You might not believe this, but…we had a huge success on Tuesday this week.

Whilst shuffling around Tesco, I did my chicken impression for Mum accompanied by the usual ‘what am I?’ question and Mum shouted (while laughing) ‘Chicken!  Stop!’  It is the first time she has remembered the word ‘chicken’.  But it didn’t stop there…oh no.  The impression continued while I asked ‘What do chickens lay?’ and (more laughing) ‘Eggs!  Stop!’.

It was brilliant.  And it convinced me that repetition is the key to re-planting words in Mums head.

We try this with the trolley before I let mum decide who will be out lucky cashier each week.  We have just been through the shop, I’ve told her what is next on the shopping list and she has attempted to find it and put it in the trolley (this doesn’t always work – she cried this week because she couldn’t find the chocolate, but was quickly distracted into a happier place by choosing her biscuits). We then stand in a quiet aisle, and I read out the list while mum tries to point to each item to make sure we have everything.  She is sneaky and tries to cheat by doing very vague pointing and getting the giggles and claiming she needs a wee, but she can remember maybe a quarter of the names of things.

After the joy of Tesco we had a ‘quick’ diversion into down to buy wool for her, go to M&S for a coffee, have a paddy over my suggestion she tried the escalator rather than the lift, have a sulk when I suggested that we didn’t need a cake as we had just bought hot cross buns to have with Dad when we got home, another sulk when I wondered if we could share one cake (we couldn’t) and tears as she told me my sister had thrown out her new shoes because they were ’no good’.  There were more tears when I pointed out that the shoes in question were actually on her feet and maybe my sister had thrown out the old ones with holes in the toes.  No, she insisted, she had definitely thrown out the ones that she was wearing right this minute and I was just not even trying to understand…

At home, fortified by our hot cross buns, I thought I’d try out the idea that repetition makes things stick.  I got out the wooden spoon as we’d spent an entire cooking session a few weeks back trying to name that.  Nope.  Gone.  I was sewing up some things for Mum at this point and asked her to go ang get me the scissors, wondering what she’d come back with.  Amazingly she brought them back from the kitchen, but then couldn’t remember why she had got them and handed me her knitting needles.  I took it in turns holding up the spoon and the scissors seeing if she could name them, making it into a game, then held up a pen…

’What’s this?’

‘A tape worm!’

I mean… 🤦🏼‍♀️😂🤦🏼‍♀️😂

After a few more minutes of ‘shuffling’ the three items behind my back and holding one up, Dad suggested I add in actions.  And bingo…she got the names right (most of the time).

So, words in isolation are clearly tricky to remember.  Words with associated actions (or terrible impressions), can stick, for a while at least.

While we were being silly I asked Mum if I could take her to the doctor to do this sort of game with them as they might be able to give her something to help her find her words a bit more.  Mum’s not been seen by a GP since before her stroke and trying to get an appointment needs nerves of steel and a lot of time.  I don’t even know if a diagnosis would change anything.  The answer was a flat no…for now, anyway.

And we’ll see where we are with the spoon, scissors and pen next week.  God knows where the tape worm came from though – we’re not sure it’s the sort of thing mum would ever have been able to identify…

So this Tuesday was pretty good.  It had more emotions than the last few, but I think I am getting better at embracing my inner duck and just letting the frustrations both of us feel roll off my feathers so we can both get back to smiling again. 🙂

Mum, when she was little 💜