Rethinking Communication guide to advanced dementia

11 hear them but give them no real attention; you might even find them embarrassing. By drawing any of those conclusions, you would most likely ignore the sounds that Jack makes, perhaps even in the hope that he will stop making them altogether. What if we were to think of these sounds in a completely different way? Since Jack can no longer speak, what if making these sounds is the only means of communication that he has left to make contact with other people? Once we become curious about Jack, then we start asking interesting questions. We give ourselves permission to wonder. Could Jack’s behaviour mean something? Could he be trying to ask me something? If so, is there some way I could answer him? What would that style of communication look like? Those are precisely the questions we’ll be asking later on. First though, let’s think about why Jack’s behaviour might be important not only to him, as an individual, but to all of us.