Helping Seniors Carry on Longtime Holiday Traditions Can Make the Season Special

By: LivHOME | 2 Shares 85 Reads

Family, Caregivers Can Help Seniors Overcome Physical Limitations

December 12, 2012 // Franchising.com // LOS ANGELES – For seniors, longtime holiday traditions have the power to make the season special. Yet, seniors sometimes pull back from these traditions due to the physical limitations that come with aging.

This need not be the case.

Steve Barlam, chief professional officer of LivHOME, explains that family members and caregivers can help by learning about the traditions, understanding which aspects are the most meaningful and finding ways to adjust these traditions to the senior’s limitations.

“Sometimes, we need to adapt those traditions to enable the senior to participate in a fashion that has meaning to him or her,” Barlam says. He discusses holiday traditions in detail in Episode 32 of The Senior Care Podcast by LivHOME.

Barlam provides some touching examples of helping seniors continue their holiday traditions. They include:

Enabling one senior to continue cooking Hanukkah donuts called sufganiyot
Keeping alive a tradition of flying special kites decorated for Christmas
Helping an Alzheimer’s patient create a humorous holiday booklet for loved-ones

In some cases, help is as simple as taking dictation to personalize holiday cards, making sure the holiday cards get mailed, helping seniors complete their holiday gift shopping, and even working with seniors to navigate the online shopping world.

The podcast episode, titled Holiday Traditions, can be found on The Senior Care Podcast’s homepage, www.livhome.com/podcast. Listeners can subscribe via RSS feed, email or through the iTunes store. Episode 32 has a run time of 11 minutes, 10 seconds.

About LivHOME

LivHOME is one of the nation's largest providers of professionally led at-home care for seniors. The company is dedicated to finding solutions that enable older adults to remain in their homes as long as possible. Based in Los Angeles, LivHOME delivers high quality at-home care throughout California as well as Arlington, Va., Atlanta, Austin, Tex., Boston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Silver Spring, Md. and The Woodlands, Tex.

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