As parents grow older, the mental and physical decline is an unavoidable fact of life. Usually, adult children are faced with the responsibility of caring for their senior parents.
Before this transition happens, it is vital to consider everything that is involved. Talking with the parties involved can help prepare every individual for what is coming.
Taking good care of your elderly parents should include protecting their mental, physical, and emotional health, as well as considering options such as independent living facilities or full time nursing care. To help you care for your senior parents, here are easy and healthy ways to look at:
- Consider Ready-Made and Easy Meal Services
The nutritional requirements of the elderly are exceptionally vital, particularly if they are fighting off diseases. Most elderly parents are also at risk of malnutrition because of anxiety, lack of appetite, and depression.
Making every meal and shopping for food involves a lot of work, so it would be best to make the most out of affordable, easy, and tasty meal services within your area. This also means you need to stock your kitchen with all the ready-made meals to ensure your parents meet their nutritional requirements every day and don’t skip meals.
- Get Helpers
Caregiving is a big responsibility, and it can get harder as your parents grow older. Waiting until crises happen can make it challenging to determine what exactly is required, who is great at providing it, and how frequently.
Apart from getting the whole immediate family involved, it can also be necessary to enlist the help of assisted living center or nursing home with all the PBJ reporting requirements. If the needs of your parents are also challenging and extensive, you can also consider hiring a professional geriatric care manager who may put together a good care plan for you.
- Be Keen with Prescription Medicines
At times, your elderly parents living independently may have to live under supervision because of poor medication management. This is because they see different medical doctors but take prescription pills from one pharmacist who might be untrustworthy.
Every time your parents get these pills, it would be important to ensure that the prescribed medicines don’t have side effects and cannot interact with other medications.
- Stay Connected
Several families usually schedule conference calls with doctors to get up-to-date details regarding the health of their parents.
Emails and phone calls are an easy method to reach out, and they might go a long way towards keeping relationships strong.
- Encourage Exercise
Moving regularly can help keep your parents’ muscles in good shape, their spirits high, and joints lubricated. Beginning exercise programs can be a difficult proposition, but you can help them stay active with creativity.
To achieve this, you can run errands together and look for activities your elderly parents can enjoy. If you realize they enjoy riding stationary bikes or water aerobics, it could be a lot easier to make them happy and stick to the exercise program.
The Bottom Line!
Caring for seniors can be challenging, particularly when it is your dad or mom. Usually, most of the caring responsibilities for senior parents tend to fall on relatives or adult children, which might be very demanding if they lack support and resources to care for their aging parents properly. The more aware you are of how aging may affect them, the better for everyone involved.
Infographic Provided by Assisted Living Staffing Services, Polaris Group