A lot of things that used to be simple may be difficult for you now, depending upon when you learned them and which skills are required.

If you cannot do some task you or a caregiver thinks is simple, you might be able to relearn it IN A DIFFERENT WAY. The trick is to be able to control yourself and not start doing the task the way that now always fails. Rather you need to identify a different way to perform the task — IF POSSIBLE — and then learn to do that by practicing until it gets to be natural. The Internet is a great source of suggestions. And you should never be embarrassed that you have to do something in an unusual way like eating soft vegetables (peas and lima beans and lots of others) with a spoon or holding a pencil in a different way so you can write faster or bigger. Or taping instructions (with pictures) on the refrigerator or clothes dryer. Or asking Alexa (Amazon Echo) or Siri (Apple devices) to look up information like “what is the weather today” or “what is the news today” or “play music by the Tedeschi-Trucks band.”

It takes me a long time now to look up weather on the Internet. It takes me 10 seconds to ask Alexa or Siri to look it up and read it to me. I use a spoon to eat those sneaky peas instead of not eating my vegetables. I now handle laser printer paper differently (much more slowly) because I got lots of nasty paper cuts handling it in the old fast way.

My list of tasks I needed to unlearn and relearn will not be your list. But the principle is the same. Before you give up eating peas, think about another solution or find one on the Internet or invent one. Practice so it becomes natural.

A mind model (AKA mind map) is shown below. Click the image to expand it.