This is what I gifted my parents for the holidays, and it’s straight-up, old-school radio frequency tech, no apps, nothing is going across the internet. They are spending an increasing amount of time looking for stuff my mom was just touching and put down. Her specific active memory loss is short term, so think of it as, her biggest challenge is remembering whatever it was she was doing right before whatever she is doing now or whatever she was doing before something broke her train of thought. Actually when my dad gets stressed, he exhibits this type of memory challenge too, something common to most older folks, and I even have a touch of this as someone with ADHD.
To start, I tagged her purse and her keys, and then I took both items and hid them in the house, and made my parents use the remote to make the tags beep, and find the items. Having a couple test scenarios was really good for them, and I used the second practice run to make my dad put his hearing aids in, and coached them more to act like a team, not like one finder and one critical observer. If this helps, we’ll add tags to other things that need frequent locating.
I did have to point out to my dad that this isn’t a toy and that randomly making shit beep when it’s right next to you is actually uncomfortable for the dog. His hearing loss means he no longer maintains any awareness of how anything might be for people or animals that have fully-functioning hearing.
