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Do Dementia Clocks Help? What Families Report

A parent or partner with dementia keeps asking what day it is. Whether a big day-and-date clock helps, from families who lived with one.

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Digby sits up in bed at night under a raspberry and amber quilt with a glowing phone at his ear, his glasses askew, mid-yawn. A lamp, a glass of water and a small alarm clock sit on the nightstand.

At four in the morning a man's wife wakes him to ask what day it is, or to tell him it's going to rain. Her phone shows the day and the time on its lock screen, but she forgets to look. Her neurologist suggested a big bedside clock, so he asked r/dementia whether one would help.

The replies don't agree, and the disagreement is more useful than any product page. It says who the clock helps, and when it stops.

If the person you're buying for still reads a clock and believes what it says, families say a day clock helps. One family put a number on how long: a year or two. Once they stop trusting it, or stop seeing it, it's one more thing plugged into the wall.

The clock they're talking about is a large digital day clock, a screen in a frame that spells out the day of the week, the date and the time. It also says whether it's morning, afternoon or evening, in letters you can read from across the room. Some drop the time altogether and show only the part of the day, for someone who can't tell night from morning.

Who it helped

The clearest yes came from r/AgingParents, from somebody whose mother had refused nearly everything else they tried:

There were so many things I tried and she refused. However the one thing I can point to as a success is a digital clock that shows the day of the week, the date, the time and whether it is morning, afternoon, evening or night. I got it on Amazon, and all mom's pals wanted me to tell their kids where to get it!

u/ljljlj12345, in r/AgingParents

Back in the husband's thread, one person bought a clock for their wife, liked it, and bought a second for their own bedroom. Another person's dad said he liked it and found it helpful.

The two longer reports both say it helped early, then stopped. One mother was helped in the earlier stages, but the clock confuses her now. Another family's standard day clock was helpful for a year or two before they moved on from it.

A UK home-care agency's page on these clocks says the same thing in its own words. Early on, a clock nearby helps a person manage their day. Later on, somebody close by does more than the technology can.

In an older bedroom lit by afternoon sun, Digby kneels by the nightstand and pushes a plug into the wall, smiling. A big clock stands on the nightstand with its back to us, glowing onto the pillow.

When it stops helping

The husband went back through the replies and summed them up himself. Results are mixed, from very helpful to a waste of money. The person may decide the clock is wrong or lying to them, or they may unplug it. Each of those has a family behind it.

One father's clock was neither wrong nor hard to read. What had gone was his ability to understand it and, more to the point, to believe it was telling the truth.

In another house the clock is read and then overruled. The woman it was bought for agrees it says evening but sticks to her own idea of the time, and decides someone came in and changed it.

More often it's just not seen. A clock with digits the size of a playing card had stood beside one mother's bed for months when she rang at half past four in the morning. Asked whether she could see it and what it said, she read out the time and said she hadn't noticed it.

Another mother points at hers when asked, agrees it's there, and promptly forgets about it again. She does that with most things she's given: moves it, covers it, or puts it in a drawer.

Several replies report the same, and one of them says that if you do buy one, set your expectations low.

Then there's the husband who hates his. The person who bought it kept moving it around his room, found it unplugged every day, and gave up and took it home.

Nearly every failure in the thread is one of two: the person has stopped reading the clock, or stopped believing it. The giant one beside the bed shows that a bigger display fixes neither.

What to do with the clock then

Leave it up while it does no harm. The child whose mother is confused by hers now still leaves it in place, because some days she reads it. It comes down only if it starts to upset her.

The family whose day clock wore off moved on to a calendar clock with reminders. The events down its side and the nudges they push to it are what get their mom off the couch. That's a different job from telling her the day.

When you keep finding it unplugged, take it home. The daughter whose father stopped believing his kept it for herself, because she likes having the day and the date easy to read from across the room.

Digby asleep under his raspberry and amber quilt at dawn, a faint smile on his face. A thin line of light shows at the edge of the curtain, and his phone lies face down on the nightstand beside his folded glasses.

Get the plain day clock while your parent or partner still looks at a clock and takes its word, because that's the stretch where it does its job. Expect it to help for a while rather than for good, and to end up on your own nightstand.