There are many challenges in caring for aging parents in your home. When my friend and her husband built their Central Pennsylvania home high on the hill, they designed living spaces to accommodate aging parents. Both had grown up with a grandparent living in the home and wanted to provide the same compassionate care for their parents. They built extra bedrooms and wider doors to allow wheelchairs to pass through. One, then two, then three parents died without needing help in their later years. But when my friend’s mother turned 98, a visit to a nursing home was required. My friend shared that when they brought her mother to their house after a week in a nursing home, her eyes sparkled, and she sighed with pleasure.
Even though my friend was more prepared to be a caregiver than most adults, she faced many challenges. I talked to several adult caregivers about the struggles of caring for aging parents.
Isolation
Whether the parents move into your home or you move into theirs, adults living with aging parents can be a lonely endeavor.
-Many caregivers retire from a socially active career to stay home and care for older parents. Changing from constant socialization within a workplace community to talking with one person creates isolation and loneliness.
-The behavior of older parents may be vastly different than what family, friends, and neighbors once knew. Visitors may be few if aging parents with Alzheimer’s or dementia become mean toward others or no longer recognize their long-time friends. You may need to help visitors understand the change and encourage them to stop by regardless of how welcome they feel. Older adults have good days and bad days. Help visitors understand that today’s visit may not have been a good day, but tomorrow’s could be better.
-Utilize Zoom, Hangout, or Google Meet to talk and see people face to face. Older adults and caregivers need face-to-face contact to feel recognized and remembered. Because caregivers cannot easily leave home or their parents unattended, person-to-person visits can still occur using the video call technology available on most computers and phones.
Sharing Your Space
When older parents can navigate the home independently, the caregiver must determine how to use space and resources in the home, when to share, and when to restrict use.
Establish areas of the house for the aging parent. Do they need a visitor’s area or a TV room? Can you provide tables or workspace for projects like painting or jigsaw puzzles? Does the parent need designated shelves in cabinets or refrigerator space?
One friend told me her mother took over the kitchen. Conversations may be needed to establish boundaries and plan shared and separate living areas.
Safety
Keep medicines in pill cases with weekday labels.
Eliminate clutter and remove throw rugs that can cause older people to fall. Many adult caregivers babysit grandchildren. Teach small children to pick up toys and keep objects out of the path of an older adult.
Keep a life alert button within reach.
Installs handrails on porches, stairs, bathtubs, and showers. Purchase a shower chair.
In-Home Workers – Hired Staff
When having hired workers come and go in your home, whether nursing care, respite, daycare, or hospice workers, remember that you are inviting people you don’t know into your home. If home healthcare workers are a regular part of your arrangement, take precautions to protect your home.
-Install cameras in every room that will be accessible to workers. Show the workers where the cameras are located to avoid legal and privacy issues.
-Put locks on doors to rooms that are not required for worker use.
-Take an inventory of the contents of your home. A walk-through video takes a small amount of time and provides a visual inventory.
-Research agencies to be sure they are bonded and licensed. Ask the agency what steps they take in doing background checks on their workers.
-Keep a daily journal in a central location. Ask each worker to record relevant medical information, such as what medicines were administered and when the parent ate and slept. This will reduce confusion about medications and help you know the parent’s needs.
Let go
Let go of the perfectly clean house. You have more important things to do.
Recompensation
Before taking on the role of caregiver in your home, discuss the responsibilities needed with a lawyer and family members. Many adults volunteer for the caregiving role without asking for compensation. However, other family members need to understand the extent of this new role and may be willing to compensate the sibling for giving full-time care. I talked to a former caregiver who was given her parent’s house in exchange for four years of caregiving. Fair compensation does not mean other family members have no responsibility to help with caregiving. It simply addresses the costs of time, stressful living situations, and daily expenses of caring for the parent.
Understand how caregiving will impact you
Because caring for an aging parent is similar to caring for a small child, spouses sometimes feel neglected. Often, one spouse must attend places alone that once was done as a couple. For example, if only one partner can attend church, they may feel more like a single person than part of a couple. Sometimes, a partner feels their spouse cares more about the parent than their husband or wife. Have conversations with partners to help them understand these feelings and find ways to meet needs that get lost in the busyness of caregiving.
After living with an aging parent for a long time, an adult caregiver may find it difficult to leave the house. After the season of caregiving has passed, it can be a challenge, even for formerly social people, to move back into social settings. This could require forcing yourself to get back into the world.
One caregiver shared her struggles to overcome childhood anger issues when her parent moved into the home. Many of the struggles, such as giving critical advice that was part of her childhood, resumed when her parent moved in. Adult caregivers may need to seek counsel on overcoming the frustrations of living with an imperfect parent.
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