The Holiday Visit: What to Watch For When You Go Home This Year

Every January, my phone starts ringing more than it does the rest of the year. The calls all sound roughly the same. Someone flew home for Thanksgiving or Christmas, spent three or four days in the house they grew up in, and came away with a feeling they can’t quite shake.

Mom seemed off. I don’t know how to explain it. Something’s different.

That January pattern is so consistent that people in senior care plan around it. Families gather, they see something, they sit with it through the end of the year, and then in January they finally pick up the phone. If you’re heading home this year and you have any quiet worry in the back of your mind, I want to help you make that visit count.

Because here’s the thing about a holiday visit: it’s actually one of the best diagnostic tools a family has, and most people don’t use it that way.

Why a short visit tells you more than months of phone calls

If you talk to your mother twice a week, you probably think you have a decent read on how she’s doing. In my experience, phone calls are almost useless for this.

On the phone, your parent is at their best. They’re sitting down. They’ve had time to think about what to say. They aren’t navigating stairs or trying to open a jar or remembering whether they took their medication. And they are, understandably, presenting the version of themselves that keeps you from worrying.

A visit strips all of that away. You see the house. You see the routine. You see what happens at four in the afternoon when they’re tired. You see what’s in the refrigerator. You see how long it takes to get out the door for dinner.

Three days in the house tells you more than six months of Sunday phone calls, and the holidays are often the only time an adult child gets those three days.

Before you go: decide to actually look

The single biggest thing that separates a useful visit from a wasted one is deciding, before you arrive, that you’re going to pay attention.

This sounds obvious. It isn’t. Holiday visits are busy. There’s cooking and family and travel exhaustion and old dynamics resurfacing. It’s easy to spend four days in your parent’s house and never once really look at the house.

So decide now. Not to investigate, not to inspect, and certainly not to interrogate. Just to notice. Give yourself permission to pay a different kind of attention than you usually would, and then let the visit unfold normally around that.

One more thing worth deciding before you go: whether you’re going to bring anything up while you’re there. There’s no universally right answer. Some families do best having the conversation in person while everyone is together. Others do better letting the visit be a visit and following up by phone in January, once everyone is home and rested. If you already know your parent tends to feel ambushed in group settings, plan accordingly.

What to look for in the house

The house is usually honest before the parent is. Walk through it slowly at some point during your visit, ideally when nobody is watching you do it.

The kitchen. Open the refrigerator. Look at expiration dates, at what’s been opened and forgotten, at whether there’s actual food or mostly condiments. Check the freezer for meals somebody brought over months ago that never got eaten. Look at the stove and see whether it looks used. Look for burn marks on pots, scorch marks on counters, or a smoke detector that’s been disconnected.

The bathroom. This is the room where the most falls happen and the room families are least likely to enter. Is there a bath mat that slides? Is there anything to hold onto getting in and out of the tub? Is the toilet low enough to be hard to rise from? Are there medications on the counter that look untouched, or old prescriptions mixed in with current ones?

The bedroom. Is the path from the bed to the bathroom clear and lit? Is there a lamp within reach of the bed? Are clothes clean and put away, or is there a pile that suggests laundry has gotten hard?

The mail and paperwork. Piles of unopened mail, unpaid bills, or duplicate payments are one of the earliest reliable signals of cognitive change. So are unusual amounts of solicitation mail, sweepstakes entries, or charity appeals, which can indicate your parent has been responding to things they shouldn’t be.

The car. Walk around it and look for new dents nobody mentioned, scrapes along the bumper or the garage doorframe, or mirrors that have been adjusted oddly. If the car hasn’t moved in weeks in a household where driving used to be routine, that’s information too.

The general upkeep. Most older adults care deeply about their homes. When the house starts slipping in ways that would have embarrassed your parent ten years ago, that’s usually an energy and attention problem rather than a housekeeping one.

What to look for in your parent

Some of this you’ll catch without trying. Some of it takes a bit of deliberate attention.

How long things take. Watch how long it takes your mother to get ready in the morning. Watch how long it takes your father to get up from a chair, or to cross a room, or to climb the stairs. Aging slows everything down, and the degree of the slowdown tells you a lot about how much energy daily life is consuming.

