My MIL has ALWAYS hosted a very formal Christmas Eve dinner with gifts exchanged afterwards. This year, she is in a new independent living apartment and her health has deteriorated to the point where she is easily tired by too many activities or too much commotion around. She admitted a month or so ago that the formal dinner she had arranged at the facility just wouldn't work with preschoolers. Now, with Christmas fast approaching, we are having trouble coming up with ideas of how to include her in Christmas eve gift-giving a bit, but w/o overdoing it. Even a 20-minute visit from each of the families separately seems like too much - that would be 4 groups. We don't want to leave her sitting alone that evening while the rest of us get together somewhere else. There may be an obvious solution, but we are feeling sort of stuck.
Thanks for any help.
S.
You could in family groups visit her so she could see each group and enjoy the company. My husbands family had the same thing and picked grandma up and took her back when she had enough. It sounds like she may not be up to these ideas but you could ask her.
C. B
Is there any reason why you couldn't have someone in the family host the dinner and party, and then one of you bring her there. My grandmother lives in an assisted living center, and we are able to bring her for visits (especially Thanksgiving, Christmas). We just have to let them know we are taking her, and they sign out the medications that she is supposed to take while with us, with instructions on when to give them to her. Your MIL can come for dinner and maybe some of the activities, and can go home when she's ready for some quiet.
Change the formal to very casual. Take your Grandmother to your house or another relative. Somewhere relaxing and don't fret over the setting. Just let her enjoy the evening and spend as much time with family as possible. As long as everybody knows that she will need to rest once in awhile it will be allright.
My grandfather was put in assisted living about a year ago.He was the type of man that loved to be around his grandchildren and great grandchildren,he recently passed in August, but like your MIL with his failing health he too would get easily tired.What we would do for big family gatherings we would take him out of assisted living for a couple of hours,most of his children have houses with guest room or empty rooms where if he were to get tired or if we were to be getting too loud he could just go in and lay down or relax.This way she's around all of you,ya'll won't feel like you left her out.You can also take her back when she's ready to leave.Well hope everything works out for you and your family.GOD BLESS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!
Our family has been in this situation before. We have picked our grandmother up and brought her to the party for 20 or 30 minutes or however long she felt like staying. When she was exhausted or was at her limit she was taken home and snuggled in bed to wait for Santa. :)
Are there a couple of people who could take turns leaving your celebration to visit with her during this time? Just one person at a time? So they would not miss everything themselves? You could have these people bring the gifts and explain who they are from.
I don't know if this will make her feel included or not but you could camcord each family doing things like singing Christmas songs and other Christmassy things directed towards you MIL and then have her watch that. You could also do a shorter clip in the video that shows you "giving" each of the gifts to her. Something like here is our gift, hope you like it (have everyone wrap them in different colored paper). Then the person with her could play the video as she unwraps each gift.
When my dad was in a nursing home, and unable to participate in the usual festivities, my husband baked homemade cinnamon rolls. He made several dozen (one of his specialties) and we wrapped them in little packages of 2 rolls, in a Christmas type of plastic wrap and a bow. Some of the older grandchildren help wrap. Then we brought them to the nursing home in a beautiful basket. We pushed my dad in his wheelchair all around the home, and he passed out gifts of cinnamon rolls to all the nurses, and the fellow patients on his floor. We had the kids follow along and help some of the less-abled people receive their rolls, and they helped push the wheelchair and generally got involved with all the fun of letting their grandpa "give" homemade baked gifts to all the people he interacted with every day. If you made cookies or little simple ornaments for your MIL to distribute, and if you all came to visit while she passed them out to her neighbors, care-givers, staff, whatever, she might feel like she's participating in the fun while not having to go too far from home. Then you can all gather and carry on with your plans. My dad felt really special for days afterwards while people raved about his gifts, even though he didn't actually make them.
Maybe you could arrange with the family to spread the visits out over the entire Christmas Eve day and possibly even Christmas? Someone visit in the morning, noon, afternoon, evening - that would spread the visits out to keep the festivity going all day, plus would give her time to rest/recuperate in between visits. You could bring gifts, plus maybe try to bring a small portion of any foods that she traditionally served at her dinner. She already arranged a formal dinner at the facility? But it won't work for preschoolers? This sounds like maybe she still wants the formal get-together but the activity/noise of toddlers is too much for her. You could always continue with her formal dinner plans, but try to get a babysitter for the little ones - although I'm sure the mommas/daddies won't want to be away from their kiddies for the holiday. I would probably try to arrange visits. Good luck and happy holidays!
