...to think that children should look after elderly parents?

[wheresmymojo]

It's not a TAAT but inspired by another thread.

It seems to be a general trend that people feel like they shouldn't have any duty/obligation to care for their elderly parents anymore.

Partly I recognise that this is because societal trends make it harder to do elder care than it used to be - it's quite common to have two full time workers, be living quite far from your parents, still have DC to care for at the same time due to later births, etc.

I find it odd though that anyone wouldn't want to care for their elderly parents and find a way to make it happen.

So for example, we have just moved to live near to DH's parents who are in their 70s as while they don't need any help now, we know they will at some point in the next 10yrs.

My DM is very young (56!) so definitely doesn't need any help. I live 200 miles away but have already had the discussion that when she is elderly I'd like her to come and live with us.

I feel like I'm in the minority though these days?

I realise there are of course exceptions - any parental abuse and there will always be people who have very complex situations that mean it isn't possible (e.g. can't afford to move, already have children of their own with special needs, etc).

But I think it's sad that the average person either (a) thinks of it as an obligation/burden that they don't want to do or (b) thinks they don't have any obligation at all.

Getting a good home for Dad was a lot of work. You can't just walk in and get a room. He had many assessments and lots of homes turned him down because of aggression and how much care he needs. It's all very well planning things but sadly even the best plans can't work out. I had Dad planned a sheltered housing bungalow had the tenancy papers ready for him to sign but he had a fall and bleed on the brain spiralled his Dementia out of control. Just because he is in a home doesn't mean I have abandoned or forgotten about him either. It means Dad is safe gets the care he needs and me and my sister and our children see him every week.

Id agree its hardcore. I work in hospitals and a hospice, have elderly relatives coming out of my ears, and have lost my husband. My aim is not to die at 62 but not to be alive past 79. I wouldnt expect anyone else to follow the same path.

I feel a duty to make sure my parents are well cared for and all their needs are met in old age.

I don't feel any obligation for this to be physically provided by me doing the care, or that it needs to take place in my home - that would be quite illogical, when trained specialist carers exist as a profession and I am not one of them. Obviously if this were not the situation (say, we were all refugees) the duty might need to be fulfilled in a different way. The duty has been generated by their long tradition of care and loyalty to me, not by giving birth to me or feeding/clothing me in childhood.

But hey, I've just worked in the system for 20 odd years. What would I know

Not a lot - obviously! 🙄 You and your 'know it all but couldn't care less colleagues' are the very reason why those that need help and support don't get it! Wake up and smell the coffee! Maybe you will when you are faced with splitting yourself between the impossible demands of your elderly parents immediate needs, your job, your family and your sanity! 😏🤷

Most paid carers are not trained anything beyond very very basic training.

I came to this country about 22 years ago. My first job (before finding my way in my real career) was as a care home carer. I truly struggled with the concept especially when you see how the elderly clearly change when they move in. But I'm African and used to the big extended family bond.

Maybe not but there are more of them, they get to do it in shifts with breaks, they get paid, they have additional help when they need it, they get paid and they can do it all in a purpose built facility. Plus no emotional connection to the patient which can make personal care extremely difficult. Just thinking about bathrooms. The ensuite in the care home that GMIL was in was bigger than our family bathroom!

Caring for an elderly person isnt about sitting them by a fire with a blanket on their knees and keeping them supplied with tea and cake. It isnt giving them a hand up the stairs or running errands for them.

Its bloody hard work which requires specialist skills. In many cases the kindest, most compassionate, thing to do is to let the professional care-givers take over and give them the personal and medical care required.

And OMG the mental strain! My mother is now on a 30 second loop.
"Where are we?"
"What are we doing?"
"What exactly are we doing here?"
"Dinner?"

Often the same question fired again and again, and if you don't answer she starts to scream and panic.
There is no intermission, no let up. No chance to check your phone, field messages, tell your kids or partner where you are or when they might see you. Not a prayer of handling work stuff.
Medical appointments needed two carers, one to talk to the hcp and one to keep mum calm and supplied with "we're seeing Dr Buggins. We're seeing Dr Buggins. We're seeing Dr Buggins".

A couple of hours does me in, my poor Dad kept it up for months, with brief spells of a carer and as much time as I could squeeze to give him breaks and to get to his own medical appointments.

Unbearable, unsustainable, exhausting.

When the parents you have become elderly and have a form of dementia that causes them to be aggressive, to hit, punch, bite, cause fires just when you go for a wee, gives you a complete nervous breakdown, and finally they require specialist nursing care, then you come back and have this conversation then!

It makes me sick when people think they know what it's like to look after someone single handedly when they are so ill, when they have absolutely no idea what it's like.

Dementia isn't just forgetting people. It's smearing shit over everything and then fighting when you try and wash it off them. They piss over things, hide things, become paranoid, have hallucinations. Certain dementias cause seizures. They're at greater risk of infections, especially UTI's. They don't sleep. At all sometimes, for weeks on end and you can't sleep then because if you leave them alone they'll hurt themselves. And the worst thing, it's NOTHING like looking after a baby. A baby learns things daily, someone with dementia unlearns it. They can be incredibly aggressive, with the strength of a fully grown man. I've been hit, punched, kicked, had blood drawn. Had bruises. Because I was trying to clean the person. They don't even recognise you. You are a total stranger washing them and they have no idea who you are, you imagine how you would react if a total stranger walked into your bedroom and started to undress you. No matter how calmly they talked to you, you'd kick off too!

