants to know is if something is going to happen soon or in a long time.
You're probably right and it seems inevitable. For the time being she wants to stay in her home where she has lived for 40 years. She can still recognise it clearly, so we can't pretend to her that some nursing home is her house.
I'm there to supervise but I can't see what she's doing in the night.
I probably need to get an alarm which tells me if she's left her bedroom.
I feel for you. My M-I-L lived in her own home and looked after herself until she was 92. She was *adamant* that she would stay where she was, even doing anything for her was a trial, since she would follow you round the house trying to get you to stop and "come and have a cup of tea".
Perhaps fortunately, the decision was made for her and she had a stroke, which meant she couldn't look after herself any more. When we cleared her house after she went into care we discovered she wasn't managing as well as we thought (and we didn't think she was managing that well).
It's very hard. My sympathies.
That sounds like an excellent idea. I know you can get "out of bed" alarms.
If she's not going to remember that dark = 'stay in bed', is she going to remember that a red light, as opposed to say a green light, is going to mean 'stay in bed'?
Sadly, what may seem a logical approach to this sort of problem almost certainly won't be 'logical' to the dementia sufferer. However, no harm in trying.
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