Dad cried through the whole art session. Do I stop sending him or is that the point?

#1stillpainting62(Joined Nov 2024 · 26 posts)May 6, 2026, 9:38 pm

I need other people's judgement on this because mine has gone.

Dad is 81, in a home since February, mixed dementia and a stroke behind it. The home runs a Tuesday art group, an outside artist, small tables, paint and collage. He has been going five weeks and by all accounts enjoys it.

Last Tuesday they were making something with photographs. Family photographs, brought in by relatives, which I had agreed to. He cried for the entire hour. Not upset in a small way. The artist stayed with him and did not stop the session, and afterwards he was quiet for the rest of the day and did not want his tea.

My sister says pull him out. I keep thinking that he has not cried since Mum died and maybe that is not the worst thing in the world. But I am also aware that I might be telling myself a nice story about something that just made an old man miserable for a day.

Has anyone been here. What did you do.

#2Marion K.(Joined Jul 2024 · 38 posts)May 7, 2026, 6:55 am

Been almost exactly here, with my mother and a memory box project. I do not have an answer for you but I want to say the thing nobody said to me: you are allowed to not know yet. One bad Tuesday is one bad Tuesday.

#3Miriam HalsteadModerator(Joined Mar 2024 · 208 posts)May 8, 2026, 11:12 am

I am on the community side of this rather than the clinical one. I run singing sessions in two care homes, so what I can offer is what I have seen from the front of a room, not a judgement about your father, which I am in no position to make and would not make if I were.

The first thing. This happens, and it happens most often around exactly the material that was in front of him. Photographs are the sharpest tool in the box. Songs are the second sharpest. Both go underneath language, which is the entire argument for using them, and it is also the mechanism by which they can arrive somewhere faster than a person is ready for.

I had my own version of your Tuesday about five years ago. A woman asked me for a hymn, and by the second verse she was crying so hard we stopped the group. Her daughter, who happened to be visiting, thought I had done something wrong. It took me weeks to be sure I had not, and the thing I got wrong was not the hymn, it was that I did not tell the staff who knew her that afternoon. I told them days later. She had had a bereavement I knew nothing about.

So the useful distinctions, as best I can put them.

Crying in a session is not automatically a harm and it is not automatically a breakthrough either. It is information, and the people who can read it are the ones who know his history, his medication and how he has been the rest of the month. That is not the artist and it is not this board. It is the staff and his GP.

What I would want to know before Tuesday. Did anybody tell the artist what was in those photographs. Did anybody tell the staff afterwards, in writing, that he was quiet all day and refused his tea. That second one matters and it is very commonly not recorded, because the session sits outside the care record and the artist goes home at four.

Two things I would actually do. Ask the home what happened after he left the room, by which I mean who checked on him and what was written down. And ask whether he can go and not do the photograph project, because sitting at the table painting something else is a real option and is usually available for the asking.

On stopping. Withdrawing him without asking him is its own decision, and he has had a good deal decided for him this year. If he wants to go on Tuesday, that is worth a lot. Can arts therapies do harm sets out what is actually known about this, which is less than you would hope, and consent and safeguarding in arts in health covers the photograph side, because whose photographs those are and who agreed to their use is a live question and not a technicality.

#4mikeatthepiano(Joined Feb 2025 · 19 posts)May 9, 2026, 6:47 pm

Not the same situation, but the refusing his tea bit is what I would be watching. A resident at one of my homes went off her food for four days after a session and everyone assumed it was the singing. It was a urine infection. Might be nothing in your father's case. Worth mentioning to whoever does his medical side rather than assuming it was the artist.

#5stillpainting62(Joined Nov 2024 · 26 posts)May 13, 2026, 8:04 pm

Both of those were more useful than anything I got at the home.

Asked what was written down. Answer: nothing. The artist told the activities coordinator he had been tearful, verbally, on her way out. Nothing in his notes, so the night staff had no idea why he was not eating.

Also asked the GP to look at him, on the infection point, and there was nothing infection wise. So it probably was the photographs, or it was the photographs and the fact that it was nearly the anniversary of Mum, which nobody in that building knew.

#6Marion K.(Joined Jul 2024 · 38 posts)May 14, 2026, 8:21 am

Nothing in his notes is the part I would go back on. Not to get anyone in trouble. So that next time the person doing the night shift knows what happened at two o'clock.

#7stillpainting62(Joined Nov 2024 · 26 posts)June 25, 2026, 4:09 pm

Six weeks on, since somebody may find this later.

He is still going. The artist now knows about Mum and about the anniversary. He has done no more photograph work and paints, badly and cheerfully, at the same table. There is a line in the communication book now after every Tuesday, which took two conversations and one slightly firmer email.

My sister still thinks I should have pulled him out. We have agreed to disagree, and I am not certain she is wrong. What I am certain of is that the problem was not the crying, it was that a whole afternoon happened to him and nobody who looked after him that evening knew it had.