Learn Their Present Habits
Once you have a good understanding about your parents' wishes for their last years, you should begin to learn about their present habits. This can be an important issue in making smooth transitions through the remaining years.
If, for instance, your parents wish to remain in their own home with outside help, having a good understanding about their habits can be a big advantage in avoiding problems with caregivers. It can help you in making decisions and in understanding why some things work out while others fail.
If they have always been, and continue to be, early to bed and early to rise, you would want to find caregivers who can adapt to these situations. Say, for instance, they get up at 5:00
Older people tend to shop more often. They no longer have a career, household, and family duties to juggle; they have the time to shop several times a week. This can be a problem for those willing to help with the shopping who can't run to the store several times a week.
If your parents are late sleepers and night owls and breakfast is coffee and toast, they wouldn't adapt well to a caregiver who wants to get them up and feed them a large breakfast by 6:00
These things aren't always considered or discussed when hiring help, and there can be devastating results. A bad experience can cause all sorts of repercussions.
Your sister may be willing to help with grocery shopping each week when she does her own. This can be a tremendous help, but if she doesn't take the time to learn about your parents' habits and tastes, it can be a disaster. Taste buds change about every seven years, and something your mother loved when you were a child may be something she loathes today. Your parents may be on special diets due to health conditions such as low sodium or low fat/low cholesterol. Where your sister may be buying for a family of five, your parents are only two, or even just one, and they probably don't eat as much as they once did, either. They probably buy the small cans, which may be less economical, but there isn't waste. They might be very particular about brand names and not like her choice of the brand on sale or the one with the coupon.
Cooking, cleaning habits, laundry, and other household tasks can seem trivial, but they can be major issues when the caregiver doesn't do it the same way your mother has done it for years. Suddenly a seemingly adaptable and flexible woman can become someone with all sorts of impossible demands and reasons for telling you the perfectly capable caregiver you hired is totally inept and must be fired right away!
Investing some time in understanding your parents' habits, likes and dislikes, and pet peeves can go a long way in finding a successful care-giving situation.
Helping your aging parents maintain as much of their independence as possible will no doubt be a challenging situation, but the more things they can continue to do for themselves safely, the better the situation will be for all involved. This will not only relieve you of some of the burden but will also help preserve their dignity.
