What I have noticed is an increase in senior housing. This is letting people move out of their homes and into smaller apartments that are more manageable. Some include meals and other services like transportation. In this way people put off the need for traditional nursing homes.

These places also make it easier to bring in home care. One aide can care for several people a day.

I don't think there is any answer to reducing the cost of nursing homes. They are highly labor intensive which is why they are so expensive. One option is to go to areas where labor is less expensive. In the US there is a huge cost difference by state.

there are some families who still practice caring for their parents at home. their is no difference caring at home then in a nursing home but the love is in the home and no love is in the nursing home.
love has the power to overcome anything that is impossible to achieve its the little seed of love and desire that can blossom when it is nurtured and grows beyond anything imaginable when you perservere through all its fears and discouragements.


godless................

Frankly, keeping the elderly at home is so wrong. No one under the constant total stress of lonely responsibility for an elderly parent can be expected to provide constant care without eventually becoming so tired they suffer illness from stress themselves.

The child who is alone with the elderly parent eventually gets no help from sibs as they slowly lose interest and stop helping with the care of the adult parent and suffers burn out. A burned out care giver is not valuable to anyone.

Many parents step into the PARENT role to treat the adult child like they are still CHILDREN instead of responsible adults. That does nothing but total damage to the parent child relationship. Instead of having peaceful visits near the end of life, these poor children are stuck working too hard, becoming exhausted and ignored by sibs and society. All in all taking a parent into your home is a bad idea.
Even if you can work out these issues, there is the issue of losing any privacy and home situation for which a child has spent a life time planning and saving. Those feelings of loss will eventually destroy any hope of a good situation between parent and child.

In a nursing home, the parent gets expert care and round the clock monitoring to ensure they are safe and not causing damage to the home which will strain the relationship beyond breaking point. Plus, the nursing shifts change so no ONE PERSON is charges with constant responsibility until they reach the breaking point.

We have to put care for the parent before our own selfish desires to prevent guilty feelings for giving a parent the best situation where nurses and professionals are available 24/7 to provide care.

FOr children whos parents are abusive, this is a necessary option. One of mine tried to murder me. The other told me to solve the situation I should move out - OF MY OWN HOME!
There is no way that I could possibly take either into my home.

When offering replies here, we must consider that not every parent has any love for their offspring. LOVE is NOT going to solve solutions like these.

We need more homes where parents can be cared for properly without danger to anyone else.

Harpie is right. Not all parents love their children,and while I agree love is the answer a lot of the time I also know for a fact this is not true. All of the time.

Sometimes in this country you can find a " Mom and Pop". Group home for seniors where a couple will make a living taking a few seniors into their homes. I wish I could find one like the one a friend had her dad in in his last days.

It was loving and reasonably priced. There is one down here in Georgia but have not been able to find one in Colorado.

Harpie,

I am so sorry that you suffered so much. My father also believes that he should still come first. He refuses to "believe" in Celiac disease because some random person claiming to be a nurse told him that I can't really be injured by gluten. So he spread gluten all over my house until I was so sick I lost my job, lost my church family and it took years to recover. Still having issues that docs think could be Refractory Sprue. That mean I will be sick for the rest of my life. All because he thinks being older than me means he knows more about everything there is to know.

No matter how much I try to "love" him into liking me, I have to accept that it just is not going to happen. I was in the way and he was only happy while I was in the way in my own home. Now he hates me. But I have the right to not be poisoned to death and starve.

I thought maybe I was the only one who had problems with parents like yours. Well, not as bad as yours - Sorry. But really how could he hate me so much that he refuses to believe in a disease that is well known. And where the heck did he find a nurse to agree with him that Celiac is a non-issue?

It hurts when parents act like we are still 5 year olf children who are just being difficult. I don't understand others here who try to claim that if I just love him enough he will give a crap. But I am stuck now! I must have a gluten free home. He does not want to live in a gluten free home. But he wants to live here. There is no way the two fit together. He simply can not have it his way anymore and refuses to be respectful about my dangerous health.

Sorry to be so long. Just seemed liek you would understand.

Yep. I get it. You just can't win with old ppl....... Unless you give back as good as you get and set limitations

Sunnybunn,

I know how much you suffer from that disease from another group. I can't imagine having your father come in to your home and be so mean to you. That is really harsh. Sometimes I think it was bad for me when the ER docs told me I could not go home till the police had gone to my home to collect the people who were hurting me. I felt like a horrible person while I was waiting for the police to come and let me go home. At least I had the bruises to prove that someone was hurting me. You don't have anything for people to see. What did your doctor think about this?

keeping a parent at home is the most loving gesture one can give to a parent. home is where the heart is it is a place that is filled with wonderful memories it is a place of safety and comfort it is a place that was filled with love. i looked after my father i lived and breathed him i am still here i did not go into a mental hospital after he died i still live i did not suffer after he died on the contrary after he died i was filled with relief, and without pain why? because i did all i could when he was alive and in the end that was my saving grace.i had no regrets after he died nor any guilt i was free from all guilt and regrets for i knew that while he was alive i was going to resolve anything that was missing and i did succeed. so many of you who have broken relationships with your loved one see this caring as a long road to healing and mending what has been broken for love can in the end overcome anything

god bless

shur1,

BOTH people have to want to mend for a relationship to even be able to heal! Abusive parents, uninterested in healing can not be LOVED by children into stopping the abuse. This is proven fact!

