How can an adult child prepare themselves before walking into mom’s home this holiday? by Dr. Jake Harwood, Department of Communications at the University or Arizona.

Dr. Harwood – If you are concerned about encountering unexpected and dreaded surprises this holiday seasion when visiting aging relative, seeing things that seem amiss, and particularly with noticing areas where you feel that your mom or relative is at risk – here are some things to better prepare you.

The first key here would be to be prepared.  If you haven’t visited in a while, it’s certainly possible that things may have changed.

The second is to keep an open mind; some changes may be good – perhaps you find assistive devices like hand rails – those might indicate something that causes you distress, but they’re good because they indicate that your parent is aware of age-related changes and is taking the right steps to deal with them.

The third key is not to overreact. If you find that the house is cold, for instance, you can certainly turn the heat up. But berating your mom for not taking care of herself isn’t the first thing you want to do on walking into the house. You’ll have time to figure out what’s going on and so rushing to figure out everything in the first five minutes is unlikely to be productive.

Taking a little time to figure out what’s going on will allow you to assess the whole situation – can you see physical changes in your mom, psychological changes, does she have new friends or neighbors, has she lost a friend who she was close to, is she on any new medication, etc.? Any one of those things might explain what’s going on, but you won’t find out if the focus is on telling her that something is wrong.

The fourth key here (and in all good communication) is perspective taking. Imagine someone coming into your house and telling you that things are amiss. How would you like them to tell you? What would you not like?  By putting yourself in your mom’s shoes you can figure out the best way to address the situation.

Finally, throughout the communication, avoid stereotyping. There’s a tendency to look at everything involving aging parents as being because of age. Obviously that’s not the case – we all lead complex lives with lots of stuff going on in them. Changes in your mom might be due to all sorts of things in her life that have nothing to do with her age. When parents get older, it’s important to remember that they are still individuals and when we judge their actions and behaviors only in terms of age we are doing our parents, and our relationships with them, a disservice.