What Doesn't Work with Loved Ones when Seeking Nursing or a Nursing Home or Assisted Living Care Center

Everyone has parents and in-laws and potentially friends and siblings that are older and it may come down to the case where you are the one that has to advise them about their choices and help them set up aids situations and even move them to a nursing home or assisted living care center. What you say and do to help your senior loved one can make the difference between their acceptance or rejection and ultimate happiness with their situation.

Early in my marriage, I got worried about what people wanted in terms of care because one day I got a call at work from my husband saying he was in terrible pain. I told him to call 9-11 but he refused. So I made the trip home and took him to the hospital and stayed with him through his appendicitis surgery. But the success of the whole situation could have been different. So I asked him and my parents (who wanted me to be their executor) what they preferred when the situation about nursing home care arrived. I hoped to make the situation easier by preparing ahead for what could happen. My husband was able to discuss a living will and power of attorney when we wrote up our wills, but any discussion of burial has been entirely off topic. Illness and death is a sensitive subject to talk about, here's some tips about what doesn't work when discussing the subject of nursing homes and senior care.

What Doesn't Work with Your Senior Loved One re: Living Wills, Power of Attorney and Care Choices

Asking your loved one to tell you their preferences for nursing home care early often doesn't work. Your senior loved ones resent the idea of death arriving on their doorstep and that grows as the checklist items-weakness, diseases that won't heal, bone breakage, etc, grows. Some loved ones are willing to fill out a living will and sign a medical power of attorney, many will resist doing so and you will have to wait and do it when a major illness occurs.

My advice: choose a suitable time i.e. when writing a will and get an attorney's assistance early.

What Doesn't Work with Your Senior Loved One Re:Competence About Daily Skills

It doesn't work to tell a loved one that they are incompetent to manage their own affairs, health care, money, driving, cooking, etc. This is often a job that a doctor and maybe even a lawyer must do. To get a doctor's help means explaining to the doctor what you have observed while your loved one is in the room and asking the doctor's opinion. Going to the doctor with your loved one improves their treatment if you are able to explain what is happening. Any attempt to hide the discussion will seem like a betrayal.

My advice: Discuss openly any observations you have about a loved one. Allow one sibling to deal with a parent and aid them.

What Doesn't Work When Discussing Nursing, Nursing Home and Assisted Living Care Options with Your Senior Loved One

When eventually your loved ones daily life situation devolves to where you can't perform all the tasks needed to keep them fed, housed, secure, and loved, you will have to discuss their options.

The explanations and arguments that don't work with your loved ones when moving them to a nursing home, assisted living center or when taking on responsibilities for them are any points you want to make about the security of their money, improvements to their life that they don't want and difficulties that you have-these things all send the wrong message i.e. that your concerns are more important to you than they are.

My advice: state all arguments factually and in terms of their benefits but don't avoid a decision that has to be made.

You may learn many of these same lessons out of desire to organize your life. You may end up feeling callous even when love motivates you. You may end up being the "bad cop" in a good cop, bad cop scenario with one of your siblings because that is what it takes to get the proper care for your senior loved one. It's a hard time in life with no easy choices but it has to be done to ensure your loved one gets the help they need.

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