Stimulating Your Senior's Mind During Bake and Decorate Month

September is Bake and Decorate Month. This is a fun opportunity to get into the kitchen with your aging loved one and enjoy baking favorite treats and goodies for your family, friends, and others. This is a great chance for you to spend quality time together, but it is also an effective way to stimulate your senior’s mind and encourage improved cognitive functioning. This can help their mind to stay stronger, more responsive, and healthier as they age in place.

Elderly Care in Pittsburgh PA: Bake and Decorate Month

Some of the ways for making baked goods together can stimulate your senior’s mind include:

-Following the directions of a recipe stimulates the memory, basic cognitive processing, and judgment.
-Processes such as measuring ingredients can encourage your parent to make the decision of which tool is most appropriate, remember how to use that tool, and use math skills to follow through.
-Baking is the perfect time to share memories and talk about other times you remember enjoying these special treats and dishes. This stimulates your parent’s memory and helps them to keep these memory skills strong and responsive.
-Baking has a soothing, calming quality often related to meditating. When you are baking with your parent, both of you can enjoy feeling calmer and more at peace, and can allow both of you to relieve stress and let your minds heal.
-Stimulation of the senses strengthens the mind and fosters conversation, sharing, and mental and emotional health. Baking stimulates the senses of touch, smell, taste, and sight, giving your parent a boost.
-Baking helps your parent to feel more relevant and meaningful, particularly when they are baking for others. Making something gives a reminder that they are capable of important things and still carry value, which can be challenging for aging adults.

As a family caregiver, you know what your aging parent eats makes a tremendous difference in their health and well-being.
Home care can help your senior take control of their diet, and support better health through eating a balanced diet that gives their body what it needs to thrive.
Through assistance with grocery shopping, meal and snack preparation, and even physical assistance with eating, an in-home senior care services provider can make sure your parent get the healthy meals they need safely and reliably. If your aging parent has dietary restrictions due to a health problem, the home care provider can also give them reminders of these restrictions, and help them to find appropriate foods that fit with the restrictions while also appealing to their personal tastes for a healthy diet they actually enjoy.

If you are considering Elderly Care in Pittsburgh, PA, please contact the friendly staff at Liken Home Care. Call (412) 693-6820 or (855) 856-0551.

Source:
Goodnet.org