How Can Children Improve their Aging Parents’ Lives?

How Can You Make Your Senior Parents Feel Better?

Different cultures have different attitudes towards the old age. In most countries in the West, the deep-rooted opinion is that everybody should care about their old age while they’re still young. In other words, you’re supposed to collect enough funds during your work career to be able to provide for yourself when you get retired. While numbers and calculations completely justify this way of thinking, our elderly parents and seniors in general shouldn’t be treated as mere numbers. We need to make them feel appreciated and loved. Here’s what we suggest you can do for your parents to make them feel better.

1)     Include them in cultural events

Many retired-to-be and senior people start wondering what they’re going to do once they stop working. This is a pretty stressful situation, because they’re supposed to change a routine they’ve been practicing for decades. Some of them manage to cope with those new conditions in a constructive way, while others become anxious and feel unwanted by anyone.

This is where you – their children – come on stage, and this should be understood literally. Namely, you should do your best to include them in cultural events. Since we’ve mentioned the word stage, you can subscribe your parents to various concerts in their vicinity. From pop and rock, to classical music, they might find these occasions both interesting and rejuvenating.

Let’s not forget that people who are getting retired now were born in the 1950s, which means that they’re eligible to attend concerts of music acts from the 1970s and 1980s. Many of these performers still have concerts, so this could be a great way to make your senior parents feel young again. Here you can check out some great ticket sites where you can spot some special deals for various events.

Apart from that, your parents might want to attend various exhibitions, literary evenings and other similar events. Of course, the range of such events will depend on the place they live, but you should make an effort to activate them culturally and enrich their lives that way.

2)     Teach them how to use technology

Now that we’ve sorted out the cultural life – which will improve their social contacts, as well –it’s time to include your aging parents in the modern world. We’re starting from the premise that older people don’t use modern technology as much as they could.

For starters, show them how to use What’sApp, so that they can communicate with your more easily. Also, ask them if they’d like to learn how to use Facebook. If they’re not interested in it, even better.

What’s extremely useful when it comes to old people and new technologies is the option to pay your bills online. Instead of dragging around public transportation and standing in lines, they can make their bill payments online and use the time they save that way to do something more practical. If they don’t want to cope with that, they can at least take photos of their bills and send them to you via What’sApp or any other similar tool, so that you can pay them.

Apart from that, they can use the Internet to do their shopping. For instance, in the UK there’s a wide range of shopping options for older people, which allow them to buy things from the comfort of their living room. In line with that, they can order things via Internet sites, or do their shopping via phone calls. Try to convince them to order their groceries online and show them the procedure. When they see how much time they can save that way, they might be delighted to continue shopping on the web.

Also, let them know that they can always contact you when they’re not sure how something works online. That way, they won’t give up using the tech innovations when they come across obstacles.

3)     Treat them to relaxing travels

When your parents get older or when they retire, you should rewind the life reel in your head and remember how much sacrifice they took in order to show you the world when you were younger. After that, go to the local tourist agency and treat your old folks with a nice travel.

As a matter of fact, you can send them to different destinations a few times a year. Of course, those choices will depend on your budget, but even if you can’t afford distant destinations every time, you can always go for a local accommodation that will meet their needs.

Also, when your parents are traveling abroad, you should take care of their health insurance and make sure that they can turn to some experienced professionals in case they need any sort of help. In some countries these services are better, and in some others they’re not that great. For instance, when they’re traveling to the UK, they can count on sympathetic British carers, whose care for seniors is known worldwide.

As opposed to that, when you’re sending your parents to countries with lower standard of living, make sure that you contact a respected care provider and inquire about their services, just in case.

4)     Don’t treat them like they’re children

The last thing we’d like to bring up today is the way you treat your parents in their everyday interaction with you. While being worried and trying to explain some things to them is the most natural thing to do, don’t overdo with being smart. They have a life behind them and they don’t like to be patronized. After all, that’s understandable.

Therefore, try not to terrorize them with your advice and tips. While you can give them some suggestions how to keep their mind in good shape, or how to improve their physical condition, don’t mess around their home organization. You can offer them help if they need an extra hand with cleaning or gardening, but stay away from their personal belongings and similar stuff. The fact that they’re older doesn’t mean that they don’t have the right to privacy. So, provide assistance to your senior parents when they as for it, but don’t treat them as if they’re your children.

Conclusion

Being someone’s child doesn’t mean only to take the benefits while you’re young and forget about your parents when they grow old. You can do a lot for your aging parents to make them feel more involved in the modern world. From technology and travels, to cultural and social events around them, you can help them stay part of their local community, as well as that of the global village. In other words, you can help them discover the world, just the way they were once doing for you. We hope that our tips will be useful in doing these things and helping your elderly parents live through their old age in a happily manner.

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Author Bio: Anne Harris is an HR specialist working for londonlive-incare.com. She eagerly shares her knowledge with her audience on various blogs. When she isn’t writing or attending wellness conferences, she likes to pack her rucksack and ride her day away on her bike or spend time with her friends.