[RobinHirst11]

Regular video calls with your parent doing casual activities like crosswords can help spot early issues like repeated stories or word-finding trouble. Setting up autopay and monitoring their spending (with permission) helps track financial management. Building connections with neighbors gives you local eyes, while smart home devices can track daily routines. Watch for changes in how they handle tasks, personal care, or social activities. Keep everything feeling natural rather than like a test.

[nobodywillobsrv]

I do regular calls. Their personality is such that they generally do not respond with typical redundancy checking responses paraphrasing what you just said. They have always done this. Financially they do nothing online, largely still visit bank in person. They have lots of social connections, but the feeling is that the elderly people in that community largely all do that same kind of thing where they just talk "at" each other and never perform the usual social paraphrasing behavoiur that is an informal test of cognitive decline.

Cross word puzzles is a good idea.

[bcrl]

It's hard to determine without meaningful regular/frequent interaction, and by that I mean more than just a weekly phone call to catch up on things. I've been watching my father's interactions with one of his older brothers, and the decline of his brother in the past year has been quite astounding. His brother lost his driver's license after a minor accident because he didn't follow up as required, and that led to a loss of social interactions, a rapid physical decline from not being as mobile, and now he's having trouble remembering what happened a few hours earlier.

Slight physical decline is very hard to spot on a family video call, but is painfully obvious in person as subtle changes in gait are something most of us are wired to notice. Nothing is a good substitute for real in person interaction. If you can't do that yourself, find someone you trust that can.

I find it a similar challenge dealing with my sister. She won't have the hard conversations anywhere other than in person, as it is far too easy to put on a good face for a short social interaction, yet it is much harder to hide true emotions when spending hours with someone you know extremely well over the course of a full day.