Assisted Living Communities Offer Alternative Support for Stress
Reading Time: 3 minutes
Looking after another human being, whether it’s a young child or an aging parent, can be overwhelming. There can be times when you want to give up when you don’t feel like you are doing the right thing, are losing ground in your own life, or simply don’t know what to do next. If you’re caring for an aging parent, such as your elderly mother, the stress of this can take a significant toll on your own life. It can affect your health, personal relationships, job, and much more. Most people who take on the role of a family caregiver consider it their duty, their responsibility to provide this type of elderly care for a loved one.
They never look at other elderly care options, including assisted living.
Elderly Care Five Forks SC – Assisted Living Communities Offer Alternative Support for Stress
Yet, if you continue down this path, taking the burden on yourself without any break, you could find yourself dealing with serious health issues, needing support for your everyday needs, and where would that leave your mother in this example?
Don’t think of assisted living as only a permanent, long-term solution.
Some quality, local assisted living communities do offer respite care options. These are short-term solutions that can help the overwhelmed family caregiver get a much-needed break from the work he or she is doing.
Respite care could be a week or two at a time. It could even be a few days each week. It might even include overnight stays at the facility, which could be a great relief to you if you worry about your mother in the middle of the night when you’re not there with her.
How do you take advantage of respite care?
Contact a local assisted living community and find out what respite care options — if any — they offer currently. Depending on availability, they might have all options available. Then you can sit down with your elderly mother and talk about these respite care services.
She may be resistant to the idea of moving from her home right now, but most seniors don’t really know what assisted living is or what it offers. They have misconceptions about it, so they dismiss it and lump it in with other elderly care services.
If you can convince your mother to give it a try, even for a couple of days a week, she might just see how beneficial assisted living could be full-time.
What could respite care offer you?
It can offer your elderly mother a great opportunity to see from the inside what assisted living is and does. For you, it can allow you to take that much-needed vacation without worrying about what your mother is up to, if she is safe, or if she is enjoying herself. It can also provide you the chance to breathe easily when you go home at night and not have to worry about your mother, especially if she takes advantage of the overnight stay options.
There are numerous advantages to respite care at assisted living, so why not look into it now with a local facility?
