POLL: The Ideal Way to Care for the Elderly

[mike]

What in your opinion is the most ideal way to care for elders who are no longer able to live independently?

[QuietlyListening]

Ideal and what can actually happen can be 2 very different things. My mom cared for my dad, with Alzheimers as long as she could at home and we girls came when we could- closest one lived 2 hours away and worked full time. She finally had to put him in a nursing home - her choice as she told us she did not want us to have to keep coming to help. We would have but she made the choice and we couldn't change it. 24 hour caregivers are not easy to come by and not always reliable.

When mom got to the point she could no longer be alone- she was in a continuing care facility but in an apartment on her own living independently, we were able to provide paid care givers to come and be with her and my sister who lived a few miles away was there often and the rest of us came weekly to just be there.

Volunteers to help care for someone are not easy to come by and for some people you need people who may have to be able to move someone, give baths, etc. Every person is different and needs different amounts of care. And finding paid people to come into a home is expensive and not always reliable- some just don't show up, some agencies don't always have enough people to cover shifts etc. Some people don't have the type of home that is suitable to care of the elderly, 2 floors, small rooms, children, maybe you need to work, etc.

If you can have someone in their own home or bring them to yours, that is wonderful but you just can't always do this. And our culture is less and less set up to be able to provide the help.

[mike]

Ideal and what can actually happen can be 2 very different things. My mom cared for my dad, with Alzheimers as long as she could at home and we girls came when we could- closest one lived 2 hours away and worked full time. She finally had to put him in a nursing home - her choice as she told us she did not want us to have to keep coming to help. We would have but she made the choice and we couldn't change it. 24 hour caregivers are not easy to come by and not always reliable.

When mom got to the point she could no longer be alone- she was in a continuing care facility but in an apartment on her own living independently, we were able to provide paid care givers to come and be with her and my sister who lived a few miles away was there often and the rest of us came weekly to just be there.

Volunteers to help care for someone are not easy to come by and for some people you need people who may have to be able to move someone, give baths, etc. Every person is different and needs different amounts of care. And finding paid people to come into a home is expensive and not always reliable- some just don't show up, some agencies don't always have enough people to cover shifts etc. Some people don't have the type of home that is suitable to care of the elderly, 2 floors, small rooms, children, maybe you need to work, etc.

If you can have someone in their own home or bring them to yours, that is wonderful but you just can't always do this. And our culture is less and less set up to be able to provide the help.

All true. I think there is not any one perfect solution. I am interested in knowing what people idealize as the best way. I had a lengthy conversation with an elderly friend the other day who told me what it was like having his father in law move in with them for several years when he began to need care. It was very hard on their marriage, and drove him to a nervous breakdown. Eventually the FIL moved to another sibling, but after only a short time it was decided to move him to a care facility. He thrived there and lived into his mid 90s.

[steve-in-kville]

It depends on so many factors in my opinion.

I jokingly told me wife and children that when the time comes, park my wheelchair along the train tracks. I'll be fine

[Grace]

The ideal method to care for the elderly, is the way the Amish do it. They have a “dawdy haus” attached to one of their children’s houses. This way their grown children can check on them, care for them, make sure they have adequate food etc. And if other grown children live close by, they can chip in and help as well. Caring for the elderly becomes a family affair, where the older children in a family can give assistance to their elderly grandparents. This is good for the elderly grandparents emotionally and teaches valuable lessons for growing children.

However this model doesn’t work for many in our Mennonite culture. First of all, the families have become smaller and caring for the elderly can cause burn out when it is just a very few caring for the parents. In our circles there has been an overwhelming push for missions, with more families not living close to the parents. Also children may move out of the area the elderly parents live, for other reasons.

When the care of an elderly parent becomes impossible to do, because there are very few to shoulder the care, it leaves no other option than to have them live in a home, where they can be adequately cared for.

This might be off topic. Over the years I have seen missionaries work in foreign countries, proclaiming they are working for the Lord, (which they are), while their elderly parents could use help at home. I often wondered if that is in violation of Mark 7:11 (NLT) where Jesus was talking to the Pharisees.

“ But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.’

[Josh]

Cross-posting from another thread:

i largely agree.
(when i had a family) it was not a problem. not enough hours in the day to bother with outside noise.

now they are all far away, my limited visits are even more restricted, like everyone, because of the pandemic.
i went for 2 years without seeing my grdaughter. i hope to not have to repeat that! i hope to be blessed in future. i hope to be blessed with a future. one never knows.

my TV was unplugged in 2016, not turned on since.
in 2020, i withdrew from nearly all news sources - basically, what i see is on this forum. with adult virtual friends.

i pray you never experience life as it now is for me. with the big family i grew up in, i did not anticipate years of isolation.
the close losses felt so complete, in a short span of time. at first, i literally compared it to the 2004 tsunami, wherein some survivors found they were left behind, after their entire families/villages were washed away. in news reports, single villagers could be seen standing alone in rubble, in shock, in disbelief that all was gone. my situation was more drawn-out, many losses over 2 years. a slow-motion tsunami of loss.

you are unlikely to experience this. and, i pray not. not for anyone.

so. i see things. much of it to pass time. we were never big consumers of media. not news or entertainment.

i don’t intend this as an excuse.
just my observations of how life can be unexpected. even alien.
even when things look perfectly ok on the outside. i look perfectly ok on the outside. i mean, i guess so, no one i meet anywhere seems put-off or alarmed. doctors are pretty optimistic. i know this is what God wants for me. i’m waiting to understand why. maybe i don’t need to understand.

