Keeping Elderly Parents at Home: Strategies to Help Parents Age at Home

Welcome to the Living to 100 Club Podcast. Here's our host, Dr. Joseph Casciani.

Welcome to all of our listeners tuning in today. This is Joe Casciani, your host for this program, and this is the podcast from the Living to 100 Club. Thank you for joining us and for being a member of our community. Here at the club, I promote the notion of living to 100 and doing all we can mentally and physically to live longer and healthier. But I also like to emphasize that Living to 100 is a mindset more than anything, a metaphor for pushing ahead. So we can say that Living to 100 is a great destination or goal, but also if Living to 100 is not in the cards, We can always stay positive while trying. This is the important part, keeping the mindset that we want to live a positive life regardless of what the circumstances are. We meet every week to talk about successful aging, longevity, and about what gets in the way of living to 100. Our guests talk about strategies to live longer, healthier, and happier lives, and how to manage setbacks that inevitably surface for everyone. So thanks again for tuning in. Now on to our podcast. Our guest today is Margo Arrowsmith. Margo has 3 decades of experience in counseling individuals and families. We explore ways that adult children can help their parents make important decisions about their future. We discuss her book, You Can Keep Your Parents at Home, and her personal story of helping her father care for her mother and then caring for him in her home until his death at age 93. First, a little background. Margo Arrowsmith is the author of the book "You Can Keep Your Parents at Home" and developer of the LOVE system, L-O-V-E. She's a licensed clinical social worker with years of professional and personal experience with in-home parent care. Margo combines her personal familiarity with aging parents and 35 years of counseling families to present a unique perspective and series of solutions to assist people across the country and around the world keep their parents at home. Margo has a master's degree in social work from Hunter College. She's been licensed in clinical social work in New York and North Carolina. When her parents started to get older, Margo got to see firsthand how complicated, confusing, and frustrating it could be to find reliable, affordable care for her parents that allowed both her and them to continue enjoying each other's company and maintain the highest possible quality of life. Margo is dedicated to helping both aging parents and their children have the best possible experience as parents age. Margo, thanks very much for joining us on our program today.

Well, thanks for having me. I love any experience to spread the word.

Great, great. I love to have people share their expertise and their insights. I'm looking forward to our conversation. I always like to open by asking our guests to tell us a little bit about the journey that brought you to where you are today?

Well, it was actually a pretty long one. When I was a kid, uh, I had 8 cousins and my mother, and my brother and I were the ones that— well, we were kind of mad too, but I'm so glad we did— we were the ones that had to sit and listen to Grandma and Grandpa tell their stories. Mom made sure we did that, and I will thank her forever. I mean, I have stories that none of my cousins know about. But then when I was in high school, Grandma and Grandpa got sick, and they came to live with us for a little while, and then Mom found them a little apartment. But unfortunately, back in the '60s, which is when this was, there were no home health aides or home health agencies. It was very difficult, and Mom tried her best to keep them at home. She had a business, as did my dad, and eventually she had to place them. And it was a horrible place. It was, it was dank, and it was just awful. And I won't bring us down talking about that, But a lot has changed since then, and most of it for the best, but we also have to be careful about how it's changed. Right after college, when I was— I didn't graduate from college until I was 27. I got a job working at an intermediate care center, which had people who probably could have stayed at home, but they didn't have enough money to afford rent in New Jersey, so they were here, and they needed some care. But then, right after that, I went and worked for Essex County Parks Department in New Jersey, but all over Essex County. That's where Tony Soprano was, by the way. And we had in the park— they had a beautiful park system— and we had senior citizens clubs in the park. And these were people that would come out and they would socialize, and they would— I took them on trips, which was— that's a whole other story, taking 6 busloads of senior citizens on a week-long trip. My mom and dad and I, they were in California, I was in New Jersey, and we all kind of settled into Raleigh, North Carolina. And I had a, uh, 750-square-foot two-story house in my backyard when I bought my house. So mom and dad went to live in it. It's wonderful. And for a long time, but anyway, then mom started to need help. And, you know, Dad had to do it. I— you said in that wonderful intro, and it worked out okay. But then Mom passed, and I had Dad come to live with me. And what I found that was there's a lot of hostility to keep parents at home from doctors, from nurses, a lot of people who are being marketed to be convinced about how everybody should be in, well, They're called senior communities. I call them silver ghettos. I think that there are some people who love them, more people don't, and I think it's really a shame to take old adults out of the community. They need to be there, and the community needs them.

