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5 Tips for Taking Care of Your Ageing Parents

  • October 23, 2018
  • 6 min read
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5 Tips for Taking Care of Your Ageing Parents

From being an infant to a fully mature adult, whatever we learn, we learn from our parents. They make the biggest sacrifice one can make for another human being: their freedom. The moment we’re born, they become responsible for us and always provide their best when it comes to taking care of us.

Try and remember the time when you were a kid and asked your dad to buy something for you. If not that day, then maybe after a few days, you got what you needed. At such age, we could never think of what sacrifice our dad must have had to make in order to save money to buy us what we wanted. Remember the time you asked your mother to cook your favourite dish, and she did that instantly? At that time, we were too young to notice that she was not feeling well, and she needed rest.

That’s what our parents do for us. They put our needs first, always! And when we grow up, we often end up taking their sacrifices for granted and get busy with our lives. We forget that the language we speak, the education we received, the manners we have, it is the fruit of our parent’s hard work too. And let’s admit it, we would be nothing without these qualities.

Now that you’ve realised this fact and have gone through the nostalgia we were trying to take you through; it’s time to reverse the roles and take care of your parents. Following are the five ways through which you can do that:

Cashback Their Sacrifices

Your parents took care of your wishes for a very long time. It’s about time you return them the favour. Talk to them, ask them what they missed out in life. Ask them about the things they wanted to do but couldn’t do because of one reason or the other.

Get to know the long-lost wishes of your parents. Plan something around it. It could be a place they always wanted to visit, or a car they always wanted to have, or anything which they couldn’t do because of time or money constraint. Your little effort will put a huge smile on their face.

Spend Time with Them

It’s quite okay to have some time to yourself or with your spouse/children. But it’s not okay to neglect your parents. They deserve your time too. In old age, they don’t need much but just the surety that you care about them. Make sure you sit with them (or skype with them if they’re not living with you) for at least 10 minutes a day. It won’t put any pinch in your ‘tight’ schedule, and they would get what most parents crave for – some time with their children.

Take Care of Their Medical Needs

Old age can be hard on a person’s body. It makes you tiresome, your joints start paining, and you lose all your stamina. It also makes your immune system weak which makes it hard for the body to fight diseases on its own.

Find a reliable and trustworthy doctor for your parents. You can also look into getting them insurance, but make sure it covers everything, even diseases as terminal as cancer. It’s always wise to take precautionary measures in such cases. You can get them a cancer insurance plan to protect them financially if the untoward event strikes. Many insurers like Future Generali offer lumpsum stage-based payout on diagnosis. The lump sum payout ensures that the insured does not have to compromise on the treatment, considering the alarming rise in the cancer treatment cost.

Not only this but insist your parents to go for a full body check-up regularly. All your life they ran after you and made sure you took care of yourself. It’s time you do the same for them by finding a skilled nursing facility in Portland, OR where they can get specialized care.

Plan Complete Family Outings

We’re living in an era of nuclear families while our parents were raised in a joint family. For us, the family is limited to parents, siblings, spouse, and children. But for them, family means (or at least meant) everyone; be it cousins or even some close family friends. They grew up in an atmosphere where decisions, trips, dinners everything was done together. And they miss it in today’s modern nuclear family.

Give them back what they miss. Reach out to your close relatives and plan a fun family trip. Invite people that are/were close to your parents and see the nostalgia in your parents’ face when they meet them. It’s just about taking one small step, and you’ll see your parents smiling the widest.

Let Them Spoil Their Grandchildren

Nowadays, parents are becoming more and more strict. They keep an eye on everything that their child does; be it eating, watching TV, or even their friends. It might be justified considering everything that is going around in the world but cut some slack when it comes to the time your children spend with your parents.

Grandparents love spoiling the youngest member of the family, and you should let them do that. Don’t question their actions; they have much more experience in parenting than you. Spending time with their grandchildren is the most important joy of their lives; they want the child to smile, laugh, and play all the time. So, the next time they offer ice-cream to their grandchildren, refrain yourself from becoming an ‘ENT Specialist’ all of a sudden. Let them enjoy their time.

Parents don’t demand much. In fact, they don’t demand anything once you grow up and settle down. All they want is to see you happy in your life. When that happens, make sure you don’t forget your parents. They did a lot for you; now it’s your turn to do a little and make them happy.

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