The DAWN approach focuses on the skills we keep in the experience of dementia. It wasn’t long ago that we were told to institutionalize our children if they were experiencing Downs syndrome or autism. Today, we are still being told that our elders need to be institutionalized if they’re experiencing dementia. Isn’t it time that we recognized dementia for what it is: just another variation in human experience and skills?
We all have the same cognitive skills—two thinking skillsets, two experiential skillsets, and the ability to use attention skills. We develop our physical and cognitive skills during childhood, use them throughout adulthood, and see them begin to fade in elderhood. Many of us are born with pronounced variations on the norm; others of us lose skills along the way to accidents or conditions such as dementia, but every one of us has our own specific blend of strengths and weaknesses throughout life.
When someone is too short to reach something, we help. When someone is unable to hear or see, we help. At DAWN, we know it is just as possible—and the simplest of kindnesses—to use our memory skills on behalf of someone else, or to reframe an approach for someone who has lost some thinking skills. Afterall, each and every one of us is accommodated every day by someone who is more adept at using thinking or memory than we are.
In 2010, an elder law attorney walked away from her career to spend five years learning from people who were living at home with dementia. She discovered that when she provided her companions with proactive support, rather than waiting for them to fail, they thrived. The DAWN approach is what she learned from them—the experts. Her name is Judy Cornish.
