Dear LPG, 

My Dad is getting on a bit and now lives in a sheltered home.  I suppose that it could be argued that the time has come for him to move into a care home.  He has had a degree of dementia for some time although he is still able, with the help of his children, to look after himself reasonably well, and like many older people he truly values his independence. 

But he is now at the stage where he does not go out as often as he used to, and even though he and about eight or nine of his neighbours do visit each other and keep in touch from time to time, he is essentially living alone.  I am one of five children, all in our fifties and sixties now, and we all visit him as regularly as we can although we are not always in touch with each other as much as we could be.

We all have our own individual activities, tasks and actions that we help him with and do to occupy his time.  We agreed some time ago that it is important that he always has something to look forward to… but there lies our little problem. 

My dad’s schedule is now so demanding that he often gets double booked if you will.  We children often get to a situation where one will have arranged to accompany him to a doctor’s appointment while another has planned to take him out for a spot of lunch and a bit of shopping and the two clash.

We siblings do manage to keep in touch for the most part and, when looking at families similar to ours, we are also lucky enough not to have any sibling rivalry internal disputes with each other at the moment either.  But we are busy and all caught up in our own work, lives and families which, in spite of the fact that we telephone and talk to each other about what we are planning to do for Dad and when, causes double booking scenarios.

We have come up with a couple of solutions which perhaps might help other families who can identify with our problem and that would be really helpful at this time of year.  Dad now has a wall calendar which we all use to enter what we plan to do with as much notice as possible.  It means that when we are with him we can pencil in our plans for his time and avoid plans that have already been made, and we are lucky enough to have one sibling who was able to create an electronic group page, using WhatsApp, where we can notify each other of plans that are made when we are not actually near enough to the Calendar.

Both diaries help and if your Dad (Mum, aunt, uncle or older friend) find themselves in a position where there are lots of people around them and some who really don’t talk to each other while they love to visit that older person, it avoids clashes if you know what I mean. 

Now that we are close to Christmas perhaps getting a wall diary could be the solution to a Christmas present for the ‘Dad’ who has everything.

GG, Sydenham

For those who are technically up to it LPG found a video to explain how to create a WhatsApp group…

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