The same question again and again

She is not asking again

From where she is standing, she is asking for the first time. The question was asked, the answer was given, and the whole event left no trace, so what you are hearing as the eleventh time is, to her, the only time.

That is the fact that makes everything else make sense. She is not being difficult, she is not testing you, and she has not forgotten to listen. The machinery that would have kept your answer is the machinery that stopped working.

Which also means "I have already told you" lands as news, and unkind news. She now knows she has done something wrong and cannot remember what, and the anxiety from that usually produces more questions rather than fewer.

Answer the same way every time

Vary the wording and you give her a new thing to process each time. Keep it identical and it becomes a small familiar object she can pick up without effort.

Short, warm, same words, no reference to having said it before. It feels mindless and it is the single most effective habit on this page.

• Pick the sentence once. "It is Tuesday, and Meera is coming at four." Then use exactly that, every time.
• Do not add "like I said" or "remember". Both mean the same thing to her: you have failed.
• Answer the question she asked rather than the one behind it, unless you can hear the one behind it clearly.
• When your patience goes, leave the room for two minutes instead of answering through your teeth. She will not remember that you left. She will remember the tone.

Work out what the question is really about

Most repeated questions are one of three worries wearing different clothes, and if you can answer the worry, the question loses its engine.

When is he coming is usually am I going to be alone. What day is it is usually I have lost my grip on where I am. Have I eaten is often not about food at all. Listen to which of those it is over a couple of days, and you will often find one reassurance that quietens a dozen askings.

Put the answer where she can find it

A written answer does not get tired. If she can still read, a large clear note in one fixed place does the job you were doing, and she can consult it without having to ask a person, which also spares her the small embarrassment each time.

One board, one place, few words. A day, a date, and the two or three things that are happening. A large clock with the day of the week on it, in the room she sits in, earns its price in a week.

This stops working at some point and that is not a failure. When it does, put the notes away rather than leaving them up as one more thing she cannot use.

Why this one grinds you down

Because it is relentless and because it looks like nothing. Nobody sympathises about a question. You cannot describe the eleventh time to a colleague without it sounding trivial, so it gets carried silently, and it is one of the most common reasons families reach the end of their patience.

Two things genuinely help. Share it, so that no one person takes every question in a day. And accept out loud that the asking is not going to stop, because most of the exhaustion is not the question, it is the hope each time that this answer will be the one that sticks.

Where else to look

These are other people’s pages, not ours. Our own published work and the neurologist who reviews it are on the research page.

• Cultural adaptation of Alzheimer’s disease assessment scale-cognitive subscale for use in India and validation of the Tamil version for South Indian population.
  The cultural adaptation of the same questionnaire for use in India.
• Hindi Version of Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination III: Distinguishing Cognitive Impairment Among Older Indians at the Lower Cut-Offs.
  A Hindi memory questionnaire validated for older adults in India.
• Alzheimer’s and Dementia Support, India
  The Alzheimer’s Association’s own pages for families in India.