AZLE — Memory care residents living in Azle are being reintroduced to parenting with great success.
The Dallas-Fort Worthbased Grand Baby Project, a 25-year initiative by Tonja Moon, uses dementia doll therapy to improve the lives dementia patients without pharmaceuticals. Inspired by Moon’s own experiences with her grandmother, the project has expanded across the country and globe. The therapy, effective for stage four dementia and above, involves giving patients lifelike dolls to stimulate positive behav- ioral changes and improve quality of life. The project has been successfully implemented in various communities, including Legacy Oaks of Azle Senior Living. LOOA is only the second Civitas community utilizing the Grand Baby Project. The initiative ultimately came to Azle after Mary Greer, a trainer and speaker for the Grand Baby Project, met a Civitas director at the Conservatory at Keller Town Center.
Mary said LOOA staff created an amazing day at last Thursday’s “baby shower.”
The baby dolls, Greer said, act as a very useful tool in giving memory care residences an activity to immerse themselves in, bond over and create a renewed sense of agency. The baby dolls can be used by caretakers to motivate dementia patients to clean themselves, take walks and more willingly engage in a wide variety of other beneficial activities. It also keeps them preoccupied with a task. Men and women, Greer said, both can benefit from this kind of therapy.
“Most all of the dementia patients will go back to a time where they were most happy,” Greer said. “This, in many cases, is when they were a parent, they wanted to be a parent, or they themselves were a child… We do refer to them as babies when we talk about them, we don’t talk about dolls, we talk about babies. So, it really hits on everything, whether they’re thinking about their own baby as a young mother or young father or as a child.” As a nonprofit organization, the Grand Baby Project relies on donations, which the LOOA community relations director has been promoting since a December Azle Area Chamber of Commerce luncheon. Readers can donate or learn more at www.thegrandbabyproject. org.
Legacy Oaks of Azle memory care resident Shirley holds her baby doll and smiles next to Mary Greer March 6. CARLA STUTSMAN | TRI-COUNTY REPORTER
Memory care resident Linda feeds her baby doll.
Tonja Moon inMemory care residents Ruth and Yoko feed and cuddle their baby dolls just after being introduced. troduces Legacy Oaks of Azle memory care resident Yoko to her her baby doll.
