What were the first signs of dementia you noticed in elderly parents?

A relative - I noticed he started shuffling suddenly like a very old man. I kept telling him to lift his feet up. He then started to mimic my conversation and couldn't follow tv plots. Next came little food obsessions..chocolate being the main one. Then came speech issues, forgetting words increasingly unable to complete a sentence. He was diagnosed with Aphasia and is slowly losing the ability to speak. It's frustrating and heartbreaking.

For my DDad, the first thing that I noticed was odd, was a personality change. He got really cross about an unflattering photo I’d taken of him, I mean really angry. It was so out of character, it took me aback. My Mum also said that when she asked him to mop the floor (that was always one of his chores for as long as I could remember), he’d become really angry and refused to do it. Again, really out of character. Thankfully, that angry stage subsided, but he then became very forgetful and he was diagnosed with dementia about 5 years later.

Putting chips in my soup in a restaurant …

Really interesting. My dm getting like this....

With my father-in-law, the big shock was when he'd forgotten that he had been diagnosed with a prostate abnormality. He'd had yearly checkups, but couldn't understand when a letter arrived what it was about - and then claimed never to have had any difficulty of that kind.

We'd accepted various things to do with repetitiveness and unwillingness to do anything new as a kind of manageable cognitive decline, but that was a big realisation there was something not right.

There was another incident where the door of his flat had blown shut, locking him out A neighbour was trying to help but my father in law couldn't remember any family phone numbers or details of where we worked, so neither he nor the neighbour could ring us to altert us to the problem. This was in pre mobile days. He could just remember our address and got driven round to our house by the neighbour in a state of great agitation.

And, she isolated herself from her friends but said it was because she didn't like them anymore. Told very close family she didn't want visitors despite loving hosting for them previously.

Looking back, this was a sign with my DM too. She didn't say it was because she didn't like them, but there was always a reason why it wasn't possible to have visitors that day. She still does this and I've found we have to over-ride her sometimes and just make arrangements for people to arrive as she loves seeing people when they are actually there. Her response at the moment if someone suggests visiting is that she's too busy and no-one understands how much she has to do.

The final straw that caused all the dots to join was when MIL took cash out of bank and phoned us in a total hysterical meltdown because the teller had given her £20 notes not £10 notes and she couldn't 'manage them'. DH had to take the money off her and give £10 notes instead.

Post diagnosis but in hindsight things that were odd - MIL was becoming fixated on routine, went to the shop every morning to buy that days food, couldn't meal plan even for a couple of days, she wouldn't change plans to walk to the shop a bit later e.g if her boiler service was due in the morning.

Another example, we had snow forecast for the next day and suggested she pick up milk&bread, she didn't need any and of course the next day in 6ft Scottish snow she was on the phone to us as she had no bread or milk.

And, she isolated herself from her friends but said it was because she didn't like them anymore. Told very close family she didn't want visitors despite loving hosting for them previously.

Cash and the valuables are the worst - they put them somewhere 'safe' only known to themselves, and of course...

My grandmother did the cash hiding. She went into a care home at the start of the 1990s; we found the last £5 note in 2018.

Oh my gosh yes - the faffing. Dementia faffing is its own unique sort of faff. It’s so intense to watch it is extremely hard not to intervene and try to stop it.

Christmas was one of the worst times in the early stages, my mum got into such a muddle writing cards that my dad confided to me that he'd had to leave the room and go to bed because he was going to blow his top and shout, and he never did that. And paperwork generally - everything was going missing. When I started the clear the house a couple of years later, I was finding rates bills inside knitting patterns, her birth certificate in a LIDL brochure, and money everywhere, in old envelopes that I nearly chucked on the fire. Cash and the valuables are the worst - they put them somewhere 'safe' only known to themselves, and of course...

