Tips to Work with Your Siblings to Care for Your Elderly Parent
When siblings care for aging parents it can become very stressful and quickly lead to hurt feelings, conflicts, and misunderstandings. It’s rare for siblings to get along in general and when it comes to getting along enough to collaborate and care for the needs of your senior family member, it can become increasingly difficult. It usually ends up being one sibling taking on the brunt of the majority of the responsibilities all on their own. How can home care services help?
Home Care in Mountain Brook AL: Caregiver Tips
These steps, which are simple, can help assist you with helping to balance caregiving duties between you and your siblings.
Set up a meeting with all the siblings. Make sure everyone is on the same page. Open communication that is straightforward is more effective when it comes to sharing not only your point of view but also hearing theirs. Explain how you are overwhelmed, and how you would like more support and assistance from them.
Make a list, and be specific about all the duties that make up your role as the primary caregiver. Find out who is more equipped to provide specific support in certain areas according to time or distance. For siblings who live outside of the area, they still are able to provide support. They can care about research services and resources, participate in FaceTiming or Skype, pay bills remotely, etc.
In-person tasks may consist of:
- Cleaning & Laundry
- Cooking meals
- Pet Care
- Yard work
- Trips to the grocery store as well as other errands
- Transportation to doctors’ appointments, hair salons, religious services, etc.
Record details, so once things have been agreed upon a copy can be made and given to each sibling. Any other important issues that come up in your discussion can be revisited in a later meeting. Make sure to think about setting up a future meeting as well, in order for future planning. If one of your parents is in the early stages of dementia, you will want to be prepared to have their additional needs be quickly met, for example.
Even if you have the support of your other siblings to help take care of your senior loved ones, it still isn’t easy. When you have your own children, spouse, household, career, etc., to take care of on a daily basis as well. It can easily and quickly become overwhelming. One guaranteed way to help ensure your senior loved one always gets the proper care they deserve, and for you to maintain the balance you need for yourself including your siblings, is by working with an in-home care provider.
Our home care caregivers are fully trained and experienced in all of the care tasks plus a whole lot more. We’re here to work alongside you. We can fill in any gaps in care to help out you and your family. It could be several hours a week or up to including 24/7 assistance. With these services, it will allow you and your siblings to choose the care and tasks you want to handle yourselves, and then you can leave the other things to us to handle.
If you or an aging loved one are considering hiring professional Home Care in Mountain Brook, AL, call and talk to the staff at Lipford Home Care (205) 623-5700.
Sources
https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/how-share-caregiving-responsibilities-family-members
They have three teenage children and are actively involved in their church and community – both teach high school Sunday school while Dennis coaches youth sports and Kelly leads a women’s Bible study. Dennis & Kelly personally manage the daily activities of the company.
It is their passion and commitment to providing quality and responsive service that has made their company the fastest growing home care agency in Birmingham.
They believe that being an independently owned and operated company gives them the flexibility to manage their business in a way that better serves their clients.
They understand you have a choice in care providers and they will do their utmost to earn your trust.
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