Yeah. So, the hostility you sensed from the medical community, the message was don't try to take care of your parents at home. Let us take care of them, we can do better. Is that the message?

Exactly. Pretty much. And I remember Dad had a— for a while when he was sick, and he got better, but he was at a period where he was pretty sick. So Medicare sent a nurse 3 days a week to take care of him. She loved my dad. Dad loved her. I loved her. She was wonderful. But she just was convinced that Dad would be so much happier and so much better off if he were living in an assisted living. And I knew that he wouldn't because I knew my dad. He hated being around the bullies, so it would not work for him. But they're just so convinced that there's this one place for everybody who goes in social services and they're all happy. And now that I've worked in them, seeing patients in them, they're not so much that way.

No, of course there are all different levels and different levels of care as well. So, yeah, but So how many years was it that you were caring for your father?

5, 5 years after mom died. 5 years. And I always made sure— he did too, because he wouldn't have liked it. He had chores to do. That was always something he could do to be useful, because he would have been very unhappy to not be useful. Another reason he liked an assisted living, because they don't want to do anything. Everybody does for them. They don't get to do things.

Yeah, it's important to have that purpose or meaningful activity or something that, you know, helps them to wake up in the morning with a smile on their face and something to look forward to. And that's sometimes difficult to offer, although—

Well, and knowing that they—

I'm not generalizing. There are plenty of facilities that can do that, but yeah.

Knowing that they still have value. Everybody, no matter how old you are, needs to know that they have value, that there's a reason for the existing, even above and beyond their own self. They need to know that they contribute to the world.

Yes, for sure, for sure. We need that meaningful activity to feel like we're still contributing. Yeah, that's important, that's important. So currently, we'll get back to more about the recommendations and keeping parents at home, but currently you're working, you have a clinical practice.

I have a therapy practice. Probably now about 90% of my clientele are people over 65, people on Medicare. That's the gamut. I mean, there are some people who just, you know, trying to adjust to, you know, being old and, you know, getting along in the world. But I actually have people who come into me in their late 70s and their 80s, and they really want to do heavy-duty, what we used to call analytic work. They, you know, they've had things— they've had good lives, by the way. It's not that their lives have been miserable, but they've had things that have just bothered them for so long, and they're like, gosh, I better do it now because if I don't do it now, you know, it won't get done. But there's so many people who think that once you're a certain age, there's no point doing that kind of work. So it's such a joy to know so many people who still want to work on themselves and become better people.

Well, that's good to hear. I know when I started years ago, outpatient psychotherapy with seniors was not very common. People tended to view therapy as this kind of long-term problem-solving readjustment of personality configuration. So I know it has improved and there's much greater acceptance for for this kind of one-on-one counseling or group therapy. So I'm glad to hear that 90%, that's virtually everybody in your practice. So kudos to you for—

yeah, pretty much. Yeah, what's also interesting is I have a few very young people. I have a young woman who's 22 and they don't— and a young man who's in his 30s, and they don't seem to mind coming into a place called Silver Linings for Seniors and sitting with a bunch of old people. They actually like that. They're not put off by that.

That's good. We can learn from each other, right? Yeah, exactly. Do any teaching or consulting or anything else professionally?

Well, I do speaking. I have a sort of a speech that it's meant to shake people up, but it's geared towards having people learn how to, as you said earlier, having to help their parents, but help them not by setting their lives up for them, but by giving them information instead of advice. And then letting, you know, unless someone really can't, which is rare, by the way, and letting then the older person, the parent, make up their own minds about what they want to do. And I'm finding that one of the biggest problems in families, and it's really, it's hard on families, is that Somehow the children have been told that they're the ones that need to suddenly take over. And it makes for a lot of unhappiness for a lot of people. And it ruins relationships.

Sure, yeah, and the important element there, what you just said, is helping the individual, you know, providing information so they can make informed decisions. Exactly. And give them whatever facts and figures or whatever is going on to let them make their own decisions. That's for sure. So I know in your book, and you've talked with me earlier about this, you know, the whole demographic change in the U.S. and the aging epidemic. And you describe this aging epidemic here in the U.S. and that's running out of caregivers and being, you know, the number of seniors, 70s, 80s plus, are living longer. Going to require more help and more assistance. Tell us about this aging epidemic. Yeah.

