Quick Take: What you'll learn in this guide
- What memory care actually is, and how it’s different from assisted living
- What to do right now if you’re noticing memory changes in your parent
- What to do if you’ve already received a dementia diagnosis
- The different types of dementia, and why the type affects the care plan
- How memory care helps with specific symptoms like wandering, sundowning, and confusion
If something feels off but there’s no diagnosis yet, What to Do If You’re Noticing Signs is a good place to start.
If a diagnosis has already arrived, jump to ➔ What to Do If You Have a Diagnosis
Ready to see a community in person? ➔ Schedule a visit to a Landing community.
You're Probably Here for a Reason
You probably didn’t land here out of curiosity. Something brought you here, and it’s likely been brewing for a while.
Maybe your mom told the same story twice in one visit, and you noticed it for the first time. Maybe your dad got lost driving to the grocery store he’s been going to for thirty years. Maybe a doctor used the word mild cognitive impairment and you went home and couldn’t stop thinking about it. Maybe a diagnosis has already arrived, and you’re trying to figure out what comes next.
Whatever brought you here, we want you to know two things right at the start. The first is that you’re not behind. Most families researching memory care didn’t realize they needed to until they did, and almost every one of them wishes they’d started the conversation a little earlier. The second is that we believe in being direct with you, because dementia is not a topic where vague encouragement helps. So this guide will tell you what to do, not just what to think about.
If you’re the adult son or daughter doing this research, the rest of this is written for you. If you’re a spouse, husband or wife, walking this road alongside your partner, it’s for you too. The honesty here is meant to be a relief, not a burden.
What to Do If You're Noticing Signs
If something feels off, you need to talk to a doctor. Not eventually. Soon.
We mean this with as much warmth and as much directness as we can. Memory changes are not always dementia, but they are not something to wait out. Some of the things that look like dementia are actually treatable, like vitamin deficiencies, thyroid problems, medication interactions, or depression. Catching those early can change the picture entirely. And if it is the start of a real dementia, an early diagnosis matters more than most families realize. Treatment options are wider when you start early. Planning is easier when your parent can still participate. And the conversation about what your parent actually wants is one you can only have while they can still answer it.
Here’s what we recommend, in order:
- Make an appointment with your parent’s primary care doctor. Tell them, before the visit, what you’re seeing. Specifics matter. Mom forgot my birthday for the first time. Dad left the stove on twice last week. Don’t soften it.
- Ask for a cognitive screening. This is a short, in-office test (often called the MMSE or the MoCA). It takes about 10 minutes and gives a baseline.
- Ask for a referral to a neurologist or geriatric specialist if the screening shows anything concerning. A specialist can run more thorough testing and give you a clearer answer about what’s happening.
- Write down what you observe between appointments. Date, time, what happened. Memory issues come and go, especially early on, and a written record helps the doctor see patterns you might not be able to describe in the moment.
- Don’t go alone if you can help it. Bring a sibling, a spouse, anyone who can listen and take notes while you focus on your parent.
The thing families ask us most at this stage is whether they’re overreacting. The honest answer is that you almost certainly aren’t. If you’ve noticed enough to be searching for information, you’ve noticed enough to deserve a real answer from a doctor.
What to Do If You Have a Diagnosis
If you’ve already gotten the diagnosis, we want to start with something important, because it gets lost in the first hard weeks.
A dementia diagnosis is not the end of your parent’s story. It’s a turn in it.
There is no cure, and we won’t pretend otherwise. But there’s a lot that often gets missed when families first hear the word dementia. People with dementia can still laugh, still connect, still enjoy music, still know who matters to them, even on the days they can’t quite remember the names. The years ahead can be full, meaningful years, and the structure of those years has a lot to do with how they unfold. The right environment, the right routine, the right relationships, and the right activities can make a real difference in both your parent’s day-to-day life and the longer trajectory.
That’s exactly what memory care is built around. It isn’t about managing decline. It’s about supporting a life that still feels like a life, inside the reality of dementia. The research backs this up too. Cognitive engagement, social connection, music, gentle movement, and consistent routines can slow progression in many cases, and they lift mood and reduce difficult moments in almost all cases.
So as you start thinking about what comes next, hold onto this. Your parent is still your parent. The work ahead is about building the kind of structure that lets them keep being themselves for as long as possible.
With that in mind, here are five practical things to do in the first few weeks. Not all at once, and not by yourself.
- Get the type of dementia in writing. The plan looks different depending on whether your parent has Alzheimer’s, vascular dementia, Lewy body, or something else. If you don’t know the type, ask the doctor for clarification.
- Start the legal and financial conversations now, while your parent can still participate. This is the single most important window your family has. A durable power of attorney, a healthcare directive, a living will, and a plan for finances all become harder (sometimes impossible) to put in place later. Talk to an elder law attorney. Most offer a one-time consultation for a reasonable fee.
