Hi everybody. Today we are talking about the hard truths about caring for aging parents. Things that we don't think to talk about or know to talk about in our families that result in caregiving situations becoming exhausting or frustrating or end up in situations where we the caregiver feels like, ah I just want to quit.
There is plenty of helpful information for caregivers and aging adults. So let's talk about the foundation of caregiving. When we're born, we live with our parents and they take care of us for 18 years, 20 years, maybe more. But what we don't realize is there's never any conversation about returning that consideration or that time or that work.
When we're young, if parents would say to us, you know, we are taking care of you and we're trying to do the best that we can, but there may be a point when we are older and we need you to take care of us. So we want to just bring this up as a potential conversation point, something to think about in the family.
We may need you to take care of us for 10 years or 20 years when we're older. How do you feel about that? If these discussions actually happened in families with parents and children and between siblings, if there are brothers and sisters, to say, well, who's going to take care of mom and dad? Is it going to be you? Is it me? Will we share it? How will we manage this when it happens? The problem is the hard truth about caring for aging parents.
Nobody talks about this until it happens, until you're stuck in the situation saying, oh my gosh, what are we going to do? How do we deal with this? The second hard truth is that caregiving really doesn't have a job description. You start helping out maybe with groceries or laundry or running some errands and then all of a sudden you're going to doctor appointments and changing catheter bags and ostomy bags and taking blood pressure and helping with diabetes care.
There's no job description that says what you the caregiver is going to do. So you have no idea what you're getting into, which can be a problem. Then we have all of these other issues related to expectations and one child usually becoming that caregiver and the other siblings saying, well, I'm too busy.
I can't help. I have kids. I'm working. You're doing such a great job. Just keep it up. And the caregiver is saying, but I can't. I can't do this. So what do we do now? Caregiving is a job. It's work. So what if we actually looked like, looked at caregiving like a job in the workplace? You go interview for a job, you get a piece of paper that has that job description on it, you know what you're going to do. Your job changes. You talk to your supervisor about it. You agree on it.
You have business plans. You make a plan for what's going to happen in six months and 12 months. But caregiving doesn't have that. What if we looked at caregiving as a job and maybe our parents being the supervisor and us being the worker and having back and forth conversations about, wow, this seems to be changing.
How are we going to handle this? What are we going to do about it? And then there may be a point when at a job you want to leave because you want to advance or do something else or your life has changed. So you give two weeks notice. Well, you can't exactly give your parents two weeks notice. Although I have known some caregivers who have just given up and disappeared because the situation got so bad.
So instead of getting so frustrated that you want to quit or give up or you feel resentful or caregiving is ruining your life, have a conversation about an exit plan. Mom or dad, I think I can do this for a year or two years beyond that. I don't know. What's our plan for when I can't be your caregiver and your brothers and sisters or my brothers and sisters aren't going to step in to help you.
We need a plan for you to get care when I'm not the caregiver. These are all hard truths about being a caregiver. They are hard truths about having these difficult caregiving conversations. If you need more help with this, there is plenty of information online. You can also share those websites with your family members, with your parents and with your workplace.
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