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Do you remember, as a child, ripping the shiny paper off a tempting-looking gift under the tree, only to find something "useful" -- socks, underwear, a piece of important literature that your parents had always wanted you to read?

In my family, the "for your own good" gift is a time-honored tradition -- just last year, my 82-year-old mother re-organized my kitchen cabinets for Christmas (thanks, Mom -- now where the heck is the colander?).

Well, folks, now's the time to return the favor -- the perfect season to give aging relatives something they don't necessarily want but that you really think they ought to have.

I'm assuming (ahem) that you've already done all your real Christmas shopping by now, but it's never too late to slip a handmade certificate or last minute print-out for an online order under the tree.

If you have aging-in-place parents like mine, then home safety is likely high on your list of "for their own good...  Read more

It's that time of year, my husband and I joke nervously as winter and the holidays approach. Nursing home time.

The last two holiday seasons have found my 88-year-old father in skilled nursing facilities, following emergency-room stints for various age- and season-related ailments. He's got emphysema and arthritis, and winter means flus that can lead to pneunomia, and weather that ups the risk of falls or driving accidents.

By the second time around, the hospital-to-nursing-home trajectory seemed crushingly familiar: the meetings with the hospital discharge planner, the visits to tinsel-draped nursing facilities, and then the long, slow car ride with my father dozing in the passenger seat as we took him to the last place on earth he wanted to be.

As soon as we got him settled in to the half-a-room he was to call home for the holidays, he'd start complaining loudly and lobbying for his car keys...  Read more

The sexual life of our elders is something we younger folks shudder to imagine (and I confess to being guilty) -- whether it's an aversion to thinking about what goes on behind a parent's closed bedroom door, or horror at the notion of Viagra in the medicine cabinet.

This willed ignorance about the sexuality of those who, somehow or other, managed to beget us, continues all the way to the nursing home, it turns out -- sometimes with heart-rending consequences.

A recent study by a team from Kansas State University includes a subtle, yet poignant, example. A married couple had moved into a nursing home room with adjacent hospital beds. One spouse had a condition that required him to elevate a leg, and the beds had been placed so that the leg was on the same side as his spouse, which made it hard for them to hold hands. Staff members didn't see this as a problem, and told the couple, essentially, to live with it...  Read more

A few weeks ago, I wrote about "boomerang seniors" -- elders whose retirement options took a big hit along with the economy and were moving in with adult children rather than into costly assisted living or other retirement communities.

Some seniors, it turns out, are taking just the opposite approach to belt-tightening. Instead of moving in, these folks are moving out -- in some cases, way out, across borders, to assisted living communities in Mexico.

According to a recent report in the Dallas Morning News, a full-service unit in a south-of-the-border assisted living facility runs about $1,100 a month, roughly a third what it would cost in the U.S. Given that the vast majority of retirees must pay for care out-of-pocket -- and that the two major sources of retirement funds for many, home equity and stock-based retirement portfolios, are plummeting -- it's not surprising that Mexican developers are rushing to build new units to meet anticipated demand...  Read more

Last week, I offered a checklist aimed at helping assess how aging-in-place relatives were doing during a holiday visit.

Meanwhile, my own aging-in-place dad had hit a minor crisis of his own, and I realized that somehow I'd neglected to write part two of the checklist: Once you identify a problem, how do you get a set-in-his-ways relative to do something about it (or let you help)?

Maybe I "forgot" because this issue is so very challenging.

Outside my 88-year-old father's back window is an ancient yellow rose vine that winds up two flights of back stairs, an impenetrable thicket of thorns and twisted stems as wide as four feet in parts. When it grows too big, it threatens his life -- literally -- by closing off his only escape route during a fire.

Ordinarily, he has a gardener come by every six weeks to trim the thing back. But the last time I visited, he mentioned that he'd fired the gardener and was letting the vine go...  Read more

Every year, nursing home and assisted living administrators share the same story: Around the holidays, admissions spike. The reason? Adult children who may not have seen their aging-in-place relatives since the last holiday season come home for a visit and are shocked by what they see: a once well-kept home now in disarray, or a formerly robust relative looking startlingly frail.

Sometimes, of course, you may in fact come home to a real emergency, and residential care may in fact be the best option. Other times, the problems can be handled without a move, by measures such as enlisting part-time, in-home caregivers, helping your relatives register at an adult day center, or hiring a housekeeper and signing them up for a meal delivery service. (Check out Caring Local for resources in your family's area.)

Before you can help, though, you need get a realistic sense of where things stand. Asking direct questions right off the bat may put your relatives on the defensive, but you can learn a lot simply by looking around...  Read more

"I don't want to live here," my 87-year-old father grumbled when my sister and I took him on tours of one well-appointed retirement community after another. "It's full of old people!"

My dad's "joke" belied a genuine discomfort. In the end, he didn't move into any of the communities we thought would be a terrific alternative to living alone in a two-story condominium where he could barely get up the stairs.

The idea of sequestering himself in an age-segregated universe -- giving up his weekly barroom poker game with men half his age or younger, or chess at the downtown café where he had a good three or four decades on his opponents -- made my dad feel, well, old.

A card-carrying Mensa member who usually has six or seven online chess games going with opponents (of all ages) across the globe, he also viewed retirement communities as the land of bingo and daytime television, devoid of the intellectual stimulation he needs to keep him on his toes...  Read more

Adjusting to a communal living setting is always challenging, and if you're in a caregiving role to an elder who has recently moved into a retirement community, you can expect to get a frantic call or two early on -- maybe even a "Get me out of here!"

Usually, time resolves these settling-in anxieties. But there's one group of seniors who often face an extra set of challenges. Across the country, gay and lesbian elders who've moved to retirement communities report being ostracized, mocked, and harassed not only by fellow residents, but also sometimes by staff.

