Senior Care Highland Park IL
 
October is National Cookbook Month. This is the ideal opportunity for you to enjoy some special time with your senior parent as you create a family legacy by making a cookbook of your family recipes. This project is a fantastic way to bring more meaning into your caregiver journey with your senior parent, boost your parent’s mental and emotional health, and create something tangible that you can share with your children and future generations years down the line.  
 
Use these tips to help you create a family legacy cookbook during National Cookbook Month: 

• Choose meaningful recipes. When you are choosing recipes for your senior parent to include in the family cookbook, focus on those recipes that are the most meaningful. Think about the recipes that you remember most from your younger years. What meals did you enjoy most when your parent prepared them? What dishes do you remember from special events and holidays? Do you remember anything that your grandparents made for you? These meaningful recipes will be more than just dishes. They will become memories that you can share with future generations. 

• Encourage your parent to choose their own memories. The dishes that you find most memorable might not be the ones that your parent finds most memorable. Encourage them to select the recipes that are most meaningful for them, such as what they prepared for you for afterschool snacks or the holiday meals that their family enjoyed when they were younger. This will give your cookbook more depth and value to your family. 

​• Include stories. There’s more to a family cookbook than just lists of recipes. Encourage your parent to record their thoughts, feelings, and memories about each recipe that they choose. Have them write a journal entry about each recipe or listen to them talk and record it for them. Put these stories beside each recipe in the book so that you can remember them as you look through the book later. Do not forget that you can leave a family legacy as well. Include your own stories and thoughts about the recipes, and consider leaving space in the book for your children and grandchildren to add their own thoughts later. 

• Preserve them safely. You want your own and future generations to be able to go through this cookbook years down the line and still enjoy every recipe. This means that you need to make sure that the recipes are safely preserved. When selecting supplies for building your cookbook, choose archival quality supplies. They may also be referred to as “acid-free” or “lignin free” supplies. This means that they lack the acids that traditional papers do that react with the oils on your skin and other environmental factors to yellow and break down over time. By choosing acid-free papers, adhesives, pens, and embellishments you make sure that the cookbook will be safe and beautiful years down the line even if you use it every day to prepare these special dishes for your children and your grandchildren.  

If you or an aging loved one are considering Senior Care Services Highland Park IL, contact the caring staff at Gentle Home Services. Call today (800) 860-9823.

Senior Care in Highland Park IL

Are you feeling stressed out but you just can't pinpoint where exactly the stress is coming from? As a family caregiver, it can seem sometimes like you're getting hit from every angle all at once. Trying to narrow down the source of the stress can help you to kick it faster.

Fear or Doubt

It's natural to be afraid for your elderly loved one, whether that's due to health or her living conditions. You might also worry that you're not making the right decisions, especially if your loved one isn't able to communicate clearly with you. Those types of feelings lead straight to a buildup of stress, so it's important to get a handle on them whenever possible.

Changing Roles

Your loved one has probably been pretty competent and may have even taken care of you quite a bit during your life. Seeing her now in much different circumstances can be really hard to do, even if she's doing well considering her situation. Your loved one may also be having difficulty dealing with some of these changes, such as being unable to drive by herself anymore, and arguments about those topics can cause stress.

Isolating Yourself

When you're caring for an elderly loved one, it's all too easy to feel like you're an island in your own little world. If you're caring for your loved one full time without much other help, these feelings are just exacerbated. You need to maintain the relationships that you have outside of your elderly loved one, even if it's just to maintain your own mental and emotional health.

Not Enough Time Alone

The opposite problem can be true, also. Sometimes you need to spend more time with others, but you should not overlook the healing that can come from spending time by yourself for a little bit, too. Whether you want time to meditate, exercise, or simply be by yourself, it's important that you schedule that time into your schedule regularly.

Guilt

Feeling guilty often leads directly to stress for most caregivers. Sometimes the guilt is related to feeling that they're never doing enough for their elderly loved one, but most often caregivers feel guilty for occasionally feeling frustrated or irritated with their elderly loved ones. Try working through those guilty feelings by talking with a friend or journaling to get them out in a healthier way. 

Around the Clock Care

In some cases, your loved one might need constant, around the clock care. No one can handle that kind of commitment on their own, so it's important that you have someone who can spell you. That can be other family members who help to care for your loved one or trusted senior care providers 
who can handle just about any situation flawlessly. It's important that you know that you don't have to do it all on your own.

If you're facing any of these reasons for dealing with stress and burnout, make sure that you resolve them quickly so that you can get back to caring for your loved one without being stretched to your limits.

If you or an aging loved one are considering senior care in Highland Park, IL contact the caring staff at Gentle Home Services. Call today (800) 860-9823.