Well, as we know, you know, since the COVID epidemic and shutdown, a lot of businesses have had trouble, you know, staffing, and the home health agencies have really also been hit by it. You know, it's just harder for them to find people than they used to, just like everybody else. You know, there's some very good people who work in these agencies, but unfortunately, because, you know, they just can't get paid that much, and it makes it difficult. So, hopefully, that will straighten out, that eventually more people will start coming into this business, because a lot of the ones that I've known have really enjoyed the work. But, yeah, so that's made it a little tight right now, too. And a lot of the senior communities, the independent and assisted living places have had some trouble keeping staff. Just, again, just like restaurants and every other business in this country these days.

Sure, sure. Yeah, and the shortage of caregivers, that's— we keep hearing about that. And I think you're right. I mean, just the demographics alone, you know, really tested the availability. But certainly with COVID and people pulling out of the job market and moving into other areas. That's complicated and it's really exacerbated the shortage. Yeah, so your message is, your information that you'd like to impart with others is helping parents live at home, aging in place, right? And I think that's a great goal. I think that's so important. So tell us your reasons why, I mean, you touched on it earlier about some of the retirement communities. ALFs. But what are your thoughts about aging in place? Why is this so important?

You know, it's important, again, as I said earlier, for people to live around people of all different generations, to not be segregated, to not, you know, old people here, young people there. I remember when I went to college at the University of Iowa and I came home for Thanksgiving, and it was so odd because I realized that for 2 months I hadn't seen anybody over 25. And that felt weird. That didn't quite feel right. It's just so important for our communities and for the people who live in them that we know people of all different generations and that we have those experiences and that we annoy each other and do nice things for each other. It's part of being human.

Yeah, the whole intergenerational mix, that's crucial. I had a guest on a few weeks ago on my program and she's the executive director of a retirement community that's placed smack in the middle of a college in Purchase, New York. And, you know, we discussed this very topic, the importance of sharing and students learning from the older adults and the seniors learning from the students and attending classes and all of that. And that makes for a very rich living environment.

I love that. I love that.

Yeah, look it up. Broadmoor, I believe it's Broadmoor Senior Living.

I will, because I have some ideas about some things I would like to do. So, I will definitely be contacting people there and finding out what's going on.

Mm-hmm. So, what are the kind of directions for adult children in terms of doing what you did with your dad? And, you know, what do they need to know? What kind of systems do they need to be aware of? What do they need to be good at?

The most important thing— you're good at being a family member, but the most important thing is that people understand that they're not going to be able to do this on their own. And again, a lot of families have a lot of different economic situations, and I know that matters. But one of the things I write about in my book is how you can get creative about that. For instance, if, you know, a lot of people, especially older people, belong to churches. A lot of the churches have organizations where they can get people to come and help. For, I mean, the church, a lot of the churches have something called Stephen's Ministry, which is like a peer counseling type of situation where they're trained and supervised. But you can call the church and see if they have that, if somebody would like to come out. I tell you, when I was with Dad, one of the biggest mistakes I made was this. When we first started, you know, just the two of us, we'd go to the grocery store, and he'd go his direction, and I'd go my direction. And he always took a few minutes longer than I did, but it wasn't that big a deal. But it started to get longer, like I'd have to like wait a half an hour for him. So, the mistake I made was that I would just— I'd say, "Dad, write me a list, and I'll go get your groceries." Well, the mistake was is that number one, he wasn't getting out of the house. Number two, he didn't have the autonomy to buy his own groceries. So, what we did was we found a neighborhood woman who had young children and she didn't want to work because she wanted to be with her children and couldn't work anyway because she needed to be with her children. But for $15 an hour, she was perfectly happy to take Dad to the grocery store and he could be as slow as he needed or wanted to be. Because, you know, she was getting paid by the hour. She wasn't impatient like I was getting. And then, because I didn't have to spend, you know, that long period taking him to the grocery store, he and I could do more fun things together so that the time we had together was actually fun. So, what I suggest, and again, I know it's different for different families, but, you know, you do the things that are fun and that are enjoyable with your parent, and as much as possible, the things that you don't enjoy doing. Have somebody else help them with, if they need it, but also very much encourage them to do as much as they can on their own.

Yeah, I agree. That's so important. It can be faster when we do it for somebody. I mean, I saw this countless times in long-term care nursing homes, and, you know, I would always encourage nurses and CNAs to allow the person to do whatever they can for himself or herself. Getting dressed, hygiene, all of that, because it might be faster, but when we do it for them, it creates that dependency and it helps to kind of hasten their—

Exactly. I'm so glad you did that. I wish more places would do that. It's the way to go.

