Life lessons
FOR ADULTS AND CHILDREN
W
hat’s the best life lesson your parents taught you? Maybe it was that honesty is the best policy. Or that there is an opportunity to learn from your mistakes. Or perhaps the value of adopting the practice of treating others as you would want to be treated.
current and long-term care options, we wanted to provide further insight for consumers on why the disconnect occurs. With our educational effort, our goal is to allow our aging loved ones to have the confidence to live a fuller and happier life. We worked with ASA member Anne Asman, a gerontologist at the University of Utah’s Department of Psychiatry, to dig a little deeper into the psychological factors contributing to this awareness chasm. We found that seniors possess a biological predisposition to protect their children. Thus the standard line, “I don’t want to be a burden to my kids.” At the same time, their adult children are wired to focus on the wellbeing of their own kids. They therefore seemingly only react to assist Mom and Dad in a crisis.
Typically, parents front-load life lessons early in their children’s lives. But when the children become adults, parents still maintain a desire to teach them. It’s in their parental DNA. What’s also in their parental predisposition is to protect their children from anything uncomfortable. Unfortunately, that can lead to an awareness gap – a chasm really – where aging loved ones do not share enough information about their health with their kids. At the same time, families often struggle to connect on care plans, finances, insurance coverage and other issues.
To help even further, we surveyed nearly 140 SYNERGY HomeCare clients – evenly split between senior and adult children – and gained even greater insight.
Recognizing how often our SYNERGY HomeCare franchisees and industry professionals work to facilitate constructive conversations about 12
