Red Flags at Family Gatherings: Signs Your Aging Parents Need Help | Canadian Guide
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Holiday family gatherings can reveal concerning red flags about aging parents’ wellbeing. Beyond festive meals and gift exchanges, the extended time spent with aging parents also provides a crucial window into their health and well-being – one that can reveal concerning changes that might otherwise go unnoticed during brief visits or routine phone calls the rest of the year.
For many Canadians, this year’s holiday season may have brought to light subtle but worrying shifts in their parents’ physical, cognitive, emotional or social functioning. Recognizing these signs is the first step, but knowing how to meaningfully act on them within Canada’s complex healthcare and support systems is equally important. Let’s help you transform your holiday observations into an actionable plan to ensure your aging parents get the care and assistance they need.
Warning Signs to Watch in Aging Parents
The extra time spent together over visits, often in their home environment, allows you to pick up on gradual changes that could signal your parents need more support. Here are key areas to pay attention to:
Physical red flags
Daily tasks become challenging. Notice:
- Mobility problems like unsteady gait, difficulty with stairs, or getting up from chairs
- Struggling with basic self-care tasks like buttoning clothes
- Significant unintended weight loss
- Excessive daytime sleeping or signs of sundowning and wandering at night
- Decline in grooming and hygiene such as wearing the same clothes or skipping showers
Changes in cognition
Extended visits reveal cognitive changes. Look for:
- Short-term memory lapses that go beyond normal age-related forgetfulness
- Word-finding difficulties or trouble following complex conversations
- Confusion about time, missing appointments or losing track of dates/seasons
- Poor judgment in areas like finances or a pattern of uncharacteristic purchases
- Difficulty handling routine tasks like sorting mail or paying monthly bills
Social and emotional concerns
Look for shifts in behavior:
- Withdrawal from activities, hobbies and social circles they once enjoyed
- Disengagement from religious services or community groups they regularly attended
- Unusual moodiness, irritability, anxiety or signs of depression
- Strained interpersonal dynamics with spouse, family or friends
- Overall disinterest in leaving the house or resistance to change/new things
Environmental clues
When visiting, check the house:
- Neglected home maintenance, clutter, unsanitary conditions or fall hazards
- Expired food in the fridge, bare cupboards, spoiled items or unsafe food handling
- Piles of unopened mail, unpaid bills, concerning financial statements
- New vehicle damage like dents/scratches or overdue maintenance
- Scorch marks on pots, stockpiled/forgotten medications, general safety risks
How to Document Changes Over Visits
Thoroughly documenting what you notice is key to identifying patterns, tracking changes over time, and effectively communicating concerns to healthcare providers and family. Some tips:
- Keep a journal: During visits, jot down incidents as they happen including dates, times, and specific details. Use your phone to snap time stamped photos of potential problems.
- Build a timeline: Create a chronological record of when worrying changes first appeared and how they’ve progressed. This paints a clearer clinical picture.
- Assess home safety: Methodically go room-by-room looking for hazards like poor lighting, loose rugs, lack of grab bars. Take photos and list modifications needed.
- Compile medical info: Make a list of their doctors, medications, health conditions and recent test results. Note any new or worsening symptoms you’ve observed.
- Review financial records: Track overdue payments, unopened statements, unusual spending or possible scams. Look for signs of financial mismanagement.
Next Steps: Starting the Care Conversation
Acting early on your concerns is crucial to avoiding crisis situations down the road. But it can be hard to know where to begin. Here’s an action plan to get the ball rolling. A caveat: some of these suggestions require you to be a power of attorney or healthcare rep to be able to access or discuss your parents’ information with others
Immediate To-Dos:
- Share your recorded observations with siblings or other involved relatives. Create a shared online document to keep everyone informed.
- Research your provincial health authority’s senior care resources such as caregiver education, home safety evaluations, geriatric clinics, or fall prevention programs. Also take some time to research private pay options for home care and other services.
- Update emergency contacts and important legal, financial and medical information. Make sure trusted people can access it if needed.
- Consider whether your parents have their legal affairs in order. Do they have a power of attorney in place and do they have an updated will?
Healthcare Planning:
- Schedule any overdue medical checkups and screening tests, especially if you noticed health changes. Go with them and take notes if possible.
- Investigate public and private home care services that could help with challenging areas like bathing, meal prep, housekeeping, transportation and medication management.
- Consider a personal emergency response system, mobility aids and home modifications to allow them to safely age in place longer. See what provincial programs can help.
- Discuss wishes for future and end-of-life care. Update advance directives as needed.
Finances and Legal:
- Gently review financial records together, watching for signs of unpaid bills, unusual purchases or possible exploitation. Discuss simplifying their banking.
- If your parents’ legal affairs are not up to date, encourage them to make an appointment with their lawyer to establish or update crucial documents like wills, powers of attorney, healthcare proxies. Make sure they reflect current wishes.
- Encourage your parent to consult a financial planner about optimizing retirement income, tax credits, and funding potential long-term care needs.
- Research eligibility for government benefits like Old Age Security, Guaranteed Income Supplement and veterans’ programs. Apply for everything they qualify for.
Building a Support Network:
- Start building a list of service providers for quick reference in case you need to engage one of them quickly. You may want to include senior transportation services, meal delivery, adult day programs, visitor companionship, and respite services.
- See if their religious institution has senior outreach. Many organize volunteers to help elderly members with errands, yard work and social activities.
- Visit area senior centers together to learn about classes, trips and events that tap into their interests. Offer to go along to ease them into participating.
- Help them reconnect with friends and social groups they’ve withdrawn from. Brainstorm ways to make staying engaged easier like rotating hosted gatherings.
- Consider hiring a care manager to guide you, especially if you live at a distance or family dynamics are complicated. They’re experts at assessing needs and coordinating care.
Be sure to check out our Family Caregiver Hub for free, downloadable resources to help you with your planning, such as our Senior Care Planning Guide, Home Care Guide, A Guide to Powers of Attorney and more!
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