Caring for elderly parents is one of those responsibilities that most of us envision. We avoid thinking about our parents growing weaker or falling ill. Caring for aging parents is a highly demanding responsibility of your life.
Caring for older parents could mean rob you of your money, time and experiences of life. There are a lot of cases with personal sacrifices for taking care of old parents and that causes drift and bitterness along with the feeling of regret and frustration towards the people you love and have pledged to offer help. A huge financial cost and sacrifice are associated with caring for aging parents.
Sometimes the sadness or helplessness while aging parental care gets worse, leaving us with the unsettling transition. When the parents live longer, any assistance or help becomes the children’s responsibility. There are families where you need to have a discussion on who is going to take care of and responsibility of the aging parents in case of crisis. Most of the families, however, find themselves unprepared to handle a situation of increased dependency by their parents. With the more number of older adults has resulted in the increase of adult children caring for their parents.
How can you equip yourself to help your aging parents better and support them? Parental help goes beyond just grocery shopping, financial matter or driving them to the appointments. Care could be more like helping with dressing, feeding, bathing, and any other personal care which is even more stressful. But there are few aging parents’ tips that you must take care of in order to give better care and support to your parents.
1. Make a caregiving budget:
Before you think of making financial planning, think about the amount and consequences you would have to spend on caregiving. Make a list of your parent’s resources and companions and how they might be able to put them to use for support and caregiving activities. Addressing the sensitive topic of finances as early as possible is a must and evaluating on how to construct the unity among siblings is vital.
2. Think before you leave the job of caring for aging parent:
Although gaining time to be with your parents and giving them personal attention helps, but the loss of income from you quitting the job could be a huge sacrifice and damage to your retirement plans and savings. You must consider all the cases if you plan to leave work. The struggle in finding future jobs might be another problem you face along with the gap in your employment years. Understand if leaving or discontinuing your job is the only beneficial way out here. You must always think about the employer’s sabbatical leave policies or the family leaves policies and avail it if they exist instead of leaving the job. Perhaps, when you want, they take you back and allow you to keep your job.
3. Look and learn about Medicare and Medicaid:
Understand what type of Medicare coverage your parent has. Medicaid does cover nursing home stay but only for people who have used most of their assets qualifying for the paid nursing home benefits under Medicare. Check if they have a drug plan and Medigap or Medicare Advantage policies. What are the out-of-pocket limits and co-pays; check other financial aspect associated with the insurances.
4. Seek professional help:
Most of the caring for an aging parent’s checklist is pretty challenging and extensive. In such cases, you might want to hire professional care like a geriatric-care manager who could put the care plan for you and help you with identifying community resources to reduce your time and expense. Check the National Association of Professional Geriatric Care Managers who can help you with the procedure and services and locate the professionals nearby you.
5. Talk to them:
Sometimes, more than anything the elders seek only your time and company. It is important to understand what your parents want and make their lives easier by talking about legal power and help them with responsibilities to certain decisions for them. An essential conversation could get you uncomfortable but you must sort out the power of attorney, will and other related things. Find expert eldercare or attorney to help you and your parent with the proceedings. Getting it done is the right thing to do.
6. Understand how much care is needed:
It could be possible that you are unaware of the overall picture of your busy life. See how much care your parents really need and you must make a caring for an aging parent’s checklist first. Think about all the help they need during the day and night separately. Is it a constant thing and needs supervision? Make some quick notes on a notepad and keep jotting when you do a task. In some time, you must have a clear picture of the help your older adult needs and also which time of the day particularly.
7. Few additive ideas:
a. Ask your family members to schedule a regular visit and extend a helping hand. Not only the elders feel happy having people they love around but also helps you to manage the finances, errands, and claims, etc. along with personal care better.
b. Have your older adult enrolled to some adult day program that helps them to socialize and spend some quality time outside doing what they like? Relieves you as well for some time to rest.
c. You can always reach out to home-care services or senior companion program in your area.
d. One of the brilliant solutions is to automate as many things as possible to help you save time and energy and spend it more worthy.
e. Find out programs that help to pay for the caregiving expenses run by the government.
f. Find out the means to reduce the cost of prescription drugs.
Reduce your financial pressure such that the major burden of adult care could be eased and you can be pressure free or stress-free.
These are the very important tips for caring for the aging parents, however, if you have got some more, please feel free to share and comment below. Write to us what do you think works in caring for aging parents.
