How to care for your aging parents?

How to care for your aging parents? There’s so much that goes into answering that question of how to care for your parents as they grow older.

The reason being that, like anything, every person and every situation is uniquely different.

There are so many different factors that go into answering that particular question for your specific situation.

So, I’m going to do my best to give you the information that you need so you can modify it to your particular situation and your particular family and elderly parents. Because if you’re searching for the answer to this, then you obviously are looking for help.

First, I want to say congratulations to you for taking on the responsibility of caring for your aging parents.

Even if you’re considering it. It’s not an easy task for anyone — even harder if you have a rocky relationship with your parents.

Let’s get to the topics on hand to answer the question. I’m going to go over several areas, which are:

1) get all the legal stuff,

2) Financial issues,

3) Housing issues,

4) Home modifications,

5) Caretaking

6) Transportation issues.

Let’s start one by one issue.

1) Get all the legal stuff out of the way.

I know that among my friends and family, this is something that is most often ignored. Reason being that it’s not an easy task to talk about end-of-life stuff with anyone, especially your parents, even if they’ll listen.

But having lived through the deaths of my father-in-law, both my parents, and my husband, I can tell you that the aftermath is made much, much worse if these issues are not taken care of.

So, I urge you to take them seriously and utilize them. Okay, the truth is when dealing with the legal stuff, your parents don’t necessarily have to pass away for you to deal with the legal stuff.

They could have suffered a severe stroke, suffer from dementia or Alzheimer’s, or for whatever reason, become incapacitated.

Any of those reasons would force you to have to begin taking care of all the paperwork and all the legalese and everything that comes after, to take care of someone’s life.

It’s more than you think. It’s not just a few pieces of paper or a couple of hours of work. I’ve been there, so don’t make the same mistake that I did and ignore it.

So, I say, “pull up your big-girl pants or your big-boy pants and sit down with your parents and go over this information even if you have to tie them down to a chair to talk to them about it.”

Okay, so what is all the legal stuff?

All right, but to give you the list — it includes a durable medical power of attorney, also known as a health proxy, also known as an advanced medical directive, also known as a living will.

Bank account information, stocks, bonds, and brokerage information, insurance policies, veterans discharge papers, death certificate of the spouse if that’s applicable, divorce decrees, citizenship documents, pension benefits, annuity names, contact information, debt documentation, including details for credit cards, loans, purchase contracts, rental agreements, and vehicle titles.

Now, along with this list of legal documents and items that you need to be able to get your hands-on, I would recommend the following.

These aren’t legal needs, what I’m going to be saying, but they can impact the list of legal stuff that I just listed.

The names and phone numbers of attorneys, financial planners, accountants, etc. that your parents use.

The names and phone numbers of their physicians, the drugstore or pharmacy where they get their prescriptions, any subscriptions that they are getting like newsletters, magazines, etc.

The names and numbers of any services that they’re currently using, like the company that comes in to check their HVAC, the lawn service company, the pest control company.

The names and numbers of any clubs and organizations that they go to or volunteer at.

You want this secondary list because if your elderly parent becomes incapacitated or passes away, you will need to contact these institutions and the people to advise them.

It could be as simple as, you know, needing to cancel an appointment at the doctor’s office, at the dentist’s office, closing down monthly services, stopping prescriptions that get automatically renewed.

It’s a significant list, and when you’re grieving the loss of your elderly parent, a lot of these things that seem like common sense that you would think of — believe me, they go right out of your head.

So, get it done, put it in a safe place, and you can thank me later for it. But I know it’s not easy to gather and to talk to your parents about it.

2) financial issues.

How to take care of an elderly parent includes being aware of what is happening in their lives and then being able to jump in and take over from them if and when they can no longer do it.

And that’s really what I’m talking about here with the legal issues and the financial issues.

There are many products and services that can help the process of aging to be a lot easier and safer, but the truth is that not everyone can afford them.

I don’t even know that most people can afford them. Knowing what your parents can and cannot afford will help you and your family to decide what can and should be done as they grow older and older.

If you discover that your parents have savings, that’s great. The game plan then is to figure out how to extend those savings to cover the remainder of their lives.

