How Can You Help a Nervous Bather?
Being a nervous bather is fairly common for aging adults, unfortunately, and that can contribute to accidents and falls in the bathroom. Avoiding that means helping your senior be less nervous while bathing.
Homecare in Prince William County VA: Helping Nervous Seniors Bathe
Give Your Senior Some Options
Your aging family member realizes that avoiding bathing for the rest of her life is not an option, but that doesn’t help her when she’s feeling out of control in this situation. Try giving your elderly family member some different options. Instead of a shower, perhaps she’d take a bath. Perhaps instead of taking a shower every day, she’s willing to take one every other day. The more choices that your senior has in a situation that she doesn’t have a choice about, she may be able to relax better.
Pay Attention to Her Responses
When you’re giving your senior choices, pay attention to how she responds. It’s also important to watch her responses when you’re actually going through the bathing process. If you’re going through with your elderly family member’s chosen options for the day’s shower and she’s more agitated or upset than usual, it might be worth it to rearrange your plans. The goal here isn’t to force your elderly family member to do something she doesn’t want to do. You want to help her to be as comfortable as possible.
Make Bathing an Experience
One way that you can help your senior to relax about bath time is to make the entire bathing situation an experience in luxury. Use soaps and bath gels that your elderly family member enjoys. Warm up the towels and make sure that the room itself is warm and comfortable. Some people find that soothing music can help to make a shower more tolerable, too. Find the combination that works the best for your aging adult and then go with that.
Consider Hiring Home Care Providers
For some aging adults, although they trust you with other aspects of their care, bathing is just that one little step too far. If that’s part of what is making your senior uncomfortable, then perhaps having home care providers available can help her to relax a little bit more about the experience. This is one of those situations in which strangers can sometimes be more comfortable than family members.
The more you know about why your senior is nervous about bathing the better your plan for making her comfortable becomes. Encourage your senior to talk to you about what’s working and what isn’t when it comes to helping her to stay clean. As you fine tune the bathing experience, hopefully, her fears can fade completely.
If you or an aging loved-one are considering Homecare in Prince William County, VA, please contact the caring staff at LivinRite Home Care. Call Us Today at (703) 634-9991.
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