Elder Care Tips: Creating a Bucket List with Your Seniors

Elder Care in Norwood, MA

Most people have heard of a bucket list, and you may even have one of your own.  It’s that list of all of those things that you want to do or accomplish in your life, and it often contains outlandish aspirations like climbing Mount Everest or skydiving. While having these types of big dreams are fun and can push you to pursue goals you may not think you have the ability to accomplish, they do not have to be all about huge ambitions and major feats to make a difference in your life. In fact, creating a bucket list with seniors is a fun way to enhance your elder care plan and encourage them to keep their minds active, engaged, and sharp.

Devising a bucket list is a great chance for you to spend some quality time talking and sharing with your aging parents, finding out more about them and getting insight into the things that they have always wanted in their lives. This process should not just be about identifying huge experiences that they would like to have, however. Their bucket list should also be about finding ways to enhance their lives now so that they can enjoy a higher quality of life as they move through their aging years.

Use these tips to create a bucket list with your seniors and then get started on checking off those items:

• Write it down. Sitting around talking about the things you would like to accomplish in your life is fun and a fantastic way to bond with your elderly loved ones, but actually writing those goals down is a way to make them feel more “real”. Writing something down not only cements that concept in your mind, but it also gives you a visible reminder of that goal and something tangible to hold you accountable for actually pursuing it.
• Think small. You and your parents may really want to run all of the marathons available throughout your surrounding states, but that may not be the most practical goal to pursue on its own. Write that down as a long-term aspiration on your list, but also include shorter-term goals such as running five 5K runs in the course of a year, or even just one 5K, and then build your way up.
• Set deadlines. If all of your goals are open-ended you are much less likely to actually dive in and start pursuing them. Go through your bucket list and set deadlines for as many of the tasks as possible. This will help you to see which ones you want to go after first and gives you some structure for including the pursuit of these goals in your routine elder care plan.
• Include your network. Whether you and each of your parents create individual bucket lists for yourselves, or you all come together to create one big list you want to go after together, include the other members of your care network in the pursuit. Including people such as your parents’ caregiver, other family members, and friends in the pursuit of these goals makes it more fun and increases your chances of accomplishing as many items on the list as possible.