Dementia caregiver resources
Why Voicemail Doesn't Work for a Parent With Dementia (And What Does)
By Kirstin Thomas
May 2026 · 9 min read
Scheduled calls did not consistently prevent later calls in Sharon’s experience. Memory changes may have contributed, but the reason cannot be reduced to one neurological mechanism.
What changed was not the content of the calls. In Sharon's experience, a responsive conversation felt different from voicemail and some calls settled; this family experience should not be generalized to every person or treated as evidence of a clinical outcome.
The call volume did not go to zero. Sharon still calls. She calls when she is anxious and when she is lonely and when something small has unsettled her routine. In this family account, some calls felt more settled after a responsive conversation; experiences vary and this is not an established KindredMind outcome. That is the thing voicemail was never going to be able to give her. Not because voicemail is a bad idea. Because it is the wrong tool for the job. The job is connection. The tool has to be something that can connect back.
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Co-founder of KindredMind. Daughter of Sharon, who has Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia. Kirstin built KindredMind with co-founder Patrick Armstrong after years of managing repetitive calls from Sharon and finding that voicemail and call limits did not provide the kind of responsive connection their family wanted.