Caregiving Articles with Tips and Recommendations

Caring for an aging parent can be one of the most rewarding experiences, but the more care your aging parent needs, the more support you are going to need. Since it's likely that you are not only caring for parents, but also raising children or grandchildren and working part or full time, your plate is more than full, it's overflowing. Organizing a care circle for your aging parents can help prevent you from suffering from caregiver burnout, a common occurrence among adult caregivers.

Make the most of your holiday visits by making your loved ones’ home safer and giving gifts for seniors that improve their quality of life.

Caring for a spouse brings a different set of challenges than caring for a parent. Lynn Greenblatt shares invaluable life lessons from her own personal experiences.

Prepare your home for senior houseguests. Room by room, these comfort aids for seniors can create a safe retreat and a more enjoyable stay for older relatives and family friends.

As the adult child of a senior, at some point you will likely need to explore the idea of finding at-home care for your parent. Here’s how to have the conversation.

In this excerpt of the new book It’s Between You and Me, author Ali Davidson helps the generations take the first step toward understanding and accepting the changes that occur as we get older.

You and your family have decided that it is time to bring in outside help to assist with the care of a loved one in need. Because you want them to be able to remain safe, comfortable and independent in their own home for as long as possible, you have chosen to hire an in-home caregiver or home healthcare agency.

It can be difficult to acknowledge the fact that your parent needs some help with day-to-day activities, let alone introducing to them the idea of hiring a professional caregiver for help. Your parent is likely to react to this decision with some resistance.

While there is some small comfort in knowing that the pressures you feel are shared by many others, the bottom line to this very personal matter is simple: finding the time and services that can help make your life and the lives of your aging parents a little easier. This year, as you provide elder caregiving for a loved one who is either living with you or still in their own home, find the balance you need each day to continue to be a great caregiver for your loved one and yourself while avoiding caregiver burnout.

Caretaking is fraught with many myths, assumptions and beliefs that have prevented generations of caregivers from understanding that caregiving is a rite of passage. Rites of passage define a sense of self in relation to society, paving the way for life transitions and allowing a more meaningful and clear incorporation of both familial and public roles. Seeing a family member through a health crisis marks the beginning of yet another transition for both the caretaker and the receiver and helps to define new roles and responsibilities in each of their lives. Although caretaking can help younger caregivers understand their place in the world, most view it with dread: an emotional roller coaster in which a plethora of daunting practical issues must also be addressed. These issues include the needs of spouses and children, estate and legal matters, health insurance, medications, funeral arrangements, and, in many cases, conflicts with siblings about how best to care for Mom or Dad and how to apportion responsibility, financial and personal, for their care.