DM has alzheimers and vascular dementia.
Looking back, the earliest signs were increasingly having difficulty finding the right word, worrying and 'preparing herself' for tasks/activities that she would usually have done without a second thought (eg. talking for days about the plan for a routine visit to the GP) and having trouble operating her phone and other devices. At the time we put it down to just getting older and she claimed phone etc were faulty.
Other fairly early symptoms were the general 'faffing' described by pp (she was previously not a faffer), having to go through a sort of repetitive 'ritual' before leaving the house (check bag, go to the toilet, recheck bag, check lights, recheck bag, put on shoes, recheck bag etc), difficulty remembering names of people very close to her (or using the wrong name and being unaware), wanting to 'rehearse' simple interactions (eg paying in a shop) and some difficulty with sequencing/processing (eg which buttons to press, and in which order, to warm food in the microwave she'd been using for years).
Luckily for us, although at first she tried to cover up/laugh off/excuse her symptoms she had an awareness that something wasn't right and at around the same time that I was getting more concerned she asked me to help her arrange to discuss it with the GP. In many ways her memory is still pretty good so initially the GP didn't seem too concerned but within a few months she was having frightening delusions.
As pp mentioned, the assessment process (assuming you're in the UK and using the NHS) after the initial GP assessment/referral is fairly slow- we were told to expect at least a 6 month wait for the a memory clinic assessment- so I'd suggest trying to encourage a GP visit sooner rather than later. Following her diagnosis I have actually found out local dementia services pretty good. She has been given medication and we've been signposted to lots of local organisations that can offer practical help and activities etc for people in her position. Unfortunately DM is reluctant to take up any other help but I was surprised to see how much there is near us for anyone who can be persuaded to use it.

At first a little forgetfulness was all. With hindsight, there was one occasion when I asked him to fit a new ceiling light for me, something that would have taken 10 minutes before, took him a couple of hours. At that time we were only mildly concerned about some forgetfulness and had no idea about the true horror of the way dementia throws everything into disarray, so it never occurred to me that it was a symptom.

Ah yes, the 'faffiness', I'd forgotten about that. An inlaw would increasingly need multiple bags to visit anywhere - turned up at my house before a family event one time with 4 or 5 carrier bags in addition to her handbag and then spent a couple of hours sorting through and checking them multiple times to decide what to put in handbag to bring to event, getting increasingly stressed. For her that was one of the earliest symptoms actually, having to check and recheck and being unable to decide what to bring, well before any obvious forgetfulness. She went on to be diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's.

Agree with @ContractorQuestion that cognitive decline and dementia are different. My father has noticeable cognitive decline and was worried about Alzheimer's given family history but he's been checked and for now at least has been told he doesn't have any form of dementia.

Both DPs have dementia but different forms. DF more classic - gradually started forgetting things, moving on to storing things in the wrong place i.e. toothpaste in the freezer. With DM with hindsight it had started a lot earlier than we realised. Her memory is still strong, but she became much less empathetic and very agitated and anxious about minor things, unfortunately I think social isolation in covid hastened her decline.

It wasn’t memory loss.

It was:

1. Personality changes which at first manifested as more extreme versions of their lifelong negative personality traits, but over time escalated to complete unreasonableness, selfishness, lack of empathy, rudeness and risk taking
2. Throwing me under the bus with complete lies, especially when they had an audience. Eg I took them shopping and bought a card whilst I was there. I discovered at the checkout I’d left my wallet in the car. They had to pay £3 for the card and they said at the top of their voice to the shop assistant ‘She’s always doing this. Pretending she’s lost her wallet so I have to pay’ in a really malicious way. This was completely untrue. Never ever happened.
3. Being inappropriate - asked the vicar at a garden party about his sex life and wouldn’t stop
4. Called me a ‘silly little bitch’ when I tried to help them click their seatbelt in
5. Ordered 3 identical rugs but in different sizes and couldn’t understand it when they arrived
6. stopped being able to use online banking or any online shopping
7. Couldn’t follow a board game we’ve played for years as a family
8. Less clean. House still looked tidy from afar, but there was mould on clothes, food out of date etc.
9. Able to put on the most perfect act in front of all other family members and doctors for about five years so they all thought I was the insane one.

The memory issues only started about 6-7 years after the above and when I finally got a brain scan that I’d been pushing for for years, it showed extensive dementia.

I was gaslighted FOR YEARS by professionals who all said my relative was showing zero signs of dementia.

I knew. I 100% knew I was right and everyone else was wrong. You just know.

