How Should You Approach Your Senior about Needing Extra Care?
June 30, 2021
You might know for sure that your elderly family member needs some extra help but convincing her of that fact might feel impossible. These ideas can help, especially if you’ve tried to talk about help from senior care providers before and it didn’t go well.
Look at What She Needs in Terms of Extra Care
Sit down and start making a list about what you’re noticing in terms of your senior’s needs. Try to predict what else she might need, based on what you know about her health and concerns. Look also at what senior care can do for your elderly family member so that you’re familiar enough with the services available that you can offer rebuttals to your senior.
Talk to Your Senior about What You’re Seeing
Set up a time to talk with your elderly family member in a calm and loving way. This is going to be a lot easier if you’re both in a good place emotionally and mentally. Try to avoid surprising your senior with this conversation if at all possible. The last thing that you want her to feel is that you’ve tried to back her into a corner. That doesn’t help either of you very much.
Make Sure You’re Listening to What She’s Saying
You want to feel as if your senior is truly hearing you and taking what you have to say to heart. But the same is true from her side of things. If she’s truly against having help from senior care providers, it helps if you’re listening to what she’s saying and why she’s saying it. Don’t just dismiss what she’s saying because you don’t like it. In fact, that’s exactly what you don’t want her to do, too.
Work out a Plan for Putting Senior Care in Place
It’s possible that you both might have to make some compromises here. Work together for putting a plan together that allows your senior to have some help from senior care providers, even if it’s not as much help as you wanted her to have. Even a little bit of help can likely do a lot more for your senior than she might have thought was possible.
Not every aging adult is excited about having some extra help, sometimes even from the people that they love. Don’t give up on the quest and don’t try to make this a huge battle with your senior. It’s a lot better to make slow and steady progress.
If you or your loved one is looking for Senior Care in Santa Cruz, CA, please call Familiar Surroundings Home Care.
Santa Clara County: (408) 979-9990
San Mateo County: (650) 353-9777
Santa Cruz County: (831) 480-3990