Family Caregiving Strategies
Creating family caregiving strategies involves discussing the potential need to place a parent in a care home. Gain insights into the importance of creating family caregiving strategies by initiating essential eldercare discussions with aging loved ones about their wishes.
Is It Right to Put a Parent in a Care Home Against Their Wishes?
Family caregivers ask whether it’s right to put a parent in a care home against their wishes. The obvious answer is that it depends on whether family caregiving strategies were discussed prior to or at the time elderly parents began to need care.
There can be a time when caring for aging parents in their home becomes impractical because of high care needs or the physical, emotional, and financial toll on the caregiver. Some caregivers place their parents in assisted living, memory care, or a nursing home after a lot of thought, while others make the decision right away.
In either situation, sons, daughters, or spouses may feel guilty about placing a parent or spouse in a care home against their wishes. When considering family caregiving strategies for moving a parent into a care home, it’s important and practical to consider both sides of the issue. The caregiver’s perspective and the perspective of the elderly parent.
Few Older Adults Want to Move
Few elderly parents want to leave their homes for a care home if they can still manage their own care at home. One key consideration and question to ask specifically about family caregiving strategies is: Can your elderly parent live alone at home without or with minimal assistance?
While most people prefer not to think about retirement and dealing with health problems, changing health needs are a natural part of aging. If your parent wants to stay at home, a family caregiving strategy is necessary to support them in doing so.
Questions to create the strategy include:
- Do parents have the financial means to pay for in-home care and other supportive services to allow them to live in their home?
- What are parents willing to do to remain physically strong and independent? Physical strength is a significant contributor to self-care and the ability to complete activities of daily living. Are they attentive to health needs and concerns?
- Are there family members who can contribute personally or financially to the care of the parents?
- Have legal plans been made to appoint an agent or agents under a power of attorney?
Retirement Dreams Don’t Always Come True
Most people dream of retirement combined with enjoyable activities. While this happens for some, many lives are derailed by ongoing or unplanned health problems.
Therefore, regardless of age, taking action every day to maintain good health, physical strength, and emotional balance is necessary if one wants to continue living independently. If you are a family caregiver, how high on your elderly parent’s priority list is maintaining their physical health, staying active, and remaining mentally positive?
The ability and interest to maintain physical and emotional health are essential family caregiving strategies that should not be ignored or delayed.
Practicalities of Being a Caregiver
If your elderly parent or spouse has health issues that require increasing amounts of assistance, they may want you to be their caregiver. Ask yourself, how practical is this for you, considering the time commitment and effort required?
As the caregiver, is your health, marriage, career, family, and personal life suffering because of the time you devote to caring for a parent or spouse? Similar to aging adults, family caregivers must prioritize physical and mental health so that they can live independently when older and not be a burden to family
The Importance of Having a Caregiving Strategy
In the twenty-five years I’ve worked as a caregiving expert and advisor, not many of my clients have told me that they look forward to going to a care home when they can no longer care for themselves.
Considering the various options for care needs, creating a family caregiving strategy is an important step. Individuals who plan for aging and retirement can choose to become more educated about health, the costs of care, and saving or investing money to cover health needs.
Most parents who have been self-sufficient most of their lives do not want to be a burden on their spouse or children. If you are a caregiver or an older adult, how much thought have you given to your caregiving strategy?
On the other hand, some individuals don’t plan for aging and retirement. Instead, they live their lives for today, rarely considering that eventually health may change and bodies will age. People who don’t want to or fail to plan often expect their children or spouses to take on the role of their caregiver.
Caregiving Decisions: Is it Right to Put a Parent in a Care Home Against Their Wishes?
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Pamela’s YouTube ChannelFamily Expectations Around Caregiving
Family caregiving strategies highlight the differences between individuals who want and choose to live independent and self-sufficient lives, versus those who don’t plan and expect family members to care for them.
Differences in beliefs about family caregiving arise from where a person is born, the family they are born into, the roles of parent and child relationships, family culture, peers, and the people one spends the most time with, as well as education, work or career, and societal beliefs.
Regardless of your background, creating family caregiving strategies and planning for the future is a wise choice. If you haven’t begun creating a family caregiving strategy for yourself or an elderly parent, begin these discussions today.
