{"id":359,"date":"2026-08-11T23:39:59","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T23:39:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agewithgracecare.com\/?p=359"},"modified":"2026-08-11T23:44:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T23:44:20","slug":"challenging-behaviors-may-mean-unmet-needs-what-are-they-trying-to-tell-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agewithgracecare.com\/?p=359","title":{"rendered":"Challenging behaviors may mean unmet needs. What are they trying to tell you?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Hello our fabulous AWG team!  Welcome to June and all that comes with it. Graduations, Summerbreak, vacations, and more activity outside! I hope this month is finding you well. We appreciate so much the help you all give as we try our best to accommodate the needs of those who request time off. We are so thankful that we are able to have our clients’ needs met as the needs arrive more frequently..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AWG continues to have steady growth and we are thankful for all of you. We also have clients who have been with Age With Grace for a long time and their needs seem to be growing as they naturally would.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With that being said it seems that we have been dealing a great deal with behavior changes due to increased dementia and ALzhimers.  I highly encourage you all to learn more about ways to go about understanding and different ways to dealing with what someone might be trying to say without actually havingthe ability to say or express it<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On caregiver.com<\/a> I read this article that just came out and it was very insightful to me. I hope it is to you as well. I particularly appreciated this statement as I really like to try to figure out if possible what someone is trying to tell me.  “It may take some time before you are able to identify the potential causes of the challenging behavior, but understanding that it may be the result of an unmet need is an important first step.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All the best,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tanna<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While being a caregiver to unusual or so-called \u201cdifficult\u201d behaviors, it is quite common for persons with dementia to display these types of behaviors. While many of these behaviors are predictable, like repetitive questioning, pacing, forgetting how to use common objects, etc., there are others that are more upsetting to both the caregiver and the individual with dementia. Agitation in the form of shouting, pushing, resisting care; spitting out food; urinating in inappropriate places, disrobing; wandering, etc., are the kinds of behaviors that are truly unsettling and should prompt investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Special note should be made of the fact that medication in the form of sedatives, tranquilizers, and other \u201cbehavior\u201d medications like antipsychotics need not be the first step. Many of the medications given to help control these behaviors can cause more harm than good. It is true that in certain instances these types of medications are warranted, but far too often these medications are prescribed as a knee-jerk response when no or few other strategies have been attempted to reduce the problem or are continued for far too long without attempts to reduce the dosage or discontinue the drug.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Current thought on best practices with regard to understanding difficult behaviors in persons with dementia focuses on the concept of unmet need<\/em>. As human beings, we all have certain, basic physical and emotional needs: air, food, water, sleep, comfort, love, safety, security, belonging, etc. Individuals with dementia continue to have these needs despite their disease; their disease, however, may make it more difficult for them to express or satisfy these needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello our fabulous AWG team!  Welcome to June and all that comes with it. Graduations, Summerbreak, vacations, and more activity outside! I hope this month is finding you well. We appreciate so much the help you all give as we try our best to accommodate the needs of those who request time off. We are so thankful […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2,1],"tags":[9,7,5,11,14,6,10,12,13,8],"class_list":["post-359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-caregiving","category-senior-in-home-health-care","category-uncategorized","tag-aging","tag-caregiver","tag-dementia","tag-elderly","tag-home-health-care","tag-home-healthcare","tag-in-home-healthcare","tag-in-home-healthcare-2","tag-joyinthejourney","tag-seniors"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agewithgracecare.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agewithgracecare.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agewithgracecare.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agewithgracecare.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agewithgracecare.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=359"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/agewithgracecare.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":367,"href":"https:\/\/agewithgracecare.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions\/367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agewithgracecare.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agewithgracecare.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agewithgracecare.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agewithgracecare.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}