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September 27, 2019
Along with the challenging conversation requesting that seniors stop driving, there is also the issue of senior home care. This may include any range of topics from bringing a home care worker into your senior’s home to take care of them on a regular basis to bring them into your own home. Sometimes this may also just include bringing them close to you.
Even though you may have left home as a teen to go to college, followed by a life of valuable work and a family of your own, your parents are likely a matter of concern as time goes on. As your parent’s age, it is more and more of a challenge to feel confident in their safety while living alone. However, addressing the conversation of moving them into your home or at least to a location close to you where steady communication can be maintained is a difficult one.
1 – What to Do if You Already Live Close
Most likely this is the same story you face. Even if you live close to your senior parents, the worry that grows for their health and safety over time makes it harder to maintain a regular daily life without checking in on them constantly.
At that point, you get into the possibility of becoming an overbearing child who attempts to take away your senior parent’s independence simply because of your concerns. Home care is an option. You don’t have to start a battle or try to make them move in with you, but it is an option and one that can be discussed.
2 – Present a Cost Analysis
This may be something that is a little more efficient in the conversation over this worry, especially if a senior’s bills are growing beyond their monthly income. The benefit of cost savings is something that is much more practical in this conversation than your simple emotional concern or worries about their health and safety at home.
3 – Make Sure to Present Your Understanding Side of All Their Concerns
Be compassionate about the change that this will impose on a senior’s life. This could be a loss of independence as well as a complete change in lifestyle and location. You may live very far away, and the change in location could be a complete overthrow in their daily lives. Your senior may be leaving the people who they communicate with on a daily basis and spend regular time with as well. Although you are family, the people they love the most, the friends who they see regularly are also very important in their lives and will be difficult to leave behind.
4 – Make this a Proactive, Face-to-Face Conversation
This is difficult, especially in returning to many points where it should be clear that you are not ordering your senior parents around or trying to make decisions for their lives. You want to make it clear that you are trying to be helpful and providing options that may be best for everyone in the long run. At this point, there could be several options including moving into your home, moving into a smaller place close to you, or moving into an assisted living facility close to you as well. No matter what, it is important to approach the topic early and allow your senior(s) to evaluate what they think will be best on their own part as well.
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