Helping Children Understand Alzheimer’s Disease.
August 5, 2007 by Liz Lewis
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
Following the posts on ‘Explaining Alzheimer’s Disease to Young Children Through Books’ and ‘Children Talk About Alzheimer’s Disease’, I decided to find out what’s available on the internet to help children understand Alzheimer’s disease.
As you would expect, there are a number of articles available aimed at parents:
Alzheimer’s: Helping Children Understand the Disease. (Mayo Clinic)
Helping Teens Cope with Alzheimer’s Disease (Alzheimer’s Association)
Alzheimer’s in the Family: How Parents Can Help Children Cope.
Parent’s Guide: Helping Children and Teens Understand Alzheimer’s Disease. (Alzheimer’s Association)
But there are also resources available for children and teens that will help them learn and understand Alzheimer’s Disease and how it effects their grandparent.
Alzheimer’s Disease (Neuroscience for Kids)
Just for Children: Helping you Understand Alzheimer’s Disease (Alzheimer’s Association)
Just for Teens: Helping You Understand Alzheimer’s Disease (Alzheimer’s Association)
Inside the Brain: An interactive tour (Alzheimer’s Association)
Helping Children Understand Alzheimer’s Disease. (Alzheimer’s Society)
What’s Happening to Grandpa? (Alzheimer’s Association)
The Alzheimer’s Society of Saskatchewan has Just4Kids website that has features such as visual audio books (My Grandpa George and Grandpa Doesn’t Know It’s Me), interactive quizzes, puzzles, and word searches all designed to help children understand Alzheimer’s Disease.
101 Ways to spend time with a person with Alzheimer’s disease (Alzheimer’s Association)
Hope these resources help anyone having to explain Alzheimer’s Disease to their children…
Fabulous, Liz! This is a great list of resources for helping children and young people understand better why family members have this disease and how to cope with it…also how to enjoy the person their loved one has become.
WOW! What a fabulous post, Liz…thanks so much! I’m an Activities Designee in a long-term care facility…we have a special care unit for residents in the beginning to middle stages of AD; working closely with our Social Services Dept., we are making every effort to to continually improve the quality of care and activities these residents receive. I have noticed that one area where we are lacking is the ability to provide information for families who are bringing their children to visit loved ones; the children are often nervous and appear confused or even afraid. I started looking for information to share and found your post…wonderful links, which I will be sure to use!
Thanks for participating in this week’s Carnival of Family Life. It will be posted at midnight (PDT) at http://www.jhsiess.com!
Having had two dear relatives live/die through this, we find there may be two more soon. Thank you for such a caring post. Kind Regards.
It’s good to know that there are resources out there to help people with issues such as Alzheimer’s Disease. Often when we think of Alzheimer’s, we think of older people. But the disease impacts on people of all ages. It’s great to know that if you have to try and explain to children the what’s and how’s of Alzheimer’s that there are places and people that can help.
I’m always happy to compile these sorts of lists as I know they will be of help.
Cheers, Liz