How can we prepare our 3-year-old grandson for visits with his late-stage Alzheimer's-afflicted grandmother who irrationally scolds him?

I would seriously limit his visits. At three he is incapable of your understanding really even the simplest explanations. But you can TRY. You could tell him that Gran has an illness that makes her very cranky, and that she isn't always remembering things, and so on. Tell him that Gran may seem cranky, but because there's not much that can be done for this illness, everyone must try to be as kind as they can.
KEEP VISIT VERY SHORT when you have the young one with you
There is no real reason for such a young child to have to be exposed to this overlong. He is very unlikely to remember or care a lot in future.
Give him fun things to give to gran. Help him make a card with her as a young woman, better still, a child, or as his gran making things for him. Teach him to say "I am so sorry you don't feel good, Gran, and I hope you will be better soon". Take it slow, gently, and keep it short. Use it as a teaching moment; we all need to learn compassion as early as we can.
Hope you'll update us.

A 3 year old child should not have to be exposed to an Alzheimer's patient who is 'irrationally' dealing with his normal 3 year old behavior. It serves no useful purpose for you to be trying to control her behavior OR his behavior. It makes better sense to show him grandma over Facetime and put the tablet down if grandma starts getting upset, if you insist on a 'visit'. Better he should have no memories of the woman than ugly ones. All stories don't have happy endings, unfortunately, and at 3 years old, your grandson doesn't need to be traumatized needlessly. I have grandchildren myself and never brought them to see my mother who had advanced dementia b/c who knows WHAT words would have come out of her mouth?? My grandchildren can look at photos of their smiling great grandmother in her younger days before the ugly disease of dementia turned her into someone else entirely.

No offense, but there's absolutely no reason to take a three-year-old to see someone like that. He won't remember her, and if he does, they won't be good memories.

While the idea of visiting is wonderful (cue ethereal music and unicorns dancing)
It is sometimes not practical.
I used to explain my Husbands dementia and the way he acted in stores (he would make noises that to kids sounded like crying) by comparing it to kids they might know in school that have Autism. I tell them his brain does not work like yours or mine.
You can explain some things to kids but 3 is a bit young to grasp that concept. Then they may also fear that their brain can get broken somehow.

Talk about grandma. Tell him she is not well. but tell him stories and show pictures of her. Tell him what she used to be like. He can know her through stories,.

I am 75 and confused by my step-mother's behavior. She has FTD.

Me, I wouldn't take a 3 yo to visit someone who has late stage dementia. The child does not need to be exposed to that behavior.

I would not expose my small grandchildren to an Alzheimer's grandparent.

I would rather protect the young innocent kid than the old demented grandmother. A 3 y.o. child is too vulnerable emotionally and incapable to comprehend what dementia does to people.

I agree, a 3 yr old should not be exposed to this. Take a video to show Mom. Pictures. But please do take him.

Great and useful answers all - thank you, very helpful. The issue will resolve itself when Granma has to be placed in assisted living - I'll be able to manage visits to the home much easier. Until then, Gran's daughters plan family gatherings and want us to visit them (too far for day only trips) so I will need curtail these to protect the grandkids.

I have a separate question about communications with her about the move to assisted living but will post separately. Thanks again all - very helpful!

The visits sound like they are upsetting to both the grandmother and child. So, instead of visits, take a short video of the child for the grandmother, and show it to her at the visit. Then take a short video of her and share it with the child. This allows them to communicate with each other without upsetting one another.

Don't take him to see her. What is the point?

My grandkids never see either of their great grandmothers. My mom can't take the noise, etc., and she only likes some of them, and they know it. She doesn't have dementia, but she's very self centered and to take them to visit her? Waste of time, AND she's a little scary looking to a small child.

My MIL doesn't even accept the fact that our grands are HER great grands. She has never met several of them and has no desire to do so.

Just b/c you are related doesn't mean you have to have close relationships. And for small kids? A 3 yo is just barely beginning to understand the world and an old lady yelling at him? That could be awful.

I will happily say that I LOVED my Great grandmother and she was an amazing person who lived to 100 and took care of herself to the end. She knew all of her progeny, but then, family was very important to her and she 'bothered' to notice us.

Explain that grandma has problems with remembering and forgets what it was like to be his age or when her children were his age. She gets easily confused and that makes her feel upset. Then, she says or does things that sound mean because she is upset. It has nothing to do with you (insert name of 3-year-old) and everything to do with the sickness that makes her forget.

Maybe it would be better to keep your grandson away from his grandmother, if she scolds him irrationally. Why subject him to this? If he must visit her, talk to him ahead of time and try to explain at a level he can understand that his grandmother's mind is sick and sometimes she is not able to think clearly. She may say some things that are not true.

Don't take him. It's the sort of horror that is disproportionate to a young child, more than the adults present can appreciate in the moment, and it will stay with him for life.

