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There’s a point in time when children play the role of caregiver in an elderly parent’s life. With a parent’s declining capacity to manage tasks, it falls on the children to ensure they continue their activities and enjoy a good quality of life. However, while it may seem straightforward, caring for the elderly can be incredibly challenging.
Caring for elderly parents is hard because they must be helped with tasks even though they desire complete autonomy. Ensuring their safety, keeping them healthy, managing finances, and the emotional strain of constant care can be difficult even for the most resilient people.
Most children don’t wish to send their parents to an assisted-care facility, and rightly so. However, there are particular challenges to prepare for if you’re caring for an elderly parent in your home.
What Makes Caring for the Elderly So Challenging
Elder adults (especially those above 70) find it challenging to handle regular tasks at home. In addition, they are acutely aware of their shrinking autonomy and ability to do things themselves. This harsh reality is compounded by the fact that they must rely on their children.
However, this age-related decline is inevitable, and with it comes a fresh set of challenges in life. Let’s go over some reasons why caring for elderly parents is so difficult.
1. Constant Care and Attention
As mentioned before, older adults require care in all aspects of life. Your parents may still want to visit the grocery store, go to a park, and cook for themselves. However, doing these things alone can become problematic at a certain age.
The parents may require constant attention to ensure they are safe while retaining their autonomy.
Of course, it would be easier if mum just watched TV while you cooked the meals or dad stayed home while you went out and bought groceries. However, most older adults wish to continue some daily activities, even when it becomes problematic.
When caring for an infant, you have complete control of their routine and the activities they engage in. But the elderly still want a sense of control in their lives. And without their schedule entirely in your hands, you must care for them how they want you to.
This dynamic can be problematic as they know of their increasing reliance on you but still wish to operate on their own. It would be easier to care for them if their routine was entirely in your hands, but you risk making them unhappy at the loss of autonomy.
The need for caring on their terms is perhaps the main reason why caring for the elderly can be so hard.
In this reference, check out my article detailing practical tips that can help you deal with selfish elderly parents. How to Deal With Selfish Elderly Parents (10 Tips)
2. Increasing Health Problems
Older adults who haven’t led a healthy lifestyle are prone to more diseases as they age. These problems include physical illnesses like goiter and diabetes. However, even healthy older adults can develop dementia or Alzheimer’s as a result of cognitive decline.
When older adults experience health problems, it becomes harder to care for them as they require more assistance than usual. Additionally, aging parents are reluctant to change their lifestyles and habits, some of which may contribute to their declining health.
These health problems also make it riskier to leave them unattended or perform some daily tasks. However, to keep them somewhat healthy, they must be allowed some physical activity, like walking or yoga. And for this kind of activity, they will require constant attention.
Add to this a declining sense of control over their lives, and older adults can feel bitter and resentful toward their children. Often, adult children have to do what’s suitable for their parents in the face of outright protest.
3. Managing Finances
There are two main financial issues every adult child faces when caring for their parents.
The first is that older adults tend to become more trusting and generous as they age and are likely to be fooled by scammers and con artists. One of the most complex parts of managing elderly parents is convincing them not to part with their money. Older adults living alone are more prone to this problem as their loneliness makes it easy for them to trust anyone.
They may receive calls from fake bank personnel asking for their account information. In most cases, these older adults are unaware that they are being duped and will gladly hand over their credentials. These scams often result in massive loss of money, most of which was supposed to be used for elderly care.
Other family members may suddenly notice their vulnerable position and request their money in exchange for companionship. Some old people even make new ‘friends’ due to their isolation and may give them money.
As such, adult children must constantly monitor their parents to ensure they aren’t getting scammed. And while there are laws to prevent such scams, it’s challenging to do anything if your parents willingly parted with their money.
The tendency of older adults can make life highly stressful in the household.
Aside from this problem, looking after elderly parents can put an immense financial strain on adult children. Paying for caregivers, medical expenses, and utilities can quickly rack up the bills. Most adult children may have to increase their work hours or figure out additional streams of income.
Even if you have set aside some money for this situation, nothing will prepare you for the rising costs of looking after elderly parents.
4. Increasing Family Disagreements
When adult siblings and other caregivers decide to take care of aging parents together, the situation can quickly get intense. The task must be equally shared, but it isn’t easy to decide what kind of help each sibling provides and how to even out the responsibilities.
Let’s take, for example, two sisters who must care for their aging mother.
The older sibling may be living in another country and periodically sending money to the household so mom can be adequately cared for. This arrangement places greater financial strain on her as she must also care for her own expenses. Additionally, she also bears the burden of guilt for not being physically present herself.