Yeah. And that's the point.

And even with Dad, he— I mean, he let the— I had two Dalmatians at the time. He let them in and out. And he would go to the kitchen and he would load and empty the dishwasher. Now, he had to sit on his walker to do it and it took a long time, but so what? So what it took a long time? I mean, it didn't bother me and he usually did it while I was at work anyway. Just a little, but they need to have things to do.

Sure, yeah, and that's a good tip. Rather than spend time that's maybe a little bit tense or frustrating or, Impatient. Let's see if we can get someone else to help with some of those tasks and reserve the time together in a more positive way. I like that.

By the way, besides, again, like the, you know, there might be a young mother in the neighborhood who wouldn't mind picking up a few extra dollars. I know where I live in Raleigh, North Carolina, high school kids are all required to do some volunteer work before they can graduate from high school. So, you know, if that's true where you live, contact a local high school and find out if there's a kid who'd like to come over and play cards with your parent or take them for a walk. And they're going to be getting school credit, so they're happy. Again, and it also gives them more contact with younger people and more contact with other people, because they don't want to just see your face. They want to see other people.

Yeah, continue to mix, offer that stimulation and entertainment. So, what about healthcare, doctor visits, managing? Medication, all of these items. How do you help adult children kind of learn what they—

I did things a little different. Now, I understand that some parents that are living with their children can't do this on their own, so I get this. So, what I'm talking about is the ideal. But I didn't take Dad to the doctor. When he was driving, he went by himself, and after he couldn't drive, Raleigh has a cab that would pick him up for a dollar each direction, door to door, and take him wherever he wanted to go. One of the reasons for this, again, it gave him more independence, but the other problem that really bothered me was as Dad started to get older and I was there, you know, Dad would ask the doctor a question and the doctor would look at me and give me the answer. And when I wasn't there, when it was just Dad, they'd have to talk to him, and that's really what they needed to do. Now, like anybody else, when he had his heart surgery, I went with him for the post-op conversation because everybody, I don't care if you're 30, if you have a serious surgery, you need to have somebody with you when you go to post-op because you just need more people to listen. But for day-to-day things, I mean, took him to his eye doctor because he had to have— he had macular degeneration, so he had to have shots in his eyes. So, I took him there because obviously he couldn't get there on his own. But everything else, as much as possible, he did on his own. There's also something to look into, which we did get after a while. Around here, it's called Doctors Making House Calls. There are more practices where they will do that. Now, they will charge you. I mean, it's costly because they will charge you for the time it took them to get to your house, and insurance doesn't pay that. But if you can afford it, that's a wonderful thing to have also. And Medicare really does— I mean, they gave Dad a nurse for about 3 years, and for 6 months of those years, she was coming 3 times a week because he needed it. But you have to do some advocating for that because, again, the tendency is, well, why don't you just put him in a home? Because he'd be unhappy in a home, and so he's not going to go there.

Yeah, let somebody else handle all of these responsibilities. It does take a lot of kind of research and, you know, looking to see what resources are available. And as you say, letting the parent visit the doctor on his own or her own and so that the information is shared between the provider and the patient rather than the provider and the intermediary. I like that.

Right. And again, most people really can do it on their own. Some can't, and again, I'm not, you know, fanatical where I think everybody has to, but you'd be surprised how many people really can do that on their own.

Yeah, what you're really talking about a lot is encouraging this independence and not building that dependency, not interfering with the person making, you know, their own decisions and really letting him kind of live his own life and not—

Exactly.

Even though it's, you know, as I said, it's faster, maybe it's quicker, maybe it's done better when we do it, but that diminishes the You know, the reality of the situation. You're right.

Exactly. Exactly.

What about financial decisions? Where do the adult children come into play here?

Well, again, it depends on who your parents are. You know, Dad, I mean, Dad was already paying his own bills and writing his own checks right up until the end. What we did was, I mean, I didn't charge him any rent, but we split the utilities in half. And, you know, but it was going to be different for different families. I do want two things to remember, though. One is make sure that those things are talked about and settled before you move in together. You don't want somebody moving in and then all of a sudden saying, "Oh, wait a minute, I didn't know that." You want to handle— you want to get all that stuff down on paper, almost like a contract, although not quite so formal, before they move in. And you do not want to mix monies. His money was his money, and he gave me a check for half of the utilities. But it's very important that they have their money and I had my money. But, again, it's going to be different from family to family depending on the financial situation, number one. But I— and, again, I would even say even if your parents have hardly any money and you're doing fine, let them pay for something. Let them pay for something. And Dad always, whenever we went out, Dad always insisted on paying because, again, he was living rent-free. But it's not even the money there, it was just so important to him to be able to pay for a dinner out.