- Look at the home environment. What’s safe today may not be safe in six months. Remove rugs, install grab bars, put away medications, and start thinking about whether the home will continue to work as the condition progresses.
- Build a care team, even if you don’t need it yet. A geriatric care manager. A memory care community on your shortlist. A neurologist. A primary care doctor who understands dementia. Lining these up while you have time is much easier than scrambling later.
- Take care of yourself. Caregiver burnout is the silent crisis of dementia care, and it doesn’t make you a bad family member to acknowledge that this is hard. Join a support group. Talk to a therapist. Sleep when you can. You’re going to be in this for a while, and your wellbeing is part of your parent’s wellbeing.
The conversation about memory care often comes up at this stage, sometimes earlier than families expect. That doesn’t mean you have to move your parent today. It means it’s time to know what’s out there, take a tour or two, and have a plan in place for when the time comes. Most families who feel best about the timing in retrospect started looking at communities before they thought they would need one.
What Memory Care Really Is
Memory care is a specialized type of senior living designed for people with Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, or other forms of cognitive impairment. It looks similar to assisted living in some ways, like the private apartment, the dining room, the daily activities. But the way the environment, the staff, and the day are designed is different in ways that matter.
Memory care communities are built around what makes life work for someone whose memory is changing. The hallways are designed to be intuitive instead of confusing. The staff is specially trained in dementia care, which means they know how to redirect without arguing, how to manage sundowning, how to handle the moments when your mom doesn’t recognize you and feels frightened by a stranger in her apartment. The community is secured, so wandering is prevented without your parent feeling locked in. Activities are designed for cognitive engagement rather than physical activity alone.
The benefit isn’t just safety, though safety matters a lot. The benefit is that your parent gets a daily environment that has been built for who they are now, not who they were two years ago. That makes their days easier, your days lighter, and the time you spend together more about presence than about management.
For an overview of every care level we offer at The Landing, see our Living Options page.
What Memory Care Is Not
There are a few common confusions worth clearing up.
Memory care is not a nursing home. Nursing homes are clinical environments designed for people who need ongoing medical care or skilled nursing. Memory care is a residential environment designed for people who need cognitive support. Most people in memory care do not need a nursing home, and putting them in one isn’t appropriate.
Memory care is not assisted living. Assisted living is for adults who need help with daily activities but are cognitively intact. Memory care is for adults whose cognitive changes mean they need a specially designed environment and specially trained staff. Some families try to keep a parent in assisted living when memory care would be more appropriate, and it usually doesn’t work for long. The community can tell, and so can your parent.
Memory care is not giving up. This one is the most important. Choosing memory care for your parent is not a failure, and it is not abandonment. It is, very often, the most loving choice you can make, because it’s a choice that puts your parent in an environment built for who they are now. We’ve watched a lot of families who held off on memory care for too long, and we’ve watched a lot of families who finally made the move and were stunned by how much better their parent did. The honest answer is that, more often than not, families wait too long.
The Different Types of Dementia (And Why It Matters for Care)
Dementia is not one thing. It’s a family of conditions, and the type of dementia your parent has affects how it progresses, what symptoms to expect, and how care should be designed. Knowing the type isn’t just useful information. It changes the plan.
Here are the most common types, in plain language.
Alzheimer’s Disease
This is the most common type, accounting for about 60 to 80 percent of dementia cases. Alzheimer’s is a gradual, progressive disease caused by abnormal protein deposits (plaques and tangles) in the brain. It typically starts with short-term memory loss, like forgetting recent conversations or repeating questions, and progresses over years to affect long-term memory, language, judgment, and eventually daily functioning.
What it means for care: Alzheimer’s progresses slowly enough that families have time to plan. Early stages are often manageable at home with support. As it progresses, the structured environment of memory care becomes important, especially for safety and to manage the behavioral changes that often emerge in middle and late stages.
Vascular Dementia
This is the second most common type, often caused by strokes, mini-strokes, or other damage to blood flow in the brain. Unlike Alzheimer’s, vascular dementia can progress in steps rather than gradually. There may be sudden declines followed by long plateaus, depending on whether more vascular events happen.
What it means for care: Because progression is unpredictable, families often need a flexible plan. Managing the cardiovascular risk factors (blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar) becomes important, and memory care communities work closely with primary care doctors to keep those in check.
Lewy Body Dementia
This type is caused by Lewy body protein deposits in the brain. It looks different from Alzheimer’s in a few important ways. People with Lewy body dementia often have visual hallucinations, fluctuating cognition (sharp one day, very confused the next), Parkinson’s-like movement symptoms (tremors, stiffness), and REM sleep behavior disorder (acting out dreams).