If instead, you discover that your parents have little to no savings or are in a lot of debt, or both, then the game plan completely changes to reducing living expenses, reducing or removing the debt, and figuring out how to move forward with this limited amount of money.

This may entail selling their home, selling their stuff, moving to a rental instead of purchasing something else.

3)Housing issues.

When taking care of an aging parent, you want to begin considering where they’re living.

What I mean is, yes, the kind of housing that they’re in, but also the kind of community that they’re in.

Are the services provided to them sufficiently? Is the house safe for them as they grow older?

Not only for them now, but how will it be a year from now? Two years from now, five years from now, and so forth?

Even sometimes walking into my friends’ homes, I just see so many issues that need to be addressed in order to make that particular living environment safer.

So, don’t get yourself to think that just because your parents have been living in their house for 50, 60 years, whatever that house is safe for them.

There are many things that need to be, that should be done, need to be done, yes, but again — not everyone can afford it.

So, I would recommend for you to contact an occupational therapist or a home safety specialist to come in and give you all the information that you need in order to make your house safer.

Are they having trouble deciding, or maybe they’re just having trouble getting rid of their stuff because they need to get rid of a lot of things in order to move to a smaller space?

My experience is that most people don’t move simply because they DO have trouble letting go of the things that they have, and also change is hard.

The older you get, the harder it is to make a change. Are you and your parents aware that there are so many other options also available for housing as you grow older?

Senior Cohousing, residential care homes, assisted living, continuing care communities, and nursing homes. So those are ten different types of options besides aging in place in your own home that your aging parents have.

4) Home Modifications

Unless your aging parents have been extremely proactive, there are going to be housing issues in their current living environment, so again, don’t kid yourself or try to convince yourself that there aren’t any, that the housing they are living in doesn’t need any home modifications, at all.

I don’t know anyone who hasn’t tackled that problem with their parents so I know it’s difficult, but again, make it a point to at least begin the conversation with your aging parents about this topic.

It’s extremely important, and it’s so much better to have all that information in place instead of having to make a decision at the last minute.

You make a much better decision when you have time to think about it and research, instead of just doing something at the last second or simply because you have no other choice.

But as they grow older, if their physical capabilities decline, cognitive capabilities decline, then all of that stuff may cause dangerous situations. They can trip over things. They can, as they fall, they may crash into something, and then that ‘something’ can fall on them, causing even more injury than if they had just fallen.

There are so many different scenarios of what could happen. My point is that the first step — the very first step in making any kind of home modification to make a house safer for age in place, is to begin removing some of that.

Whether your parents are going to be staying in their home and age in place or if they’re moving to a

A smaller home or perhaps moving in with someone, they’ll more than likely need to have some home modifications made to the environment that they’re going to be living in order to make it as safe as possible.

Again, not only for now but for the future. The home modifications could include many things, depending on their physical capabilities and cognitive capabilities.

So, it could be anything from widening doorways for wheelchair access, reconfiguring the kitchen to make it easier to reach items that they often use, changing the flooring to make it as non-slip as possible, adding lighting throughout the house.

Which by the way, is often something people don’t think about (adding more lighting)? but as you grow older, the brightness of things declines.

Installation of smart home features, installing monitoring products so that if you live far away or you can’t see your parents as often, you can have products that will monitor.

Or even fall detection products, the installation of automatic shutoff devices for ovens and stoves, constructing wheelchair ramps outside the house to get into the house and out.

Of course, modifying staircases if they live in a two-story house or a multi-level house, reconstructing the shower, the bathtub or purchasing products to make bathing and toileting easier, installing smoke alarms with strobe lights if they are losing their hearing.

Possibly purchasing new furniture to replace chairs or sofas that they can’t get up off of anymore.

Some other home modifications are adding bed rails or products to their bed if they’re falling out of bed or you suspect that they may and injure themselves.

Installing grab bars, not just in the bathroom but throughout the home.

And then removing throw rugs and decluttering living spaces. All of these encompass home modifications.

5) Care Taking

Taking care of your aging parents also includes caregiving, so if your parents are going to live long enough or will live long enough to require some type of caregiving

You should have a plan in place for what the caregiving is going to look like. Is it going to be you and your siblings? Are you going to divvy up the time?

You? Is it just you? Will you, are you the only one that’s going to be responsible? Are there funds to hire somebody? If so, for how long? And how are the daily tasks going to be taken care of?

