Category Archives: Parenting

Going Healthy, Life, Parenting, Tips

Helping An Elderly Relative Maintain Their Independence

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As you grow older, your chances of experiencing uncomfortable symptoms that affect your quality of life become larger and larger. You may even be thinking about what will happen at the end of your life, whether you want to be buried or if you should start looking at urns for ashes instead. However, right now that is some time off, which is why focusing on how you can help yourself in the present moment is essential. Mobility can become difficult, whilst maintaining a good memory is even harder, and this can have a drastic impact on your ability to stay independent. Losing some or all of your freedom as you age can be a humiliating affair that one must always work to avoid, so watching as your elderly relative is stripped of their dignity and independence should encourage you to intervene. Luckily, it needn’t be as difficult as you might expect to help an elderly person regain some of their self dependence, as there are several simple tips and tricks that you can utilise to improve their quality of life in no time at all. So, if you would like to find out more, then read on to uncover some of the best steps that you can follow now to make a real difference in no time at all.

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Adapt Their Home

One of the most important steps that you must follow to help an elderly relative maintain their independence involves adapting their home. When you get older it often becomes far more difficult to get around – joints get stiff, the risk of falling increases and many people feel as though they simply don’t have the energy to get up and go. Luckily this struggle can be easily alleviated, as you can begin by installing grab bars around their home in high traffic areas such as the hallway and bathroom to make sure they can get around without the need for extra support. Slipping and tripping whilst walking up the stairs could be another issue, and this could do serious damage if they were to fall near the top, so it’s a good idea to source a stair lift in order to reduce this risk. Getting up and out bed from a laying position or struggling to pull themselves out of comfortable chair can be another issue, yet their are specially crafted models that can lift up and rise to place your relative onto their feet without any issues.

Even with these adaptations in place, falls can still happen, so it’s important to be prepared. Understanding how to get up off the floor with bad knees can be incredibly beneficial, ensuring that seniors know how to safely regain their footing without putting unnecessary strain on their joints. In addition, having a plan in place—such as a medical alert system or easy-to-reach phone—can provide peace of mind for both the individual and their loved ones. 

Making these simple adaptations can have a drastic effect on the way that they can lead their life without the need for care assistance, so there’s no time like the present to offer a helping hand!

Make Health A Priority
Ensuring that your elderly relative can maintain good health is essential for long term independence, as experiencing any issues that are related to mobility, sight or hearing can make it really difficult for you to live without the need for external help and support. Doing something as simple as booking your relative in for a hearing test could alert you to the fact that they need new hearing aids, which contribute massively to the maintenance of independence and freedom. Struggling through day to day tasks without glasses when you suffer from sight loss can be equally uncomfortable, so be sure to visit the opticians office for regular check ups too.

Health, Life, Lifestyle, Parenting

How Disciplining A Child Can Be A Healthy Process – If You Let It Be

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It’s important to discipline our children as they grow up, not because it’s fun to do, but because it helps them understand the certain boundaries they need to live within in order to be healthy and happy. The standards you set now will carry with them throughout their whole lives. Of course, many people consider ‘discipline’ to be a reprimand, but that’s not always the case. Discipline is simply making a value judgement and going for the best option, making sure you’re able to get to it, or that your children are.

For instance, brushing our teeth before bed every night is a discipline, and bestowing that on our child is important. As you can see, discipline is more than a stern word or punishing a child. It is a very healthy process. So – how can we keep it healthy? Well, of course, first and foremost it’s important not to raise our voice, or to get emotional, or to let on any bad impressions or examples if our child is misbehaving. You’d also be forgiven for making a mistake in this regard from time to time – parenting is extremely tough. 

But how else can we discipline our children to help them learn important and foundational life lessons? Let’s consider:

Staying Consistent

Staying consistent in your discipline is important because children often realize if they are being held to different standards from week to week. If there’s a bedtime you set – keep it. Make sure that you don’t allow them to jump around some nights, even on the weekend. If they’ve been mean to their sibling, don’t handwave it one day and reprimand them the next. This can take some work and none of us are perfect at applying it, but consistency can be the biggest aid to discipline in the best possible sense.

The Proper Environmental Feedback

In some respect, certain environments teach social discipline no matter what. For instance, placing your child in the best possible daycare can help them come into contact with other children, as well as responsible adults that know what children need. In this way, they begin to learn social boundaries and how to better work with other children – even if that means sharing a toy or simply being polite. In this way, your lessons at home are given credence in an environment you use to aid your own life convenience. That can be a great win-win for all parties involved.

Teaching Temperance & Patience

It’s important to teach our children patience and temperance. For instance, it might be that instead of purchasing that toy because they have asked for it in the store, you tell them that if they make their bed and eat their vegetables for a week straight, you will happily buy it for them. This helps them learn that earning something is more valuable than simply having it, and they learn patience through this, or a refusal of the reward if they fail to keep up with their tasks. Of course, not everything should be a harsh negotiation, but sometimes employing methods to help them understand what patience is (even if you don’t expect them to be patient as a child), will help the develop the foundational knowledge for later.

With this advice, you’re sure to discipline your child healthily, not punitively unless absolutely warranted. In this sense, you’ll go from an already great to an amazing parent.

Parenting

Showing Your Support For A Loved One Who Is Trying To Be Healthier

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Whether it’s your partner, friends, or family, you want them to live strong and healthy lives. So, when someone that you care for tells you that they are ready to make positive health changes, you may find it hard not to bombard them with advice, however, telling them what they should eat, drink, and do make not be the best way for them to navigate their changes.

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Image by RitaE from Pixabay

Your support in helping them achieve their goals shouldn’t be underestimated, but it is definitely more than just advice and to do’s. Whether it is choosing to attend one of the American Addiction Centers or make changes with the amount of exercise they do, it is shown that people stick to healthier changes when they have a good support group.

How Can You Help? 

A great way to help, over recommending food they should eat, is to prepare some ready-made meals for them to try. You will find that they react more positively to something like this over being told what to eat, it offers them a chance to try something new. 

You could also ask them why they are making the changes, and what they want to achieve, this way you know what to expect and won’t get carried away or put them off when they are just starting their journey.

Rather than saying what they should and shouldn’t do, try showing them how to set and track goals that can achieve, and don’t make them all about a number on the scale. Although it can be hard to break the habit, health isn’t all about the number on the scale. Maybe ‘I want to be able to run 5k by the summer’ is a better goal than ‘I want to lose 10lbs’. 

Ask Them What Support They Need 

You may think that your friend wants to hear all the advice you have to offer, or every new recipe thrown their way, however, in reality, they just want someone to go on a cycle with or a walk around the block at lunch. 

Rather than jump to the conclusion that they need all your hints and tips, ask them what they need to help them get to where they need to be. And then listen to it. 

Offer To Help With Cooking Or Meal-Planning

It is far easier to make good, healthy choices when you can open your fridge and it is full of nutritious choices. However, planning your meals for a week requires some time and effort. One of the easiest ways to make sure you are ready for a healthier lifestyle is to meal prep so you can grab and go if you need to. It helps to prevent you from grabbing the wrong foods. Offering to help with the food planning, going shopping with them, or preparing some meals could be just what they need to get started and in the swing of things. 

These are just three of the ways you can offer your support to a loved one who is making healthier choices and changes. Do you have any other ways you can show your support? Please share them in the comments below.