How to talk to aging adults about Assisted Living

9 steps to help you create an engaged & productive conversation about assisted living.

Most Senior Citizens are not excited about the idea of Senior Living and Assisted living. Between their opposition to considering more support and your desire to not create tension, this conversation is often over-looked and procrastinated until a crisis occurs.

Which then causes all parties to stress as no one knows what the path forward looks like.

We have to remember, that our goal when starting the conversation about Assisted living, is to not come to a conclusion on the topic, but to BEGIN the conversation. Here are some things to consider as you begin the conversation.

1) Is memory loss a concern?

If you have concerns about memory loss, this is a conversation that I would encourage you to start the discussion with their physician first. There is a difference between age related memory loss and Dementia. If someone has dementia and we talk about change or the changes we see in them-it might cause undue stress and anxiety for them. But again, that conversation is best had with a physician first.

2) Start YOUR research

Before we even utter the words “Assisted Living”, we need to start gathering some information for ourselves. Start YOUR research on the subject, so you become aware of some of the local options. When we take the time to do our research, it will help us to become confident in what some options might be.

Plus as we explore the world of Senior Housing, there are so many different options. We need to narrow down our search before we start the conversation and provide our loved ones with so many options, that it becomes over-whelming.

3) Prepare your mind

One of the most important things I want to impress upon adult children, friends and helpers, is to get in the right mindset before sitting down to have a conversation about Assisted Living. Clearly, you’ve pinpointed Assisted Living as an option to help the aging adult in your life. But before we dive into this conversation, I want to encourage you to consider, are there other options that could also be viable for them?

As someone who has spent over a decade in Senior Housing I believe that Assisted living communities are a great benefit to Senior Citizens in a variety of ways. However, I also have a strong belief that Senior Citizens should be kept in the drivers seat of change, whenever possible. (If there is memory loss or cognitive decline Seniors can’t always be kept in the drivers seat).

So as we discuss preparing your mind for “the talk”, I encourage you to prepare yourself to not solve their problems, to not judge their ideas and to not make decisions for them. Instead, I want you to prepare yourself to…

• Listen
• Be curious
• Evoke their ideas on how to solve their challenges

4) Start the conversation with curiosity

Now that we’ve prepped ourselves to not interrupt, to not try and provide the solution of Assisted living right away, it’s time to start the conversation with a question.

“How are you feeling about……X?” Insert the recent falls they had, their recent health scare, their mismanaged medications or their inability to drive.

Then we listen. Continue to be curious, and follow up their statements with non-judgemental curiosity. “

“Tell me more about that.” Or “What do you mean by X?” Or “How does it feel?”

Other prompts might include:

“Have you had any concerns about X lately?”

“Have you had any concerns about driving lately?”

“What challenges are you facing right now?”

5) Summarize how they feel using empathy

Try to feel what they are feeling as they share about their life and the challenges they are facing. Is it fear they feel? Fear of change? Fear of losing independence? Fear of the unknown? Fear of death? These are all serious fears that we should not ignore or try and brush past. But instead we want to discuss all of it, with them. Summarizing what we think they are saying, and summarizing what we think they are feeling. That can sound like this.

“Wow, you’ve thought a lot about this. It’s emotional and hard right now. Life is riddled with fear, because you don’t know what the next day/week or month brings.”

6) Share information or concerns…with permission

You might have some serious concerns or ideas about how to best move forward, so how do we bring those up? After we’ve listened and hopefully created a space where they feel HEARD, we can offer up our ideas or concerns, once we ask for permission to share. This can sound like this.

“You’ve shared a lot with me today. Thank you. I have a few (insert: Ideas/Concerns). Do you mind if I share those with you?”

The goal is we are continuing to try and create a space where they are in the drivers seat of this conversation, and we are coming along side them with valuable and pertinent information, when they are ready to hear it. If they say, “no.” , thats ok! You can try again another time. We have to remember that their brains are processing a lot of information and our goal isn’t to overwhelm them with details, but to provide them with much needed feedback, when they are ready to hear it.

7) Be clear about boundaries

Boundaries are a normal and healthy part of conversations about aging and change. If you as a family member or friend already have clear boundaries in mind about how you can best support them financially, emotionally or physically, kudos to you! Not everyone has already thought through that!

If the idea of boundaries is a new concept to you, start thinking through what boundaries you might have. Here are some things to start thinking about.

• How much time per day or week can you dedicate to helping?
• How many times a week can you visit them?
• Do you have the bandwidth to manage their healthcare?
• Do you have the ability & time to deliver medications daily or weekly?
• Are you willing to be a caregiver?
• Would you prefer your interactions to be focused on caregiving or on enjoying their company?

These are some serious things to really contemplate and think about. Boundaries can be a healthy part of the conversation, especially when we are clear about how we can help and then we elicit THEIR ideas on next steps.

8)Ask them for next steps

We’ve been curious, we’ve listened, we’ve restrained our judgement, we have not problem solved. But I can imagine, you, like many of us, want to figure out some next steps. Don’t be afraid of asking them a variety of these prompts.

“We’ve talked about a lot of things today, what do you want to do next?”

“How do you want to move forward from here?”

“Given our discussion, what’s something that you can do in the next (timeframe) to get you closer to (their goal)?”

“What steps do you see from here?”

The goal at this point is to really tap into their executive functioning skills, eliciting their ideas about next steps. This helps them to stay in control, in the drivers seat and puts the power of change back in their hands. They can think about what are viable next steps for them.

9) Prepare to Circle back

As we get older our brains naturally slow down. It takes us longer to process challenging things, and we often avoid the hard things. So as an adult child or family friend, don’t be worried about circling back to this conversation at a later date. This gives your aging adult time to process information and prepares them with their own valuable insights for the future.

In Closing

The conversation about Assisted living doesn’t have to be one riddled with anxiety and concern. If we focus on keeping our aging adults in the drivers seat, while tapping into our empathy skills to cultivate a space where they can share all their feelings about life, aging and change, we can make a lot of progress.

I often see tension arise when we can’t suppress our judgement, or we jump to problem solving without involving them.

If you’d like a roadmap on how to have conversations with aging adults, check out this PDF. We cover proactive conversations (long before health concerns), guiding conversations (As we start to notice changes in our loved ones) and Safety conversations (Direct conversations about safety and change).

If you found this helpful make sure to check out our other post on 6 tips for exploring aging, health and change.

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And lastly, please share this content with your friends. So together we can help create more empowered conversations around change with Senior Citizens.