When you’re young and full of energy, you feel invulnerable, indestructible even. It’s like the world is your oyster. You’re so full of life that you can’t even stay on just one activity or hobby. It just feels like you can do everything you wanted and have more time to do the things you want.
What we don’t realize is that years can go by so fast and before we know it, we’re in that stage where we need to be adults, and our parents or grandparents aren’t getting younger. Suddenly, they’re not able to come to your housewarming or the birth of your first child for a few good reasons.
They don’t have as much motivation as they used to. Here’s how you can encourage them even into their retirement years.
Improve Their Health
As years go by, our bodies deteriorate, making our physical and mental well-being so hard to deal with. For the senior members of our family, this is especially critical considering they don’t have the strength that they used to. Moving around may be a challenge, but still try to encourage activities such as walking or light jogging.
They can be stingy when it comes to for their health, so encourage them to follow the doctor’s orders. This is very important if your parent is receiving hospice and health services because unlike other forms of therapy, it’s a specialized form of care specific to a patient’s need.
Spend Quality Time
Life can be busy, especially for people who have demanding schedules due to work or business. It can be such that sometimes we forget to spend time for the people who matter the most – our family. Your parents may not say it much, but they miss spending time with their children too.
When you can, try to schedule a vacation or trip. Spend time with them and see how they’re doing. For sure, the look on their faces when they see you approaching is worth more than your month’s paycheck or that big payday for this year’s profit.
Inclusion Instead Of Isolation
One thing that divides the younger people from the elderly is what’s called the generational gap. Since they’re born earlier than us, there are things we don’t understand anymore and for them, newer things are weird and even a little scary.
Modern technology is one of those things that they don’t want to mess with simply because they can’t retain much information as they did before. Instead of making them feel isolated, you can help introduce them to today’s trends.
No, you don’t have to force them into using a smartphone but do help them learn about the benefits of having such a device handy for emergencies or simply for connecting with family members when they need to. Avoid isolating them because even if their memory fails them, their feelings certainly don’t.
Our elders can be considered as the foundation of our society. Without them, the present generations wouldn’t have knowledge and wisdom passed down by word of mouth. It may be annoying sometimes when they tell stories about what happened during their heyday, but those carry some weight and are worth listening to throughout the generations.