What it means for care: Lewy body dementia requires staff who understand the unique symptoms, because the hallucinations and movement issues can be frightening to families and to the person experiencing them. Some medications that work for other dementias can be harmful with Lewy body, so specialist input is essential.
Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD)
This type tends to strike earlier than the others, often in the 50s or 60s, and affects the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. The early symptoms are usually behavioral and personality changes, not memory loss. A previously gentle parent may become impulsive, blunt, or socially inappropriate. Some forms of FTD affect language first, causing trouble finding words.
What it means for care: Because FTD looks so different from typical dementia, it often gets misdiagnosed early on as a psychiatric condition. Care plans need to account for behavioral changes and the fact that FTD progresses faster than Alzheimer’s in many cases.
Mixed Dementia
In reality, many people have more than one type of dementia at the same time. The most common combination is Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia together. Research suggests that mixed dementia is actually one of the most common forms, even though it’s underdiagnosed.
What it means for care: A care plan for mixed dementia draws on the approaches for each underlying type. This is one reason a thorough diagnosis matters.
Parkinson’s Disease Dementia
This develops in some people with Parkinson’s disease, usually years after the Parkinson’s diagnosis. The symptoms are similar to Lewy body dementia, with movement issues, hallucinations, and fluctuating cognition.
What it means for care: Coordinated care with a movement disorder specialist is essential, and memory care communities that have experience with Parkinson’s residents are often a better fit.
What Memory Care Looks Like Day to Day
The image families often carry into memory care is wrong, and we’d rather correct it directly.
A good memory care community doesn’t look like a hospital or a nursing home. It looks like a home, with studio apartments, a dining room, a courtyard, a living room with familiar furniture. Residents wake up when they wake up. They eat breakfast in the memory care dining room. They participate in activities if they want to, like music, gardening, art, or chair exercises. They sit with friends. They watch the windows. They nap when they’re tired.
The difference is in what families don’t see at first glance. The team members are trained to redirect gently when a resident is confused or agitated, instead of arguing or correcting. Activities are designed for cognitive engagement, like music from your parent’s era, simple art projects, and reminiscence therapy. The environment is designed to be calming, with clear sightlines, intuitive room labels, and soft, consistent lighting. The community is secured, but the security feels invisible from the inside. Your parent doesn’t feel locked in. They feel at home.
A regular day might include a slow morning, a familiar breakfast, an activity or two, lunch with friends, an afternoon rest, an evening meal, and a calm evening designed to minimize the confusion that often comes with sundowning. Family can visit anytime. Your parent’s apartment is their own space. The community simply makes the day work for them in ways that are increasingly hard to manage at home.
What's Included in Memory Care
Memory care typically includes everything that assisted living includes, plus the specialized care, environment, and programming that dementia residents need. The benefit isn’t just more support. It’s the right kind of support.
Most communities include:
- A private or semi-private apartment in a secured environment, so your parent stays safe without feeling locked in
- Trained dementia care staff around the clock, which means someone is always there who knows how to handle confusion, agitation, or wandering
- Three meals a day plus snacks, served in the dining room, which removes one of the biggest daily challenges of dementia care at home
- Help with all daily activities, including bathing, dressing, medication management, and toileting, so the care your parent needs is integrated into the rhythm of the day
- Specialized activities designed for cognitive engagement, like music therapy, reminiscence groups, art programs, and gentle movement, which research shows can slow cognitive decline and improve quality of life
- A secure outdoor space where residents can walk and spend time outside without wandering risk
- Family communication, so you’re kept informed of changes and included in care decisions
- Coordination with doctors and specialists, so the medical side stays managed without you having to be the one tracking it
What’s not always included varies by community. Some include all dementia care levels in one fee, while others charge differently as care needs increase. Ask during your tour exactly how the community structures pricing.
How Memory Care Helps with Specific Symptoms
A lot of families come to memory care with specific behaviors they’re struggling with at home. Here’s how memory care addresses some of the most common ones.
Wandering. Wandering is one of the most stressful aspects of dementia for families, because it carries real safety risk. Memory care communities are secured by design, which means residents can walk freely within the community without being able to leave unsafely. The benefit isn’t just safety. It’s that your parent can keep walking, which is good for their body and their mood, without you having to monitor them every minute.
Sundowning. This is the increase in confusion, agitation, or restlessness that often happens in late afternoon and evening for people with dementia. Memory care communities design the evening environment specifically to reduce sundowning, with calming activities, consistent staff presence, and routines that anchor the day.
Confusion about people and time. When your parent doesn’t recognize you, or thinks it’s 1972, the right response is not to correct them. It’s to meet them where they are. Memory care staff are trained in this approach, which often calms the moment instead of escalating it. The benefit is fewer hard moments and more good ones.
