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" &amp;quot;Hi, dad! It&amp;#039;s Paula. How are you?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m fine, how are you?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re fine. It&amp;#039;s sunny and the girls are all outside. Henry&amp;#039;s playing his guitar.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Oh, that&amp;#039;s good. And how&amp;#039;s the weather?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Cool and sunny. How about down there?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;The sun is shining. How&amp;#039;s the family?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re good. Next time we see you, we&amp;#039;ll get Henry to play for you.&amp;quot;   &amp;quot;Oh, nice, what instrument does he play?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Guitar.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Oh, that&amp;#039;s good\u2026So how&amp;#039;s the weather by you?&amp;quot; &amp;#039;Round and &amp;#039;round we go. There&amp;#039;s an old saying in the Midwest, where I grew up: &amp;quot;If you don&amp;#039;t like the weather, wait a few hours.&amp;quot; On the phone with my dad, it&amp;#039;s more like, &amp;quot;If you don&amp;#039;t like the weather, wait a few seconds and pretend it&amp;#039;s better.&amp;quot; I could alternate saying it&amp;#039;s raining, snowing or hailing all in the same conversation, and he&amp;#039;d respond to each new weather report as if he were hearing it afresh.   Because in a way, he is. Dad has dementia. We don&amp;#039;t know whether it&amp;#039;s Alzheimer&amp;#039;s or vascular dementia (the kind often caused by small strokes) or what. My four kids&amp;#039; only other living grandparent, &amp;quot;Mima&amp;quot; (my mother-in-law), has dementia too, as did the only great-grandparent they ever knew. No wonder my son once said, &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s that thing Grandpa has? Old-timer&amp;#039;s disease?&amp;quot;   Alzheimer&amp;#039;s disease is not, of course, the inevitable fate of &amp;quot;old-timers.&amp;quot; But millions of kids\u2014and their parents\u2014are feeling similarly flummoxed by their changing loved ones. Every family seems to have a story about a granddad who went to the store for bread and was found two states away. Or an aunt who hoards cat food, even though she no longer owns a cat. Mima once saw a 6-foot rabbit in her backyard. (And says she called the police over it, though the call was as imagined as the rabbit.)   &amp;quot;Where has Grandpa Gone?&amp;quot;   The very young tend to be oblivious to memory loss, wandering, delusions and the other behavioral changes of Alzheimer&amp;#039;s. (Kind of like Grandpa himself.) &amp;quot;Can we catch it?&amp;quot; my youngest once asked\u2014a reasonable question about an affliction with the word disease in its name. I said no, and borrowed an answer from geriatric consultant Joyce Simard, MSW, author of the children&amp;#039;s book The Magic Tape Recorder: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s like Grandpa had a tape recorder in his head, but it&amp;#039;s turned off. When he was younger, the tape recorder was on, so he remembers more things from far back in his past.&amp;quot; My oldest three, though, are old enough to feel they&amp;#039;ve lost a past relationship, while not knowing what to make of this new one.   For years, Grandpa called his beer &amp;quot;Power Ranger soda,&amp;quot; a name Henry gave it at age 3 because of the design on the label\u2014their private joke. Not anymore. No more year-round valentines from Mima, either. A beloved elder&amp;#039;s blank stares or loud, circuitous questions can be deeply uncomfortable to a self-conscious teenager who can find mortification in something as benign as my nerdy shoes.   I don&amp;#039;t believe in forcing kids to interact with their sick elders. If they volunteer a goodbye hug, I&amp;#039;m proud; if not, that&amp;#039;s fine, too. And I don&amp;#039;t usually hand over the phone for merry-go-round conversations. My dad and mother-in-law don&amp;#039;t even remember visits a few hours later. We grownups aren&amp;#039;t let off so easily. November is National Alzheimer&amp;#039;s Disease Awareness Month, but it may be time for a new name. Awareness isn&amp;#039;t the problem; coping day-to-day is. How handy, at least, that dealing with aging parents is a bit like parenting in reverse. It starts around prickly adolescence, with the first clash over independence. (&amp;quot;I can drive!&amp;quot;\u2026&amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m fine home alone!&amp;quot;\u2026&amp;quot;Mind your own business!&amp;quot;) Then come the taking-them-places years, if now to the doctor&amp;#039;s instead of soccer and piano lessons, then the keeping-an-eye-on-them years.   Eventually, it&amp;#039;s down to keeping them safe and avoiding tantrums. Last comes the phase requiring the skills you learned first: feeding, bathing, diapering, soothing. It&amp;#039;s not a perfect parallel. But at least the terrain becomes more familiar. Certain child-rearing tactics transfer especially well:   Lamaze breathing   When my kids ask the same question over and over (&amp;quot;When will we get there?&amp;quot;) I do some deep inhales-exhales to derail my slowly\u2026building\u2026exasperation\u2014at least until the sixth or seventh time, when I feel free to holler, &amp;quot;Not soon enough!&amp;quot; With Dad, my panting manages to stave off hyperventilation until the 10th repetition\u2014then I start talking about the weather and hope he forgets what he was asking.   Tempering expectations   Yes, not losing your temper is tough when your patience is fried, but just as I once pored over baby milestone charts (and thus learned I can&amp;#039;t expect perfect table manners from a 1-year-old who doesn&amp;#039;t yet have the motor skills to hold a fork), I boned up on the progressive stages of Alzheimer&amp;#039;s. It&amp;#039;s the disease that snatched up all the children&amp;#039;s toothbrushes, one by one, and hoarded them in Grandpa&amp;#039;s toiletry kit. It&amp;#039;s the disease that chooses the same stained shirt day after day. Just like the developmental phase that kept my son in the same Davy Crockett getup for, oh, the entire time he was in preschool.   Taking it one day\u2014er, one minute\u2014at a time   Diaper-smell happens. Shoes get lost. Questions are asked. (Many, many, many, many questions.) Bedtime routines can last longer than a SpongeBob SquarePants marathon.   My brother and sister-in-law, a.k.a. the saints with whom my father lives, also look after her parents, and have six kids under 12. To cope, they rely on a brilliant motto that must be tattooed on their hearts: In with the moment. In the moment is where Dad hangs out. Arguing and correcting only add to the confusion and frustration someone with dementia feels. It&amp;#039;s less frustrating for everyone to simply join him in the moment. So what if he mistakes the moon documentary on cable for a news report about a new lunar landing? So what if he insists the house where he grew up is still standing, though he just saw the photos of when it was bulldozed years ago? So what if he repeats a long, word-for-word anecdote two minutes later\u2026and five minutes later\u2026and seven minutes later?   Just be in the moment with him. Moments pass quickly enough, anyway. Kind of like the weather. Or raising kids. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/life/a3048/where-has-grandpa-gone-21431/>