Yeah. Well, you know, I think in many ways your situation might have been easier than if there was a mix of adult children in the family, like several siblings, especially—

Yes.

—disagreement, you know, because that's very much common, as we know. And if you have the one-on-one relationship, that's ideal. But sometimes there's a brother or sister who may not agree with that approach.

Well, I— and I was lucky, I have a brother. However, he was in California, so he did disagree on some things, but it was— no, you're very right, and I'm glad you brought that up. And also, frankly, I didn't have a husband, so that made it easier. I'm not saying it can't work if you're married or have children at home, it's just a different situation. And, you know, sometimes I will be more than happy to talk with people about their particular situation and help them kind of figure out, well, you know, yeah, your book is fine and the way you did it was fine. However, I have a husband and a, you know, 30-year-old daughter who's still living at home, and really help them figure that out and kind of look at what the problems are.

Yeah. Yeah. Everyone has their own mix of variables, right?

It doesn't mean it can't work. It just means that you might need a little more consultation. To do that.

Sure, yeah, especially when there's a disagreement about selling the home or, you know, should Dad or Mom live in, you know, with me or should we live with somebody else or— yeah, all kinds of decisions. And I guess what you're saying is the process is more important than the content and that is make sure you tackle these topics, you discuss them and find ways to move forward and find something. Acceptance.

Acceptance. And that it's clear, that it's clear. Yeah. That it's very clear what's going to happen and who's going to pay for what. That's so important.

In the future, sure. What about, you have a LOVE system, I mentioned that in the intro, L-O-V-E, what's that all about?

Gives you a framework for doing this. The L with the LOVE is, letting go. And let me tell you, my father— my mother was a little difficult, but my father, who I had for 5 years all by myself, was one of the most wonderful men you ever wanted to meet. He was so easy to get along with. However, I remember one time he— I was going upstairs, he asked me to do something, or he didn't, and all of a sudden it flashed through my mind about some choir concert that he missed when I was, you know, in high school. And I'm like, now, where did that come from? When you're living with somebody, especially when the situ— you know, with the kind of dynamics, stuff like that can happen. So, what I suggest is that people sit down beforehand and you write out all the things that you're— all the ways your parents disappointed you or all the— or that they did something better for your sibling or what— just write it down. And I don't care how petty it sounds, write it down. Because 'Cause it comes to your mind, it's in your head, write it down, you want to get it out of you. And then you go through them all and you say, well, this one, this one, you know what, now that I look, like for instance, my father missed a concert when I was in high school. Well, that's a little silly, you know, 50 years later. So, I could kind of laugh at that one, but it was out of my head and that's what's important. Some of them are a little more important and you say, well, you know, well, gosh, this is important because dad has this way of, I don't know, turning all the lights on. That's not a good example, but something that annoys me. But that's, but again, you know it ahead of time. So, you're either going to say, well, you know, we're going to get dad to change, or I'm just going to learn to live with it. But again, you've gotten it out of your head onto the paper where something can be done about it. And, you know, you do that about a lot of things. But again, and by the way, anything that you write on that paper, do not show to your parents. It's going to do no good. This is strictly for you to see what, you know, see what kind of garbage you're still hanging on to so that you can— and again, there's the L, let it go. The O stands for organization, and again, you've got to have a team, and even if it's a volunteer from the church and a volunteer from high school and a woman down the street who works for an hour a week, you still need a team, and it could be family members, but you can't do it all by yourself. If for no other reason, your parent wants to see somebody besides you. They get sick of just looking at your face all the time. Even, you know, you go out into the world and you do your job and you see people, but, you know, they want to see somebody besides you, just like you want to see other people. So, but the organization is a matter of, you know, working that out, figuring out what you're going to need, and how you're going to get it based on what you can do, what your financial resources are, and, you know, what's available in your neighborhood and what your parent needs. The V is the value, and again, that we kind of talked about that a little earlier. Everybody needs to know that they have some value. My dad, I mean, I really am— actually, I had two big Dalmatians and they were old, so they couldn't stay in the house all day. They needed to be let in and out, so he was actually doing me a very good service. Service. And so it wasn't like I found him some busy work. It was a good service, and I could go to work knowing that the dogs were going to be let in and out. That's all he— that's about all he could do, but that's all I needed. So that was great. And again, he would empty and load the dishwasher. So finding some— finding a value of what they could do as to where they are, and also valuing yourself and your own time so that you know that that what you're doing, while you're not perfect, is good enough. D.W. Winnicott, who was a child psychiatrist and analyst way back in the '50s, but he came up with a phrase, and this was back when everybody was blaming mothers for everything, and he came up with a phrase. He said, "All anybody needs is good enough parenting." Well, when you're taking care of your parents, all they need is good enough too. And sometimes if it's too good, it could become more of a problem anyway. So, value yourself for what you're doing. And do try, of course, to keep what you do for them to be in the fun area and not so much in the drudgery. The E, again, is just to sit down periodically, once every 6 months, and say, well, how are we doing? You know, is mom getting to all of her doctor's appointments? How is her health still? Does she like the people that are coming to help? Just kind of evaluating it, and most of the time you'll say, well, you know, things are working pretty good, we're okay, or you you might want to tweak a little bit, or you might need to change, you know, you might need to change a whole person out. But that's important to do once every, depending on the situation, about once every 6 months.