They require so much more than babies and children and for someone to assume that we don't want to look after them is so insulting! Like I said, especially coming from someone who doesn't have any personal experience.

NHS want to discharge elderly patients home and they dont care how they do it. I have personally seen emotional blackmail of an elderly patient and I have heard threats of a house being broken into to effect a discharge. The NHS does not get that if they continue to force people to care they will gain a bed for a few hours but they will also "make" new patients by making willing family carers ill with being overworked

This doesnt surprise me at all and it may well not surprise @Graphista either.

The 3am discharge is another tactic.

Exactly, it's nothing like looking after a baby it's more like fighting off zombie hordes in a horror movie

@Whosorrynow exactly. I couldn't even read my young boys a bedtime story because I couldn't leave him alone. And he couldn't tolerate the children around him. I wasn't seeing my kids or my husband. I wasn't sleeping. I broke. I absolutely broke. And it was heart wrenching when he finally needed to go into a nursing home. I felt like I'd had a child taken off me.
Nobody realises how hard it is. And it's not just hard. It's a billion times harder than that.

@GiggleMcDimples, it sounds traumatising beyond belief, I'm so sorry 😔
In hindsight is there anything that could have been done to reduce the trauma to everyone involved?

@Whosorrynow in hindsight... no I don't think so,I know I did the best I could for him at that time. He is still alive now, albeit very very poorly. I couldn't have neglected my children any longer and in his right mind he wouldn't have wanted me to have either. He adored my boys. I now work as a full time carer in his nursing home. So I haven't given up caring for him altogether which is great for me, but he's had dementia for almost 10 years. People just don't understand the complexities of it, and no two dementia sufferers are ever the same. Some are cute little ladies who think they have a cup of tea with Tom Jones every day and are happy. Others are aggressive and fight back. Some can talk, some can't vocalise as their mobility has taken it away completely.
It's not as simple as making a cup of tea and chatting about bygone days.

@Jennymanara please don't generalise like that , that's a massive simplification of initial training.

There are different levels of carers and some of them are extremely well trained in a wide variety of things.

Training and competencies are updated yearly and whilst there are some new in who only have initial training , most experienced carers have far more training than most are aware. I admit it irritates slightly that people still think this.

There are of course crap companies that don't train their staff well but I'd appreciate it if you didn't tar us all with that.

My childhood, and siblings', were negatively affected by my mother caring for her physically disabled father. She had very little time to spend with us children after caring for him and running the home.

My grandfather wasn't the nicest and loved to "tease" (mentally abuse us children). My Dad would work lots overtime as there was only one wage coming in.

Physically lifting my overweight grandfather for the best part of a decade contributed to my mothers ill health. After she had a heart attack he had to go into a home and they failed him as he soon got massuve pressure sores and eventually gangrene and died.

So in hindsight, in my case, no I wouldn't want to take on my parents at the expense of my health and other relationships.

@Shinyletsbebadguys that's so true. Where I work training is as you say, yearly, but ongoing throughout the year, so much more than "basic".
Stoma training, PEG training, oral care, skin integrity, MUST, WATERLOW, Sepsis, to name but a few. Plus your usual manual handling, first aid, defibrillator, fire safety, COSHH, etc. To say carers only have minimal basic training is an insult really.

It depends. My mother and I treated each other well but unfortunately she didn’t live to an old age. Had she done so I would have definitely. My in-laws? They made no bones about it that I was not family and would never be considered as such. You reap what you sow. They moved closer to her family because they had the realization that I wouldn’t be wiping their asses when they needed it, and rightly so.

That's what it comes down to, are you prepared to half kill yourself, Sabotage any chance of enjoying your 'golden years' in order to keep your parents alive (in a wretched state) for as long as possible
Surely the only winners in this situation are the private care homes raking in the cash?

Unfortunately it’s not always possible. I have seen relatives and wives on their knees trying in vain to look after their spouse/relative to finally give in. I know of a lady who is of ill health and whose husband had started becoming violent with her due to his dementia but still she would try and struggle on until one day he had a fall and landed in hospital and she even says now she wants to to take him home but her children said no more and made her look at things. Sadly he is in the nursing home now and doesn’t recognise who she is and keeps thinking that another lady resident is his wife. He doesn’t recognise his children either. Often still has outbursts of violence. One of his children doesn’t visit as they don’t want to remember the person he has become. Very cruel illness.

@gigglesmcdimples Absolutely , plus to be honest I think that people see some training as basic when it really is a lot harder than it looks.

A meds round at teatime , getting it right including controlled drugs , changes , recent hospital discharges meds changes is far from for the faint hearted. However I've often heard people snidely comment it's just giving a few pills!!

Drives me mad.

@Shinyletsbebadguys there's lots that drive me mad. And definitely not for the faint hearted I agree. There's LOTS of challenging behaviour to deal with too. But people tend not to see that.

Politicians from all parties have really let the nation down on this over the years. Health, covering living costs and social care for an ageing population are huge issues that require hard analysis, long-term thinking, cross party co-operation and consideration of unpalatable options.

Ditto the environment and likely problems of all kinds that will arise due to climate change.

Thats because they want it all ways . They want everyone working all the hours and caring 24/7 as well. Aptly demonstrated by a right wing poster on page 1 of this thread.