Your parent is getting older, and they need help. As their adult child, you’re likely feeling obligated to swoop in and take care of them whenever you can. You love them, and you want them to be happy. But, acting as your parent’s full-time carer can quickly become overwhelming. Find out why it’s not the best decision, and what alternatives you can turn to instead, including options such as at home senior care.
Why Should You Rethink the Role?
You Could Hurt Your Career
Acting as a full-time caregiver can hurt your career because you will have to take more time off and reduce your workload to handle the responsibility. The decision has been proven to slow down women’s career trajectories and lower their wages. Sometimes, it pushes them to retire early, since they can’t juggle two full-time jobs at the same time.
You Could Hurt Your Relationships
Becoming a full-time carer when you’re a parent could hurt your relationship with your kids — this is especially true if you’re a single parent. It will be nearly impossible to devote your attention to everyone. Do you drive your kid to school or bring grandma to the doctor? Do you help with homework or organize medication? These are the debates you’ll have every day.
You Could Burn Out
Maintaining a full-time job, parenting your kids, and caring for your aging parents is a lot of work for one person to handle. The workload is unsustainable. Eventually, you’re going to burn out or break down.
What Can You Do?
Find a Different Living Space
You should suggest for your parent to look at senior homes like All Seniors Care Living Centres as their next place to live. These elderly care homes have beautiful suites for independent living while providing the option to transition into assisted living and other types of personal care later on. No matter what kind of care your parent signs up for, the centres will still provide essentials like dining and housekeeping services. You wouldn’t have to come over every day to cook them meals and clean up messes. Your visits could be purely social.
Use Tech to Your Advantage
Tech can take some chores off of your plate. Online delivery services can take the stress out of getting groceries and other essentials. Several smart home devices could make tasks like scheduling doctor’s appointments easier for them. And, of course, tech can help with communication. Introduce them to applications like FaceTime and Skype so that you can have virtual catchups on the days when driving through traffic is a big hassle. If you need to take some of the pressure off of being with your parent constantly, consider looking into medical alert systems so you can have peace of mind that your parent is safe and able to contact help when needed. With 24/7 two-way communication with healthcare professionals, your parent will feel reassured and safe, whilst you will have more free time to destress and recuperate. Many simple technological solutions can make caring for your parent easier, so you should take advantage of them.
Ask for Help
Don’t be afraid to ask for help. If you have siblings or relatives that are nearby, get them to join in. You can’t shoulder this on your own. If these relatives live far away, they can still split the funds for care and keep in contact with your parent. Spreading the weight around will make everything easier to carry.
Taking care of aging parents can be rewarding, but it can also be exhausting when you already have a full plate to deal with. Using the right alternatives, you can help them without hurting yourself.