Yeah, and waiting too long makes that list longer, of course, so keeping it—

And more complicated, not just longer, yes it does, but also more complicated. So, yeah.

And heavier too, yeah. And heavier. How much bigger in our mind.

Yep, oh yeah. And then you get to the point where it's so long you just, I can't even do it, and then it gets longer. So yeah, so just, so make sure you do it on a regular basis, whether it's 3 months or 6 months, make sure you do it on a regular basis.

Yeah, that's a great list. I like that. L for letting go, be ready to let go of some of those old hurts or disappointments or resentments and get that off your chest. Not necessarily share it with them. Not to them.

Not to them, but for yourself. Yeah.

And the O for organization, be prepared, get the team, get the resources in the community, get to wherever is needed, whatever your financial means will allow, but have this plan for support, whatever you can pull together. Yeah. And the value, make sure you offer opportunities for the person to feel valued, to still have that sense of purpose and meaning, and that goes a long way, I agree, because that can outweigh any kind of physical decline as long as we have some sense of strength and kind of our own value in our own mind. That can outweigh that poor eyesight and poor vision and needing a cane and all that. Yeah, that's good. And E for evaluate, just do some status checks. How we doing? What can we fix? I think that's important, especially to point out what's going right. It's easy to find out what's going wrong, but let's—

Exactly. Exactly.

—let's put the spotlight on what we're doing right. Hey, I'm really glad that you're still doing this, or I'm really glad that we can talk about that. So let's point out some of these successes because that's what builds the progress and kind of allows for more of that.

I want to add one more thing, and this gets— you were talking earlier about it is more complicated when you have siblings. Sometimes it's better, but most often it's not. And it's more complicated. For instance, like if you need to spend some money remodeling a bathroom to make it safe for your parent, use your parent's money for anything like that or anything. And Daddy, Dad didn't have a lot of money at all. He couldn't even afford it to go to an assisted living, but like when he decided he wanted to have someone come in during the day for a few hours, he paid for that. And here's the deal, because when they die and you have siblings, your sibling most likely is not going to say, well, gee, you did all this and you built that bathroom, so I'm— so we're going to pay you back for that. That's not going to happen. I'm just going to tell you, if you think it's going to happen, I mean, maybe, but it's not going to happen. So in order to avoid fights with the family, mom or dad, as much as they can, they pay for their own care. And again, any renovations that need doing, they pay for that. And then that way, whatever money's left over, then, you know, you all split it up fine, and there's no— you, you feeling resentment because you had to spend all this money while they were alive. Yeah, don't expect to get it back when the siblings will not look at it. I mean, rarely will siblings look at it that way. So just, just Just to avoid family confrontation, just get it done ahead of time.

Good advice. Good advice. What about when we have to work, when the adult child has to work and we have mom or dad in the home? And, you know, how do you balance those two worlds?

