How are your teens coping? Ours has been a very rocky road since we were late in getting my wife to a neurologist - symptoms/signs started 6 years ago. (We just thought she was becoming a big jerk.) So our youngest (almost 18 - now a senior in H.S.) didn't have the same home environment as our 23 y/o. Lots of problems, but still a wonderful daughter. She is there for us when the crapola really hits the fan, but otherwise finds excuses to go to her friends' homes. I can't blame her - we all used to be teenagers (didn't we?).
My kids have had to deal with this since their preteen years. 16 year old son always WAS my rock, and sometimes still is.. but he eventually decided that he was going to be a teenager anyway, and now wants to either have friends here, or be gone to their houses all the time. My 18 year old daughter reacts quite differently. She isolates herself away from the situation. Hangs out in her room. Although she loves him, she hadn't had a close relationship with her Dad since she was quite young. I'm sure that has a lot to do with it too. She's pretty emotional as a rule, and though her friends are aware of her Dads AD she doesn't "discuss it." We both have older kids in mid 20's, from prior marriage. They were out of the house before the AD issue was known. His 25 year old daughter lives out of state, but is coming Oct 11-14 to take care of him while I'm attending my 26 year old sons Aircraft Carrier Homecoming with DIL. Stepdaughter has already told me she's nervous as her contact with him in the past 3 years has been primarily by phone. Despite how much I have shared with her over the past few years she is still in for a shock.
Not AZ, but brain tumor which caused enormous mood changes. My son and a neighbor boy jointly held a paper route. He was one of 3 kids, middle-school. Dad started acting really weird, roaring at the kids, etc, etc - no one could understand, thought he was drinking, but he wasn't. He had some sort of stroke and it got diagnosed but for several years it was terrible on the kids. HOWEVER: they all turned out fine, adults. And didn't blame their mother. In fact her only problem was that the sons were so overprotective of poor old mom (in her fifties when dad died) that they wanted to take care of her as much as possible. One of them moved in with her. Which was nice except that after years of taking care of her husband, the last thing she needed was to have to do son's laundry, son's dinner, etc!
I would guess it's perfectly to be expected that they'll want to get away from it as much as possible. We're lucky - our sons (and our daughter), now long grown, are completely understanding and helpful.
This is becoming a huge issue with so many people being diagnosed with EOAD. I have 3 resources for you - go to the home page of my website - www.thealzheimerspouse.com, and click on the left side topic- articles of interest- it may take a long time to load - scroll down to the EOAD section, and there are two articles about helping children and teens cope with AD. There is also a website for teens of EOAD parents - it is a place where they can talk with each other and get support and a lot of information about AD- the link in my "articles" section is not working, so copy and paste this - http://www.afateens.org/