Curses! Curses! Swear Words...

This week at Mind Matters we played trivia. It was actually “Early American Trivia” and on a poster we had five trivia questions. Below the questions was a list of people to choose from to answer the questions. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were among those listed. The Founding Fathers continue to be recognizable to the dementia clients I serve. One of the trivia questions asked which person said, “Never put anything in writing as it could bite you in the ass”. Well, as my clients got to this point in the trivia game, their eyes widened and all hell broke loose. We all had quite a laugh for a long time. The clients began to laugh at the term, “bite you in the ass”. They were all repeating it and they all took turns saying other clichés such as “pain in the ass”, “move your ass”, and “don’t be an ass”. One of my clients actually bent over in her chair laughing. We never did finish the trivia game.

While the scenario played out quite well for us at Mind Matters, there are often times when the use of foul language is an unwelcome behavioral change in a person with dementia. Client’s families will tell me that their loved one with dementia almost never swore in the past. Caregivers bring this point up because they notice the person they are caring for is swearing more often, using unwelcome words like the “F” bomb.

This change in behavior - swearing - is typically linked to progression of the dementing illness. Different regions in the brain control language. Part of the brain is responsible for language development and formal language skills. Another part of the brain is responsible for automatic language skills which include singing and swearing. Dementia tends to affect our formal language skills first. From a very early age, the average person learns that swearing is not appropriate and over time we learn other ways to express frustration that are considered acceptable. As the damage to the brain occurs people with dementia lose the parts of their memory that help them cope with frustration or anger in more appropriate ways and they revert to what they learned earlier in life. Simply stated, they swear. Over time in people’s lives, other words of expression that are considered acceptable are learned.

We’ve all heard about people with Alzheimer’s disease asking about people and places that are no longer in their lives, but not remembering that their daughter visited yesterday, that they retired, or that they used to coach basketball, right? Well swearing is simply another way that the damage to the language skills of the brain is displayed. Reverting to swearing when something doesn’t go their way is just a reminder to us that the person we are caring for doesn’t have the proper neural pathways in their brain (because they are damaged) to recall better words to express themselves.

Stay patient. Stay kind. Give love.