Hearing knocking at nighttime?
Hello, all :) So this is something that has been going on for years and years. My Grandma is 88 years old and has dementia. She lives downstairs in her own house, because we have an addition.
When she goes to bed at night, she is safe and sound. All of a sudden, she hears knocking that wakes her right up out of her sleep. She gets up out of bed, grabs her walker, and goes to the door to see who is there. (The door opens to her living room. Couch, tv, chairs. Well lit) Nobody is ever there. Ever.
She is so adamant that someone is knocking on her door. Even when I tell her nobody is there, and it is quiet as a mouse in her living room. “Believe me when I tell you”, she says. I tell her nobody was knocking. “Well I heard it, and it was loud!”
She refuses to listen, and is so insistent about this. That someone knocks on her door, then when she sees nobody is there, it is peaceful and quiet. Does she think someone knocked and ran? You enter the living room to stillness and calm.
I have told her that I can hear over the intercom in her room any noises. Plus trying to reassure her that nobody can possibly gain access to the inside into her living room. And that I am able to see and hear from my room upstairs, and that she is safe. But that never works, because she says “Someone was there, they knocked really loud! I heard it!” but then opens her door to no one in sight.
I have said to her before “notice how you only hear the knocking when you are sleeping? Not when you are in the bathroom or sitting in your living room?” And she had no answer.
You cannot reason with dementia. She is so serious about this, someone being there and knocking, you cannot change her mind. No one is ever there, and trying to give her that reassurance is hard when she does not believe you.
5 Answers
