Transforming Holiday Gatherings for Joyful Aging Experiences

What if the secret to a joyous and inclusive holiday celebration lies in the smallest details? Join me, Esther Kane, a retired occupational therapist and certified dementia care specialist, as we unlock practical strategies to transform your holiday gatherings into magical experiences for everyone, especially our cherished older relatives. From simple home adjustments like decluttering and improved lighting to accommodating sensitivities with a warmer ambiance, these thoughtful actions can make a world of difference. Explore engaging activities that bring the family together, such as storytelling and capturing life stories through interviews, to create lasting memories.

As the festive season approaches, let's focus on enhancing the experience for our loved ones. I'm eager to hear your ideas and experiences in holiday planning—your insights could inspire future podcast episodes and videos. Together, we'll create opportunities for meaningful interactions and ensure each family member feels included and valued. Subscribe to our podcast and YouTube channel for more insightful content, and leave your comments and suggestions. Here's to a memorable and joyous celebration for all!

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Chapters

• 0:33 Managing Holidays With Aging Adults
• 16:28 Enhancing Holidays With Older Adults

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:33

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Aging in Place Directory podcast. I'm your host, esther Kane. I am a retired occupational therapist, certified aging in place specialist and a certified dementia care specialist, majority of my career working with older adults and family caregivers, and I really am very passionate about that entire niche. Anyway, today it is November 15th, I believe 2024, and the holidays are just around the corner. So I wanted to talk today about how to manage the holidays if you're going to be spending them with an aging parent, you know, an older relatives, anything like that.

Speaker 1: 1:30

I know that when my husband was alive, we would often host his family to come over for holiday events. Most of them were well into their 80s, 90s plus, and, of course, we had to make accommodations for them, not only mobility wise, but activity wise, food wise. You know everything like that. And and as a as a trained occupational therapist, it wasn't that difficult for me, because that's what I would normally do for my patients anyway. But I, you know, listening to my friends as they're going through this process now with their relatives, I realized not everyone has that, obviously has that training, but not everyone can, you know, think that way. So I thought I would make this podcast about tips on how to manage the holidays with older adults. So one of the first things you want to do, obviously, I think, think, obviously is to make sure that the environment is safe enough for them. So, in other words, things like, you know, removing any kind of hazards that they may bump into, trip over, especially if they're using a walker or cane or they may have low vision, any, you know, remove any clutter, make a nice clear pathway. If they have trouble getting up onto your steps, if you have multiple steps to get into your front door, is that, if there's no other alternative way to get in, you may want to think about? Perhaps, you know, consider using a renting a ramp to put up those steps, or maybe just renting or borrowing a wheelchair and the person can sit in the wheelchair and others can lift that person up, you know, depending on how difficult it is for that person. Hopefully you have banisters on those stairs which can really help anybody to stay safe and walk up and down those steps.

Speaker 1: 3:40

You want to make sure that there's enough lighting. I know a lot of people like to have low lighting during holiday time. You know, the dinner they set out candles, they make it look all pretty. And it does look beautiful and pretty and it does look beautiful and pretty. But if you have low vision and as we all get older, our vision you know we need more and more light then you're it's going to be difficult to tell the difference between the mashed potato and the stuffing and you know the turkey or anything else. So you want to make sure that there's enough lighting. I would put a motion light in the bathroom so that when they do go to the bathroom they can, you know the light automatically comes on a little nightlight. They even have these beautiful little lights that you can put in the toilet. It hangs on the bowl and it lights up the inside of the toilet, anything like that. If you want to put up little, those little light christmas lights around to make it look even prettier, and have lights as long as there's no glare, because glare is very difficult, especially if you have cataracts or macular degeneration or glaucoma. Glare can be, can can make things very difficult to see, but lighting decluttering, of course.

Speaker 1: 5:02

Comfortable seating, you know, maybe that you know, remember my husband's uncle had a very hard time getting up from low seating so we had to make sure that one that he used a chair that had arms where he could help to lift himself up. We would, of course, help him get up, put cushions on that chair to make him sit up a little higher, anything to make it easier for them to get in and out, do whatever it is they need to do, and as independently as possible. You know, no one wants to look like they're old, but so the more help they end up, getting, the more it may seem, you know, makes them feel like. It can make them feel like they are, you know, disabled in some way, which they don't have to be. It's just the equipment can help them. And then, of course, temperature control. I personally like my home a little bit cooler than some, and as you get older, people tend to be affected more by colder weather, so they like things a bit warmer. So if that's the case, you, as the host, hostess, you, may want to dress cooler so that you can keep the temperature warmer for them or at the very least, you know, provide sweaters, blankets, help them to be as comfortable as possible in your home in the temperature that you like.

Speaker 1: 6:35

And then, when it comes to activities now every family has cannot think of something that you can do together. You know, if your husband wants to sit and watch the football game, that's fine, but grandpa can't hear it or isn't into sports. Maybe there's something you can do with the grandfather, maybe looking through photo albums, maybe, you know. You know beginning the holiday decorations for trees or Hanukkah anything at all that you can do together, maybe even storytelling, you know, asking them to share stories. You can write them down. One thing my husband did that I thought was awesome is he videotaped his mother and father. He basically interviewed them and was asking them all kinds of questions. How did they meet? You know? What was their life like? What was it like to be separated during World War II, all kinds of things. And now we have that interview, now that they're both gone. It's just a wonderful way to get to know your elder parent and you may end up finding something new that you never knew about the family or about them or maybe about yourself.