there is one young one counting on me to be there.
she does not understand the fleeting nature of life on earth. children don’t, and they shouldn’t. i’m doing my best to be there for her, 2000 miles removed. one day, she may miss me as i miss my elders/loved ones. i never wanted to think of them as temporal, either. young ones want everyone to be there. God’s design. God’s time.

i know lots of parents+grparents are disturbed by the world they know full-well their children are swimming in.
i know many young people are not having families because the world is “not fit” for children. they live in it and they know it.

this is quite a phenom, the psychological state of things in a world with relative plenty.
i mean, history is full of seriously dire times, disease, wars, concentration camps, acts of God, poverty, famine, et al.
Yet, in the past, people were motivated by the drive to “leave things better” for those coming. Life was valued.
Today, in relative abundance, the psychological factor is so intense, many are responding with, “It’s not worth it to try.”
“We’ll have cats+dogs!” Even the pope has noticed.

i believe normalized, for-profit vulgarity is a major turn-off to young minds. it’s poison.
poison they think they like. but it’s killing them. day by day. poison does not nurture bodies or souls.

anyway.

The problem temporal1 describes as personally experiencing is a problem that is pretty widespread. Material needs are met, but other very human needs are not.

Hillsong in Australia used to have a thing called "city care" where they would try to visit elderly people in their homes once a week. Often, the only person who would ever see these elderly people would be the postman and (occasionally) a social worker. Originally they planned to distribute food, but they found the greatest need was that the elderly people just wanted someone to talk to for an hour.

[mike]

In our region there's this company called Community Life which is essentially daycare for seniors. They can come, or be brought to, the facility for meals, entertainment, social activities, and what not for the day, then go home at night. It's covered under Medicare from what I understand.

[JimFoxvog]

When my grandma was widowed, she moved in with our family while I and my siblings were still pre-school age. She was a regular part of our family growing up. It worked well for all of us, I think.

When my mother became a widow, she took turns with different of her three adult children living with her, most of the time. She could maintain her regular routines in her accustomed space. Alzheimer's disease gradually took her mind. This took a big commitment of the one doing the caregiving role. Problems arose when the adult children had different ideas on the best care.

Both approaches seemed fairly good, but, at least in our family, the first approach was much happier, I think. (But then, I was a child most of the time, so may not have seen all the problems.)

[Ken]

We are facing this issue in our family right now.

We bought our current house with the idea that we might someday need to care for one of our parents so we found a house with a guest suite on the ground floor which isn't that easy in this area with a lot of 2-story homes. My wife and I both have unmarried brothers but none of our siblings on either side is prepared to take care of elderly parents so it falls to us to worry about all four parents. At the moment it doesn't look like we will have any of them moving in with us.

My parents are happy in a Menno-associated retirement community that is about 30 min away. They are in an independent apartment and living independently at the moment but there is a nursing home on the premises and memory care center if they need increased levels of care. They have many friends and relatives there and would not want to leave. So fingers crossed that they are adequately taken care of for the future.

My wife's parents are in Chile and that is somewhat more problematic. They are also 5 years old than mine...pushing 90. And my father-in-law is fading fast. There is some resentment that we are not providing the same care that their upscale peers are getting which is moving in with the daughter's family and having full time home aids in the form of hired nurses and maids. That is basically what the wealthy in South America do. They take in their elderly parents and just hire lots of help which tends to come cheap. My wife's parents have zero interest in moving up here to live with us because that would sever them from their social lives, extended family, and the life they know. We are not going to uproot our lives and move to Chile just to take care of them full time. So we are at something of a standstill. My wife has gone down numerous times during the pandemic to try to hire nurses and aids but her obstinate father fires all of them for trivial reasons just to be difficult. Nursing homes really aren't a thing for the middle and upper classes, those that exist in Chile are mostly for the destitute. So we are at a standstill. They mostly get by with their long-time live-in maid who herself is getting somewhat elderly. But my wife's father is becoming increasingly senile or suffering from Alzheimer's so becoming more difficult. So at some point we will just have to hire help to deal with him whether he wants it or not. My mother-in-law is still sharp as a tack but getting weaker physically. She still comes to visit us on her own, relying on the airport wheelchair services and such. But I don't see that lasting too much longer. If my father-in-law dies first, she might move up to live with us. But I don't see that happening as long as he is living.

In any event, I don't think there is one ideal way. Every family's circumstances are different.

[Joy]

This might be off topic. Over the years I have seen missionaries work in foreign countries, proclaiming they are working for the Lord, (which they are), while their elderly parents could use help at home. I often wondered if that is in violation of Mark 7:11 (NLT) where Jesus was talking to the Pharisees.

“ But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.’

Right, there is not playing the Corban card, and there is putting God's work above everyone else, including parents (Luke 14:26). I don't pretend to know how that should play out in individual cases.

I have a dear friend who served the Lord in Venezuela for many years, and then when her widowed mother needed help, came with her husband to be live-in caregivers. Then when they got their own house built on the same mountain, they moved her mom in with them there. It was a demanding job, harder than my friend expected, because her mom didn't want her out of her sight. All three were sweet, caring people who loved the Lord deeply.

Then I have a friend whose mother expected to move into her son's house when no longer able to care for herself and her husband with dementia, although she doesn't get along with her daughter-in-law, who is ninety (a year older, I think, than her MIL). The son asked my sister and me for advice, but we could only give general principles. They are all four living together now, although I doubt anyone is happy. A dilemma for sure. I do give my 90-year old friend full points for trying to live peaceably with her MIL