Spotting signs of decline in your elderly loved ones during the holidays

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The holiday season is a good time to look for signs of decline in our loved ones, according to the AGES Foundation.

It notes that, too often, older people blame oddities on normal aging, when there are ways to prevent certain health problems if caught early.

As such, the foundation is launching a free online training course to help people assess their elderly loved ones.

The course, entitled “Sentinelles en gériatrie sociale” (Social Geriatric Watchdogs), has three main components.

The first is to spot signs of deteriorating health; the second is to plan actions to prevent accelerated aging; and the third is to properly prepare for an appointment with a health care professional.

“Unfortunately, even today in society, people will often say, ‘Oh, it’s normal, he’s getting older,’ and then they’ll let it go until the deterioration is so severe that there’s not much that can be done,” explained Dr. Stéphane Lemire, an internist-geriatrician and founder and president of the AGES Foundation. “The idea is really to get people to realize that there’s no need to panic, but that they need to take care of it because it’s not just normal aging.”

“The idea is to make people more independent in taking care of themselves, identifying problematic situations, and connecting that to a support system, which we call social geriatrics,” he continued in his explanation. “It’s a support system that helps people navigate the intricacies of the health care system when necessary, but sometimes avoid going into the health care system for things that can be dealt with without going there.”

Lemire gives a few examples of things we can look for at a Christmas or New Year’s party: if the entrance hasn’t been cleared of snow or if the person has completely messed up a recipe -- say, if the turkey isn’t cooked properly or sugar has been mixed in with salt in the meat pie.

“These are signs that we can see,” he pointed out. “Sometimes, in conversations, there are people with age-related hearing loss who are reluctant to talk about their hearing problems or deafness,” he added. “In conversations, they seem confused and give irrelevant answers. Whereas sometimes, simply by seeing an audiologist, the situation can be resolved.”

Sharing a concern without being confrontational

Sharing a concern with a loved one about signs of deterioration can be a delicate operation.

“When people take the ‘Sentinelles’ training course, we give them tips on how to interact effectively. Basically, you have to avoid confrontation and focus on expressing any concerns you may have, for example, about memory, appetite, or falls,” said Lemire.

He mentions that people tend to minimize these concerns by saying that it’s normal to eat less and be less active as we age.

“But we need to change this way of thinking,” he said.

According to Lemire, denial stems from a fear of ending up in a seniors’ residence or long-term care facility.

“What people fear most is being placed in a home, being forced to see the CLSC social worker. [...] What we want is to show people that there are many very simple solutions that can be implemented on a daily basis. Just in terms of minimal physical activity, such as walking, in terms of nutrition by eating more protein, etc.”

In the training, participants are invited to follow the acronym AINÉÉS AD-PLUS, where each letter corresponds to a checklist for assessing an elderly person.

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“It was a deliberate choice because [...] when people enter the health care system, they don’t have the right vocabulary. So, we wanted to give people the right vocabulary to be able to structure their health observations, as we do in hospitals with AÎNÉÉS,” explained Lemire.

The AD-PLUS component was added because, in the community, he said, there are other factors to consider.

For example, self-care abilities, home safety and the interaction between seniors and their caregivers.

It is also important for seniors to have a social life to break the isolation.

The “Sentinelles en gériatrie sociale” training course is available free of charge on the agirpourmieuxvieillir.com website.

The Canadian Press’s health coverage is supported by a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. The Canadian Press is solely responsible for this journalistic content.

- This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Dec. 23, 2025.