Caregiver Guilt About Moving a Loved One to a Care Home
Caregivers can feel guilty if they are unable to meet the expectations of a care receiver. Guilt can weigh heavily when a spouse or an adult child considers moving a loved one into a care home.
Being a caregiver is a demanding job. It can be emotionally overwhelming. Elderly individuals with health problems and their caregivers can feel overwhelmed and unable to see solutions.
Those who identify potential solutions may see the effort as being too great or fear deciding to move ahead. Others delay due to fear of negative reactions from a parent, spouse, or other family members.
There can be as many reasons why a strategy won’t work as there are reasons to move ahead and believe in a plan.
Caregivers might stay frozen in fear or worry because the choices ahead have unknown or feared consequences. The unknown is part of life. It is impossible to predict the future. Staying frozen, stuck, or living in fear is not a solution; it’s not living – it’s surviving. It’s best to hold family discussions, create a caregiving strategy, and move forward.
The Effect of Caregiver Stress
Uncertainty and worry place mental, emotional, and physical stress on the body, which is why caregivers often become sick and feel emotionally drained.
If you are a caregiver, recognize that your actions did not result in a parent or spouse being in poor health.
If you are physically and emotionally drained, how are your actions to care for another person and ignore your needs contributing to your life circumstances today?
While you may feel that being a caregiver is a duty and a responsibility, there is a duty and a responsibility to care for yourself so that you do not eventually need care
Family Relationships Can Create Caregiving Expectations
Adult relationships with elderly parents result from early parent-child relationships. Did your parents encourage you and bring you up to be independent, or did they make you feel guilty, rarely support your wishes, constantly criticize you, or make you feel that you could never do enough?
Consider that your upbringing, to some extent, has shaped who you are today and your perception of life circumstances and outcomes. The results in your life are your responsibility. Some blame the results on other people and expect them to pick up the pieces. These behaviors can be modeled by parents and passed on to their children.
Parents who don’t model positive habits of self-sufficiency, independence, learning, and education, those who fail to focus on health and well-being, and others who use substances can be poor role models for children.
These adult children are more likely to be swept into family drama and expectations because they never learned to stand up for themselves and their needs.
Passing on Care Expectations
To what degree do your parents place the results of their health and care needs on you? For elderly parents or individuals with unlimited financial resources, life is easier. They can pay for care rather than relying on family members.
The reality is that most people have limited financial resources. Being healthy costs money, accessing healthcare costs money, and being sick costs money.
And if you or your parents don’t have the financial means to pay for care, then there is Medicaid—a program in every state for low-income and sick elderly unable to care for themselves. Learning about and planning for Medicaid is a family caregiving strategy.
Moving Loved Ones into a Care Home Without Guilt
If your parents didn’t plan financially to pay for their care in old age, the outcome may be that they have to move into a care home. Moving a parent into a care home is neither right nor wrong.
The practicality of moving can result from past choices or unexpected health concerns. Sometimes, there are no easy answers or choices about how and where care is received.
- Are you a spouse caregiver creating a situation of financial poverty for yourself without knowing unknown of how you will support yourself after you give everything, including family money, to care for a husband or wife?
- Are you a caregiver making practical and hard decisions about what you can or cannot do to care for others because of the negative effects on your life?
Decisions around care and family caregiving strategies will impact the outcome of your family life today and in the future.
Everyone must come to their own conclusion about feeling guilty about putting a parent or a spouse in a care home. Discussing eldercare and creating family caregiving strategies can help determine the best path to care for aging parents and spouses.
Some decisions are emotionally difficult. What advice would you give to a friend who is considering moving their parent into a community?
What expectations do you have for your children who might be your caregivers? What would you tell your spouse who might have to decide to put you in a care home if they can’t take care of you physically and emotionally?
The decision to move to a care community can be a significant undertaking. If you are a caregiver, consider these questions for yourself.
This way when when the time comes, you’ll have a plan for the outcome you want. If you are a caregiver for a spouse or elderly parent, initiate family caregiving strategy discussions with the person you care for.
It’s never too early to consider what might happen in the future and have a plan in place for the various care needs that may arise.
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