If it were of any benefit to her there might just about be a case for it, but he irritates her and she will frighten the heck out of him. His parents must make better arrangements, and you shouldn't hesitate to tell whichever of them is your child so.

I don’t have a lot of memories of most of my grandparents as they were all pretty old by the time I came around, but I am certainly glad that the memories I do have are either positive or neutral.

I have a vivid memory of feeling mortified at age 4 or so when an aunt calmly but firmly asked me along with some other kids not to keep opening and closing the doors, letting flies in. I was particularly “sensitive” but I think all little kids lack the context to correctly identify adult behavior all of the time.

Please don’t subject a small child to irrational scolding.

Just want to say that I did take my 3 yr old grandson to see my Mom but she loved little kids. She made over him. A man at the AL liked to play ball with him. They just rolled it back and forth to each other. And the other residents enjoyed him. In this situation, I would have never exposed him to a person who hollers at him. Of course he is confused and not old enough to understand what Dementia is or how the brain works no matter how you explain it.
Grandma does not seem to enjoy his visits either.

We were taking my grandson to the MC. On a regular basis for short visits before Covid, and the residents loved him and he loved them all including my LO.

I would not have taken him if his experiences hadn’t been pleasant. I know of no way that a 3 year old can be prepared for someone who has loved him scolding him or being in any way harsh to him.

My opinion is based on being the grandmother of four children currently age 6 and under AND having worked with children in that age group for over 35 years.

I'm with the group here you shouldn't take your 3 year old to visit. Your grandmother won't remember the visit and your grandson won't have a pleasant visit.

Don't take the three-year-old to visit. If he actually does have a memory of his great-grandmother at some point in his life, it will be of a terrifying old woman.
Don't make him be around his great-grandmother with Alzheimer's and don't force her to have to be around a three-year-old who you cannot control. Neither party benefits from those visits.
Leave him home. He does not need to make memories with hs great-grandmother and she will not remember spending time with him.
I have a few memories when I was a little kid of visiting one of my grandmother's elderly aunts whose son brought her to America.
Let me paint you a picture of this experience.
Think of a toothless corpse with long, dirty nails wearing a black dress, tied in a wheelchair that screams in Italian. She also burped and farted continually and smelled absolutely disgusting.
Now picture a little kid and a bunch of adults who've had a few glasses of the homemade vino because it's a holiday, and they make the little kid go and "Give zia (aunt) a kiss". 'Zia' grabbed ahold of my hair with her her clawed hand and nearly pulled it from the roots.
I'm almost 50 years old yet I still remember the terror 'zia' Lucrezia
like it was yesterday.
Don't do that to a little kid. Leave the three-year-old at home.

You can’t expect a kid that young to understand that granny is mentally ill. Why stress a child out like that?

Don’t take child to visit agitated dementia/Alz grandparents. It will be a disaster & it’s child abuse. Granny won’t remember visit 5 min later..but impressionable child will remember being abused forever. Don’t do it!!!

Get a babysitter.

What is the reason you feel the need to continue to have your 3 yr old even visit under these circumstances ?

His Grandmother who has dementia can’t control her behavior or reason out his behavior nor do these visits sound beneficial for either of them even though the wish that they would be is a natural one. I would want to spare my grandchild the experience and would not want this to be the way my grandchild remembered me. Even if that meant he never really knew me I would prefer his memories be built of photos and stories about who I was before the dementia. The way we get to know relatives who passed before we were old enough to remember them well. What do you think his grandmother (the one with dementia) would want, how would she want to be remembered?

When I was young our parents took us to visit our elderly relatives many times. We were given rules on what to do and how to behave. It was confusing and stressful for us. We could read our parents stress that they were under while we were there. The car ride home was filled with discussions of the visit and potential for critique of our performance. Not fun memories. Honestly, it's one of my resentments when reflecting on my current caregiver situation with my parents.

I don't think it's appropriate to subject a 3 yr old to the unpredictable actions of someone with Alzheimers. The 3 yr old needs to be in a safe and healthy environment. Please make his needs the priority.

This should be fun for both of them or there is no need to cause the interaction. Bring him in and let her enjoy him as long (or, if) she can. Snap a few photos so he can have them when he is grown.

Bring the toddler in for short periods to amuse her and whisk him out when she starts getting crotchety.

She may not enjoy being around children as she once did, and she may find his noises shrill and his energy agitating.

In that case, get him out and take him somewhere that he can enjoy. It may seem efficient to visit with them both at once, but sometimes when you kill two birds with one stone you are no better off and just have a couple of dead birds.

As for his memories, he is an unwritten book. He may not remember the details of the afternoon vividly, but getting yelled at, is, after all, abuse. You don’t want him to have his earliest memory scarring. Take him to the park, the pool, the arcade. Let him play in the sunshine. Shield him from the horrors of life as long as possible.

Why would you even take him?

If you have to take the toddler, get him a tablet and headphones and tell him it’s tablet time. Then he can tune out grandma. Worth a try?