Caring for elderly parents at home is typically the first step in a senior’s long-term care plan. Not only can it be a way to save money and remain in the comforts of home, but it bides time while family members assess what is needed in terms of home care versus facility-based care.
Most often, the responsibility of caring for the elderly at home falls onto adult children.
For some adult children, this increased dependency occurs right around their own retirement, and after their own children have left the nest. For others—referred to as “the sandwich generation”— it begins while they still have children at home. This group is referred to as “the sandwich generation,” because they are sandwiched between two generations of people who depend on them.
Helpful Suggestions When Caring For Aging Parents
The following 8 tips for caring for elderly parents at home are relevant to both empty nesters as well as the sandwich generation (SG).
1.Keep a close eye on your parent’s well-being
At first, caring for elderly parents at home can be as simple as a weekly or daily phone call, checking in and assessing their conversational tidbits for information on how they’re doing.
In many cases, this simply isn’t enough. Seniors who are struggling often hide it while on the phone, unless they are well into the throes of dementia or Alzheimer’s. Either way, it requires physical surveillance to assess how well seniors living independently are doing.
Read 10 Signs Your Parents Need Assistance to Safely Live at Home in the following article. SG’ers are especially prone to missing (or dismissing) these signs because time flies when you work, take care of your children, are busy with extracurricular activities and have to keep an eye on aging parents.
2.Enlist helpers early on
Caregiving is a huge responsibility and gets increasingly harder as your parents age even more since their needs grow proportionally as time goes by. Waiting until a crisis happens makes it difficult to figure out what exactly is needed, how frequently, who’s best at providing it, etc.
Get the entire immediate family involved. Whether it’s providing respite care on scheduled days or times of the year, contributing to a general fund to support professional in-home care providers as needed, or someone to come to clean the house, it should be a team effort. You’ll wear yourself out if you take it all on solo.
3.Find a relief care provider
There will be times you aren’t able meet your parent’s needs:
- Driving
- Meal planning/preparation
- Extra help around the house
- Laundry or errand running
- Unplanned doctor visit
From weekend sporting tournaments to annual family vacations, there are also times when you simply have to get away. Working with a home care agency ahead of time gives you the ability to have respite care ready when you need it.
4.Find a way to provide easy-ready meals
Seniors are at risk of malnutrition. There are multiple reasons for this, but one of the most significant is that they simply don’t have the stamina/ability to shop, prepare, and make their own food. That makes seniors more likely to skip meals and/or eat processed foods that lack nutritional value.
Ensure your loved one has regular access to healthy, nutritious meals that align with any dietary restrictions. These can be arranged regardless of where you live.
5.Take care of yourself
This ties into the airplane axiom of putting your own oxygen mask on before attending to others’ masks; you simply can’t take care of anyone if you are incapacitated yourself.
Find ways to nourish your body and your spirit so you have the energy, stamina, and resources to be a caregiver. Sure, it’s great to get a massage or head to the gym for an hour or two, but those options aren’t practical for many caregivers.
6.Keep your parent active & engaged
Living independently is great for the elderly, but not if it means retreating from their formerly active, engaged daily routine. If you aren’t able to help your parent get to the social, religious, recreational activities and events they used to enjoy, then hire a companion or enlist the help of others in related organizations to lend a hand.
7.Make the home safe & accessible
Any kind of fall or injury is the detriment of seniors who live at home. Therefore, safety is a top priority when caring for the elderly at home. While some structural modifications may be necessary, the majority of steps required to make a senior’s home safe and accessible require minimal DIY skills and just a few sets of helpful hands.
A stair lift is a safe and affordable way for seniors with limited mobility to navigate between the floor levels of their home. It provides convenience and can restore independence for those who stopped using the stairs.
8.Provide access to safe transportation
After losing mobility, turning over the keys is probably the most traumatic loss seniors face, but that’s no excuse for not getting around. There are abundant senior transportation options; it just may require your research and effort to get a safe driving plan in place.
Finding Balance While Caring For Aging Parents
Caring for the elderly at home is a labor of love. Whether you have a busy lifestyle and active family, or more time to offer your parents, chances are you’ll need help and resources along the way.
This list of 8 tips for caring for elderly parents at home should be a starting point towards finding balance in not only your life, but also in your parent’s life as well.
source: georgetownhomecare.com
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