The New York Times published an article recently that discussed a range of monitoring equipment that can be installed in your parent’s home. These products promise family caregivers of older adults peace of mind through e-mail, text message, or voice mail notifications each day that detail the data collected.
- 6:00 a.m. – your mother’s feet hit the bedroom floor
- 6:02 a.m. – she enters the bathroom
- 6:15 a.m. – she opens the refrigerator door
- 6:16 a.m. – she keep the cabinet door open for a minute before heading to the living room and sitting in her favorite chair.
- 6:45 a.m. – she retrieves her morning medications
…or doesn’t.
Supporters argue that monitoring equipment enables you to prevent mishaps such as your parent missing a dose of medication or worse, lying on the bathroom floor for hours after a fall, unable to call for help.
And there’s definitely something to that argument.
Frailty can increase the risk of falls and mild cognitive impairment or the early stages of dementia can make it hard to remember things. In these instances monitoring may make sense.
But, I would argue, only in these instances.
In other words, I think there’s a sweet spot here – a middle ground – where the monitoring equipment can be valuable. I’d define that spot as just after a marked decline in physical and/or mental functioning has begun and before hands-on assistance is absolutely required.
However, the companies that manufacture the monitoring equipment won’t be content to make sales within the sweet spot alone; their goal will be to convince daughters and sons around the country that their higher-functioning, independent parents need monitoring too.
This is where I think things go off course.
Despite the many commercials that depict resistant seniors who eventually see the light and gladly welcome the technology du jour to please their anxious daughters, this isn’t reality. And if you tell your parent that you want them to have this monitoring equipment in their home and they don’t think it’s needed, reality may feel like a swift kick in you pants.
Simply put, your parent will probably hate this idea, or at the very least, hate the cost involved, even if you agree to foot the bill. And you know what? They should hate it if it’s unnecessary. Being monitored can make a person feel inept. Before any steps are taken that might cause our parents to feel a diminished sense of competence, it’s critically important that we know what normal aging looks like.
When is it time?
A quick and dirty way to understand where your parents are on the aging spectrum is to talk to them and get to know their routine. Chances are that if your parent requires some sort of assistance with activities of daily living (ADL), like bathing, dressing or grooming, you’ll know it. And if this is the case, your parent shouldn’t be alone which means that help should be brought in, or your parent should move to an assisted living facility or even a nursing home depending on the degree of need. To be clear, no amount of monitoring will be enough without hands-on assistance for the older adults in this group.
Being monitored can make a person feel inept.
On the other hand, if your parent is completing his or her activities of daily living [ADL] independently as well as his/her instrumental activities of daily living [IADL] (i.e. grocery shopping, meal preparations, laundry) then you’d be smart to forget about the monitoring equipment all together and celebrate what’s (still) working. There may be a time when it will make sense, but the time is very likely not now.
Getting to the heart of the matter:
My hunch is that there are many adult daughters and sons whose interest in the home monitoring equipment is really connected to their own guilt that they can’t be there more often. If that’s you, I hope you’ll forgive yourself. We do what we can and most of the time that’s enough. If guilt is a feeling you can’t seem to shake, take small steps to get more involved. Re-institute the old-fashioned check-in call at night and get to know your father’s neighbors on your next visit so that you have someone to call upon if you need to.
I hope that the big take-away message is clear by now: don’t fix it if it isn’t broken.
Older adults cling to their independence so fiercely because they know that it is an amazingly fragile thing. Do what you can to nurture it for as long as possible because when it’s gone, it’s probably not coming back.
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Are you considering home monitoring equipment for your aging parent? If so, you might be in the midst of Planning Care. I’ve written quite a bit about this stage of caregiving, so take a look! And as always, if you have any questions that you can’t seem to find answers to on those other sites, contact me and ask them! 
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