Honor Your Parents
What do we mean by the phrase “honor your parents”? When we talk about the caregiver profession, and in particular, those we love and cherish, we are talking more about certain things that caretakers should be considering as the prospect of moving your family member into an assisted living facility looms overhead. Honoring your parents can and does mean different things to different people, but our approach to this is more fundamental in terms of how it relates to the relationship with your family member that will be, or has already moved into a care home.
Further, honoring your parents means understanding that what you “do” for them as a family member, respresentative or power of attorney (POA) is consistently in their best interests prior to and after their entry into an assisted living facility. Honoring your parents means that after your family member is placed into a care home, that you don’t abandon them or run of with the family fortune. Likewise, honoring your parents, doesn’t mean skipping off to Florida for a vacation and dropping in to visit your family member every three years because it’s you feel you “have to.”
Honoring your parents is all encompassing in that we don’t pick and choose, or select what things we will do or not do for our family member. Quite the contrary, we need to be their for them consistently. Of course, we realize that life is not so easy, and that being “available” 24 hours a day simply isn’t reasonable or practical. It’s more about being aware of your responsibilities within the context of honoring your family members, and subsequently acting upon said responsibilities that we are focused on here. In other words, “thinking” about helping is one thing, “doing” is quite another.