Helping your parents deal with the challenges of aging can be stressful and requires an understanding of personal values and needs. And there’s no one way to do it.
“There’s all kinds of stress that people go through,” said David Bialik, licensed independent clinical social worker with the Center for Psychiatric Care in Grand Forks, N.D. “Everyone is different.”
People might want to hire aides to help with tasks in the home or move their parents to an assisted-living facility or a nursing home. Determining the best course of action “depends on what the parents would want,” he said. A parent “might want to stay out of a higher-care environment.”
“When do you say, ‘Mom and Dad, you need to go’” somewhere that better fits their needs?
See tomorrow’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Family section for more about facing the challenges of taking care of aging parents.