If you didn’t see this opinion piece in the Guardian, I really recommend it. It looks at the value of reading to people living with dementia – but also challenges the idea that people with dementia have in some way vanished, that they are no longer present. As writer Jo Granville points out, ‘How are you to know what is happening in someone else’s brain?’
In her article, ‘Reading was the key to breaking through the fog of my parents’ dementia!‘ she explores her accidental discovery of this:
Both continued to enjoy being read to until the end of their lives. They responded positively to hearing stories, poems and novels throughout their illnesses….
However, neither of them were able to communicate that they wanted me to read to them. I only discovered this by accident. My father would spend all day sitting silently in a chair…. To a casual visitor, he would appear to be “dead” to the world, apparently vacant. But he wasn’t – it was simply that, as I observed, Parkinson’s and dementia had robbed him of the ability to initiate a conversation or express a desire.
The value of shared reading
She goes on to describe how she reconnected with her father and her mother through reading to them, and mentions the research – which of course tends to focus more on the shared reading experience, which I’m more familiar with, and is mentioned in the letters responding to this article (there’s a link in the sidebar). Perhaps I should now let you read the article for yourself: