Eldercare Tips - Ways to Ease Caring for Your Elderly or Disabled Parents

Caring for elderly parents is a fact of life in many households. It doesn't have to be a burden. In fact, enjoying their presence and giving care should be a positive experience. Here are some ways to make it easier on your family while enhancing your elderly parents' quality of life.

Take time for yourself.

Get a relative to help out or hire an adult sitter if you must. Becoming burned out or irritable over having to be on guard 24/7 is worse for everyone.

Encourage social activity outside the family

Churches, senior centers, and yes, even bingo are places where your aging parent can continue to make friends and socialize.

Adult day care services could have many benefits.

In addition to giving you a break or continuing to allow you to work fulltime, adult day services allow for socialization and attention from medical personnel. Medicaid waiver programs can often provide funding as these centers are nearly always preferred to long term care (nursing homes) for their cost and separation from family.

Your parent may qualify for visiting attendants.

The Visiting Nurse's Association is the most well known example, but if all that's needed is someone to check in to make sure lunch was eaten and meds were taken, home care aides are available too. Look up adult home care agency for your city and you'll find many options.

Communicate with their physicians.

You elderly parent might not remember new symptoms or to keep tabs on chronic conditions. Be observant of their health and consult with their physicians at all checkups.

Keep copies of their insurance information and current prescriptions.

Emergency situations might require you to know these things. Keep copies on hand wherever you keep the family's medical records.

Set ground rules around the house if your parent lives with you.

It can be difficult for a parent to adjust to the child being the head of the household, or even living with other people again. One area of frequent friction is television volume, such as when the parent needs the TV turned loud but insists they don't need a hearing aid. Put speakers next to their chair or try headphones made for television listening. If the problem is the opposite and your family's TV time is disturbing to their rest speakers can be helpful as well.

Encourage activities other than television (a frequent retreat).

Reading, puzzles and hobbies keep the mind active and in better shape. My mother loved art since she was a child and sketched until her last day of life. Being an artist was a part of her identity that over 20 years of MS, with it's tremors and nerve pain, couldn't take away. Keeping that interest as her illness progressed enhanced her life.

Also encourage a healthier diet with better foods, but don't outlaw all unhealthy favorites.

A special diet is often required, but comfort foods are a small pleasure that shouldn't be taken away in old age.

If they qualify for Medicare work with them to make sure they're getting the right plan.

As well as supplemental insurance at an affordable price. Look around for ways to bring the cost of prescriptions down (drug companies are sometimes give prescriptions for free), and general discounts that could apply to them as well.

Look into what kind of public transportation is available for qualifying disabled people.

If your parent is in good enough health to be out and about, many major cities have a service just for transporting disabled people. A specially equipped van will pick up and drop off at the requested points as long as they are within the service area. A common name for this service is "paratransit" and it's usually offered by your mass transit provider. Some smaller towns or cities will offer this while lacking basic bus service. Looking at the municipal homepage under "city services" is a good place to start.

Talk to them and let them talk.

Even if it's a struggle to understand their speech, sometimes our loved ones just need to have a chat to feel that we care about them.