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Holidays with loved ones can be a joy, but memory loss can create a lot of stress for everyone involved. You might be worried about an aging family member; children might be confused as to why a grandparent doesn’t seem as engaged as they expect; an elderly guest or host may be confused by all the unfamiliar activities. With a little planning, you can make decisions that create a holiday season that is safe and happy for everyone. Check out these tips to make your holiday visit a success:

Our residents had a great weekend celebrating Halloween at Beaver Lake Lodge! We wanted to share with you pumpkins carved by one of our creative residents. We can’t get enough of it!

As our parents age and we begin thinking about things like assisted living, dementia, and other elements of aging, many of us are also raising children. Often children can cope with major life changes more easily than we expect—and in many cases, the reactions of adults in their lives can be the hardest thing for them to deal with. At the same time, changes to a beloved grandparent’s attitude, memory, and personality can be difficult for a child to comprehend. We’ve put together three tips for talking to your child about dementia and helping them adapt to the changes it may bring.

Caregiving is an important role in many of our lives, but it can be emotionally and physically exhausting. It can also take up every moment of “free time.” When we are caring for a loved one, the idea of taking time away from those duties can feel selfish.  The fact is, you probably can’t be as good of a caretaker if you never let yourself have a break. Check out these tips for helping to take care of yourself as well as your loved ones.

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.