Category: Tips

Managing and talking about money can be difficult for people of any age, but as parents get older, many adult children start to take a more active role in their parents’ finances. This can be a stressful process, but also can help ensure that both child and parent feel more financially secure. Here are five tips for helping with financial management for an aging parent.

As we age, there are many things that can impact our nutrition. Dementia or cognitive decline can result in struggling to recognize feelings of hunger, as well as make cooking less safe. Medications come with many side effects—nausea and lack of appetite are two of the most common. While our aging family members may need fewer calories as they become less active, eating enough (and well enough) is an important key to staying healthy. It can also be a great way for our aging loved ones to maintain some independence, even if they need assistance with some aspects of preparing food. Here are some tips on maintaining good nutrition for seniors.

Juggling the medical needs of yourself, your immediate family members, and your senior loved one can be difficult. On top of this, you cannot always trust your senior loved one to take medications reliably, on time, or even as prescribed. Because of this, it’s sometimes in the best interest of everyone involved for you to partake in the administration of medications for your elderly loved one. Remembering to take your own medications as well as your senior’s can be difficult. We have some tips to help you stay on top of medication management for your elder.

As our parents age and we begin thinking about things like assisted living, dementia, and other elements of aging, many of us are also raising children. Often children can cope with major life changes more easily than we expect—and in many cases, the reactions of adults in their lives can be the hardest thing for them to deal with. At the same time, changes to a beloved grandparent’s attitude, memory, and personality can be difficult for a child to comprehend. We’ve put together three tips for talking to your child about dementia and helping them adapt to the changes it may bring.

Caregiving is an important role in many of our lives, but it can be emotionally and physically exhausting. It can also take up every moment of “free time.” When we are caring for a loved one, the idea of taking time away from those duties can feel selfish.  The fact is, you probably can’t be as good of a caretaker if you never let yourself have a break. Check out these tips for helping to take care of yourself as well as your loved ones.

Earlier this year, we started a short series of posts about having difficult conversations with your aging loved ones. In the first post, we discussed how to prepare for potentially stressful conversations. In the second post, we moved on to the day of your difficult discussion, with ideas of how to start and end the conversation with minimal stress. However, when talking about stressful topics like health, aging, or finances, conflict is sometimes inevitable. In our final post in this series, we’ll offer some suggestions for how to respond to conflict when it arises. Resolving Conflict With the STATE Method The book Crucial Conversations outlines the STATE method, as a way of working through conflict outside of being “right” or “wrong”. Check out this article for a more in-depth examination of the book and the STATE Method. Share Your Facts, THEN Tell Your Story The STATE Method separates out the facts from your interpretation of them. When conflict arises, taking a moment to identifying the facts of the situation ensures that you can separate your emotions and opinions from specific events. After that, you can share your “story”: how you interpreted the facts and how they made or are making you feel. Ask Another To Share After you have explained the facts, emotions, and impacts that you experienced, ask your parent to share their own facts and story. If emotions are very high, you may both wish to start by writing these pieces down, and then you can swap, read,…

In this blog post series, we are exploring the process of discussing difficult topics with our aging loved ones. Topics like money, health, and life changes can be stressful, but communication is vital. In our previous blog post, we identified ways that you can prepare for a difficult conversation.  Once you have prepared, it’s time for the talk. While in many cases, the actual conversation may be much less stressful than you feared, you may find that you—and your parent—respond in ways that you weren’t expecting.

It can be difficult to discuss topics like money and finances, especially with seniors and aging parents. As children, your parents are the ones that take care of you. They cover finances and any emotional stresses kids go through. But as they age, the roles reverse. The tricky part comes when your aging parents are not aware of this role reversal. Often, they still want to take care of you and don’t think they need help with their money. While this conversation can be hard, it’s important. Even though we don’t like to think about a time when our beloved seniors can’t be with us, you will be thankful you prepared for these changes ahead of time. This way, when the time comes, you can focus on grieving instead of stressing about finances and money.

It gets more and more difficult as we get older to keep up with a healthy exercise routine. Not only is it harder to find the time, but for some older adults it is physically impossible. Their bodies do not move the way they used to, and things that used to feel good are now painful. The trouble is that keeping an active body is crucial to maintaining a high quality of life. As Life Goes On has compiled this list of easy exercise routines for seniors to help keep your loved ones active and healthy. Of course, we always recommend checking with their physician or medical practitioner before undertaking any exercise. Once they get the all clear, try helping them to implement these into their routine!

Moving from your own home to an assisted living facility can be a daunting task. In many ways it can be emotionally and physically exhausting for seniors downsizing from their home. As caregivers and people who care about those moving, we want to help them in this difficult transition as graciously as possible. We have some downsizing tips for seniors from As Life Goes On Elder Care to ease the move and keep everyone healthy and happy.