Tips To Help You Care For Aging Parents At Home

photo via

If you've made the decision to care for your elderly parents at home, then you'll know what a big deal it can be. You may feel as though you want to make them feel comfortable but at the end of the day, you also want to make sure that you are looking after yourself as well. I asked a good friend of mine who is currently caring for her parents to share some tips on caring for aging parents without compromising your own mental health.

Understand the Level of Care that is Required
The first thing that you'll need to do is figure out how much care your adult parents require. Create a list of tasks that need to be done daily, weekly, and monthly. After you've done this, you can then figure out how much care they need and you can also figure out whether you are able to give this amount of time. If you want to make things easier on yourself, write down every time your parent asks you to do something. After a couple of weeks, you have a good idea of what they need help with and the time of day they need it at as well.

Be Realistic
Now that you know what kind of care your parent needs, you can figure out if you are able to provide this level of care by yourself or if you'll need help. If you feel as though things are going to be overwhelming, it may be worth you looking into some kind of care home at this point. But there are a lot of factors to consider if you considering a convalescent home. If you are concerned about nursing home abuse, you should know that there are so many lawyers out there who are protecting the rights of nursing home abuse victims, so you can easily get the support you need with that.

Get Some Help
If you feel as though caregiving takes too much time and effort, then you should know that it is an investment and that everything will pay off in the future. Finding help will take a great deal of time, effort, patience, and creative thinking. It will be worth it though when you can decrease your workload and stress while knowing your parent is well cared for. If you want to get help, then you can enroll your parent in an adult daycare plan, or you can hire a home caregiving professional. You can even look into respite care if you feel as though you need a longer break.

Of course, if you aren’t sure if you are going to be able to give your parent the care that they need from home, then you should not feel any guilt in this. Home caring is not for everyone, and if you are unsure as to whether or not you can handle the responsibility then there are other services out there that can help you. When you go through them, they can then give you the help that you need.

Thank you to my dear friend for offering expertise based on her own experiences.