Music in care homes.

I work in a nursing home and I can assure you the residents are given a choice. Yes there is entertainment usually more variety style acts so it's visual performances backing up the music, we also have one to one or small groups so residents can listen to exactly what they want. Lively and lovely music well presented raises residents spirits and can change their day, even if Vera lynn creeps in sometimes. The war years and just after produced some incredibly moving stuff and this is often where their memory is sharpest . Mixed up with modern stuff brings out the best in the residents and makes them smile, music for dementia has to be selected carefully as their moods can change at different times of day, suitable music to enliven or calm as necessary helps everyone. I'm from the black sabbath and led zep camp myself but if we played that I think there would be a riot! Cater to individuals is key.

I think this is where we're going to (hopefully) see "future care planing" become a normal part of pension&retirement planning.

The Alzeimers society do "this is me" books for relatives to fill in so that carers know about individual's preferences.. but it'ld be so much better coming from the person themselves, it'ld be great if they made a future car planning pack that you could store with your will or something so if you did get to a stage where you couldn't express your preferences, they were all there. You could do your own I guess, e.g.

My favourite tipple at christmas:
My favourite hot drink:
Foods I don't like:
Music I like:
Music I don't like:
Movies I like:
My style (if you wear make up/ prefer trousers to skirts etc)
My happy stories/memories:
Things that scare me:
Things I enjoy:
My greatest achievement:
Bath or shower:
I do/don't like halloween ( ) :
Christmas cake or christmas pudding:
Jam or marmalade:
butter or marge:
and then some more serious things like medical intervention preferences

etc etc..

I plan to do some serious future care planning with DH when we hit 60, and making our own memory books etc maybe even our own memory sound tracks.. and make a sort of care-home time capsule for our later doddery selves

My mother was in a dementia specialist home for nearly 8 years. They did play a lot of old songs, and ditto at singalongs, but it's a bit different where dementia is concerned, since memories are progressively lost, newest first. So old songs were often the ones that were best remembered, and everyone always seemed to enjoy them. In most of the residents dementia was well past the early stages and I never heard anyone complain about the choice of songs.

They also sometimes played a game of 'musical bingo' where they played snatches of very well known old songs/hymns, and they filled in large bingo cards as they recognised them - often with a bit of help.
I don't know about anybody else, but although I grew up in the 60s, I like the old songs, too, and will sing along to 'Daisy, Daisy...'. Or 'My old man said follow the van...' with the best of them.

yes that is a good point about the older memories being better than more recent ones for dementia, but I think the concern of the OP is that people now with early demetia, in their 70s, the music of their youth would be 60/70ss not steriotypical "old people" music like We'll Meet Again and Glen Miller etc.

To a lot of people in their 60/70s, that was their parents naff music, not theirs.

I think a problem is that within any given care home there's actually several generations there, people in early onset in their 60s/70s, and their parents generation in their 90s, and maybe even into some fo their grandparents generation with a few over 100s.

They should not be treated as one group just because they're all in a care home together in terms of generational interests and memories

a 60 year old, an 80 year old and a 100 year old could potenially be child, parent & grandparent.

3 different generations.

Fancy a bit of Jon Bon Jovi myself

I am in my 70s and I loved my parents records of Glenn Miller, still do. I am not yet in a care home, but if I were I would enjoy hearing them again. Lots of other music as well, of course.

Listing our likes and dislikes ready to take in with us (to be sent in with us by our families, more like) is a good idea. Sorting out the photographs that will jog our memories of happier days is another.

Elegran you can use this as a starting point but of course if you're doing your own ahead of time it would be much richer/more useful

www.alzheimers.org.uk/thisisme

I'ld probably do it in picture form so it can be read with me, like:

I've always liked gardening, here are pictures of the gardens in homes we've owned:

I prefer coffee, here's a picture of me having a coffee with my good friend X

^ that way I think it'ld help me build a relationship with the staff reading it with me IYKWIM as well as letting them know my preferences and serving as my own memory book

and thinking about it, a really well done personalised "this is me" picture book with bits of writing about me by me would be quite a nice thing to hand down to kids/grandkids etc.

It's a scary thing: planning for potential dementia in the future, but making a really good "This is me" scrap book or picture book could turn into an enjoyable task

I've done picture books for the DDs where I've written what we've done in them like a story and they LOVE reading them, especially about times they don't remember because they wre babies or toddlers - it's not just pictures it's writing about the time too…

Anyway.. bit of divergence there from the main point of the thread, but yeah! I plan to make my own nursing home play lists while I still can at some point

I would also like to do a bit of nursing home shopping so I could jot down a few nursing home likes and dislikes in advance (not specific homes as there'ld probably be changes in management etc before I'ld need them, but general features I did or didn't like) so that my next of kin has something to go on if they're presented with a list of numbers and 2 days grace to pick a home before I have to be discharged from hospital..

again sorry slight diversion..

I went to visit a friend in a care home last week and there was an entertainer with a very nice voice singing. The room was not large so why did she have to have a microphone ? Not all old people are deaf (or were not until they were exposed to loud noise!). My mother used to hate the entertainment in her care home because it was always so loud.