La Jolla Senior Care News

Family Senior Care: Keeping Your Sibling Involved in Your Parents’ Care

Home Care Coronado CA

Home Care Coronado CAWhen it comes to creating a senior care plan for your elderly loved ones, having as many people in your care team as possible is ideal. The more people you have involved in the care of your seniors, the more support, encouragement, and help you have in meeting their daily needs, handling emergencies, and preventing overwhelming caregiver stress. Building your care team can mean hiring a senior health care services provider, encouraging friendships with neighbors, and involving your elderly loved ones in community activities. If you have siblings, however, getting them involved lets you spread out the responsibilities of care and give your parents the joy of maintaining connections with all of their children.

Keeping your siblings involved in your aging parents’ care, however, can be challenging if those siblings do not live in the immediate area or are less willing to step into the role of being caregivers for your aging parents. Making them a useful and effective part of your care plan may require effort, but the reward benefits all of you, especially your elderly parents.

Use these tips to get and keep your siblings involved in your parents’ senior care plan:

  • Call a family meeting. You may think that your siblings are willingly not involving themselves in your care efforts, but they may not realize that you could use help. Many people assume that the primary caregiver can handle the demands or does not need help simply because that caregiver does not ask for the help. You cannot expect your siblings to be active participants in the care if you do not let them know what your parents need and what they can do to help. Call a family meeting so you can sit down with your siblings, even if that means over a phone call, and talk about your parents’ condition, your care efforts, and how you feel they should be involved.
  • Take the help. Knowing that your siblings should be a part of your parents’ care and being willing to accept the help that they offer are two different things. It is important to be open to the help that your siblings offer and avoid the temptation to micromanage their efforts. Let your siblings tell you what they can do and then take that help. Do not insist they do things the way you would do them or try to force them into care activities they are not comfortable handling. This will only lead to bitterness, resentment, and a decrease in your seniors’ quality of care.
  • Facilitate distance caregiving. Just because you are the only adult child still living in the vicinity of your senior parents does not mean you should be the only adult child giving them care and assistance. Distance caregiving is challenging, but it is made simpler when someone is in the area facilitating the care. Make an effort to help your siblings be active, involved distance caregivers for your seniors by helping your parents learn to use video chatting, scheduling phone calls, setting up private social media accounts just for the family to use, or assigning specific responsibilities for your distance siblings, such as paying particular bills, sending money to your parents each month, or maintaining contact with care providers when you are out of the home.

You may encounter some resistance from your siblings when it comes to asking them to be an active part of your senior care efforts with your parents. If they are not able or willing to actually come to the home to give your parents care and assistance, ask them to be a part of the hiring process for a senior health care services provider. By helping you hire and pay for a care provider, your siblings are still a part of your parents’ care and are taking some of the responsibility and pressure away from you. Get in touch with the elder care agency in your area to find out more about hiring a care provider and get more recommendations for ways your siblings can be involved.

La Jolla Nurses Homecare can help your aging parents remain in their own homes, call 858-454-9339. We are a home care agency providing quality and affordable senior care in La Costa, CA, and the surrounding communities."]” data-sheets-userformat=”[null,null,767,[null,0],[null,2,10667209],[null,[[null,2,0,null,null,[null,2,0]],[null,0,0,3],[null,1,0,null,1]]],[null,[[null,2,0,null,null,[null,2,0]],[null,0,0,3],[null,1,0,null,1]]],[null,[[null,2,0,null,null,[null,2,0]],[null,0,0,3],[null,1,0,null,1]]],[null,[[null,2,0,null,null,[null,2,0]],[null,0,0,3],[null,1,0,null,1]]],2,2,null,0]”>For more information about how the caregivers at La Jolla Nurses Homecare can help your aging parents remain in their own homes, call 858-454-9339. We are a home care agency providing quality and affordable home care in Coronado, CA, and the surrounding communities.

Brittnei Salerno

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