Island Treasures 'Treasure Chest' with Loretta Veney

Loretta Veney is a LEGO Serious Play Instructor and she was able to find effective ways to incorporate LEGO into caregiving for her mom who was living with dementia.  You can hear all about Loretta's journey as a caregiver in the full podcast episode titled "Building the Unbreakable Caregiver" from Season 3 of the Island Treasures Podcast.

In this Treasure Chest segment you will hear how using LEGO as a communication tool can be effective.  When Loretta's mom was unable to express in words how she was feeling about her dementia diagnosis, she used LEGO to clearly demonstrate how she was feeling.  Loretta shares many uses of LEGO that she has experienced throughout her life.  

Transcript

Thank you for tuning in to the Island Treasures Podcast.

We value the insights shared by our guests and hosts, but it's important to note that their personal experiences are intended to inform and encourage, and not to replace professional, legal or medical advice.

With that, we are ready for today's exciting episode. Hi there, I'm Alison van Schie, host of the Island Treasures Podcast for Caregivers.

And in this segment, I will be sharing some nuggets of wisdom, or shall I say treasures, from the Island Treasures Treasure Chest.

Today, we're revisiting an episode from Season 3, entitled, Building the Unbreakable Caregiver, which featured Loretta Veney. Loretta is an inspirational speaker and former caregiver for her mom for 16 years.

During those years, Loretta discovered a unique approach to enhance the relationship between herself and her mom who had dementia. And that was using LEGO bricks.

Take a listen to the many purposes Loretta found for LEGO bricks, especially relating to caregiving.

What I learned right away about the LEGO bricks, I guess you could say it's a conversation starter, but also for us, it was a mechanism to talk through difficult things.

So whenever a boy didn't like me or I had trouble with a homework assignment, I would sit and build it out, so to speak. And my mother was very quiet, very un-Loretta-like.

So when she was having a bad day at work or something, then that's how we would talk through. But without the LEGOs, she wouldn't say a lot. It would just be, oh, you're doing fine.

Everything was fine. And that stayed with her through the whole dementia thing. Everything was fine.

But if you really wanted to dig deep, know what was going on, what are the things, you'd get out a few little bricks and she would start putting them together, and pretty soon you would know what the issue was.

So we talked through a lot of things that way. It was also my relaxation and then became a absolutely essential tool for continuing the communication with my mother.

Here's an example of how Loretta's mom used LEGO to explain what she was feeling when she first received the news that she had dementia.

When she was actually diagnosed with dementia, she had a really hard time defining how she felt. What her greatest fear was, I'm a planter, so I'm wanting to know, what are you thinking, what are you feeling? She obviously was very upset about it.

On the way home from the doctor's office, I couldn't get her to talk at all, so I reach over and there's always LEGOs. I have a bag of LEGOs in my center console. I also have this little lap pad thing, because a lot of times I would work in my car.

So I put the bag of LEGOs on the little lap thing, and she just went to work. She eventually took the head off of one of the little LEGO minifigures, and she said to my question, what's your greatest fear?

I'm afraid that years from now, I'm just going to feel like I've lost my head. So she had the head in one hand and the rest of the LEGO in the other.

Before I continue, I'd like to add that Loretta is trained as a LEGO serious play facilitator and has been using LEGO throughout her life.

She found that LEGO bricks were the connection to her mom and provided an incredible way for them to engage as her mom's dementia progressed. Here's a clip from a lesson Loretta's mom had taught her before she had dementia.

My mother, one of her life lessons was to teach us, you know, you don't just, you know, you find something that works, you don't keep it to yourself, you share it with other people.

And she certainly did find something that worked, a way to connect with folks. So she now shares it with other people, not only through her LEGO connections, but also what she learned when her husband passed away.

Her husband had been her caregiving partner in Team Veney, as they cared for her mom together, and his passing created a huge void for her.

Here's how her supportive network helped her through that time, and the lessons she now shares from that experience.

One of the greatest lessons I learned about caregiving is that my church started a support group for me right after he died. And they asked me to write out all the things that Tim did for my mother, which was a lot.

And so I did that, and each one of them took a task, which was just the coolest thing ever.

So when I work with other people, I share with them, if you are alone in this caregiving thing, then try to build your own village, whatever that village looks like, and people help you with some of the tasks.

Because when people say, nobody helps me do anything, I always say, did you ask? Because when people say, hey, let us know if you need anything, you say, okay. And then when they don't hear from you, they think, wow, she must be doing okay.

She didn't say that. So I always tell people, ask for what you need and want. So if you call and you say, oh, David, can you take dad to the barber to get his hair cut on Tuesday?

He either can or he can't.

And you go to the next person. Exactly.

And just for respite too, if somebody's going to come over for two hours and read with mom or play a game while you go to the spa or to the movies or wherever. And they say, oh, my brother caught COVID and now I can't come.

But don't say, okay, I'll wait till next month. No, reschedule it. You know, you still have to build in things.

So I try to get people focused on checklists and plans and things that you can follow. Because if you don't, it can overrun you at times.

Oh, totally.

You know, you're only going to have 24 hours a day. I don't care who you are. You have the same amount of time as everybody else.

So identify the tasks that you need help with and ask for that help.

And think about her suggestion that caregivers build their own village, especially if they are alone in caregiving. And when Loretta's husband and sister passed away, she found it wasn't helpful to tell her mom.

And here's what she had to say about that. You said that when your sister died and your husband died, you chose not to tell your mom that.

Right.

And that shows insight.

I asked the neurologist what she thought and she agreed with me. Probably was not the best idea to tell her. And because here's the thing you have to consider, I think.

You say something and they forget it right away. My fear was that that would be the one thing she would remember. And then she would cry all the time.

So I wasn't willing to take that risk. And by the time my sister died, she had forgotten that she had had two kids anyway. So my plan was, and there were all kinds of pictures of my sister up.

So I was like, if she ever asked about it, I'll make something up. And she never once ever asked about her. If there is a beautiful thing about dementia is that you don't have to deliver bad news.

So hearing this information beforehand so that you can plan gives us something to think about.

And as Loretta is a planner, here's one more nugget to share.

So I just wanted other people to have their plans in place. And we had a plan for my mom every single day. And when you have a plan, it really does allow you to handle emergencies better.

So let's get started planning.

Whether it's a plan to use a communication tool such as LEGO bricks or to keep track of the multitude of caregiving tasks that you are doing, or that a caregiving partner was doing and no longer can do.

So that as you build your supportive network, you can ask them for specific help taking one or several tasks off your caregiving plate. Well, that concludes our Treasure Chest segment from the Island Treasures Podcast for Caregivers.

Thank you for tuning in today. We'd love to hear from you. Take care.