What Our Grandparents Need Is Love And Patience
It may be that our grandparents do not have the energy as before, that it is difficult for them to move, that they do not remember who you are, that from time to time they lose their tone when they talk to us or that they drive us crazy because they do not see anything positive in their day to day .
It may be that way and that is the way it has to be, because grandparents are made of routines and needs that we do not understand. Furthermore, those of us who are younger than them may miss the logic that explains those demands and that “subtle selfishness” that we see in their words.
However, we can say that in an age in which society depersonalizes the elderly and robs them of their privacy, the concerns that they express to us often respond to their need to reaffirm their identity.
When your elders bother you, remember …
When your elders bother you, remember that they exercise their right to decision at a stage in their life when they depend on others. Do not break with impatience because he walks slowly, do not be irritated if he screams, cries or turns 20 to convey his message to you.
When the speech of your elders you get impatient, do not forget that it may be the last time you hear that battle from their past. Love him in his old age, give him what he needs. No matter how long it takes to walk, it needs your support and your love.
Grandparents are NOT like children
Older people are “ like children ” in the sense that they need patience, attention, care, understanding and affection. Perhaps at certain times they require our attention and protection in a paternalistic way, but that does not mean that we have to communicate with them with childish language ( elderspeak , in English).
We cannot treat them as if they know nothing, as they are people with incredibly rich life histories. Speaking to them with diminutives excessively, simplifying the language, using a child’s voice or not taking into account their decision-making capacity is the wrong way to treat them.
. They are elderly people who, due to age and possibly multiple pathologies, have certain limitations with which they have to live.
On the other hand, it is important that we X-ray the abuse of the elderly, something much more common than we want to believe. Physical and psychological violence are the protagonists of the relationship between grandparents and the main caregivers.
Not letting them make their own decisions in the affairs of daily life, denying them assistance, offering them excessive or insufficient medication, neglecting them and emotionally or physically violent them are the most common mistreatments.
Excessive affection and infinite patience, the keys to care
Although caring for our grandparents can be exhausting, we cannot forget that sadness and fatigue are part of the grief that we need to elaborate. It is part of the farewell, the goodbye to a piece of our soul that belongs to them.
Because what our grandparents need is excessive affection and infinite patience. Both fundamental ingredients of the care recipe, both balms of her anguish and her sadness for her lost abilities and her goodbye to life.
