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Healing Damaged Relationships through Elder Care

Elder Care in Mt. Gilead OH

Engaging in an elder care plan with your aging parents is a powerful show of love, concern, and compassion. When there are damaged relationships at play, however, stepping into this role for them can feel more like torment that nurturing. Not all care relationships begin because an adult child wants to give back to his parents and return the support, love, and caring that he received from them when he was a child. Sometimes an elder care plan forms out of necessity where the seniors are in need of care and assistance and the only available option that they see is their adult child, regardless of the condition of their relationship with that adult child.

If you are dealing with a damaged relationship with one of your aging adults, focusing on repairing and building that relationship can help you to feel better about your role in their elder care, and ensure you give them the highest quality, most compassionate care you can.

Try some of these methods for healing your damaged relationships through your elder care efforts:

• Listen to them. When you have an already difficult relationship with your parents it is easy to avoid talking to them very much. This seems like the easiest way to avoid discomfort and prevent worsening of the relationship. In reality, this could be making the situation much worse. The issues that led to your damaged relationship could no longer be applicable, or your seniors may not even be aware of the issues. For example, you may feel anger toward your parents for not supporting your career choices, or for what you perceived as neglect when you were a child, but your parents might not even know that this is what caused your distance. Be willing to talk with them, listen to them, and work toward understanding;

• Empathize with them. An important part of building or repairing a relationships is being able to connect with how the other person feels and have feelings in response to those emotions and challenges. For example, empathizing with your parents means recognizing that they are feeling pain and being distressed in response to that pain, or knowing that they are angry and feeling compassion for that anger;

• Show affection. It is often said that love is not a feeling, but an action. This very much applies to rebuilding damaged relationships within an elder care plan. Even if you do not feel loving and nurturing toward your parents, continue to show compassion and affection through your tasks. Use gentleness and care in everything that you do even when you are frustrated or angry. As you show affection you will begin to soothe the hurt feelings inside you and reach out to your parents so you can work toward a better relationship.

If you are struggling with a damaged relationship and need help providing the care and assistance your parents need because of that damaged relationship, get in touch with the elder care agency in your area to discuss hiring an elderly health care services provider who can step in and fill the gap.

If you are considering hiring elder care services near Mt. Gilead, Ohio, call the caring staff at Central Star Home Health at (419) 610-2161.  Providing services for families in Mansfield, Lexington, Ashland, Bellville, Crestline, Galion, Loudonville, Mt. Gilead, Shelby, Wooster and the surrounding areas.

Stephen Sternbach

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