When someone you love is struggling with age, perhaps cognitive decline, such as what one might expect when a person is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, for example, how can you cope? It’s not always easy figuring out the best way forward, but it’s necessary.
Absolutely necessary.
Which is why you should at least sit down and discuss the prospect of assisted living. In reality, there’s just no time to waste when someone you care about is dealing with the short and long-term impacts of memory challenges.
How can you bring this topic up?
A lot of families simply don’t know how to deal with the topic of assisted living. Adult children, siblings, and even a spouse may reluctantly (at first) realize how beneficial assisted living could be, but they don’t want to talk about it with that elderly loved one.
Why?
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Assisted Living Pascagoula, AL: Memory Care Assisted Living
For one thing, many people have the wrong idea about what assisted living is and offers. Too many immediately think about another senior care option instead. The kind of option where the facilities are medically focused, understaffed, and burdened with too many challenges to provide the kind of high quality care and support an assisted living community can.
Don’t misunderstand this, though; not all assisted living facilities are the same. There are exceptional ones and there are those dealing with their own challenges.
However, when it comes to seniors struggling with a host of mental decline issues, memory care assisted living is monumentally important.
The best way to bring up this topic is to be honest. Don’t beat around the bush or sugarcoat things. Talk openly about what you observe, the challenges this elderly family member is facing, the fear, the doubt, the uncertainty the future holds.
First, learn what you can about assisted living.
Before you bring up this important topic, either to your mother, father, grandparent, spouse, sibling, or whoever it is to you, make sure you know what you can about it.
The toughest thing you’ll face are the questions meant to derail the conversation. If you can’t answer them, then it becomes that much tougher to convince someone to at least listen.
When your mother’s memory loss impacts her days, when you are being tasked with supporting her more and more, and you’re feeling the struggle impact your personal life, that’s when you should consider discussing assisted living.
In truth, it’s never too early to talk about memory care assisted living, especially when that family member or friend has been diagnosed with dementia.
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