Well, you go to work. You can call them. You go to work. If they need— if they can't prepare lunch, then you have somebody come in and get them lunch, but you go to work. I mean, you know, this idea— I mean, if your parent has like advanced Alzheimer's, that's a whole different situation, and that's not what I'm talking about. But, you know, I don't know where people get this idea that if they have an older person living in the home, that person has to be constantly watched, because it's not the case. I even— I used to have this. I used to visit people in their houses for therapy, and I had this woman who actually had advanced Alzheimer's. I'm not recommending this, but by the way, but she had advanced Alzheimer's. And she lived in her townhouse all by herself. Her daughter lived like a block away, but she lived in her townhouse all by herself. And every night, as many times as I saw her, the night before she'd call me up and she'd say, "I have your name here. Who are you and why are you coming?" And then the next day I'd go and knock on the door and she'd say, "Who are you and why are you here?" Now, we could do therapy, believe it or not. But the point is, and I'm only mentioning this story not to say that it should be tried by very many people. Her house which is spotless, by the way. But you'd be surprised. They don't need to be watched over all the time. And, in fact, it's not good for them. So, go to work. You know, again, unless— and if they need massive nursing care, like if they're bedridden, you know, have your doctor write a prescription, have Medicare send somebody over to do that because Medicare will do that. You don't have to stay home and do it. You need to have your life, and you certainly most likely need the income. Come from your job. Of course, of course.

Now, it occurs to me as we talk about these different situations, the older adult could be living in their own home, his or her own home, and the adult children are living separately. It's not— I'm so glad you mentioned that.

Keeping your parents home doesn't mean keeping them in their home.

Yeah, but if your father is living with you, that's one thing, but when he's living in his own home or his own apartment, That puts a little different perspective on things, right?

Right. I will tell you this, I mean, if that's what they want to do, that's fine. Uh, as long as, you know, it— for me, it would have put— I mean, Dad couldn't do it anyway because he couldn't afford an apartment on his Social Security, was very low. But it would have been more stress on me because then I would have, I would have felt the urge to have— like, I would have had to go see him every night. And the way it was, like, I had 2 bedrooms downstairs and he had a living room and a bed— and a bedroom. And I would come home and a lot of nights I would come and sit and we'd watch TV or— but a lot of nights I'd just come in and say, "Hi, Dad, how you doing?" And I'd go upstairs and do my thing upstairs. For me, it was much easier to have him in my home because, again, I didn't have to— because I would have felt a pressure. To make sure that I visited often enough. This way, I got to see him twice a day. Even again, if it was just to say hello, I got to see him twice a day. But yes, it can, but keeping your parents home can mean staying in their own home. And again, it may or may not mean that they're going to need more help. Don't assume they're going to need more help, and especially if they have friends in the neighborhood. You know, a lot of people who have lived in the same neighborhood for 40 years know who their neighbors are.. So, they may not need as much as they— like my dad had moved here from California, so he didn't know anybody. But don't assume that your parents can't be in their own home either. But, again, then you want to give them a lot of information about how to get things done that they can no longer do. Like, for instance, I know you love to plant flowers and do that, but would you like— there are people who will come and mow your lawn because that's kind of strenuous work for you. So, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because, yes, staying home can mean staying home too.

Yeah, different perspectives, of course, and different responsibilities depending on where parents are living. Yeah, that's important. Tell us about your YouTube channel, Age Out Loud. What's—

Oh, I'm glad you brought that up. Well, it's on YouTube. It's called Age Out Loud. I have several different different playlists. One of my favorites, by the way, when Dad— when I was 6 months old, my mom and dad bought their first of 3 small-town weekly newspapers in Iowa. And when Dad was 91, I sat him down. This was back when YouTube would only take like 4-minute videos. I sat him down and I had him talk about this. And when I first started, because he was kind of shy, he's like, "Oh, I don't have anything to say." It didn't take very long before I'd have to say, "Dad, we're at 4 minutes. We have to stop now," because he had so much to say. So, one of the playlists there is my dad. Another one, I have this wonderful 87-year-old flamenco dancer who does an amazing dance and she reads poetry she wrote. I also have, and this is very important, I have a playlist that I did that is about 12 videos and the heading of it is "Just Because You're Old Doesn't Mean It's Dementia." And I list all of the different things that— because dementia isn't technically a thing. Dementia is a grouping of symptoms that all seem to look alike. However, just because you have those symptoms doesn't mean you have dementia. It could be, as we get older, I'm sure you know this, as we get older, a UTI tends to look more like dementia than it did when we were younger. It could be because we're on— somebody's on way, way too many medications that are interacting with each other, so they look like they have dementia. I mean, there's all— it could be depression, it could be all sorts of things. And one of my concerns is, is that when somebody's of a certain age and they have gray hair and they go to the doctor with these symptoms, it's so easy to just call it dementia. My recommendation to people, whether it's you yourself or whether you're doing it for a loved one, if a doctor gives you a diagnosis of dementia, which you might have, People have it, but the first question that you want to ask is, if I were 45 years old, what else would you be looking for besides dementia?

