Top 5 Brain Games for Seniors with Parkinson’s Disease

Playing brain games is a great way to keep seniors busy throughout the day, and it offers particular benefits for aging adults with Parkinson’s disease. Over time, Parkinson’s disease causes changes in the brain that affect the ability to move easily and think clearly. Doing activities that stimulate neural communication within the brain may slow down the pace and severity of these changes. These five brain games are perfect for preserving your senior loved one’s abilities and having fun at the same time. 

1. Pull Out the Chess Board

Playing chess is a pastime many seniors have enjoyed over the years. As your loved one thinks through the strategic moves, his or her memory is strengthened by thinking about what has worked in the past. Moving the chess pieces also causes your loved one to continue to work on hand-eye coordination. 

A professional caregiver can be a wonderful game-playing partner for a senior with Parkinson’s. If you have a senior loved one who needs help maintaining a high quality of life while aging in place, reach out to Assisting Hands Home Care, a leading provider of home care Danville families can trust. Our caregivers help seniors focus on healthy lifestyle habits such as eating nutritious foods, exercising regularly, and maintaining strong social ties, and we offer mentally stimulating activities that can boost cognitive health and delay the onset of dementia. 

2. Keep the Mind Active with Video Games

At first glance, playing video games may not seem like it’s training the brain. However, your loved one must think quickly and creatively to accomplish missions during many types of video games. You can also turn this activity into one that exercises the brain and body at the same time by choosing games that involve some mild physical movement, such as bowling or golf. 

3. Enjoy a Game of Scrabble

Board games are often designed to stimulate the mind, and Scrabble is especially good for seniors with Parkinson’s disease. Some seniors with Parkinson’s face difficulty with communication, and your loved one may experience memory lapses that make it challenging to remember words. Your loved one will use vocabulary skills to come up with words using the tiles in his or her tray, which may help with retaining verbal abilities. 

Many seniors in the early stages of Parkinson’s are able to live on their own, but they may need a bit of help with the everyday tasks of life, such as exercising and preparing nutritious meals. Aging adults who require assistance with the tasks of daily living can benefit from reliable senior home care. Families trust Assisting Hands Home Care to provide the high-quality care their elderly loved ones need and deserve. Our caregivers are trained to help seniors prevent serious illnesses and encourage them to make healthier decisions as they age.

4. Try Task Sequencing

Your loved one’s cognitive changes can also make it difficult to complete tasks that require multiple steps. For example, your loved one may forget how to cook a simple meal from memory. To prevent your loved one from losing this ability, set him or her up with a few task-sequencing games. You can make your own by typing or writing down the steps to a simple procedure and scrambling them so they’re out of order. Your loved one then has to put the tasks back in the correct order. You can also find task-sequencing games online that get progressively more difficult as your loved one successfully completes each puzzle. 

5. Do Word Searches

Word searches are the perfect activity for seniors who have busy schedules, since the puzzles can easily be put down and picked back up when seniors are ready to resume working on them. Doing a word search causes your loved one to focus on where each letter is on the page, which is great for retaining spatial awareness. Your loved one also must maintain focus while looking for each word, and finding the word sends reward signals to the brain that help him or her stay motivated to play more games. 

If you’re the primary family caregiver for a senior loved one living in Danville, live-in care is available if your loved one’s health has become too difficult to manage without professional expertise. At Assisting Hands Home Care, we take measures to help seniors prevent illness and injury by assisting with exercise and mobility, preparing nutritious meals, helping with bathing and other personal hygiene tasks, and much more. We will work with you to create a customized home care plan that’s suited for your loved one’s unique needs. Call the Assisting Hands Home Care team today.