Balance and movement. Notice whether they reach for furniture as they walk. Notice whether they’ve started taking the stairs one at a time, or holding the rail with both hands, or avoiding the stairs entirely. Notice whether they seem unsteady when they first stand up.

Weight. This is the one that most reliably surprises families. If your parent looks noticeably thinner than the last time you saw them, that matters, and it usually means eating has become harder, either physically, or because cooking is exhausting, or because appetite has changed.

Repetition. Everyone repeats stories. What matters is whether they remember having told you. Repeating the same question after you’ve answered it, several times in a few days, is a different pattern than telling a favorite story twice.

Energy through the day. Notice what four in the afternoon looks like compared to ten in the morning. Many older adults, especially those with early cognitive changes, are noticeably different in the late afternoon and evening.

Mood and personality. Increased anxiety, unusual irritability, withdrawal from conversation, or a flatness that wasn’t there before are all worth noticing. So is the opposite — a parent who seems fine but whose spouse looks exhausted.

How they handle the unfamiliar. Holidays disrupt routine, and disrupted routine is where cognitive changes show up most clearly. A parent who is fine in their own daily rhythm may struggle noticeably with a houseful of people, a change in mealtimes, or an unfamiliar setting.

If something you see during this visit worries you, you don’t have to figure out what it means alone. You can schedule a free in-home assessment and I’ll come sit with your family and give you an honest read on what I’m seeing. There’s no cost and no pressure to decide that day.

Watch the caregiving spouse, not just the parent who’s declining

If one of your parents is caring for the other, please pay as much attention to the caregiver as to the patient.

The spouse who has been quietly managing everything is often in worse shape than anyone realizes. They’ve been doing this alone, usually without complaint, often while minimizing it on the phone with you. Look at their weight, their sleep, their patience, their own health appointments. Ask directly how they’re doing, and then stay quiet long enough for a real answer.

I’ve had many situations over the years where the family called about one parent and it turned out the more urgent need was the other one. The caregiving spouse is at elevated risk for their own health decline, and they are almost never the one who asks for help.

The kitchen-table conversation with your siblings

At some point during the visit, usually late at night after your parents have gone to bed, you and your siblings are probably going to end up talking about this. That conversation matters more than most families realize, because family disagreement is the single biggest thing that delays needed care.

A few things that help that conversation go somewhere useful:

Compare notes before drawing conclusions. The sibling who lives twenty minutes away and the sibling who flies in twice a year are seeing completely different things. Neither view is complete. The local sibling may have normalized changes that happened gradually. The distant sibling may be alarmed by something that’s been stable for a year. Both perspectives are real data.

Be specific instead of general. “Mom seems off” is hard to act on. “Mom took forty minutes to get ready this morning, she’s lost weight, and there was expired food in the fridge” is something a family can actually work with.

Name what each person can realistically contribute. Geography and life circumstances mean contributions won’t be equal. Time, money, phone calls, coordination, and research are all real contributions. What matters is that the load is shared honestly rather than silently defaulting to one person.

Decide on one next step, not a whole plan. Trying to solve the entire future of your parent’s care in one late-night conversation almost never works. Deciding that one of you will call the doctor, or that you’ll all research options and talk again in two weeks, is achievable.

Before you leave town

Whatever you’re seeing, there are a few things worth doing before you get on the plane. These take an hour or two and they make everything easier later.

Write it down. While it’s fresh, write down what you noticed. Specific things, with dates. This becomes enormously useful when you’re talking to a doctor, coordinating with siblings, or trying to remember three months from now whether something has gotten worse.

Take photos if it helps. A photo of the medication situation, or the stairs, or whatever concerned you, is easier to share with a sibling than a description.

Check the medications. Take five minutes to look at what’s actually in the cabinet. Note the prescriber, the medication, and whether the fill dates make sense with the dosing. Bring a photo of the labels home with you.

Ask about the doctor. When was the last appointment? Who is the primary care physician? Is there a specialist involved? Do they have a way to get to appointments?

