Who to Talk to When You Can’t Persuade Your Parent to Move Into Assisted Living?
As long as your senior parent is legally competent, your mother or father has the right to decide where he or she resides. This includes the right to decide whether or not he or she moves to an assisted living community. As the adult child of a competent senior parent, you do not have the right, authority, or ability to force your parent to live in an assisted living community or anywhere else.
What you have the appropriate ability to do is to try and persuade your parent to move into an assisted living community if you believe that is in your parent’s best interests. Like many adult children of senior parents, you may face challenges convincing your parent that a move to assisted living is a good idea and that moving to assisted living makes sense.
As a consequence of your inability to persuade your parent to move to assisted living, you may wonder what other options might be available. One fair and suitable course of action is to try and get someone else to persuade your mother or father that moving to assisted living makes sense at this time.
Strategies that have worked for people in your position with a parent that would seem to benefit from moving to assisted living include:
- Arranging a family meeting where others can share their thoughts with your parent about assisted living
- Meeting with a pastor
- Meeting with your parent’s primary care physician
- Meeting with a friend of your parent who already lives in assisted living
Family
In some instances, a broader family meeting might prove persuasive in convincing your mother or father that moving to assisted living is a wise course at this juncture in time. Such a meeting certainly would include your siblings. However, you may also want to consider your parent’s sibling in such a meeting if they favor the idea of your mother or father moving to assisted living.
Care needs to be taken so that your parent doesn’t feel ganged up on regarding a family meeting. Such a session needs to be arranged, so your parent doesn’t feel cornered. It does need to be an open discussion.
Pastor or Minister
If your mother or father attends a church or some other religious or spiritual organization, your parent may have developed a relationship with a pastor, minister, or individual in a similar position. This type of trusted person might help discuss the prospects of moving to assisted living with your parent. The pastor, minister, or other individual needs to be on board with your mother or father moving to assisted living. In other words, you will need to convince that person that such a move is in your parent’s best interests.
Primary Care Physician
If your parent likes and trusts his or her doctor – and now all older people do – you might enlist the help of that primary care physician to assist in discussing the benefits of assisted living with your mother or father. A doctor can provide a unique and authoritative perspective on life in assisted living that could prove very helpful to you and your parent when it comes to your mother or father making this type of move.
Friend of Parent in Assisted Living
The prospect exists that your parent may have a friend who already lives in assisted living. A person your parents like and trust who is already living in an assisted living community is in the position to provide information that might prove very helpful to your mother or father when considering moving into an assisted living community.
Finally, when it comes to enlisting someone else’s assistance to persuade your parent to move to assisted living, there are a couple of other considerations to remember. First, you want to schedule a conversation with someone at a convenient time and place for your mother or father.
If your parent makes clear that she or she doesn’t want to discuss assisted living with someone else, you cannot force that issue either. Again, your mother or father cannot be forced to do something.
In addition, merely because you don’t make headway today regarding convincing your parent to move to assisted living doesn’t necessarily mean it is a dead issue. The day may come when your parent is more open to discussing the prospect of moving into an assisted living community.