Agony aunt
‘How can I manage the overwhelming demands of my ageing parents?’
*ANNA MAY CHOOSE YOUR DILEMMA TO DISCUSS ON IT CAN’T JUST BE ME
Q I’m 59 with a husband and grown-up daughters, but my time is taken up with my parents. They’ve reached a point where they need support at home but are refusing to have carers. They have always bickered between themselves but it’s getting worse and I’m finding their demands overwhelming. I handle all their paperwork, visit three times a week and take them meals. It’s always a miserable experience and I can’t wait to leave, so I am irritable with them, which I hate myself for – plus I feel guilty that I don’t do more.
A When I first read this dilemma, I had to check that it hadn’t come from someone I know. This is a weekly topic of conversation for me and my friends – mostly women, I should add – because we feel the burden of loving and caring for our ageing parents acutely. I want to emphasise three key words in that sentence: Loving.
Caring. Burden. Because that neatly describes the cataclysmic emotional roller coaster adult children find themselves unwillingly subjected to once our parents start to need us.
Some say it’s our duty to care, but what I can tell you is that I personally know families and individuals that have been ripped apart by the agony of trying to do the right thing by the parents they would never wish to be without – even though doing the right thing sometimes comes at enormous personal cost.
We know that adult social care in the UK is in a parlous state; that there’s a crisis in the number of carers available, and that the care for older people is mainly self-care or provided by family. According to Carers UK, as many as 10.6 million people are doing this as an unpaid job – and given that it’s predominantly daughters or daughtersin-law doing it, this becomes a gender discrimination issue also.
So, how to help you? And by you, I mean all of us. First, it’s crucial to accept your emotions. Feeling stressed, resentful and guilty doesn’t make you a terrible daughter; it makes you human. Caring for fragile parents is a demanding task, and being around two bickering people who are oblivious to the demands they’re placing on you is exhausting. Is it any wonder your visits are miserable?
But let’s not forget that your parents are frightened too. Their refusal to accept professional help is no doubt a ref