Make sure you have the paperwork question answered. Does anyone have medical power of attorney? Is there a durable power of attorney for finances? Does anyone know where the important documents are? You don’t have to resolve any of this during the visit, but you should know where things stand.

Get contact information for a neighbor. Someone local who sees your parent regularly and would call you if something seemed wrong is one of the most valuable things a long-distance family can have.

Why January is when families finally call

I mentioned at the start that the calls come in January. There’s a reason for that beyond the obvious.

The holidays give families information, but they don’t give them room to act on it. Everyone is busy, the visit is short, and nobody wants to be the person who ruins Christmas by bringing up assisted living. So the information sits. People go home. They think about it through the end of the year.

And then in January, when the house is quiet again and the ordinary rhythm has returned, the thing they saw at Thanksgiving is still sitting there. That’s when they call.

If that ends up being your January, you are in very good company. But I’d offer one gentle piece of encouragement: the families who move a little earlier tend to have more options and less pressure than the families who wait until something forces the decision. Nothing about looking into care in December or January commits you to anything. It just means that if something happens in March, you already know who to call and what your options are.

Frequently asked questions

What if I only have two or three days with my parent?

Two or three days is enough. Most of what matters is observable in that window if you’re paying attention — the house, the routine, how long things take, how they handle a disrupted schedule. The families who learn the most from a short visit are usually the ones who decided in advance to look.

Should I bring up my concerns during the holiday visit or wait?

It depends on your family. Some families do best with an in-person conversation while everyone is together and the specifics are fresh. Others find that holiday gatherings feel like an ambush to the parent, especially if several adult children raise concerns at once. If you’re unsure, a good middle path is to let the visit be a visit, then follow up by phone in early January when things are calmer.

My siblings and I saw completely different things. Who’s right?

Probably both of you. The sibling who sees your parent frequently has adapted to gradual changes and may not register them. The sibling who visits twice a year sees the cumulative change but may miss the context of a good day versus a bad one. The most useful thing is to compare specific observations rather than general impressions, and to consider getting an objective third-party assessment if you can’t reconcile the two views.

What if my parent gets defensive when I ask how they’re doing?

Very common. Most older adults hear questions about how they’re managing as questions about whether they’re still capable, which touches identity and independence in ways that go far beyond the practical. Asking about the future rather than the present often lands better — something like “what are you hoping the next few years look like?” opens a conversation where “are you having trouble with the stairs?” tends to close one.

We noticed things but nothing seems urgent. Should we do anything now?

Yes, and this is actually the ideal moment. Everything is easier to arrange when nothing is on fire. Understanding what care would cost, what your parent’s insurance covers, whether they’d qualify for veterans benefits or a Medicaid waiver, and who you’d call — all of that is much simpler to sort out in a calm January than in an emergency in July. A free in-home assessment costs nothing and gives you a plan you can hold onto until you need it.

One last thing before you go

Holiday visits carry a lot. Old family dynamics, grief for how things used to be, the strange feeling of parenting your own parent for the first time. If you go home this year and see something that scares you, that fear is not an overreaction. It’s usually the beginning of paying attention.

Nobody solves this during a four-day visit, and you don’t need a plan by the time you get on the plane. What matters is that you noticed, that you wrote it down, and that you’re willing to have the next conversation when the time is right.

If you’d like to talk through what you saw with someone who has walked a lot of Ann Arbor families through this exact moment, you can schedule a free in-home assessment whenever you’re ready. There’s no cost and no pressure to decide that day. Sometimes the most useful thing is simply having an outside set of eyes tell you whether what you’re seeing is normal aging or something that deserves attention.

About the author

Elizabeth Snyder Corman is the owner of Home Helpers Home Care of Ann Arbor, serving families in Ann Arbor, Saline, Dexter, Chelsea, Pinckney, and Whitmore Lake. Before opening the agency, she served as a hospital chaplain through the COVID-19 pandemic and as a hospice chaplain, walking with families through some of the hardest transitions of their lives. She holds an M.Div. and brings the chaplaincy posture, slow listening, no rushing, honest answers, into every assessment.