When you’re raising a young family, life tends to be hectic enough without any added pressures, such as the added stress of caring for an elderly loved one. However, if an older relative – be it a grandparent, parent or aunt or uncle – requires your help to take care of themselves, the chances are that you won’t feel like you can turn them down. After all, family should stick together, and when a loved one requires you help and support, you most probably don’t want to turn them away.
The issue is of course, that when you’re already leading an extremely busy life, which consists of caring for your own young family and trying to fit work around that, not to mention keeping on top of the housework, it can seem almost impossible to manage anything else, such as caring for an older loved one. However, the good news is that there are plenty of ways that you can make caring for an older loved one easier to cope with.
Keen to learn more about how you can care for a loved one while raising a family? Read on for everything that you need to know!
Find out what support is available to you
First and foremost, it is essential that you take the time to find out what support there is available to you and your loved one. The good news is that there are a large number of services designed especially to help older adults who are struggling to cope, from day centers to respite facilities, so whatever help is needed, you’re sure to find plenty of support. You might not feel sure about using care homes and other similar services due to hearing ‘horror stories’ from friends or other family members who ended up having to use a company like Rosenfield – Rosenfeld specialises in nursing home abuse cases – after a loved one of theirs wasn’t treated well by a care facility. However, it’s important to remember that these kinds of experiences are rare, and that most of the time, professional care environments are able to offer amazing levels of care.
Put a schedule in place
If life is already extremely busy, you might benefit from having a schedule in place for the care that your loved one requires. By putting a schedule together, you can ensure that when it comes to what needs to be done when, you have everything noted down. If you are sharing the load with another family member, a joint schedule could be a good idea, as that way you will both be able to see who needs to do what and when, ensuring that your loved one receives that very best care and is being properly looked after.
Be organised
When it comes to fitting caring for a loved one into a busy work schedule, being organised is a must. You need to take the time to think carefully about what needs to be done each week beforehand, to ensure that you are able to provide the level of care that your loved one needs from you. Let’s say, for instance, that they require you to provide them with their meals each day, perhaps you could use one afternoon a week to batch cook, portion up and freeze meals for them, so that all that they need to do is reheat each meal. This should help to make life easier and less stressful for you.
There you have it, everything that you need to know about making caring for a loved one easier, while also trying to raise a family.
