How do you discuss long term care with a family member?

It's often best to have a third party help you out. This can be the doctor or even a life-long friend. Family dynamics can get in the way when the "child" tells the parent that it's time. I'm not saying it's ever easy, but having someone who is not a family member - clergy? - can often help make it happen. Good luck,
Carol

PS..if they can't take care of themselves presently, enlist her dr and their offices social worker to initiate the conversation and present options. You can then reinforce and set things in motion. Expect tears, drama, and resistance.

I'm in my 50s and my husband and I have long term care insurance, plus we've had frank discussions with our adult children of our wishes. We've talked and enlisted our long time trusted friends to help our children and or spouse carry out our plan -- as I'm sure when my time comes, I likely will be stubborn and resistant thinking I can still care for myself and causing my children undue stress and guilt!! I tell my children constantly that I don't want them to go thru what we are going thru with our elderly parents.

You just have the hard conversation. Find a time when both of you are calm and preference with a nice lunch or stop for coffee. Have your research available and calmly tell them you love them and want to help the understand and plan for their options before something bad happens where they may not have such choices.

Be prepared to have the conversation frequently and reinforce. Visit some of the places in your area and keep an open mind regarding in home care services.

If there are friends or others who've made the transition, visit them with your loved one.

Now, I will say, I have been doing this for several yrs with my independent and stubborn mom...she has resisted to date...but I've done all of the above every chance I get...she finally gets the message. She hasn't agreed to a move, but at least she understands how it works and we've discussed what will happen under various scenarios.

It's not easy and I haven't had a success story, but I have made progress over time in that the message of what will happen under various scenarios is finally comprehended. Most of all, she knows I will not be the one to take care of her and how the finances can work to provide for her care.

I so agree with Sunflo. The time to start the conversation and the research is long before the actual time when care is needed. It's like looking at colleges, you don't do that the day you graduate from High School. And look at all levels of care, IL, AL and NH, hopefully in tiered facility. You just never know what is going to happen, and when.

In our case, we THOUGHT we had planned, but it turned out that we worked on false assumptions and believed what mom told us! 1 do your own research about what care costs; mom told us stuff like "you can only go to X if you have a million dollars in liquid assets, I called and asked " well, no, that wasn't what they told her, but never mind. Call these places yourself!

2. We assumed that mom would be able to "age in place" with care. We didn't forsee that her increasing anxiety, depression , isolation and panic would upend our lives. Prepare for the unexpected!

I started years before my mother actually had to move in with me of "planting a bug in her ear" that one day she and I would come to a crossroads on how her living arrangements would be. She didn't want to hear or discuss it, but I would still say it out loud,every time we communicated I would throw it into the discussions even for a few seconds, just a constant little reminder.One day we hit that "crossroads" and although it was horribly emotional it wasn't a complete shock,still shocking but not completely and that did actually help.Every family is different,my goal was to try to have a game plan before "something" happened.

Be very careful about the financials. Its true that some places may require a million is assets, especially if their buy-in is about $400, 000 and the monthly rent is $3000. There's other expenses to Life besides your rent....eyeglasses might cost $400 now, but in 10 yrs maybe they cost $1000. Add some gifts, clothing, trip to grandkid's wedding, and your wine club dues, and youve got another 10-20, 000 a year expenses. And if you live for another 15 years you dont want to have given that much money to this wonderful place that doesn't accept Medicaid.

in a singing telegram.
na na na NA
hey there mom , your getting old and sick .
back in the army , they called it broke d*ck .
you cant live alone , as you desire .
you keep falling down , and starting fires .

you cant live with us , too much on our plates .
i think youd do better at clapboard estates .
theyve cleaned the place up , its swept and mopped .
they fired the euthenizin nurse , and all charges were dropped ..

Look, mom said if we took her car away she'd be dead in six months. That was May of 2013. We took the car anyway. You cannot reason with dementia, any more than you can reason with a three year old. You do what you have to do to keep them safe. Neither one knows what is good for them.
And mom? Alive and well and living at Assisted Living.

The Conversation Project Starter Kit will facilitate the discussion: theconversationproject