But They Said No

You invite residents to activities and they say no. It is true they have the right to say no. Let’s look at it from a different angle. The first thing is why did they say no? Is it, they don’t like the activity they are being invited to? Do they have family coming in? Are they depressed and refusing everything? Do they not feel good? Is there a ball game on or a TV show they don’t want to miss?

If you invite me to bingo, I will tell you no every single time! Unless; you ask me to come and help another resident be able to play. I have never liked bingo and will not look forward to going when I’m in a facility. Yes, even if it’s the only thing going on. I will be the resident working on a puzzle or trying to get outside. My husband prefers to watch ball games or the news. There was a couple that lived down the street from us, and they would invite us over to play Euchre and eat pizza. We would usually get a text about 4ish asking if we wanted to play cards. They never sent my husband the text; it always came to me. Why, you ask? Because they knew he would say no. I would get home and say we are going to play cards with the neighbors. He would give me this look and say I don’t feel like going and that I should go without him. Oh sure, it takes 4 people to play Euchre and he was the 4th person. So, I would drag him down there. He had a blast. We laughed and had fun and the girls generally beat the boys.

Most of the residents come into our facility with depression. Depression can be very debilitating. They go from living in their own home, in most cases alone, to living in a small room with a perfect stranger. I have a client that had lived in a house for almost 60 years. She had a stroke and could no longer navigate steps. This is one of those old homes that has all the bedrooms and bathroom upstairs. They took her right from the nursing home to a handicap accessible trailer. Her husband passed away 3 years ago. They haven’t lived in that house for 5 years. If you don’t live in a house it starts to deteriorate. She is now having to pay for things that are starting to break. It was time to clean it out and put it on the market. The problem is her family all lives out of state. She decided it was time to put it up for sale. This is where the term job description becomes fluent. I started taking her to the house to “clean” it out. If it had been me, I would have just hauled it all out to the dumpster and called it a day. I could have had it done in a week. This process took 3 months! Now remember she can’t navigate the stairs, so it was my job to bring everything down from upstairs so she could go through it. I have never seen so much paperwork in my life. I think I have their social security numbers memorized now. We made piles. One pile for going through later, one pile for taking back to the trailer, piles for each of the kids, pile for the goodwill and a pile for trash.

She had me load up the pile for the trailer. This was so she could go through it and then tell me whether it was trash, goodwill, one of the kids piles or if she was going to keep it. Yes, I was moving things twice, sometimes three times! It took 2 months before we could even get a

dumpster. We went through a 30 yard and two 12 yard dumpsters. She would come across something and then have to tell me the story that went with it. It hit me when we started with the basement, what was really going on. You see the basement had had a sewer back-up that no one caught right away because no one was living there. Just imagine 60 years of memories laying around in sewer water. There was furniture, pictures, games, holiday decorations, canning supplies, and much much more. We brought everything out of the house and sat it in front of her to go through. We had to throw almost everything down there out. We did salvage some things. As I sat the boxes/items in front of her, she was going through the memories, reliving 60 years of marriage and reliving losing her husband. I stood there realizing that coming in and throwing everything out would not allow her to process all these memories and move on. This is what happens to those that are admitted to facilities. Most of the time you have a life-changing event that requires placement. Family goes out and buys new furniture or items for their room. Then they go into the home and clean it up and put it up for sale.They think this will help with the transition. It actually causes more depression. They don’t even have their own furniture.

She spent a lot of time crying. She has been really depressed all summer. She would refuse to leave her trailer regularly. I didn’t force her to get out; I just strongly encouraged her. She always felt better when we got out.

We finally finished cleaning it out. There are only piles left in the house for the kids to deal with. Her whole disposition has turned around now. She just needed to process the past and put the memories where they needed to be. Her last request of her kids was one more Thanksgiving in the House. I relayed this message to the family. They are making it happen. Then the house goes up for sale. I truly believe the residents coming into our facilities do not get that opportunity to process what has happened so there is no closure or grieving for the that loss.

Residents with dementia do not always understand what we are asking them to do. This is where their assessment comes into play. If we have a detailed assessment, we know what they like or used to do and we can strongly encourage them to attend. We all have that one resident that refuses everything. I had a  resident that refused everything, but I just kept asking every day. One day she looked at me with disgust and said, “what can I do to get rid of you?” I replied tell me yes and come to an activity”. She finally said she would come down to get me off her back. She came down and had a blast. She made a new friend, who then would invite her instead of me. She started attending activities after that. One resident hated going out the doors, but once she was out, she was fine. I knew we would get a bunch of behaviors till we got her out and then she loved going for outings.

The residents wanted to go to an Ohio state Football game. One of my residents was a HUGE Ohio state fan. She had dementia which made it hard to get her to come out of her room. She was a social butterfly and loved people, but she thought everyone was talking about her so she didn’t always want to come. When she heard Ohio State, she made sure she was on the list. Her son was excited she was going. Well, it came to game day, and she wasn’t going because nobody told her in advance so she could get ready. All the staff helped get her out of the facility and on to the bus. She demanded we call her son. So, I called her son from my cell phone and gave her the phone. She told her son she was being kidnapped, and he needed to call the police. He asked her where the kidnappers were taking her. She leaned over to me and said, “where are you taking me?” I said to an Ohio State game. She repeats that to her son. He says, “Gee Mom, I wish someone would kidnap me and take me to an OSU game.” He told her to have fun and then hung up the phone. And have fun she did. Once we got going down the road, she completely forgot she was being kidnapped.

Another situation I ran into was a resident who kept refusing activities. I couldn’t figure out why. She would say I don’t feel good. Finally, one of the aides came to me and said she’s afraid she will have an accident or won’t be allowed to leave an activity to go to the bathroom. We worked it out that she could sit close to the door where no one could block her in and if she needed to leave she could without anyone really noticing what she was doing. Once we figured this out she started coming to everything.

If they tell me they have family coming in, I let them know that their family can attend the activity with them if they would like. I’ve talked to families before and asked them to help get their loved ones down to activities. Most families want their loved ones involved. Activities has been a great thing for families of residents with dementia. It gives them a chance to have a meaningful visit. It also helps them make memories with them.

I’ve never been able to compete with their “Stories” in other words, Soap Operas. I remember when I first became an Activity Director. I had to plan the calendar around Soap Operas. They would come down for activities as long as their “stories” were over. Another big one was ball games. This is when I started having tailgate parties on the weekends. If you can’t beat them, you might as well join them! It was great to see families coming in and watching the games. The main problem I had was the TV in the activity room was so small. I remember when the 70” TV’s came out. My residents came to me and said we need one of those for the ball games. At the time they were almost $2000. That was not in my budget. We started doing fund raisers. We finally raised enough money to get the TV. The maintenance man and I were going to get the new TV on Monday. I came in on Monday and they were waiting for me at my office. Apparently, the Console TV had given up the ghost on Saturday right in the middle of a game. It was one of those old ConsoleTV’s on a stand and the tube blew up.

I had another resident that refused to come to my stupid childish activities. She had worked as a farmer’s wife her whole life and the stuff we were doing was a waste of precious time that could be used doing something productive. She loved to decorate and clean. I asked her if she would be willing to help me get things set up for the activities. She was really excited to help. She even started coming back after the activity to help clean the room up.

Yes, it is their right to refuse, however I believe it is our job to figure out why they are refusing. If we can get to the why, we might be able to find a way to get them involved. Activity Professionals as miracle workers. I truly believe we have a way of getting the residents to do things they didn’t know they wanted to do!

Tammy Point

NAAP Leadership Team 2025