Medication management. Missed or doubled medications are dangerous in dementia care, and they’re hard to prevent at home as the condition progresses. Memory care communities manage medications around the clock, which removes one of the most common sources of crisis.
Caregiver exhaustion. This isn’t a symptom in your parent. It’s the cost the family pays for managing dementia at home. Moving your parent to memory care isn’t a betrayal. It’s often the move that lets you be present as their family member, instead of being absorbed into being their full-time caregiver.
How Much Does Memory Care Cost?
Memory care typically costs more than assisted living because of the higher staff-to-resident ratio, the specialized training, the secured environment, and the dementia-specific programming. In Georgia, memory care usually runs $5,000 to $7,000 per month, with the state average around $5,000 to $5,500. Nationally, the range is wider, often between $5,500 and $8,500 per month depending on the community and the level of care needed.
Here’s the honest math. Memory care often costs about 20 to 30 percent more than assisted living at the same community. That feels like a lot at first, but the comparison most families really care about is memory care versus the cost of in-home dementia care, which usually involves multiple shifts of care providers, home modifications, and the family’s time. When you do that math, memory care is often the more affordable path, and dramatically less exhausting.
For a deeper breakdown of Georgia memory care pricing, visit our Pricing page.
When Is It Time?
This is one of the hardest questions in dementia care, and we believe in answering it directly.
It’s usually time when one of these is true:
- Safety is becoming a daily concern. Wandering, falls, stove fires, lost driving incidents, or moments where your parent can’t find their way home.
- Medication can’t be managed safely at home. Pills are being missed, doubled, or hidden.
- Personal care has slipped. Bathing, dressing, or toileting are becoming difficult, and the help you’re providing isn’t sustainable.
- Sundowning or behavioral changes have escalated. Evenings have become chaotic, or your parent is having moments of agitation, paranoia, or aggression that you don’t know how to handle.
- You, the caregiver, are exhausted. You’ve lost sleep, lost weight, lost time at work, or lost touch with your own life because dementia care has expanded to fill everything.
If any of these have become regular, it’s time to start looking at communities. Starting is not the same as deciding. It means taking a tour, having a conversation, putting a plan in place so when the moment comes you’re not scrambling.
A lot of families wait until something dramatic happens, like a fall, a hospitalization, a wandering incident that ended at the police station. We understand why families wait. The decision feels heavy, and there’s often a hope that things will stabilize. But the families who feel best about the timing in retrospect almost always say they wish they had moved a little earlier. Crisis moves are harder on everyone, including your parent.
If the question of is it time keeps coming up, that’s usually the moment to schedule the first tour. You don’t owe anyone a decision afterward.
Schedule a tour at one of our Northeast Georgia communities, or reach out with a question first.
Memory Care in Northeast Georgia
We’re rooted in Northeast Georgia, with three communities that each have their own personality. For dementia residents, staying near family and familiar surroundings matters more than usual, because the brain has fewer resources to adapt to a completely new environment.
The Landing of Bogart is close to Athens and Watkinsville, and a frequent choice for families with Athens-Clarke-Oconee ties.
The Landing of Winder serves Winder, Statham, and Bethlehem, and is convenient to East Gwinnett, Dacula, and Jefferson.
The Landing of Monroe is the newest of the three, serving Monroe, Loganville, Social Circle, Covington, and the rest of Walton County.
Each of our communities has dedicated memory care, designed around the same principles. Secure environments that feel like home rather than like a hospital. Staff trained specifically in dementia care. Programming built for cognitive engagement. And the continuity that comes from being part of The Landing family, with assisted living and other care levels in the same building if needs change in either direction.
View all our locations to see which one feels right.
Frequently Asked Questions
Dementia is an umbrella term for a group of conditions that affect memory, thinking, and daily function. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common specific cause of dementia, accounting for about 60 to 80 percent of cases. So all Alzheimer’s is dementia, but not all dementia is Alzheimer’s. Other types include vascular dementia, Lewy body dementia, frontotemporal dementia, and mixed dementia.
Assisted living is for adults who need help with daily activities but are cognitively intact. Memory care is for adults whose cognitive changes (from dementia, Alzheimer’s, or other conditions) mean they need a specially designed environment and specially trained staff. The two often exist in the same community, which makes it easier to transition between care levels as needs change.
Come See for Yourself
If you have questions, the best way to get real answers is to come see one of our communities in person. There’s only so much a brochure or a blog post can tell you when it comes to dementia care. Walking through the secured living area, watching the staff interact with residents, and seeing the environment with your own eyes tends to answer the question more clearly than anything we could write here.
There’s no pressure on the visit, and no obligation afterward. Most families come more than once before they decide, and we encourage that. Bring a sibling or a spouse. Take your time. Ask hard questions.
Schedule a tour at one of our Northeast Georgia communities, or send us a question first.
