Tips for Helping Elderly Loved Ones Who Are Resistant to Care – Understanding of Their Emotional state and a Few Common Sense Appoaches May Make it Easeir for an Aging Family Member To Accept the Help They Need.

counseling elderly woman with resistance

 It is often difficult to watch a loved one in need of help or care who is resistant to having it. Caring for the elderly may be challenging even when they are cooperative. When they are not, understanding the causes of their resistance enables you to better meet the challenge, resulting in some assistance occurring and hopefully a positive outcome will be had.

How do you help someone who does not want help?  Sometimes you can’t. Other times, with patience, accommodation and persistence, cooperation can happen and some degree of help, accepted.

Healthy, able bodied, clear minded folks don’t typically need help, especially in-home, personal care. So, when such assistance is needed, the person is usually dealing with complicated issues of either loss, illness, injury, mental decline or a combination, which may cause them to be in physical and/or emotional pain, feeling vulnerable or “like a burden” and infringing on their sense of independence, routine and privacy.

Needing help is a very difficult concept and reality for many people who have been largely independent their entire adult lives. Becoming dependent, even temporarily may bring up other fears, feelings of guilt, depression, anger and so forth.

Here are some tips to help you approach and begin the conversation with an aging parent or other elderly family member who you believe may be resistant to help.

• Try choosing a time when they are most relaxed. This will enable both of you to better converse and speak your minds.
• Ask them about their thoughts and preferences. It is very important to include them in decision making, congruent to their ability. Ask about schedules, male or female help, age of the caregiver, what they need help with and so on.
• Consult with and enlist the help of a family member or friend whom your loved one will listen to. The person they trust most may be best able to persuade them to at least try and start with some in home care.
• It is very important to include the care recipient in the discussion and hear their wishes. You may be doing what is
  “best” with the best of intentions but they have the right to be included in decisions directly affecting them, as they are cognitively able to.
• If at first you don’t get cooperation – don’t give up, try again. They may be more receptive later when they have had a chance to mull it over. You may need to have this discussion a few times. Start small and then it is easier to build on a beginning foundation.

If your family member or friend has some type of cognitive impairment, dementia, or brain damage and is unable to make a decision to have in home care, then you likely have to make the decisions for them. Compromised judgment is often in degrees so your approach will be most successful if you meet their ability to make decisions at their ability to make them.

Boca Home Care Services has 3 Geriatric Care Managers on Staff to assist family members in working with their loved ones who need care but may be in denial or stubborn. We offer a compliometary in home visit to discuss the needs, answer questions and put together a sensible care plan for the immediate need or the future.

Related posts:

1. Four Must Have Items when Caring for the Elderly at Home
2. Caring For Elderly Parents – In-Home Care Decisions