When Your Elderly Parents Resist Efforts To Help Them: 8 Ways To Strengthen Your Position
Posted on: 24 August 2017
If you're watching your elderly parent(s) deteriorate in mind or body and worrying about it constantly, your hands may be tied if they resist your efforts to lend them a hand in life. This can be an excruciatingly difficult situation to be in, but you do have options that can strengthen your position and enable you to help them out more.
1. Seek Professional Guidance
Especially if you feel your elderly mom or dad may be in some kind of danger as a result of their refusing help, talk to a professional about senior services right away. Although every elderly person has rights, including the right to be left alone in most cases, if there's a chance they're going to be harmed in some way, your best bet is to seek the experienced and knowledgeable opinions of professional care-givers and physicians.
2. Create A Prioritized List Of Your Concerns And Document Any Incidents
In the event that you're eventually put in charge of making decisions for an elderly loved one, it would help if you had documented evidence of the potentially harmful events that have been happening in their lives. For example, if your mom or dad is refusing to use a walker and they've fallen, keep a record of it; if they've lost a considerable amount of weight due to poor eating or had to be treated after failing to take prescribed medicine, this data will help you help a senior service agency formulate a safe and caring plan of action. Prioritize the list and make sure the concerns mentioned are directly related to the actual health and well being of the elderly person, not your over protectiveness or generalized anxiety about someone you love getting older.
3. Help In Any Way You Can On Your Own
Although it may feel burdensome, if you're the only one your mom or dad has coming over and looking after them, keep doing that. Start adding visits to your schedule like you would a business meeting, so you always make time to see them, but make sure you have some way to relieve the stress you're under, such as going to yoga following trips to see your mom or dad. Also, it's important that you have someone else to talk to about the load you're carrying and how it depletes you emotionally. If there's a financial or other miscellaneous burden involved, seek specific advice on finding a local agency that can help you.
4. Try Introducing Someone From A Senior Service Agency To Your Elderly Loved One
You could interview staff from a senior healthcare service agency, with the sole intention of finding a person you think your mom or dad may warm up to. For example, someone with a sense of humor, from a particular background or hometown or other having some other characteristic your elderly friend would relate to may open the door to future visits of a more in-depth nature. The agency might have a staff member accompany you on a visit, just to see how everyone would get along. If you're really concerned about the situation, it's at least worth a shot to try to find someone who'd be a great fit.
5. Solicit The Support Of Family, Friends, And Neighbors
Not only is a support system of value to you and your elderly loved one, but it can help you in monitoring the situation for them at home and possibly increase the number of helping hands available, in addition to what you're tirelessly doing.
6. Ask Your Elderly Loved One To Set Goals With You
Even if you're the only one your elderly mom or dad will allow to help, it's still important that they look forward to some upcoming events and maintain an individualized goal plan. This is similar to what would happen if they were under the care of a senior service agency, where a customized goal plan would be created to keep life moving in the right direction. A few areas you might wish to cover in your goal plan include:
- Adhering to a healthy diet.
- Keeping up with regular exercise.
- Dining out or shopping weekly, if there are no physical obstacles to meandering around town.
- Satisfying doctor's orders for medicine and other therapies.
- Staying in touch with other people.
- Using talents, such as art, music, cooking, etc. to enrich life and share it with others.
7. Don't Stop Asking For Your Elderly Loved One's Opinions
It doesn't matter that you always get the same answers to the questions about living and care arrangements, such as "I want to be left alone." or "I don't want any nursing care." It does matter that you keep asking, though, and keep suggesting healthier and more practical alternatives. Especially following any incident of concern, like a skipped meal or meds, constantly reminding your mom or dad that there is help and an alternative to precariously living alone should eventually sink in. While they may not want to fully "surrender" to a nursing home, they may eventually be willing to accept some help, perhaps in order to avoid having to move into a facility.
8. Ultimately, Accept That Your Mom Or Dad Is A Responsible Adult
If you have done everything in your power to help the elderly person in question get everything they need to be safe, healthy and happy, yet they still resist, you'll need to accept their decision. While you can keep up with your well-intended nagging, as well as check up on them as needed, try not to bear too much of the burden of their choices. Ultimately, they're adults and in charge of their own destiny, no matter how much that may cause you worry.
With persistence, professional advice and a whole lot of caring, your elderly loved one should eventually come around to your proactive, protective position. Just make sure you take good care of yourself in the meantime, too.
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