Key Concerns When Dealing with Aging Parents
- Written by NewsServices.com
Caring for an elderly parent can be very rewarding as it can provide opportunities for strengthening your relationship, creating new memories, and spending precious time with them. But it is usually not easy to do this. Providing the health and care they need can include everything from helping them with daily activities to dealing with serious health complications and concerns. To make things easier, we will look at some key concerns you should know about, so you know how to deal with them.
Living Away from Them
In an ideal world, we would all live close to our aging parents and provide them with the help and care they need. However, it is very difficult to be at their side promptly every time they require us. You may not be able to have tight control over their health and care or get the right information from the people or person taking care of them. Additionally, living far from them makes it harder to coordinate things like appointments and other services they need.
A life care manager is a viable option because they will become the primary point of contact between you and your parents. They will be responsible for taking care of different aspects of their lives too.
Medication Compliance
Another very common worry is medication compliance. You may be worried that your parents are not taking their medication as prescribed. This can be for different reasons including having too many drugs to take or having varying medication doses. This is another area that an in-house life care manager can help with. They can not only ensure medication compliance, but they can also liaise with doctors and other healthcare professionals to create plans that ensure your parents are taking their medication as required.
Loneliness
Seniors who live at home alone are more likely to become bored and lonely. Both can affect their emotional well-being and different aspects of their health. Staying connected to the people they love or people they can relate with is an important component in helping eliminate boredom and loneliness.
Social engagement is critical and is one of the benefits of looking at assisted living options. Assisted living facilities encourage social interactions and engagements through various interaction and engagement activities. Those looking for assisted living in Dallas Texas can consider Belmont Village which has facilities and activities that ensure social engagement and interactions.
Safety
There are so many things that fall under ensuring your parent is safe. For example, you need to ensure their home is safe, and that they are protected from things like wandering and putting themselves in dangerous situations. Ensuring they are safe also requires that you consider where they can drive safely.
Driving becomes more challenging as we get older, and it may come to a point when you need to let your parents know they can no longer drive. They may resent being told what to do, but you have to remind them that you are doing this for their safety.
It is perfectly okay to be concerned about an aging parent. The best thing you can do is identify these concerns and have a plan in place to tackle them.