Started very slowly as not being able to remember a conversation we had already had. We laughed about it at the time but it slowly became apparent that she wasn't remembering anything we had spoken about. Bizarrely although she couldn't remember me, she remembered my husband, her son i law right to the end. She knew him by name and to ask after his family

Repeating the same questions over and over again.
Forgetting the names of grandchildren.
Forgetting her son's middle name.
Forgetting her husband's birthday.
Forgetting how old they both are.
Losing interest in cooking when she used to be a very accomplished cook.
Ordering a supermarket delivery and repeating the order the following day.

Roughly in order - small vessel dementia.

Losing sense of direction.

Reduced and then lost ability to multitask.

Irritability.

Repeated falls.

Losing ability to carry out a sequence of tasks and learn new tasks (such as operating a new phone).

Visual processing difficulties.

Noticable memory loss and loss of ability to carry out already familiar simple tasks.

The last 2 came pretty close together. Gap from the first sign to the last 2 was almost a decade.

In my mum, it was actually my next door neighbour who flagged it up to us at a party we had, she asked me if I realised my mum was repeating herself quite a bit. She was telling neighbour something then a few minutes later, repeated the same thing. Mum was late 60s at the time.

My aunt's sister also did this, I was in the room and she repeated the same thing around five or six times. Both of them are currently in care with advanced dementia.

Wearing clothes inside out.
Being more aggressive in words than usual ( caused by small strokes)
Difficulty in spatial recognition eg putting a plug into a socket.

-Trouble with short-term memory e.g. Mum will completely forget that she had cooked something earlier that day
-Will ask the same questions again and again
-Issues with cooking- forgetting how to make things she has been cooking for decades
-Losing interest in others
-Losing interest in her finances e.g. she has some Premium Bonds and would always ask me to check how much she had won each month. Now she never remembers until prompted
-Hygiene- will sometimes forget to shower or change her clothes- this one is not too regular at the moment
-Stopped reading and watching tv (except news) as she cannot follow anything

Not my parents, but a neighbour I'd known a bit for years - a well-educated professional woman. We were on the management committee for our block of flats and she alleged in a meeting that the accountant at the managing agent's firm must have been stealing from us because of his race. The agent's representative at the meeting reprimanded her but she didn't seem to care, and looked quite pleased at herself for "solving" the issue (there was no missing money).

Then we noticed little acts of vandalism around the building, including a brick in the stairs from the street up to our front door which was loose, then fixed, but then someone repeatedly dug into the drying mortar and loosened it again. It was a pointless thing to do but it happened several times, and another neighbour said he thought he knew who was doing it and I said I also thought I knew, but neither of us would actually say her name. Then she started ripping up junk mail addressed to her flat and scattering the pieces around the foyer instead of just putting it in the bin or the recycling. We could see it was her because she didn't rip through the address properly.

Eventually I heard she'd been diagnosed with dementia, but that was maybe five to seven years after the comment at the meeting.

Occasional word-finding difficulties - often referred to as an "age-related recall problem" or circumstantial speech - are a normal part of getting older. Whereas a profound loss of comprehension and repetitive mimicking represent genuine signs of cognitive decline. In the context of advanced cognitive decline or conditions like Alzheimer's and frontotemporal dementia, the brain struggles to process the meaning of incoming language. Instead of generating a thoughtful response, the person automatically echoes back the words they just heard, much like a tape recorder, because it is the only way their brain can attempt to participate in the interaction.

Both of these incidents were about a year or two pre-Covid so about eight years ago.

The first (with visual processing symptoms) is still living pretty independently but needing more support with things like medications and is more ‘difficult’ in personality. Also more general cognitive decline - he was very intelligent so had to fall a long way for it to start interfering with life.

The lady with ‘senior moments’ is now advanced dementia, still recognises family (just) but living in the moment with no short term memory.

With MIL the stand-out incident for me was when we were visiting from abroad, and all of us plus SIL and her family were invited for lunch at PIL. So 6 adults and 3 children. It became apparent that she’d only bought one standard pizza to feed us all. Usually she’d turn out a full three-course meal or at the very least home made soup with filled rolls and salad, then dessert. She looked so confused, and was very quiet about it. SIL made lots of cheese on toast instead. Unf FIL was just oblivious so it was quite a while before any action was taken.

She had Parkinson’s so was much less mobile and started freezing in doorways, looking very confused.