Mary Alexander: Hi! I'm Mary Alexander from Home Instead Senior Care and today I'm going to provide some tips for effective communication with seniors and how to overcome obstacles.

Over our lifetime talking with our parents seems to go in full circle. When we were young and their mutual feelings that neither knows anything, you don't understand each other and both sides get frustrated. As adults, those tendencies ebb as you both respect and accept each others' adult opinions and decisions.

But then something happens as our parents age. All of the sudden it can be back to misunderstanding each other, frustration, or either not communicating at all. In a worst case scenario, small disagreements can start out as annoyances, but left to simmer and grow, they can result in arguments or complete lack of communication that can destroy your last precious months and years together.

According to David Sully after it had a say it to seniors, these communications breakdowns occur, in part because the needs and developmental task older parents' face are starkly different from and at times even conflicts with those of their adult children. Understanding these differences and learning to manage them can result in positive, constructive and healthy conversations between seniors and their adult children.

To help you through the process we developed this series of videos that will enable you to open the lines of communication, know which topics are most difficult and give you methods to approach them. We will explain the barriers to communication and how to help you overcome them.

In the end, we'll give you some great additional resources where you can seek help. Home Instead Senior Care, the national leader in providing in-home care for seniors is bringing you this video series to help you help your senior loved one. Helping seniors is something Home Instead Senior Care has been doing passionately for more than 15 years. I not only work with Home Instead Senior Care, but I'm a certified Senior Adviser. More importantly, I'm currently a long-distance care giver for my dad and I spent several months for caring for my mom locally. So let's start talking about communication issues.