One state, California, has responded with a law aimed at preventing anti-gay bias in senior care facilities through staff training.

Another answer is retirement communities developed with the needs of gays and lesbians specifically in mind. The few already in business have waiting lists, and the others now in development are likely to see a booming business...  Read more

A few weeks ago, my children invited my mother to move in with us.

We were on our way back from a family weekend in Yosemite together, and they'd laughed themselves silly running in and out of her adjoining hotel room, staying up late reading stories in her king-sized bed, and just generally enjoying every minute of her company.

"When you get old, Grandma," my seven-year-old daughter promised my 80-year-old mother, "you can come live with us." The car ride sped by as we dreamed up accommodations for her -- we'd convert the treehouse into an enchanted aerie, my twins decided, with a generator-powered elevator for when she got too fragile to climb the rope ladder, and a pulley from our kitchen window, to which we'd attach a picnic basket to send back provisions when she didn't feel like coming down for breakfast.

Later, my husband and I found ourselves talking it over more seriously. Could we pull it off, if the day came when my mother really needed our round-the-clock help...  Read more

Last week, I wrote about a new movement in nursing home care to build community via activities such as shared meals around an open hearth.

Well, the need to gather round the hearth -- literally or figuratively -- is just as strong in those who are growing old at home as it is in those in nursing homes, and changes are also afoot on their behalf to recognize and fulfill this need.

One of the most promising is the "elder village" model, in which neighbors band together to share services such as home repair, meal delivery, transportation, and in-home care, often at a discounted rate. Villages also hold recreational and social events, creating that all-important sense of community among residents who might otherwise be isolated in their homes.

Until recently, these villages have been limited to urban areas where seniors live in close proximity. The most famous is Boston's Beacon Hill Village, which offers consultations to other communities looking to replicate its model...  Read more

Say the words "nursing home," and what comes to mind? Sterile hallways, the smell of disinfectant, runny eggs on a tray, a diffident game of bingo with Wheel of Fortune playing endlessly in the background?

Researchers have found that older Americans fear winding up in a nursing more than they fear death itself. If this is the picture they hold in their heads -- combined with expectations of helplessness, incapacity, and isolation -- is it so surprising they'd fight tooth and nail to stay away?

But a new movement is afoot to change the way nursing homes operate, down to their very core. This movement is way past the conceptual stage -- across the country you can find nursing homes that are filled with birdsong; where koi ponds have replaced nursing stations and residents live in "neighborhoods" rather than wards; where meals are served family-style around big tables and sunshine and laughter are abundant even as age works its irreversible ravages...  Read more

The other night at bedtime my seven-year-old daughter shared with me the fears that were keeping her up at night: demon ghost dogs, and the fire she feared would consume the house, starting with her room.

The demon ghost dog -- well, I won't bore you with the details of how he was dispatched (there's actually a special spray you can keep by your bed in a bottle, but never mind….). To allay her fear of fires, however, I walked her through the house, showing her the smoke alarms in each bedroom and the hallways, and the fire extinguisher we keep in the kitchen just in case.

I explained how the smoke alarms beep when the batteries get low, and how we always keep fresh batteries on hand to replace them. Mom and Dad, I reassured her, have things covered. After all, as her caregivers, that's our job.

Her timing couldn't have been better. October, it turns out, is Fire Safety Month, and as part...  Read more

Do you worry about older relatives who live alone -- what if they fall down the stairs, or have a heart attack, and are unable to call 911?

If you share these worries, you're like me and enough another Americans that General Electric (GE) is anticipating a 5 billion dollar market for the electronic home monitors it just announced an agreement to market and develop.

The monitors GE will be selling -- already available from several smaller manufacturers and in use in a few hi-tech nursing homes -- are more sophisticated than the currently more widely-used Personal Emergency Response Systems (PERS), which require elders to wear a pendant or bracelet and push a button when they need help.These monitors are attached to the walls, silently track seniors' movements, and can generate a call for help if there is a fall or another medical emergency.

Is GE overly-optimistic in predicting huge demand for these devices in the coming years...  Read more

As anyone who's ever had to ask their parents to turn over their car keys knows, losing the ability to drive can be traumatic for elders, and can even precipitate an unwanted move to a retirement home. Those of you who've dealt with this, or just worried about it as you've watched your parents inch their way out of a parking place, should be heartened to learn of a flurry of futuristic developments aimed at keeping seniors safe on the road -- which will likely mean they can stay in their own homes longer, too:

• Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are fine-tuning an "autonomous vehicle" that can navigate city streets without the aid of a human driver. Not only did Carnegie Mellon's "Boss" model just beat out rivals from across the nation in a defense-sponsored obstacle course on an abandoned military base, the director of the team that developed the car is thinking ahead not to the next war but to the next phase of life for graying drivers...  Read more

Getting older isn't what it used to be. At universities and private labs around the country -- and the world -- engineers and scientists are constantly coming up with new gadgets and innovations that can ease the challenges of aging and help you stay connected with older family members.

Here's what's coming down the pike right now:

The iShoe. Erez Liberman was an intern at NASA when he began working on a shoe that would help monitor balance problems in astronauts returning from space. It didn't take long for the MIT grad student to realize that the device -- which takes measurements of the wearer's balance with every step -- would be equally helpful to his elderly grandmother, who had suffered a bad fall a few years earlier.

He and a team at MIT are now testing the iShoe on a group of 60 non-astronauts and developing a model that will report imbalances directly to the wearer's doctor, as well as correcting them on the spot by stimulating the feet when a wobbly elder gets off-kilter...  Read more