Speaker 1: 8:11

Then there's also, you know, relaxing type of options. You don't want to be in constant um, you know, busy, busy, busy. You also want to allow some time to just relax, take a nap, because often as we get older, especially elderly, you know they tend to rest a bit more. My mom-in-law would fall asleep in the middle of a party when she was in her mid 90s. So, you, it breaks up their schedule and they normally end up taking naps during the day anyway. So you want to try to incorporate that and, if that's the case, have some place comfortable for them to rest be it a, you know, a lounge chair, recliner, bed, whatever that they can relax and that they can relax and rejuvenate, you know, for the rest of the day you want my, my husband's aunt was very, was a great cook and she wanted to help very much in the kitchen, which was wonderful.

Speaker 1: 9:14

But we had to make sure that or at least I had to make sure as I was in the kitchen I had to make sure that she wasn't going to hurt herself with any of the tools, because she had some dementia and I just wanted to make sure that she was going to be okay. So I gave her activities that didn't necessarily require chopping or cutting, but she did a lot as far as mixing and rearranging and I mean she would lay out these beautiful you know platters. So she really helped me a lot in putting together all kinds of things, the hors d'oeuvres, and then the setting of the table and all of that, and it gave her. You know she was part of the activities. So anything that you have that you can, you know she was part of the activities. So anything that you have that you can, you know, don't do ahead of time that you can let them do. I think that's a wonderful thing.

Speaker 1: 10:08

I remember one Thanksgiving I invited an entire family over and it was my friends, the husband and wife, their children, and then their parents, and the parents were in their mid to late 80s. And then what? Sorry about that. And then what ended up, what I did was is I created stations throughout the house and I had. I went to Goodwill and I bought aprons for everybody. So everyone had an apron and everyone had a station, and at each station was a recipe card of what they had to make. So somebody was making the apple pie, somebody was making the salad, somebody was making the you know, the sweet potato souffle, somebody was making everything, and so everyone had to participate and do something, and then, of course, I had my tasks as well. So everything, the only thing that was already in the oven was the turkey, because of course, that takes quite a while, so that was already in the oven, but everybody had an activity to do for something else. And at the end, when we sat down to have dinner, it was wonderful, because when someone said, wow, the stuffing is really good, we can say, well, thank you know, thank John, for doing that, or, you know, thank Karen for making that. So that was a great way, and they still talk about that particular day.

Speaker 1: 11:35

It's a fun way to incorporate people and also it's less stressful on you. You don't have to make everything, although you do have to create the stations for everyone. That did take a little bit of work, but it was fun having all those, and then they got to take their aprons home with them, along with leftover goodie bags, of course. The other thing that I think that is puzzles, word games, sudoku. My mother used to love Sudoku. She was very good at that Anything that they can do as a solo activity or with just one other person, if they're not the type of person that is, you know, very comfortable with crowds or with the family. It's just a way to keep give someone something to do while they are there instead of sitting in the corner mulling, wishing that they could go home at any moment, because there are those in almost every family there's at least one if you have enough people over.

Speaker 1: 13:03

The other thing, you want to make the entire day as stress-free for you as possible, so giving others tasks to do is one way to do that. If you are not able to do that, then plan your activities, plan your meals three, four days ahead. I used to make Thanksgiving dinner for 20, 25 people and I would always start a week before, not necessarily making the food a week before. The food was made, three days before some of it, like the cranberry sauce I love the fresh cranberry sauce I would make that three days ahead. You know, for all the other items that needed a lot of chopping, I would chop everything up the day, the day before, and I would put it all in containers so that when it came to actually doing it, it was just a matter of mixing things up and putting it together in the oven or on the stove or whatever anything that you can do to break up so that you don't have to do everything all in one day. It's much easier that way if you make something and you can freeze it. I've never done that. So I'm not quite sure how to do that, but if you, if that's something you can do with your recipes, then do that. You want to make it as easy as possible for yourself.

Speaker 1: 14:22

Another option is to order Thanksgiving dinner. A few years ago I had my family over. We had a very, very busy schedule the day before. It was going to be very difficult to cook everything, so we just made a few things. We made our pies supermarket here called Fresh Market, but I think you can order from a lot of different grocery stores and it was a wonderful dinner, except the stuffing. It wasn't that great about the stuffing, so if I ever do that again, I'll make my own stuffing. But everything else was delicious and all we had to do was go there in the morning, pick it up, bring it home, lay it out and there was our dinner. So we got the dinner, we got leftovers and we were able to relax and enjoy each other's company and not be so stressed out about trying to do everything, although we did have a few of the best ways that you can create an easy holiday, be it Christmas, be it Hanukkah, be it New Year's, be it Thanksgiving, you know, whatever holiday, because the holidays are all coming up pretty soon.

Speaker 1: 15:43

So, whatever holidays they they are, consider all the people that are coming to your event. Accommodate them so that they can feel comfortable, so that you can feel good that you were, that you had a wonderful time. Because you know, for some families it's very difficult to get together. Usually every you know there are people that have different, whatever different views on just about everything, and now you're throwing them all together and expecting them to have a Norman Rockwell kind of dinner. It doesn't always work that way, so you want to do all that you can to accommodate as many people as you can, including the older adults in your group.

Speaker 1: 16:28

All right, I hope these tips help you. I hope that it will give you a beautiful holiday season with everyone, family and friends. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast if you're watching this on YouTube, to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Give us your comments, let me know what you think. What ideas do you have for your holidays with older adults? I'd love to know, and maybe we'll do another podcast and video about that. All right, take care and have an awesome day. Thank you.