This study deals with directive sequences in mobility practices when people with dementia are assisted to sit at the dinner table. By using multimodal analysis of interaction, we highlight how caregivers, often in encounter with more debilitated residents, may deconstruct the entire activity of sitting down on a chair into smaller practical projects and move from mitigated directives with indirect forms to more imperative formats which are shorter, clearer and more lucid in their turn design. In our data set, directives in both downgraded or upgraded forms are accompanied by embodied linguistic and haptic resources and are hardly ever used to claim authority over the residents, but as communicative resources to help people with dementia to perform an instructed action.