On the other hand, the younger sister takes a more hands-on approach. She doesn’t contribute as much financially, but she lives with her mom, attends to her everyday needs, and keeps her company. She must deal with the difficult task of seeing her mother grow old and satisfy her growing dependence. She may also be burdened with guilt for contributing less.
How do you decide if someone is falling short of responsibility in such a situation?
Both siblings are helping in their own ways. However, the older one may feel like she contributes more as she pays the bills, runs her mom’s household, and covers her mother’s medical expenses. She may claim that her sister isn’t doing enough.
The younger sister may feel like she is bearing the emotional burden of looking after her mom. She may feel that she isn’t being acknowledged for helping her mom through this challenging phase in life.
The issue is that both sisters are helping how they can, but both may feel the other needs to do more. This resentment slowly builds up and can lead to disagreements and even disputes over who deserves more in their mom’s will.
Additionally, one sibling may feel their mother owes them more and convince her to change the terms of the will.
These complexities, coupled with the stress of caring for an elderly parent, can quickly devolve into full-blown arguments, making life stressful for everyone involved.
5. Finding a Caregiver
When adult children have full-time jobs and kids to manage, it can help to hire the services of a caregiver. And apart from the additional expense, it’s challenging to find the right fit for the elderly parent.
Aside from finding someone great at their job, you must see whether they can get along with your parents. And this chemistry can be complex if the elderly parents resent the additional care or don’t like the caregiver for a particular reason.
As such, some older adults become bitter, and having to deal with them constantly can leave a caregiver wholly worn out. As such, you may employ a caregiver who knows the household and your parents’ routine, but they may quit in a few months.
Finding another caregiver requires significant time, energy, and money, which is stressful.
6. Decline in a Caregiver’s Social Life
When adult children take the responsibility of caring for their parents, they also forego many of life’s everyday pleasures. Aside from their jobs, regular activities, and looking after kids, they must also care for their parents. In such a case, they are forced to sacrifice time in other aspects of life.
In most cases, their social life takes a blow as they reduce time with friends and colleagues to take care of their parents. Additionally, traveling and exploring new destinations becomes far too difficult if there’s no one at home to care for their parents.
This decline in social life is compounded by the fact that interactions are limited to their parents, caregivers, and the people at home. And giving up social connections can quickly make people unhappy over time. Even carving time out for a quiet night with their spouses or a group of friends can be difficult, depending on their parents’ situation.
Unfortunately, it’s one of the harsh realities of growing older; looking after your parents involves putting many of your needs on the back burner. And even if you have a caregiver to administer most of their medicines and help them with daily tasks, there’s the constant guilt of not spending enough time with them in a difficult phase of their lives.
7. Emotional Strain and Burnout
If you look at the other reasons why looking after elderly parents is difficult, you’ll see that most of them can be a source of immense stress.
- You must grant your parents enough autonomy so that they don’t become resentful. However, they can’t accomplish many tasks on their own, so you have to let them go about their routine, even if that means a slower pace or increased danger.
- You must watch your parents grow old and possibly deal with age-related diseases and other health issues. This progression can be depressing and lead to chronic stress.
- Managing finances becomes even more complicated due to increasing healthcare costs and medical bills. And aside from caring for parents, adult children must also run their own households, which can be financially draining.
- There is an increased chance of disagreement with other family members and caregivers. Some of the conflicts are unavoidable as responsibilities are appropriated among the family. However, they increase stress levels in the household.
- Finding the right caregiver can be a difficult and time-consuming process. And there’s no guarantee that the caregiver you’ve hired will stick around.
- Reduced social outings, meetings with friends, and a lack of new experiences can be a source of great sadness in a caregiver’s life. This change can even cause them to resent their parents, leading to feelings of guilt over such resentment.
- Sometimes your parent might not appreciate all that you do for them. This ungrateful attitude can have a heavy emotional weight on the caregiver. How to Deal With Ungrateful Elderly Parents
These problems are a recipe for emotional strain and burnout, even in the most resilient individuals. Many caregivers experience frequent bouts of illness and exhaustion as they are constantly involved in some form of work or activity. Their parents’ need for constant attention and care can leave them feeling emotionally drained and burnt out over time.
As such, the essential thing adult children must remember when caring for elderly parents is to take their mental, physical, and emotional health seriously. They must carve out quiet time for themselves and create spaces where they can take a break from their elderly parents.
Adult children should also consider hiring a caregiver so that they don’t have to perform all the activities themselves. They must have someone to care for their parents while they take a break and live the way they want to in some capacity. Without this measure, the emotional strain and burnout can lead to more severe health effects.
For more information, you can check out my article discussing what to do if you hate caregiving. It shares practical tips to help you keep up your morale alongside a bunch of ways to help you cope with emotional strain and burnout. What to Do When You Hate Being a Caregiver
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