Start here
You just landed here. Read it in the order the evening arrives.
Eighteen pieces is too many for a worried night. This is the path through them: one step at a time, from the first gray light to the morning after.
Most people find this desk the same way. Something happened at the door, or a neighbor knocked with Mom beside them, and the search box got a sentence typed into it. The pieces on this site each answer one of those sentences. You do not need all of them tonight. You need them in order, and you need to know which one to skip to if the house is empty right now.
Step zero, only if she is missing
If she is not in the house right now
Stop reading this page. Search the house, the yard and the street. If you have not found her within 15 minutes, call 911 and tell the dispatcher she has dementia. Then open the first fifteen minutes on your phone, and how a missing parent is reported in Missouri while you wait for the officer.
Step one, late afternoon
Understand the window before you fight it
Read what sundowning is and what to do about it first. It names the late-day window in plain words and gives you a routine to try at the next dusk. Then read why Mom gets agitated every evening, which turns the same idea into a list of things to change before the light goes, in clock order.
Step two, the first try at the door
Learn what to say in the doorway
This is the part most families get wrong the first week, because correcting feels like helping. Start with how to talk to someone who wants to leave. If she wants to go home while standing in her own house, read she does not recognize this house. If the errand is a job, he thinks he has to go to work has the scripts. When it keeps happening, why Mom keeps trying to leave helps you find the hour she usually tries.
Step three, this weekend
Make the house safer without making it a cage
Walk the house with the safe-exit checklist in hand. If a parent still works the lock, Dad keeps unlocking the door gives the order to add things in. The rule underneath both pages does not change: never lock her in the house alone.
Step four, the honest question
Decide which hours she can still spend alone
Is it safe to leave a parent with dementia alone? walks through the stove, the phone and the door as questions. When Mom cannot be left alone anymore is the decision that follows. Neither page diagnoses anything. They help you name the hour that now needs a person.
Step five, after dark
Build a night that someone else can hold
Dementia parent up all night sets out a family rotation and what a non-medical overnight caregiver actually does. If you are the one lying awake listening for the latch, read a night plan that lets you rest next.
Step six, the morning after
Make the calls, and write down what happened
If she was walked home by a neighbor, start with Mom was found wandering. Then keep the lifelines page and this desk's own local directory where you can find them. If the diagnosis itself is new, finish with what to do first and the family checklist.
Two things to keep in mind the whole way
Nothing on this desk is medical advice. A sudden change, a new medicine, a fall or a question about sleep goes to her doctor or pharmacist, and every article says so where it matters. And the one paid box you will see, for New Plan Care Solutions, is labelled as paid every time. It is there because an evening shift or an awake overnight is often the part a family cannot hold alone. You can read everything here without ever calling it.