Our seniors have a horror of being "put" in a nursing home or other facility. Whether it makes sense or not, they will often do whatever they can to hide the difficulties they are having with their day-to-day activities because they'd rather struggle than take that chance.

Sometimes they don't even recognize the extent of the changes they are experiencing. It's simply easier to nap on the downstairs sofa than to manage the stairs to the bedroom. Rinsing things out in the sink is easier than trudging down to the washing machine in the basement. Fading eyesight makes the aging food in the refrigerator hard to identify, so it neither gets eaten nor thrown away. Short-term memory losses may make it hard to remember whether you've had a bath or eaten dinner.

Because we love them, we don't want to embarrass them or put them on the spot, yet we have real concerns about their safety and ability to cope. We're looking for clues to how things are going. Having a checklist of "What To Look For" gives us a tool to start with and helps us focus.

Using a tool such as this is the first step toward solving or reducing the problem. It will help us pinpoint the most important concerns so we can look for ideas, resources and support. And that's the first step that we all take on this bumpy eldercare road.

The Warning Signs Checklist is downloadable as a pdf file. You will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader to open pdf files. Here's where you can get a free copy of the Acrobat Reader.

Download "Warning Signs"