You and Your Ageing Parents - How to Balance Your Needs and Theirs (Paperback)

For the first time in Britain, there are more people over 60 than there are children. So there are a great number of working adults who are responsible not only for their children but also for their ageing parents. How do you relate to each other as adults, how you share the responsibilities between family members and how do you plan for the future? A self-help book for people who have elderly parents whose memories, minds and physical abilities are not what they used to be. It offers strategies for dealing sensitively with your loved ones, advice on how to make their lives more pleasurable and fulfilling, ways to avoid feeling guilty, how to share the obligation evenly and tips for making sure you keep your own faculties fresh for as long as possible. It also touches in brief on planning for the future in terms of thinking about assistance from local social services and the NHS and where to find information on these matters. The author helped her 83-year-old mother to nurse her father for five years, an Alzheimer's patient who had a severe stroke that left him in a wheelchair. This personal experience forms the backbone of the book and makes it convincing and supportive.