How to Handle Personal Care for Your Senior

The tasks that fall under the category of personal care, like bathing and dressing, are ones that are incredibly intimate for your senior. Helping your senior with these tasks is something you might find yourself doing regularly, so it’s important to approach them properly.

Comfort Is Key

Elder Care Holdingford, MN: How to Handle Personal Care for Your Senior

If your senior isn’t comfortable, that’s going to factor heavily into whether personal care tasks go well or not. For instance, if the room you’re in is too hot or too cold, she might not want to get undressed. If there are windows, she might be worried that someone can see in. A lot of different factors are at play for her to feel comfortable, so it’s important that you try to manage as many of those as you can.

Let Your Senior Do What She Can Do
Just because your senior needs help with dressing or bathing, that doesn’t mean that she can’t do anything at all. If possible, you need to allow your senior to do as much as she can do on her own. Be there to support her and to step in when she lets you know that she needs that help. Try not to step in too soon or too often.

Follow Her Lead All the Way
But it’s not just about waiting for your senior to let you know that she needs your help at the beginning. It’s really important to let her lead all the way through. If you’re helping her with a task like getting dressed and she changes her mind about what she wants to wear halfway through the process, make sure that you listen to what she’s telling you.

You Might Want to Consider Letting Someone Else Handle These Tasks
Something to consider is that sometimes both you and your elderly family member might be too uncomfortable to handle personal care tasks the way they need to be handled. Hiring elder care providers can be a fantastic way to get your senior the help that she needs, but to be able to take a step back yourself. This can be especially helpful when you’re both too embarrassed.

Your senior might not be thrilled about having your help or anyone else’s help with personal care tasks at first. But accepting help from others can free up her time and her energy to do other things that she finds easy to do, which might be how you need to convince her to accept help.

Excerpt: Personal care can get complicated, especially if your senior needs only a little bit of help.

If you or an aging loved-one are considering Elder Care in Holdingford, MN please contact the caring staff at Alternative Senior Care today. Providing Home Care in Central Minnesota and Surrounding Communities. Call us Today (320) 352-3350.