Tips for clear communication when aging parents need health help

Описание: Get ahead of the game as it concerns managing your aging parents’ healthcare, because once you are in the thick of a health crisis, decision-making gets more difficult, experts say.

And given the drastically different characteristics of family units, there is no single best way to tackle the matter. Families with two kids might have an easier time deciding who is going to take on specific responsibilities, but they may not have the financial and time resources that a family of four kids might have. The bigger the family, the more difficult it can be to come to a consensus, said caregiving expert Pamela D. Wilson.

“Say, “mom and dad, there's two of us,” Wilson said. “We want to talk about what happens when you need care and what we can contribute and what we can't contribute,’ she said. FYI, there’s a good chance that some kids are going to say “I can't do anything,” Wilson said. It’s also possible that some siblings will more easily be able to help because they live closer to the parents, which will need to be factored into the plan.

Wilson said you and your sibling, in this example, will want to have conversations about different scenarios and ask, “OK, when mom and dad need care, what can we do?”

“And then you figure that out.”

“I even take it down to a granular level to say, OK, I've got four extra hours a week, or I've got eight extra hours a week, or I have extra money and I can contribute, or I have time and I can contribute, but I don't have money,” Wilson said. “So the kids really need to decide what they can contribute.”

More importantly, the parents must be involved in the conversation. If they have frequent health issues, they may need to come up with alternative plans. Wilson said those kids need to set a ceiling and say, “My ceiling is one call a week, one crisis a week.”