Caring for your parents isn't fun, but Kim and Mike Barnes are ready to talk about it. Are you?

Kim and Mike Barnes are best known by longtime Austinites as a power couple on local TV news. She spent 12 years in news at KVUE, and he spent 29 years in sports at KVUE.

Now in addition to coaching people on public speaking through their Barnes Team Media, they have another venture: Parenting Aging Parents, a website in which they interview experts on different topics about what happens when children and parents find their roles reversed.

The Barneses will be the keynote speakers at this year's GPS: Navigation for Caregivers Conference next Saturday.

The Barneses speak from their own experience as caregivers for their parents. Mike Barnes' mom and dad live in Dallas. His mother has Alzheimer's disease, and his father has had his own health problems.

Kim Barnes is a caregiver to her mother, who lives in Houston. Kim Barnes has had to help her mother undo the damage from scams that prey on older adults.

The Barneses' inspiration came from when Mike Barnes was looking for a place for his parents to live where his mom could get more care.

"We looked at four different memory care places," Mike Barnes said. "I was thinking, 'This is going to be easy.' I was totally overwhelmed. I didn't know the questions to ask."

He likens it to when you first become a parent and you get the baby home and you don't know what you are doing. Now the baby is older than you and has needs that you know nothing about.

The Barneses found themselves both trying to manage their parents' care from afar while trying to grow their business at the same time.

"No one talks about it," Kim Barnes said of taking care of parents.

"So many people are living in silence," Mike Barnes said. "They don't have community support."

The day Mike Barnes moved his mother into memory care in March 2021, he posted on social media about it and received an outpouring of responses.

It was a lot of "I've been there" or "I see that in my future," Kim Barnes said.

They started Parenting Aging Parents as a Facebook page, really an experiment, to create a platform where people could talk about what they were going through and learn from one another. That grew to 5,000 members.

Then six months later, they launched the website to make it easy to access all the material they were creating. They have sponsors, which fund the site.

Here are some of the things they've learned:

Have conversations early

When it comes to planning, helping your parents is similar to raising children, "It's not like you wait until the day after high school graduation to ask, 'Where do you want to go to college?' Don't wait until the last minute for your parents."

Have conversations about their wishes before a parent can no longer have a conversation because of memory issues or a stroke.

"The worst time to have conversations is when they are in a crisis," Mike Barnes said.

"Nobody wants to think of themselves where they can't take care of themselves," Kim Barnes said.

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There are so many resources

People don't know about the available resources and don't know whom to ask. Start talking to everyone to gather your resources. In Austin, AGE of Central Texas and Family Eldercare are two go-to sources, along with disease-specific support groups.

Consider future housing needs

Talk through scenarios. What would it look like to age in place at home? What modifications would be needed? What care would need to be brought in? What would it look like to go to independent or assisted living? What would their ideal situation be?

Talk about money

What financial resources do your parents have? If they are looking at staying at home, do they have long-term care insurance? If they need nursing care, what will their insurance pay?

Get the paperwork in line

• Is there a will?

• Is there a power of attorney both durable (financial decisions) and medical?

• Do you know where all the important paperwork is kept?

• Do you know your parents' passwords and usernames?

• What medications are they taking and what are they for?

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Figure out the family dynamics

If you have siblings, which one does mom or dad listen to? That might be the one who delivers the hard to hear news. Which one is really organized? That might be the person who handles the finances or paperwork.

Don't judge other people or yourself

It's like being on the airplane before you have kids and you think you'll never have the kid who is screaming the whole time or kicking the seat. Then you are that family. You might think you'll never put your mother in a senior living center, but that might end up being what you have to do.

Remember this isn't always a happy job.

"Dealing with my mom, it's not fun," Mike Barnes said. "I have to introduce myself to her. It can be emotional, but someone suggested: Don't worry about what's missing. Love what's there."

That's the kind of tidbit to be shared on their Facebook page, website and now at the conference.

GPS: Navigation for Caregivers Conference

• From Riverbend Church and AGE of Central Texas

• 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Feb. 25

• Riverbend Church, 4214 N. Capital of Texas Highway

• Free, but register at http://www.TinyURL.com/GPSconference2023.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: AGE of Central Texas, Riverbend Church conference on caregiving coming