As parents grow older, their health and mobility often decline. The independent lives they once enjoyed become peppered with challenges like chronic conditions, fall risks, and isolation. Even the most robust seniors face difficulties as advanced age creeps up on them.
If you notice your aging mom or dad struggling with activities or connectivity, you may consider moving them closer to family. Relocating a parent is a major decision, but several factors make compelling cases for this move. Here are five top reasons to bring your aged parent into closer proximity.
1. Monitor Health Issues More Easily
When an elderly parent lives far away, it is tough to grasp the full picture regarding their physical or mental health. Getting second-hand reports from phone calls offers limited insights. If your parent faces medical problems like heart disease, arthritis, dementia, or debilitating injuries, closer proximity allows you to be more hands-on with appointments, therapies, treatments, and more. You can better assess their daily functioning when you see it regularly first-hand.
Even if they have significant health issues, there’s nothing stopping them from moving closer to you. Non emergency medical transportation services are on hand to make the transition easier if your parent lives in a different state, or even a different country.
2. Access Assistance More Quickly During Emergencies
If your aged parent takes a serious fall, suffers a stroke or heart attack, or faces a similar urgent crisis, distance can hinder quick supports. Being nearby allows you to respond promptly in emergency scenarios. You get to the hospital rapidly or summon an ambulance faster when needed. Critical moments matter enormously when managing health events in an aging loved one. Relocation removes roadblocks to emergency assistance.
3. Widen Social Opportunities
A problem for some seniors—especially after losing a spouse—is a lack of interaction with others. Isolation sinks in, depression festers, and mental health falters without social connections. Moving your parent closer to family inserts them straight into their social circle again with more chances for meaningful engagement.
Bonding with grandkids over activities, chatting with their adult child frequently, or meeting up with their sibling who also lives nearby are all feasible when location no longer separates key relationships.
4. Monitor Finances Better
Managing money becomes tricky for some seniors due to conditions like dementia or broader cognitive decline. The odds of fraud, unpaid bills, unbalanced checkbooks, or similar monetary issues rise if you cannot watch their finances closely. Relocating your parent nearby makes regular financial checkpoints easier. You can more readily work together on budgeting, bill paying, paperwork organization, or getting assistance if necessary to safeguard their finances.
5. Arrange Caregiving Help Smoothly
If in-home caregivers, nursing aides, physical therapy, meal services, cleaners, transportation assistance, or other senior supports grow essential, proximity enables you to set up and oversee these smoothly. Being long-distance makes coordinating and managing caregiving help tougher. Once your mom or dad relocates closer, you can explore local aging assistance resources readily. Your parent also likely feels more at ease with helpers you arrange and supervise yourself when living nearer.
The Choice is Yours
Ultimately, deciding whether or not to move an aging parent hinges on your specific family’s needs and dynamics. If caregiving demands, health concerns, financial issues, or social disconnects impact your parent’s wellbeing, closing the gap geographically can help safeguard their next chapter.
