​Easing Your Stress Over Thanksgiving Weekend

Elder Care Skokie IL
 
Thanksgiving is a wonderful time that many families look forward to as an opportunity to reconnect, spend quality time together, and make precious memories. If you are a family caregiver for an elder adult, however, you might find that this introduction into the main holiday season carries with it more stress than it has in previous years. Now instead of just handling the holiday-related tasks such as preparing a meal or helping host, you are also responsible for all of your care tasks for your aging parent. This can put a tremendous amount of stress on you and make it challenging for you to enjoy the holiday as you have before.

​Finding ways to ease this stress throughout the entire holiday weekend is an important part of not only helping you to find meaning and joy in the holiday, but also to ensure that you continue to be the highest quality caregiver possible for your elder loved one throughout this weekend and the rest of the season.  
 
Use these tips to help ease your stress over Thanksgiving weekend: 

• Close your home. If your home has always been the one where out of town family members come to stay during the holiday season, consider closing it off this year. Spending time with family is a wonderful way to ease your stress and boost your emotional health, but adding guests into your daily dynamic can push your stress to a far higher level. Help them to make arrangements to stay at another family member’s home or in a hotel, or suggest that a different family member host the meal this year. If you must have family in your home, consider hiring an elder care provider to care for your parent during this time so that you are able to handle the guests while still knowing that your parent’s needs are met. 

• Host a potluck. Just because you have always cooked the Thanksgiving feast does not mean that you have to keep up with that responsibility this year. Things have changed now that you are a family caregiver and it is important that you keep those needs at the forefront of your priority list. Asking for help with the meal is an easy way to immediately cut down on the stress of celebrating Thanksgiving while also caring for your parent. Offer to handle the turkey and the dessert, and then have each other family member who is coming to the meal supply a side dish to round out the meal. 

• Focus on the memories. Everyone dreams of having the Normal Rockwell Thanksgiving, but the truth of the matter is that does not happen most of the time. This is especially true for family caregivers. Your time, attention, energy, and effort are going toward caring for your parent, which means that you might not have as much of those and other resources to put toward your holiday celebration. Choose to let go of the disappointments of everything that you are not able to do or that you have to do differently, and instead focus on the wonderful things that are happening during the weekend. It does not matter if you have to use a few premade dishes and everyone eats off of paper plates rather than having homemade everything off of fine china. If you have your family around you you can focus on the memories and the meaning of the holiday, and let everything else go out of your mind.  

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

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