Most adult children fail to see the signs until something drastic happens. A fall, a pot burns on the stove, bills go unopened on the kitchen counter and when someone finally goes over to check in, it’s too late. The conversation surrounding home assistance is much more difficult than it ever needed to be.
This is because parents are excellent at hiding their difficulties. After all, they’ve spent decades running the household in a very competent manner and now, asking for help is basically admitting defeat when it comes to independence. So they adjust, they make excuses, they deny what’s going on, and their children, visiting every so often for an afternoon and seeing a relatively clean house, decide everything is okay.
Everything may be OKAY when it comes to being independent, but it doesn’t mean that someone is getting by at a low level with adequate resources that makes it appear everything is fine. But it’s not, it’s just perceived that way. It’s important to know the difference before something drastic happens.
What Signs Actually Matter
It’s not an incident that should bring home assistance to mind, it’s an accumulation of daily shifts that happen gradually.
For example, when it comes to personal hygiene. Someone who regularly bathed suddenly goes days without bathing or weeks with wearing the same clothes, something is wrong. It’s either too painful to get in and out of the shower anymore or they’re forgetting they’re not changing. Either way, this constitutes concern.
A check of the refrigerator and pantry is a good way to assess food quality, it’s important to note, too, that there’s more than just condiments in there. A person’s public eating habits may still exist but when someone can go an entire week without eating a vegetable or eating in general, red flags should go up. Weight loss occurs extremely fast. When someone stops cooking all together it’s because they can’t with memory or energy.
Then the state of one’s home. It’s either clean or dirty but are they maintaining it properly? Are they mowing their lawn? Getting mail? Addressing minor repairs? If the answer is no, it usually means that they have neither the time nor energy nor concern left.
Are Tasks Becoming Tasks?
Most seniors can do one task at a time, but once multiple tasks come together it becomes overwhelming.
For example, medication management isn’t difficult unless you have six different prescriptions which you forget about or must double up on because you forget if you’ve taken your morning prescription. People assume pill organizers help but those people must remember to fill them AND use what’s inside.
Many people also assume that physical decline is obvious. A parent may still walk around their house, but are they hanging onto furniture? Are they avoiding stairs? Are they taking a dangerous amount of time getting up from their chairs? It’s important to note these changes when they’ve never existed before since they’ll continue to worsen.
The bathroom is also off-limits for discussion, but when laundry piles up, small awkward scents exist and avoidance for long periods of time around the house take place, it’s clear that something’s not right. And seniors are often too embarrassed to talk about bathroom problems so if you notice them elsewhere, realize this might be an issue.
The Finance and Bills Red Flag
Money management goes out of the window long before other things and most of it doesn’t have to do with ability to remember.
If nothing’s getting opened, bills aren’t getting paid, there’s overdue late notices in the pile, confusion sets in about duplicate purchases; something’s gone wrong. No Philadelphia home care agency will enter into someone’s home as a new client without one of the first indications being disorganization of finances, even when other components run smoothly.
Sometimes it’s not an age-related issue. For example, arthritis makes opening envelopes painful. Vision makes reading bills difficult. Depression makes it an uphill battle to work on anything financial. Either way, it’s critical that if symptoms present themselves in other ways, they’re less important than a pattern forming.
Be on guard for strange purchases as well as scams. Scammers like vulnerable populations and vulnerable populations with poor judgment can be signed up for significant losses before it’s too late. Changes in credit cards, new “donations” to organizations they’ve never mentioned before – or new friends bringing up that they need money, all indicate something that needs immediate attention.
The Social Isolation Pattern
When people cancel plans they’ve made for years or stop responding to friendships, something’s changed.
Whether that’s new anxiety about driving and now avoiding going places or whether they’re embarrassed about their inadequacies so they don’t want others to see them OR depression has set in; it doesn’t matter in the present moment, what matters is that NO change has occurred, especially for someone who’s social.
Listen, instead of offering advice, all along the way. Inquire more about what’s going on if you notice cognitive decline during phone calls. Are they repeating themselves more? Are they losing focus? Jumping around? Cognitive decline occurs before it’s even visually obvious – in conversation it’s clear first.
Note struggles with technology, a great way for seniors to cut off communication. Where someone used to be tech-savvy, though declining, may be refusing to use their devices anymore because they can’t keep up with their phones or find their emails confusing. This isn’t part of getting older, which happens, but cognitive decline which makes everyday challenges even more challenging.
What Happens When You Wait Too Long?
The price of waiting isn’t just money, it’s senior health and safety destruction as well. Emergency intervention after a major event will come at a higher price than scheduled home assistance.
When seniors stay home too long it creates decline which includes additional stressors on top of what happened in the first place, a fall puts someone in the hospital which exacerbates skeletal decline which ultimately leads them back again for another fall-related issue as muscles and joints deteriorate in the meantime. Malnutrition complicates healing; medication errors create life-threatening situations that could have easily been avoided. The slippery slope is a fast ride down once it begins.
Caregivers feel exhausted trying to fill gaps while their lives try catching back up as adult children take medical leave from work attempting to manage a crisis that could have easily been prevented long before when signals were missed along the way because no one wanted to intervene early enough.
How To Have a Discussion Nobody Wants
Bringing up the need for assistance requires actual honesty, not tiptoeing around waiting for them to volunteer their need or assessment.
Miss the “I’m worried about you” opener, it sounds condescending and gets people defensive. Instead, mention what you’ve seen. “Hey – I see bills over there from last month; what’s going on? Why did you even tell me about this?” Instead of generalized concerns, target specific responses, that are harder to deflect than just concerns.
Recognize they’re going to resist. Nobody wants to admit defeat based on shortcomings and providing help as an extension of maintaining independence not giving-up will avoid personalizing issues through negatives. Help means they can still do everything else they want to do without interruption.
Provide alternatives, not ultimatums. Research what’s out there so you can provide part-time help or daily assistance or even more tremendous options, to have a practical discussion instead of just outlining negatives that come without solutions.
Moving Forward Without Parental Permission
Once safety becomes an immediate concern it’s up to adult children to make difficult decisions, without seeking parental help first.
Start small, from yard work, all the way to grocery delivery all the way down to medication management; slowly-but-surely these little adjustments may upgrade someone’s level of satisfaction when critical need assessments otherwise turn into monumental decisions down the road.
It’s not about taking over someone’s life, it’ll become clearer than ever assumed, and even easier when safety becomes an option once it’s no longer available without help. Most seniors realize this once they’ve had appropriate help assigned, but it took someone else recognizing first, and pushing them into it, which isn’t easy but necessary until help gets rendered – and improves lives beyond measure when help gets rendered efficiently early enough! But that someone pushing them is usually you!
