Elderly Care Tips: The Benefits of Taking a Trip to the Playground with Your Seniors
Elderly Care in Hudsonville MI
Whether you have just started offering care for your aging parents or have been engaged in their care for years, you understand the importance of physical activity in their elderly care plan. 
Keeping them active is essential to their physical, mental, and emotional health, and can help them live the highest quality of life possible throughout their aging years.
Getting your parents to engage in enough physical activity can be stressful, however, particularly when your aging loved ones have gotten bored with your usual exercise routine. Encouraging a more varied approach to exercise is important to keeping your seniors engaged, interested, and willing to keep working out.
One innovative and fun exercise idea that is gaining tremendous popularity in the elderly care community is playing at the playground. Playgrounds are designed to encourage active, creative play among children, and many caregivers and care providers are recognizing the value of this type of activity for elderly adults as well. In fact, many areas have opened playgrounds specifically designed for seniors, creating social centers that also offer outdoor exercise opportunities ideal for senior adults and their varied capabilities.
The next time you or your aging parents’ elderly health care services provider are looking for a creative and enjoyable way to get more activity in your parents’ elderly care routine, head to your local playground and try some of these ideas:
• Swing. Swinging on the swings is a favorite activity for all ages, and is a great way to get your parents’ heartrate up, strengthen their muscles, and condition their joints, as well as work on balance. The action of pumping their legs to move them forward and back requires coordination, balance, and concentration, which supports both physical and cognitive health;
• Obstacle course. Take a beloved childhood playground activity and customize it for your aging parents by creating an obstacle course through the playground. Many playgrounds, particularly those designed specifically for seniors, already feature integrated obstacle courses, but you can also create your own simply by coming up with a series of actions using the equipment. Completing the course strengthens the muscles, conditions the joints, encourages flexibility, boost endurance and cardiovascular health, burns fat, and also works your parents’ memory and cognitive processing skills;
• Jungle gym. Climbing is a fantastic form of physical exercise. Working their way through a jungle gym works out your parents’ muscles and joints, burns calories, increases their heartrate, and encourages problem solving and memory skills. These same benefits apply to other climbing equipment as well, such as rope ladders, miniature rock walls, and cargo nets.
Get in touch with the elder care agency in your area to find out more about hiring an elderly health care services provider who can boost your aging parents’ health and quality of life by encouraging them to get more physically active, head outside, and enjoy the wide range of benefits of staying in touch with the fun and value of play.
If you or someone you know needs help with elderly care services in Hudsonville, MI, contact Gauthier Family Home Care. We provide quality and affordable home care services in our community. Call us at (616) 258-2300 for more information.
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