Stories Articles & Conversations
Long-form blogs, expert articles, and media — gentle, accurate ways to talk with children about Alzheimer's, dementia, and memory loss.
When a Parent Is Caregiving: Helping Kids Through the In-Between
When you're caring for a parent with dementia while raising children, everyone in the house feels the shift — and children often feel it most in the things nobody explains. Kids notice when you're distracted, when plans change last minute, when the phone rings and your face changes. The most helpful thing you can do is name what's happening in simple, honest terms, reassure them that they're still a priority, and protect small pockets of ordinary time together. You don't need to be less stretched. You just need your child to understand that the stretching isn't about them.
When Siblings React Differently: Supporting Each Child in Their Own Way
One child sobs, another shrugs and asks what's for dinner, a third starts acting out at school — and all three are responding normally to the same grandparent's dementia. Children process hard things through the lens of their age, temperament, and relationship with the person, which means siblings in one family can look like they're having entirely different experiences. They usually are. The most helpful thing a parent can do is resist comparing them, meet each child where they actually are, and trust that a quiet child isn't necessarily fine and a tearful one isn't necessarily struggling more.
When Things Change: Talking to Children About the Later Stages of Dementia
As dementia progresses, children need honest, gentle updates rather than a single conversation that stands forever — and the guiding principle stays the same as it was at the beginning: tell the truth in words that fit their age, don't promise what you can't, and keep pointing to what remains. Children cope far better with a hard truth they understand than with a change nobody explains. And even in the later stages, when speech and recognition fade, connection is still possible through touch, voice, and presence — which is often the most comforting thing a child can learn.
Staying Close From Far Away: Long-Distance Connection When a Grandparent Has Dementia
When a grandparent with dementia lives far away, meaningful connection is still absolutely possible — it just looks different from a visit. Video calls can be wonderful or confusing depending on the person and the day, so the most reliable approach is to send things that live in their world: a card in the mail, a drawing on the wall, a recorded song, a photo they can hold. Keep it short, warm, and repeatable, and don't measure success by whether they know who's calling. Presence can be delivered by post, and love travels perfectly well across a distance.
Summer Activities Kids and Grandparents With Dementia Can Share
Summer is full of simple, sensory pleasures — and those are exactly the kinds of moments a child and a grandparent with dementia can still share beautifully. When memory is changing, the best activities aren't elaborate outings but small, gentle, feel-good experiences: the warmth of the sun, the taste of ice cream, the smell of a garden, a familiar song drifting across the porch.
Making a Memory Book With Your Child for a Grandparent With Dementia
A memory book is one of the simplest, most loving things a child can make for a grandparent with dementia — a small album of photos and stories that helps their loved one reminisce, feel calm, and connect, while giving the child a meaningful way to help. You don't need to be crafty or spend money.
The Longest Day, Together: A Family Activity Kids Can Be Part Of
The Longest Day — the summer solstice, the day with the most light — is one of the loveliest ways for a whole family, children included, to honor someone they love who's living with dementia.
Teaching Empathy Through Story: Dementia and SEL in the Early Classroom
Story is one of the most powerful tools we have for teaching young children empathy — and a gentle story about a grandparent whose memory is changing can build perspective-taking, compassion, and emotional vocabulary in ways a worksheet never could.
A Father's Day for Changing Memories: Helping Kids Celebrate Grandpa
When a father or grandfather is living with dementia, Father's Day can feel bittersweet — but it can still be tender, joyful, and deeply connecting if you let go of the big-celebration script and lean into small, sensory moments instead.
Visiting a Grandparent in Memory Care: A Family's Gentle Guide
Taking a child to visit a grandparent in memory care can be one of the most loving things a family does — and it goes best when you prepare a little, keep it short and sensory, and let go of the idea that it has to look a certain way.
When a Grandparent Forgets Your Child's Name: Gentle Things to Say
When a grandparent with dementia forgets your child's name, the kindest thing you can do is name the feeling and protect the bond: let your child know it's okay to feel sad or confused, that Grandma's brain is sick and it isn't anyone's fault, and that the love between them is still completely real — even when the name slips away.
Children's Books That Gently Explain Memory Loss and Dementia
A good picture book can do something a careful explanation often can't: it lets a child meet a hard, abstract idea safely, through a character, with a parent close by.
How Do You Explain Dementia to a Child?
The simplest way to explain dementia to a child is to be honest, gentle, and concrete: a person's brain is getting sick in a way that makes it hard to remember things and sometimes makes them act differently — but it isn't anyone's fault, it isn't catching, and the love between them doesn't go away.
What Alzheimer's & Brain Awareness Month Means for Families With Young Children
June is Alzheimer's & Brain Awareness Month — a month set aside, since 2014, to talk openly about the brain, about dementia, and about the families living alongside it. For households with young children, it's a gentle invitation: a natural, low-pressure moment to begin the kinds of conversations that are far easier to start before they feel urgent. You don't need to turn it into a lesson.