7 Tips on How to Take Care of Your Aging Parents

Amidst your busy life, can you still afford to pause for a while and spend time with your aging parents? However easy it may sound, in reality, it’s a challenge for every child. Balancing your time between your career and family needs commitment and patience.

All parents get old. One day, you’ll realize that yours are getting there too. Check out below tips to help you prepare on what you should do to keep them happy.

Here are useful tips on how to take care of your aging parents

1. Discuss the situation with your siblings

Taking care of your aging parents is not as easy as you may imagine. You need plenty of time, effort, understanding, and lots of patience. Having a helping hand will make the days lighter. Therefore, when you come from a big family, you can get as much help you need.

Plan together what you need to do in taking care of your parents.

2. Find out what your parents need

It is important to know what your parents need. Some aging parents want to stay close to their children because they feel loved, secure and happy to see them all the time. However, others find it convenient to pay for nursing homes and a few find it hard to leave their houses. They find new life there because of new friends, environment, and activities.

I chose to let my parents live with me at home. I know that they feel happy to see the kids daily. I need not worry about how to do it since I got professional help.

There are home care services that are willing to assist me whenever I need them. They help with the housekeeping, medication monitoring, errands, cooking, and doctor visits.

3. Ensure that you have monitored the following

Proper Nutrition: Seniors have a special diet that meets the need of their aging body. You can ask help from their doctors for suggestions. Give them food supplement and vitamins to support their health too.
checkHygiene: Ensure that your parents can still take care of their cleanliness. Staying clean helps a lot in keeping them healthy. Check their clothes, their nails, hair, teeth, and body odor. Their room and the rest of the house must be clean too.
checkBack up support: Always leave someone responsible enough to take care of the old ones when you are not at home. Make sure that he or she is properly oriented around the house and of your parent’s needs.
Exercise: Aging people needs exercise to keep the body moving. Taking them for short walks as a routine is healthy. Regular exercise protects the body from sickness and makes them look years younger.

4. Be prepared for Financial Support

Taking care of your parents does not only need your time and energy but also needs lots of financial support. With their aging comes along frequent visits to doctors, maintenance on medicine, food, and other basic needs. Make sure that you have money prepared to support their daily needs.

5. Educate Yourself

Your aging parents already have their individual needs not only for medicine but also on how to deal with them in other aspects. It is best to educate yourself first on taking care of your aging parents to prepare yourself. Familiarize yourself with their medication, routine, food, and doctor visits.

6. Make Your Home Elderly-Friendly

Remove objects like toys from the floor. Keep them away to avoid accidents.
checkInstall grab bars in the corners and walls of the house. It can help your parents move around safely and easily. When their knees are weak, they need the grab bars to support them while walking.
checkNight-lights are necessary to pathways. Install them to strategic areas in the house.

7. Make them feel they still belong

Aging parents tend to think that they no longer belong in your world. Since they are no longer healthy and strong like before, they are aware that they are no longer of big help. Arrange ways to keep them from feeling lonely and unwanted.

Eating together every meal is a great way to let them feel they belong. Update them on what is going on in your life to make them feel valued. If they are in a nursing home, visiting them often helps a lot. I suggest bringing along their grandchildren, other families, and friends.

Conclusion

Being sincere with what you’re doing is the key on how to take care of your aging parents. Seniors are already susceptible because of the thought that they’re no longer useful and the fear of being abandoned. Therefore, find a way to give them comfort.

Other Related Articles: