Do Children and Alzheimer’s Patients Communicate?

My mom reached out from her wheel chair and touched the peach fuzz hair of the toddler playing with the brake handle of her wheel chair.  Little Alex looked up at Great Grandma and grinned.  She smiled, too, and I marveled at this communication that seemed to pass between the two.

As Alex began to form words and Mothers’ became more mumbled utterances than clear syllables, they made sounds together. 

“Gramma talk to me,” Alex would say.

“What did she say?” I’d ask.

“Dunno,” he replied.  “Gramma talk to me.”

There apparently was a type of communication between the older lady with Alzheimer’s and the little boy.  My mom died when Alex was 6 years old and she 92.  However, even though he’s now 12 years old, he still recalls, “Gramma talked to me.”        

               Both Alex and his sister, four years older than he, enjoyed visits to see my mom in the nursing home.  They played on the floor around her wheel chair.  We had tea parties with her.  They participated in activities for all the residents and brought laughter and joy to them for an afternoon.

This became part of their lives and their memories, just as I have memories of my grandmother.  It didn’t matter that my mom had Alzheimer’s; they accepted her just as she was, as I accepted my invalid grandmother with her physical limitations.