If you have an elderly loved one that you’ve noticed starting to have a hard time with things like getting around, taking care of themself, keeping track of daily things, or having a sharp memory, it might be time to start thinking about their long-term care and how that might be best given in an assisted living facility. However, most people don’t dream about the day that they move into a care facility. Luckily, there are things that you can do to broach this topic to help it go over a bit better.
To help you see how this can be done, here are three tips for speaking with an elderly loved one about moving into assisted living.
Bring Experts On Board
Sometimes, just hearing the take of younger family members and their opinion on moving into an assisted living facility can be hard for older family members to take. But if you’re able to pair your opinion with some experts who know your elderly loved one personally and the situation that you’re all finding yourself in, this can help to smooth things over a bit.
To do this, consider speaking with your loved one’s doctor, a financial advisor, and someone in the senior care community so that you have outside help in getting your loved one to see how moving into assisted living could be good for them and the best thing to do for their health and wellbeing.
Address Concerns Carefully
In most cases, younger family members will advise older family members to move into assisted living when they feel that they can’t give them the care that they need any longer. This decision will likely have come about due to having concerns over their health. However, when bringing these things up, your elderly loved one might feel ganged up on or that you’re accusing them of something.
To combat these types of feelings, make sure you take care when addressing your concerns with them. Make it clear to them that their health is your top priority and that you feel their health will be best protected in an environment such as this.
Keep Your Language Positive
While this can be a sad and scary decision to make for everyone involved, when bringing up this topic to your elderly loved one, you should try your best to remain positive and use positive language. Try to focus more on the benefits that they’ll gain by moving into a senior facility as opposed to what they could potentially be losing. This way, you’ll show them that you see this is a good thing for them and that there are still things to look forward to when they move into a senior living facility.
If you’re worried about bringing up moving into an assisted living facility to your elderly loved one, consider using the tips mentioned above as you prepare for this conversation.