Anyone who's had experience caring for a family member who's had a stroke, could I ask your advice?

[Jacksmania]

My stepdad had a stroke in March. A small one, thank God, and he's recovering quite well. He's had a long history of ill health, if you think it's relevant I can go into more detail later. (Posting from phone on an outing with DS and my parents.)
My mum, who takes wonderful care of him, has told me he had had what she calls "the typical stroke victim's aggressive outbursts" on occasion. Don't worry, my lively mum is not a door may and she's said she gets in his face right back if he gets too aggressive. So I'm
not in any way worried about any abuse going on. (God, if I thought that, I'd go around the bend. I live 4000 km away from her :(.)
Anyway - I've had a fair bit of medical education, I was a nurse for a little while and now work in an alternative health field. Which is to say unthought I knew a fair bit about stroke, but what both my mum and my stepdad's lovely respite worker have said about stroke victims' aggressive outbursts is completely new to me. They both said that stroke can lead to low tolerance for frustration, and a short fuse. I didn't know any if that.

Mum said she mostly doesn't take it personally, which is good I suppose.
I had first-hand experience with it on the ferry ride to our outing. DS, who's 4 1/2, was singing to himself on the ferry and making a bunch of goofy sounds. To me, just the typical 4 1/2 year old entertaining himself. I almost don't hear it anymore. Suddenly my stepdad starte waving his walking stick in DS's face (actually more my face because I was say between them) and started shouting at DS to stop his noise. It was completely out of the blue, scary contorted face and everything. It was actually a bit frightening. I don't remover what I said to defuse things, and then we got up and walked around the ferry a bit.
I know I shouldn't take it personally, and there was no threat of harm to DS, but I was a bit .

Must go, will check back, but would welcome any input.

Crap, sorry this is so long.

Also, not sure if it's relevant, but I'm not in the UK.

I'm so sorry about your SD. Unfortunately, this is quite common I think. I have no first hand in dealing with it but my friend has with her Dad.
A stroke coupled with dementia has meant he now has to live in a care home.

Your Mum sounds lovely and i feel for her. All you can do is offer support and maybe limit time SD spends with the children so they dont wind him up.

JM, unfortunatly aggression or personality changes are very common in stroke, as in any brain injury. Its a bugger, as you see movement and speech stuff improving, but the more subtle things can take much longer to improve.

Time with DS will perforce be limited as we're going home tomorrow and won't be back for a visit until November.

:(

My grandfather had a stroke which left him without speech. He did display some behaviour changes afterwards. Happily not aggression in his case but he did start doing the hoovering! Obviously the speech thing was frustrating but what made it worse was that all the connections weren't quite there in the brain anymore so that he would try to write what he meant but what he wrote didn't make sense in context. So yes I would say behaviour changes are very usual after the insult to the brain that is a stroke. It sounds like your mum is coping with that. I think from your perspective its probably best to try and work out the trigger points and then avoid them. It really is not your SD's fault that he is reacting like that and whilst of course he must not be abusive to your son, there is a degree to which he will not now be able to control that behaviour. His brain does not work like it used too

Totally normal, sadly.

It has all been a bit shit :(

It would be utterly fab if he started doing the hoovering though!
or any housework for that matter :o

Use this as an opportunity to teach your DS about brains! My Opa had dementia and would do some totally bizarre things, some funny and some scary. My DM took it in stride (Opa was DF's Dad) and used it to tell us about how sometimes people's brains get injured or change and that was what was happening to Opa. It wasn't our fault, but we should be respectful of him and not make fun or be afraid.
It did make him less scary and less funny, and I like to think it made us more compassionate. I was about 4 or 5.

My dad had a stroke, quite a severe one, he never walked again and there were some changes in his personality. He didn't become aggressive though, he became a lot more chilled but a lot more self-centred, like a child who has yet to develop a sense of empathy. This is quite common apparently. His stroke was on the right side of his brain (left arm and leg affected) so no speech problems. I think I remember a nurse in the stroke unit telling us that aggression is more common where speech is affected - understandable I suppose.

Monsterchild, that's a good idea. Thanks everyone for your input.

Does anyone have advice for how to handle the aggression?