It’s a week out from your next visit home. Urrrrgghhhh! The anxiety rushes over you as your mind rushes with the questions your parents will ask (must we talk about non-existent grandbabies, again?), how you’ll spend the time (oh great :), Uncle George is going to be there when I’m there), what old wounds may be poked or prodded (yes I’m still pissed about that time you missed my volleyball championship), and finally, what tasks you’ll need to take on while you’re there (mind blown emoji). If none of this sounds familiar then email me some tips pronto, your home visits must be incredibly relaxing! For the rest of us having a plan will help us navigate the joys of a home visit.
Years ago my mom decided that she wanted to get her credit in better shape. Her credit wasn’t bad but it wasn’t where she wanted to be. After probing a bit, she specifically identified that she wanted to get her bills organized as she had recently been charged a late charge and she knew she could do a better job. After mentally planning my trip, I figured that on the next visit I could spend about 3 hours in the morning helping her with this first step. At this point, we were a well-oiled machine so learn from our lessons.
To have an awesome home visit you’ll need to:
- Prepare – Partner with your parent to understand what they need and make a joint plan.
- Execute – Make things more manageable by doing pre-work in advance and sticking with the plan.
- Celebrate & Look Ahead – Celebrate your collective win and decide on your next step or next project.
1. 🗒️Prepare 🗒️
The goal of preparing for your home visit is to set you and your parents up for success. If you both agree on what you want to partner on before you get home, you’re well on your way.
- Assess your time – Decide how much time you have to help your parents in this visit. Decide how much time you will have to spend with your parents vs. other obligations. Do you have a few work items to wrap-up? Will you need to see friends or other family members? Do you need to relax and take a beat for yourself? Even in a weeklong visit time can quickly dwindle when you carefully assess your time constraints.
- Assess their needs – Once you understand how much time you can spend, chat with your parents to understand what they need. You may already have a short-list of parental tasks but it not, now’s the time to start.
- Create a goal – Set a SMART goal for the project.
- Example: Create an itemized list of past due and upcoming bills and submit payments for 100% of past and upcoming bills for August.
- Calendar the plan – Identify the most impactful task(s) you can tackle in the time you have to be present and help your parent(s). Schedule it on both of your calendars.
2. 🔨Execute🔨
When you get home it’s easy to fall into old habits and revert to your childlike self. Snap out of it. You’re battling avoidance, just wanting to chill, and other distractions. You Got this!
- Pre-Work – One way to enable your success is to assign pre-work. It’s harder to skip over the task when you both have already invested in the project. What is one thing you and your parent can do before you get home to enable your success? Make it something simple that can be done quickly! The goal is to set both of you up for success.
- Example: On the visit where I helped my mom get her bills organized, we had the following pre-work:
- Her Task – Gather all of her mail from around the house
- My Task – Do a quick google search on avoidance and how to help someone else navigate it. Our parents are human and in her case, the pile had gotten to be too overwhelming
- The key hear
- Example: On the visit where I helped my mom get her bills organized, we had the following pre-work:
- Review the plan/ Preview the task – When you kick off the home visit, remind yourself and your parent what you agreed to. Check-in on the pre-work.
- Example: Upon arrival, we collectively sorted the mail based on the sender. Because of the pre-work I had given her, she had already started the task and it was a fun way to jumpstart our plan a day early.
- Execute – In your allotted time, sit down and start the task. You oot this!
- We set a goal to
3. 🎉Celebrate🎉 & 🔮Look Ahead 🔮
- Celebrate – You’ve accomplished something together as a team so once you’ve completed a task, celebrate! Treat yourselves to something special for sticking to your plan or at least trying. For us, it’s always grabbing water ice & a soft pretzel or going to get our nails done.
- Decide on your next step – Is there an obvious next step for your next visit? If you’re working on your finances with your parent, maybe this month you organize their bills and ensure they’re up-to-date. Next visit you can work on getting an emergency fund set-up.
- Follow-up – Set the next task or the time you’re going to determine the next task.
You can have an effective, loving, fun home visit in 3 steps:
1. Prepare
2. Execute
3. Celebrate & Look Ahead
Sign-up for the newsletter and I’ll send you the home visit worksheet to scaffold your next home visit. You (and your loved one) will thank yourselves.
