I haven't read what anyone else has answered on your question, but I am going to add this. My mother (I loved her very much) was a drama queen. She could be EVERYTHING and anything including difficult. When Dad and I first suspected dementia, we pondered that--is it her or an illness? When we got the diagnosis of Alzheimer's, we decided that we would always consider her difficult behavior part of the disease and treat her as if she couldn't help it. We will never regret that approach.
We excused her behavior because she couldn't remember any of it anyway. That took the burden off us of trying to decide how to treat those behaviors. We knew she wasn't going to learn from any incident.
When she constantly accused us of being the trouble-makers, we just apologized and made a joke out of it and then distracted her with something else. In private moments when she couldn't hear us [she had the ears of a fox and hated for us to talk about her behind her back], we would reinforce our strategy in each other so that it became second nature to react that way. I think it made Mom's and our lives easier.
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We excused her behavior because she couldn't remember any of it anyway. That took the burden off us of trying to decide how to treat those behaviors. We knew she wasn't going to learn from any incident.
When she constantly accused us of being the trouble-makers, we just apologized and made a joke out of it and then distracted her with something else. In private moments when she couldn't hear us [she had the ears of a fox and hated for us to talk about her behind her back], we would reinforce our strategy in each other so that it became second nature to react that way. I think it made Mom's and our lives easier.