Taking care of aging parents during the holiday season can add to your daily stress. Between shopping, decorating, meal planning and partying, you can get overwhelmed when you also have to add taking care of mom or dad to the mix. But elder care expert Ester Koch believes caregivers can use the holiday season to bring joy to their lives instead. She recommends that caregivers create “moments of joy” by changing their focus from all the things they do for their parents to the joyful experiences they can create for and share with them.
She advises caregivers to “Become a facilitator of experiences and seek to make the ordinary extraordinary. The results can be memorable.” Koch offers many examples of how caregivers can rekindle or make new memorable holiday traditions.
Here are a few examples:
Attend a holiday lighting event.
Drive through neighborhoods to view Christmas decorations.
Buy and trim a tree together.
Attend choir concerts and sing-a-longs.
See the Nutcracker.
Attend a special Christmas Eve service.
Rent holiday movies or watch movies or specials on TV (Can you say It’s a Wonderful Life?)
Get out and visit with family members and friends.
Take a trip down memory lane and visit your old neighborhood(s).
Look through old family photos and take lots of new ones to add to the collection.
Take a family photo with Santa.
Make special holiday treats and share with family and friends.
As you can see there are many things you can do to make your holiday less stressful and more festive. Sometimes we are so busy trying to get gifts for everyone on our list we forget the true meaning of Christmas. Caregivers can create their own moments of joy and are limited only by their imagination. “Your Holidays will be joyful if you intend them to be,” says Koch.
See also:
Six Ways to Beat Holiday Stress