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Earlier this year, we started a short series of posts about having difficult conversations with your aging loved ones. In the first post, we discussed how to prepare for potentially stressful conversations. In the second post, we moved on to the day of your difficult discussion, with ideas of how to start and end the conversation with minimal stress. However, when talking about stressful topics like health, aging, or finances, conflict is sometimes inevitable. In our final post in this series, we’ll offer some suggestions for how to respond to conflict when it arises. Resolving Conflict With the STATE Method The book Crucial Conversations outlines the STATE method, as a way of working through conflict outside of being “right” or “wrong”. Check out this article for a more in-depth examination of the book and the STATE Method. Share Your Facts, THEN Tell Your Story The STATE Method separates out the facts from your interpretation of them. When conflict arises, taking a moment to identifying the facts of the situation ensures that you can separate your emotions and opinions from specific events. After that, you can share your “story”: how you interpreted the facts and how they made or are making you feel. Ask Another To Share After you have explained the facts, emotions, and impacts that you experienced, ask your parent to share their own facts and story. If emotions are very high, you may both wish to start by writing these pieces down, and then you can swap, read,…

On June 22, some of the residents at Beaver Lake Lodge showed off their gardening skills. The team created beautiful planters full of bright summer flowers.  Enjoy these pictures of our residents sharing smiles while making their home a little brighter and more colorful!

Boutique senior living residences offer smaller numbers of guests and often more home-like environments. While it’s important to find the right match for your parent, this means that they can be a great place for your aging loved one, and especially those with memory loss. These five reasons to consider a boutique senior residence include quotes from Atul Guwande’s book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Happens in the End. 

In this blog post series, we are exploring the process of discussing difficult topics with our aging loved ones. Topics like money, health, and life changes can be stressful, but communication is vital. In our previous blog post, we identified ways that you can prepare for a difficult conversation.  Once you have prepared, it’s time for the talk. While in many cases, the actual conversation may be much less stressful than you feared, you may find that you—and your parent—respond in ways that you weren’t expecting.

In our previous blog post, we talked about approaching finances and financial changes with aging parents. But there are lots of difficult conversations that we need to have with our parents as they age—how do you actually sit down and have those discussions without anger, misunderstanding, or hurt feelings? Our next three blog posts will be a series that explores the process of preparing for and engaging in difficult conversations, whether they are about money, health, housing, or anything else. In this post, we will discuss things you can do to prepare for a difficult conversation. In the posts that follow, we will turn to the conversation itself, including responding to your parent and resolving conflict when it arises.

It can be difficult to discuss topics like money and finances, especially with seniors and aging parents. As children, your parents are the ones that take care of you. They cover finances and any emotional stresses kids go through. But as they age, the roles reverse. The tricky part comes when your aging parents are not aware of this role reversal. Often, they still want to take care of you and don’t think they need help with their money. While this conversation can be hard, it’s important. Even though we don’t like to think about a time when our beloved seniors can’t be with us, you will be thankful you prepared for these changes ahead of time. This way, when the time comes, you can focus on grieving instead of stressing about finances and money.

It gets more and more difficult as we get older to keep up with a healthy exercise routine. Not only is it harder to find the time, but for some older adults it is physically impossible. Their bodies do not move the way they used to, and things that used to feel good are now painful. The trouble is that keeping an active body is crucial to maintaining a high quality of life. As Life Goes On has compiled this list of easy exercise routines for seniors to help keep your loved ones active and healthy. Of course, we always recommend checking with their physician or medical practitioner before undertaking any exercise. Once they get the all clear, try helping them to implement these into their routine!

Moving from your own home to an assisted living facility can be a daunting task. In many ways it can be emotionally and physically exhausting for seniors downsizing from their home. As caregivers and people who care about those moving, we want to help them in this difficult transition as graciously as possible. We have some downsizing tips for seniors from As Life Goes On Elder Care to ease the move and keep everyone healthy and happy. 

Could smaller be better for assisted living facilities? In New Hampshire and Massachusetts there is currently a shortage of assisted living facilities and nursing homes. This shortage leaves much of the elderly community displaced and at risk for health complications. The homes that do have availability are usually overpriced and have a high turnover rate in staff because of low wages. Those that work in the elder care community know that there must be a simpler solution to this shortage and we have found one; Our Model.

We all know the feeling when a song from your childhood comes on the radio and brings a smile to your face or a tear to your eye. It is a feeling that only music can evoke and it is powerful. Music offers us many benefits and for seniors in the elderly community, music can change a bad day to a good one. Here are some reasons why seniors should start introducing more music into their lives to feel good.