I found chapter 2 to be very informative. To be completely honestly some of the recommendations of how to deal with our elders or older parents and grand parents should have been common sense. An common sense recommendation was #3, Give your aging parent of space. If you think about it everyone need their space and we tend to for get that older people do too. That is not to say that they don't get lonely and that we should abandon them but we do need to know when to allow them to have some time to themselves. Recommendation #12 says Listen carefully to the concerns of the Senior Citizen under your care. I think this is a great recommendation because it helps you to better know how to care for a person when you can take care of their concerns or at least reassure them that it is or will be taken care of. I think that one of the most important recommendation mentioned in the reading was # 7, which says to make plans for the end of life and allow active input. This is very very important because thins can happen out of no where and you wan to know how to handle the situation and what they would have wanted you to do. I have already had this conversation with my parents and my mother is only in her late 40s and my father in his early 50s but you never know.
I did not get the opportunity to grow up with grand parents because my mother's parents passed away when she was a young girl and my father's parents passed away when I was a young child. Although I did not get to interact with them I encounter a lot of elderly people as I volunteer at the hospital once a week and reading this chapter will help me to know how to handle the different conversations with the various people I meet there.
Im sorry to hear about the loss of your grandparents. I didn't get to meet my grandmother(dad side) because she died of breast cancer. My grandfather (dad's side), I met him and I used to talk with him. He later passed away from a number of illnesses.
ReplyDeleteTake in as much as you can volunteering!