Apologies this is long but don't want to drip-feed and there's a lot of context which needs to be here. Am a regular but have name changed as might be recognisable.
My mum has what is now fairly severe dementia, still lives at home with my dad although we're thinking about residential care. She still just about recognises family members but has difficulty working out what their relationship is to one another, needs help going to the loo, repeats questions multiple times a minute and has difficulty with motor functions so needs help eating etc. Although at heart she's still a lovely, kind person, she's pretty stressful to be around most of the time.
My dad is her primary carer, he has carers in the week but no support at weekends. As a result myself and my sister try our best to go down as often as we can but its not that easy (I live about a three hour train ride away and the fare isn't cheap). In general, one of both of us plus family members is generally there every other weekend.
I always take my DD, who is 2.5 and sometimes my DH there. Up until fairly recently I haven't worried about my DD being exposed to this because my DD's language skills weren't really up to understanding that there is something "different" about the way my mum interacts, IYSWIM. Now DD speaks pretty fluently and I think is starting to pick up on the fact that my DM asks the same question a lot etc. Which is fine in itself.
My thoughts on it up to now have been that I want my DD to have a relationship with her grandmother, regardless of her condition and vice versa, and have tried to explain that "granny sometimes feels a bit sick/tired" if my mum is behaving oddly.
But recently my mum's cognitive ability has declined significantly and there was an incident recently which scared me a bit and is making me rethink this. DD (who had just been given her first scooter) was wearing a little helmet which she has to wear with the scooter, in the house with my parents and my mum became convinced the helmet was something which had come loose from a piece of furniture, couldn't grasp that there was a person's head inside it and started "hammering" it onto DD's head, with her fist, quite forcefully.
My dad and my DH got her to stop quickly so no physical harm was done, but DD was obviously confused and distressed that her granny was apparently attacking her and it was difficult to explain this afterwards. My mum also gets extremely distressed if my dad leaves the room for more than about five minutes and starts shouting and the last time my DD saw this she asked me why granny was shouting so much.
I don't want to feel that my mum needs to be "hidden away" and I really want to keep the contact as long as its feasible because I'm sure my mum gets something out of seeing my DD, even if she's confused as to who she is. But I am becoming increasingly worried that a child that young isn't up to witnessing the more advanced stages of dementia and that I should have a strategy in place to cope with situations like this.
Is there anyone else who's had to deal with this and any advice on this?