How to encourage a dementia patient to eat

It was very difficult to feed mum, wasn't it? Yes. Because of lots of reasons, one or two of which were that she was difficult and sometimes, I think you could call it challenging, couldn't you? Yes, but the reason for that is it was she wanted to feed herself. It was weakness on her part that she had to depend on somebody else to do everything for her. for. I mean this was a real problem but after the fact I mean what advice would you give to someone in the same situation with a challenging patient who does have dementia and is difficult and isn't eating or refusing? Oh easy what you do is you put the food there you ask them if they don't want it walk away you give yourself 20 minutes you go back and they will eat or 15 minutes because they have forgotten they've said to you I'm not eating or I don't want it or they pushed it away you go back you leave them alone you don't challenge because then that really gets them you know they get really hoity-toity so what you do is you just leave them and then sort of 10 minutes 20 minutes go back and they'll eat because that was my mum. Because that moment has gone the moment where they were annoyed and irritated was gone. The moment she was defiant and I'm not going to do it and that's it, you know, and then we used to say, okay, mum, we used to walk off and then we used to come back 10, 20 minutes later and we used to sit and say, ready for your breakfast now, or dinner, and she'd sit and eat it like it's as good as gold. That is frustrating, it is so frustrating. You know, I used to come out then and I used to think, oh, I'm so tired. Oh, it was horrible. Well, I hope, I just hope I never get it, because it's not the facilities these days. Okay, thank you.