-So if you come at from a medical perspective, if you come up with things, say like, Mom, how does that new prescription affect your driving, or what did your doctor new prescription for glasses or what did your doctor say about that medication, is that, are you OK to drive on that? Or, for me at 50 I don’t want to drive at night so much anymore, so I’m able to say to my Mom: I hate driving at night, how are you feeling about driving at night these days? Or Mrs. Smith actually stopped driving, you know, what do you think about that, what do you think about how she is feeling and how do you feel about that for yourself?
So you can do it in ways that help really promote the conversation. But ultimately you can make it about safety really.
-And you think about having that conversation for us was a doctor. It was because of a medication she was taking.(Right) And a kind of, you know, helps a little bit. Was your father…there’s an assessment, cause we were have my Mom to do this, there is something that you can do so they can assess how they are driving.
-Yes, that’s right. What we didwith my dad first is we started sort of setting limits. Like : Dad, what about just we do it local driving or maybe you don’t drive at night, or maybe you make a deal with your folks you don’t drive at the certain weather conditions. My Dad was really wonderful about it in the end. But it was difficult issue first. This is a generation that used to go out(sure..sure…)on Sunday drives. Dad always gets in the driver seat and mom gets here. And what we did is we made a deal we said how about if we take you to an independent driving place, if they say you are OK to drive, we’ll back off; and if they say that you maybe need to hang up the keys, you need to listen. And he agreed. He was surprised at the results that he wasn’t as good a driver as he thought, and we all ended up in happy campus.
-There were something that you’ve done ,just a great work with this and really talking to several different folks. And because parents they want to be independent and they also feel like they can afford it. But what was great what you found out that if you can’t crunch the numbers.(absolutely) it’s not so bad.
-And come to them with solutions. Say mom here is a senior center number; here are the transit.You know, that’s the transit solutions. And here is how much you would save if you give that car, appears how much gas and maintenance and all these things are, you actually may have enough for taxis or a driver, or whatever the solution may be. We are come to them with that already crunch . You can find that worksheet on our website.
-All right, thank you so much,Lee. So how’s your dad doing?
-He is fabulous. So great, at home yesterday in Boston. They’re all great. You mom?
-She is doing great.
-Good.
-She’s doing great. She’s been fighting a little bit. It was hard for her.
-It's a loss...
-But she understands. She walked from church. There are definitely different ways you people.
-There are solutions and you need to work with them. It will all be ok.
-Ok.We’re going to have an ongoing discussion about this.
-About my hair？
-About your hair, about all that. We create a special page on our website to help you talk to your parents as they are getting older about these tough topics that Lee is gonna be here from time to time sharing with us. Thank you, my friend.
-Thanks.
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