← Back to Care Games Co

When the Evenings Get Hard — Understanding Sundowning

Why late afternoon and evening can be the toughest time of day in dementia care — and what helps.

Every day around four o'clock, something shifts in Joan.

She was calm all morning — chatty even, laughing at something on the radio. But as the light outside starts to change, so does she. She gets restless. Paces to the window and back. Asks when she's "going home," even though she is home. Her voice gets sharper, more anxious.

Maria used to find this the hardest part of the day — not because Joan was difficult, but because it felt so unpredictable. Some evenings were fine. Others unravelled fast, and Maria never quite knew why.

It took her a while to learn the word for it: sundowning. A pattern common in dementia where confusion, agitation, and anxiety increase in the late afternoon and evening. Nobody knows exactly why it happens — tiredness, changing light, a long day of sensory overload, disrupted body clocks — but it's real, and it's common, and it's not something Maria or Joan are doing wrong.

Knowing that changed things. Maria stopped trying to reason Joan out of it, the way she might've done at midday. Instead, she started preparing for it — dimming the lights gradually before it got dark outside instead of switching them on all at once, keeping the evening routine simple and predictable, turning the TV off before the news (too loud, too much), and just sitting with Joan through the restless bit instead of trying to fix it.

It still happens most days. But it's shorter now, and softer. Maria's learned that some hours don't need solving — they just need someone steady nearby until they pass.