Editor's Note: Johnson County Human Services, and its Area Agency on Aging, receive many calls from members of the baby boom generation who are helping to care for their elderly parents. This is the last of three installments in which Ed Schulte, an aging information specialist, provides his experience and wisdom.

What advice can you give to adult children caring for elderly parents, with the child assuming the role of lead decision-maker and the emotional pitfalls that can generate?

Communicate adult-to-adult with a senior, rather than assuming a parent-to-child tone. Be respectful. Be kind. Don't try to solve all the problems at once. It will drain you. Start with the most important things.

Understand that your parent's physical and cognitive capabilities may diminish, but there is no set pattern of decline. Your parent may rebound from setbacks and surprise you. Do not be quick to assume or diagnose a physical or mental decline and rush to place a parent in a facility.

You can try different options. Do a trial run with in-home care and see what plan of care might ensure the parent's health and safety at home. Or arrange a respite, rehab, or vacation stay in a facility as a trial run. See what works for the elder's needs and your capacity as a caregiver.

Do not push your parents too hard, even if they pushed and encouraged you to high achievement when you were young. This is different. Many loss issues associated with aging require time to adapt to: loss of income, home, spouse, and health. Wisdom, strength, and experience may come with aging, but allow time for your parent to adapt and respond to the challenges, too. Be patient. Take breaks.

At this stage in their cycle of life, seniors deserve peace, health maintenance, and pain management; the best options for living available to them; and the security of knowing that someone cares about them and will be there for them.

What do you say to the adult children of an aging and ailing parent when they bicker over care?

Whether near or far, find your own way to "share the care."

As an adult child, the best solution will always be to follow your values. Learn more about caregiving and caregiving options, but care with whatever strengths and tools you already bring to the table.

Talents and capabilities, personalities and strong traits, may not be distributed evenly among siblings. Parents may respond better to certain children or respond to them better for different needs—legal, financial issues, emotional support, health care.

If discussion is too challenging, sometimes you just have to do the right thing or help the right way according to your beliefs, values, and strengths.

How about when one sibling lives out of state and others live in the same city as the parent. Do you find it's common for tensions to build between siblings as they take on more caretaking responsibilities?

Caregiving comes with challenges and tensions, so family members who are in that role have to find ways to deal with those tensions.

Do not let caregiving become the focal point of your life. Let it be part of your life, but you do not have to center each day on the same caregiving issues. Your thoughts, emotions, and personality as a caregiver do not have to parallel the thoughts and feelings of the person you care for—especially true if the parent is not feeling well. By being a happier person and caregiver, you can lift the person you care for out of the doldrums. You can be empathetic and caring, but you do not have to be down and despondent.

The realities of life often place family members in different locations. Most family members didn't move away to avoid a caregiving role; they moved to be employed or to live their best life in a location and environment that supported their talents and needs. You can be supportive from a distance by phone and visit when you can.

When there is disagreement between siblings, try talking informally or with social workers, or get formal counseling and mediation. Knowing the care needs of the parents, and having advance directives such as wills, living wills, and powers of attorney, will help sort out some parts of who does what based on the parent's choices.

Family members all have choices, too, and should be involved as caregivers according to their physical and emotional capacity to do so and related to their parent's need for help or agreement to be helped. After that, other options for caregiving can be looked at.

Any general advice to baby boomers who, if they aren't already, soon will face juggling caring for their own families with caring for an elderly or sick parent?

You build a house according to certain building codes and blueprints, and then that house serves everyone who lives in it. Live according to your values or your personal code and belief system. Let your goals and dreams be your blueprint for living. Recognize that you have choices and the ability to plot a course and adjust it. Be positive, persistent, and proactive, and life can follow a course close to what you envision.

Care for other people while still caring for yourself and the life you want to live. Make your days happy, and you will be happier and more caring toward your family and everyone around you. Help yourself and everyone make the best of every moment.

"Aging" is just another way to say "living."

Every day is a gift to be appreciated. That's why they call it the present.