The world views your opinion as wrong. Every psychatrist will tell you the idea that I can heal someone else is co-dependant. That is not healthly for anyone in any relationship EVER!

Even the state disagrees with you! My father does not have the right to refuse to "accept" my illness and poison me with gluten. That is called murder. It is against the law.

It is proven FACT that I can not fix anyone else. When the other has no interest in participating in the healing it is hopless.

When one person does all the giving and sacrifice it is called slavery. That has been against the laws in our contry for a very long time.


people with unresolved guilt continually press others to live up to these sorts of unreasonable standards.
Your continued insistence that we have the power to fix others with enough love points to unresolved grief issues from dealing with your father's death. If you would only get some therapy to resolve these issues, you would be able to offer valuable advice instead of this simple claim of "love heals all" which is totally untrue.


many of us have children of our own. These young people deserve to have healty examples of how to live presented daily. If I allow my father to continue to kill me by spreading gluten all over my home, they loss a mother and a proper example of how they deserve to be treated. My responsibilities are far greater than dealing with a recalitrant father. The only one I owe love to is these children who I promised to protect in a holy promise to God when I accepted them. I made no such promise when I was being born.

Jesus said, "I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW"
matthew 10:35
he was talking about loving and showing love to the world. When that requires hard choices of demanding that others behave with courtesy and respect, I choose to follow the example of real love

fake love allows and accepts one human to be abusive to someone else. That is called fear.

God sees behind the masks people wear, the stories they tell themselves and others, the unresolved guilt and the refusal to make a truthful evaluation of their lives. I live with someone like that, so I know.

My mother placed her own mother first. She will deny this. Now she even glosses over what their relationship was like. It's like a silly, desperate attempt to convince the Almighty that she did what "she had to do". At the end of the day I paid the price as a child, my father paid the price and even she is paying the price of her choices and the lies she told herself.

sofia,

that was the breaking point for me. Dad tried to tell my handicapped son that he no longer deserved to live in my home. he certainly has no right to decided what happens to my children. It was that day that I realized that I could not allow dad to control my home. I felt ashamed that I told him he would have to leave or accpet that I am this childs mother and if he would be out on the street in a minute if he ever did anything rude to any of my children again. That they have the RIGHT to live in MY HOME for as long as I SAY this is their home.

He packed up and moved back to his house. But hubby let him backin while I was on retreat with choir. It seems like dad has kept his mouth shut since then. I told my kids they should come to me right away. Thanfully they are old enough to realize he is an old codger who is selfish and mean.
Now he just stays in his room. He decided that is better than making small changes to protect me from dying. Really nice of my dad to believe I deserve to slowly starve to death in a horrible torturous painful way.

Really sad to be hated so much that my father believes I deserve to die.

SunnyBunn:

I'm proud that you're putting your children first and yourself. Whenever I went to my mother I was told that it was not fair on her hearing complaints from me and from my grandmother, so could I please behave. So I did (well, sort of). My grandmother was allowed to keep on doing and saying what she wanted to me (which she did when no one could see or hear).

My parents would even buy my grandmother an ice-cream if they bought me one so she'd not sulk. She was so jealous of me. In adult age I heard neighbours mocking my mother saying to her "you haven't noticed she's jealous of her own grandchild?". Even I had told myself through the years I was imagining it and then I heard my mother's friends asking my mother what they saw as obvious. My mother said she'd never noticed.

It hurts so much feeling that a parent doesn't care enough. Or at all. I hear your pain on your last line. I wouldn't say he hates you but he doesn't know what love is. Just too self-absorbed.

You're doing the best you can, you're standing up for your children...you're A GREAT woman. Don't let anyone ever make you believe otherwise.

Big hug xx

It does really hurt. Mom and dad could not be bothered coming to see me in the hospital when the doc called to tell them I had a couple hours to live. they did not know what was wrong with me expect that I was clearly dying. They were a two hour drive away by car and just called hubby each morning to see if I was still alive.

But when he couldn't be bothered living alone anymore, he just sold his house and showed up on my driveway. AND expected me to starve from gluten poisoning so he can eat bread.
Basically, I am supposed to die so he does not have to be alone.
That is just wrong!