If you’re working, if you’re trying to do caregiving, if you’re splitting it — who’s going to do what? Who’s going to do the house cleaning? The grocery shopping, the bill paying, the medication dispensing, going to the doctor’s, and so many other issues?

Unfortunately, if your parent needs to be toileted, who’s going to do all those things?

I’m not saying you have to have every single detail written down in a contract, but if you have siblings and you’re going to be sharing this, then I strongly suggest that you sit down, order a pizza, and talk about it.

Have a discussion to begin the idea of creating some type of plan before you’re forced to make decisions at the last minute.

Many family caregivers find it very difficult to care for their aging parents, so I urge you to use as many services available as possible. And today, fortunately, we have a ton of services thanks to the good economy.

Grocery shopping can be done through a resource like Instacart who can go and do the shopping for you and then deliver it to your parents’ home or, you know if you’re there with them.

Services like Blue Apron can deliver meals with fresh ingredients that can be prepared right in your home.

There are maid services, of course, that can come to clean your home.

Amazon pretty much delivers almost anything directly to your house.

Even Pill pack is an Amazon thing where they will deliver your medication in convenient packages.

My point here is that it’s excellent to consider what you will be able to pay for and what you will have done for you as a primary caregiver for your parent.

Because it’s going to be stressful enough caring for an elderly parent — especially if they’re combative if they’re fighting dementia or Alzheimer’s.

You’d be surprised how much your parent may change as far as their personality, and that isn’t easy to accept and work with daily.

So be kind to yourself as a caregiver and utilize the resources as much as possible.

But, all right, what if there are no other close family members? What if there are no immediate family members at all to aging parents and you have to be a caregiver from afar?

Ensure their safe environment by hiring a home safety specialist to come in and then give you the report. Even though you’re living far away, you can certainly do that.

You can call a care manager who can, you know, do all of these things for you and basically, be your advocate there for you.

Plan for emergencies, such as fires and natural disasters, you know, whatever it is that happens in the geography that your aging parent lives in.

Set travel funds aside for yourself, just if you have to take a short plane at the last minute to get to see your parent for any reason.

Get information on your aging parents’ local support, you know, what is available in their area. Consider taking caregiving classes.

There’s a lot of them — come online, some you can actually attend. And pre-plan any vacation trips. If you go away on vacation, you want always to be able to be in touch, and you want to be still able to grab a plane at the last minute to get to see your parent.

6) Transportation issues.

This includes your parents driving, as well as what kind of transportation they could possibly use if they can no longer go about elderly driving laws in your state.

The reason I say this is because many seniors will drive past the point of safety when they really should stop driving.

So, you want to know what are the laws in your particular state and how often they can be retested.

Sometimes you can use that as leverage to try to help get them to stop driving, which I know is extremely difficult.

It’s also widespread. Taking the car away from your aging parent is not going to be easy, but it has to be done at some point, and hopefully, they will work with you versus against you.

And hopefully, it’s not going to be done after an accident where they’ve gotten injured or, God forbid, injured someone else.

Okay, so having said that, there are products that we can recommend, or we recommend making driving a little easier and safer if your parents still are moving.

Things like car cane standing aides, seat belt buckle holders, leg lift straps, comfortable seat belt unbuckles, gas cap remover tools, and seat belt buckle guards.

Of course, nowadays the newer cars have a lot of safety features in them, but I don’t know many seniors who have these more recent cars.

If they do, if your parents do great!

That’s another bonus to the whole issue about driving.

But what if your parent isn’t driving anymore and they still need transportation services here and there to the book club, to church, to wherever they’re volunteering?

Luckily, as I said earlier, because of the good economy, we are so fortunate to have services like Uber and Lyft.

I know that my mom in law lives in a 55 plus community. She uses someone who lives in the community to drive her to some places, so it’s like her own private Uber driver.

And the reason I’m mentioning that I’m sure many 55-plus retirement communities have someone who is offering those services to people in his or her community.

Final Words

I guess my final point is that there is a lot out there for you, so if you’re starting to think about caring for your aging parents and you’re getting nervous about it, and you’re not quite sure where to go, what to look for, where to start, all of these issues are great places to start.