Do you feel you have an obligation to try to stay healthy for your children?

[TheSilenceOfTheGirls]

I’m interested to know how other people feel about this. I am fairly sure my sister thinks I’m a terrible person and I’m not sure whether I am an outlier and completely unreasonable or whether other people would feel the same way.

If your parent has made choices throughout their life (perhaps, for example, heavy smoking /drinking /severe obesity /absolute refusal to do any exercise after the health risks of these things were known) which have led to ill health and to a need for support from you much earlier than might have been expected, at the expense of your time with your own children / your own work commitments, do you secretly feel a bit frustrated with them? And what about if there were something they could do to improve the situation now and they refused to do it, and that refusal meant that they needed more support from you? I obviously haven’t said to my parents that I’m feeling this way but I have said to my sister that I’m feeling frustrated and I think she is a bit horrified with me.

I have a parent who has never looked after themselves, as a result they have a range of health conditions, some of which could have been avoided. As a result they are not able to do anything with their grandchildren or me, I don't have a normal relationship with this parent.
Am I angry, absolutely! Am I providing care, absolutely not!

I am staying as healthy as I can for both myself and my children.

I think you have an obligation to try and stay as healthy as possible, within the realms of what you can manage without being obsessive or driving yourself crazy trying to fit it into a busy life.

I allow myself some vices and don’t always pick the healthiest options when it comes to food. I could do more exercise. I’ve been overweight most of my life and will never be slender, although I’m working to lose weight at the moment. But on the bigger picture, I don’t smoke at all or drink much, I eat a relatively healthy diet, I keep an eye on symptoms and visit the doctor regularly, I don’t take risks with my personal safety and I do some amount of exercise every day to stay flexible.

I remember having discussions withy mother about smoking. That it would kill her. She laughed it off and continued to smoke. You know the ending. She was 70 and she may have had more years of she had quit in her 50s.

Nope. I have been extremely unhealthy most of my life but had a huge word with myself at 42yrs and improved my health.
I'd not expect my kids to look after me.

I’m a single mum and it’s absolutely required from me to be as healthy as possible so that I can give DD the best life I can, for as long as I can. My own DM has very poor health in her 60s due to obesity, smoking and binge drinking throughout her 20s and 30s, and is a fairly useless grandparent as a result.

I feel the same as you OP and recently lost my father to a cancer that may have ended differently if he had gone to the doctor in a timely way about his pain. It is frustrating when people don’t look after themselves, and it rarely is easy to just walk away from a loved one and refuse to be involved or help. I now am taking much more care of my health - nobody else will, after all! It’s my responsibility and I want to be as active and healthy for my DC as well as other family and loved ones, for as long as possible.

Yes. Single working mum here too. Ridiculously healthy and active. Get everything potentially dodgy checked out.

Children should not be expected to look after their parents for making poor lifestyle choices. Any parent that expects their children to look after them despite the warnings in my eyes are bad parents.

Good mindset there. I gather a lot parents expect their kids to look after them though

I get every little niggle checked out at the doctors but could I live more healthily? Definitely. I drink too much, vape, don’t exercise (beyond lots of walking) and have a very questionable diet.

It has actually hit me as I approach 40 that my body won’t just carry on taking all this crap like it did in my twenties and early 30s. I will probably get health issues, I will slow down and I might even die from some of it.

It scares me while me dc are little because we have no other family who’d take them if anything happened to us. If I can get them to adulthood I suppose I can relax a bit. It’s really hard when the stereotypical ‘healthy lifestyle’ doesn’t come easily to you but I did see a meme recently that said ‘you’d die for your kids but would you live well for them’. And it made me think.

I guess a few small vices are ok but I definitely need to do better.

Yes. I am as healthy as I can be.

This touched a nerve, as I remember a friend asking me what my incentive to stay slim & healthy was & I realised it was so that I could run after DS2, who has ASD & SLD & was a bolter.

DM smoked, as was common amongst women of her generation (born 1938) & also drank. She died of liver cancer before any of her grandchildren were born. DDad is still going strong at 91. He never smoked, drank in moderation & kept fit playing team sports. He takes an active interest in his 7 grandchildren’s lives.

It seems like you are doing good, dont be too hard on yourself. We could all live like Buddist monks but that would be boring, we also need to live a little.

I did give up smoking because I promised them I would at 60
They would be really concerned if I was harming my health as I'm disabled.

50, I'm 60 now

Yes because I’m another single mum - otherwise super-fit DH died of brain cancer in his 30s so I know not everything can be prevented, but I’ll prevent the things I can because it’s just me holding the fort for the kids.

I’ll also eat an egg custard tart right now too 😋 because there’s no need to remove all the pleasures in life all the time to stay healthy

Also I’m not far off having a bit of time to myself finally and I can’t wait to get stuck into a racket sport again, do a few gym classes with friends and walk for miles. I love it all. So I’ll be gutted if my health declines just as I’m finally getting a bit of freedom

i stay healthy for myself/my dh and yes hopefully so my dc don't have to.
but i'm also old enough to remember conflicting advice regarding smoking and drinking and the change in foods from limited and fresh to preserved.
i do believe my df died before his time and believe he was using alcohol to relieve possible cancer pain he simply refused to see a dr. for the last 40 years of his life. i don't begrudge his view he lived his life as he wanted to, although shortened by his drinking.
strangely where i live there are no family physicians available and any ailment would mean going to the emergency department of a hospital, maybe my children will begrudge me for not seeing a dr, because surely by the time i go seek treatment what ever my concerns will have been long standing.