Yeah, that's a good way to question that diagnosis, sure. Really another conversation, and we might want to do this sometime because I agree dementia is a collection of symptoms, it's a syndrome, and it doesn't necessarily say anything about reversibility or It could be. Exactly. It is reversible, sure, like medication. Yeah, exactly. Or a UTI.

And I mean, doctors are better about the UTIs now, but back in the days when they would diagnose a UTI as dementia, not only was the person having dementia, which they didn't have, but the UTI didn't get treated.

Yeah, no treatment for UTI. Yeah, these, um, these playlists are— this is all on your YouTube channel, Age Out Loud. Somebody can go go to YouTube and just—

and also, yeah, if somebody out there who's older has a good story or, or something that they would like to talk about, if they would like to contact me, and if I feel that that story is something that would enhance, you know, the, the, the channel, oh, I would be more than happy to talk to people to see if someone would like to, to, to do something to put on that channel, because I'm really looking to grow it in that way. Great.

Well, I was going to ask you how can people contact you before we wrapped up, but why don't we, uh, why don't we cover that now? How can people contact you? Well, there's a few ways, and I don't recommend—

there is a website, You Can Keep Your Parents Home, by the way, which has some wonderful videos on it of some experts, and there's some very good information on there, so you should go to it. It's not the best way to contact me right now, and this may seem a little clumsy, but the best way to contact me is to go to my Facebook group which is Age Out Loud, and send me a message through Facebook. And one of the things, by the way, I'd like to put in a little plug, I'm making a course which helps people figure out what the best place for them to live in retirement is going to be. I start out by teaching them a program, which is fun and simple, but where they can figure out what their ideal day is. And then, once they've done that, then I talk about all of the different possibilities and probably more importantly, if like say you've decided that you want to go to independent living or assisted living, and people do, I got that, but what questions to ask the salesperson? Because salespeople are only going to tell you what they think they want to tell you. And I'm not putting them down, that's their job. But how to ask them other questions and when they when they say something, how to find out what that really means. And again, the course is going to be coming out in a couple of months. If people are interested, they can also go to my Facebook group, Age Out Loud, and tell me that they're interested and give me their email, and I'd be happy to notify them.

Great. Sounds like a terrific course. A lot of information for people on making some informed decisions like we talked about. Mm-hmm. Great. Yeah. So, before we wrap up, what would you like our listeners to take away from our conversation today? What would you most like them to take away? Aging happens.

However, you don't stop living just because you're getting older. And too many people, again, just like the doctors occasionally do, will look at their hair and they look at their age and they and maybe their hip hurts a little bit, and so they assume there's so much that they can't do anymore. And there always is. There's a way to do it. One of the women I'm doing psychoanalytic work with is 83, and up until like, up until just before COVID she was dancing around the— she was doing competition. And now, you know, she's gotten a little older, and she knows she can't do that anymore, but she still takes a class with her instructor. There's even, even if you have to dial back a little bit, never stop. Never stop until, until you're dead. Because it's once you stop, once you stop growing, it's all over. Whether you could live another 20 years, I say this to people a lot, do you really want to live another 20 years like this, or how about we make it better?

Yeah, well, you're preaching to the choir here, if that's the expression. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree. Let's keep opening new doors. We don't know what lies ahead. Let's keep starting new chapters and opening new doors. Great. Thanks for that. Great conversation. Since we are out of time though, I just want to remind our listeners about a couple of things. Please feel free to visit our website, my website, livingto100.club. Sign up for our email list and download a free copy of my 9 Tips to Make Living Longer Enjoyable. While you're there on the website, please be sure to peruse our library of blogs and podcasts. And finally, if you're interested, reach out to me to schedule a presentation for your group in person or online. I think there's value in helping older adults feel inspired about their future. Margo, thanks so much for being a guest on our program today. I really appreciate it. Great conversation. I know our audience We'll appreciate it as well.

Well, thank you for having me.

You're welcome. And thanks to everyone for listening to our episode today, and hope to see you next time.

Hi everyone, this is Meredith from the Senior Fitness with Meredith podcast where I discuss all things for seniors, from fitness, your health and wellness journeys, how to be all over strong and beyond. I also have my mini podcast called Motivation with Meredith. It's a great quick motivational pick-me-up for your days. Join me, listen now, search for Senior Fitness with Meredith on your favorite podcast platform.