Child Carers

[prepared101]

I've named changed because I'm aware this is emotive and I'm prepared to be flamed by some who wholeheartedly disagree with me but...

I've just seen a post a large Facebook group where a poster talks about their 7 year old child who has been her carer since the age of 3. THREE.

My 4 nearly 5 year old has asked me a million things already this morning including could I make them a drink, make their breakfast, help them put their swimming costume on etc etc. How on Earth is a three year old a carer FFS. Even at 10/11/13 etc a child doesn't have the emotional resilience to take on someone else's struggles.

IMO it's stealing a childhood and should be illegal. I can't believe that in this day and age we think that's acceptable.

AIBU?

No obviously no one can predict the future and that’s an entirely different kettle of fish. But that’s where we need the powers that be, to step in. It shouldn’t ever fall to a child.

@Thelnebriati I’m asking YOU the question because it was YOUR comment 🙄😵‍💫 If you feel you can’t provide a legitimate response, maybe don’t insult with a nonsense piece of waffle.

Do YOU think “disabled” ie people with limited mobility should be sterilised? Would you same the same for those with mental health impairments?

The biggest issue is that there isn't sufficient support for people to access carers and other services that would enable them to carry out day to day tasks. This means that family are the only choice, it someone doesn't have a partner and other family members who can help it invariably does fall on children. The alternative is of course very unpalatable and in a civilised country shouldn't be the case; but I also think its unfair. My best friend was a carer for her mum, she's pretty fucked up because of it to be honest and missed out on a lot of things growing up because she had to be at home. It's an unfair expectation to put on a child tbh as they won't have any actual choice or any escape- there's also the emotional element of course that they feel they have to help as they don't want a parent to suffer- but there's a price for that.

This level of narrow-mindedness & discrimination on threads like this make me so grateful and appreciative that my DD is so open to seeing people for their flaws and weaknesses and embracing someone as a whole complete person for the good in them 🥰

And for what it’s worth I’m not talking about kids who sometimes need to help with the shopping etc. the ones my mum works with are the ones who eventually stop attending school. Because they are running the household, caring for the parent and sometimes younger siblings.

As I said I was presuming this is what the OP meant not that it was my opinion

@Artwodeetoo It sounds as if your friend was hugely let down by the other adults ( not her Mum) in her life. What did her other parent do to support her, for example?

@Yesitsmeagainhey I read the post about sterilising disabled women as the poster saying the choices are to do something extraordinary unpalatable or support them, and the only choice therefore is to support them. I really don't think she was advocating it.

My 4yo DD is classed as a child carer. She has an autistic sibling and loses out on attention and some experiences that her peers do, despite our best efforts. It's an umbrella term for siblings of disabled children, or children of disabled parents.

She doesn't know who her father is. Her mother was very much us against the world at the detriment to her daughters education, chance to enjoy being a child with no responsibilities, social life (yes I believe that's important growing up). I met her when she was a teen and my parents would help her mum out so she could have a break and she eventually moved in with us at 16. I'm not suggesting at all everyone is like this, i would guess probably the tiny minority are. There's a difference between doing groceries, helping with siblings (although you don't choose to have them so shouldn't be a child's responsibility imo), helping occasionally and a parent relying on their child for a lot to their detriment.

Only now as an adult do I recognise that I was a carer. I cared for my dad, the home and my older brothers. I cooked, cleaned, shopped, booked doc app, etc. My mum died when I was 2. I distinctly remember ironing mine and my dads stuff at the age of 5. I would wake at 6am at primary school age to start chores, cooking breakfast, ensuring my dads work stuff was ready, and then the same after school. My dad was a narcassist and an alcoholic. I had an awful childhood.

That is not that uncommon, sadly. Me and the couple of friends I had as a child were what you call young carers now. One girl's mother was in a wheelchair after she had a stroke during a tonsillectomy, so with her it was a lot of practical help.

Me and my best friend had mothers with severe mental health problems who didn't even get out of bed some days. So we did everything for our brothers (who both have autism), left sandwiches for other mothers, then took ourselves to school to sit and worry about what was going on at home in our absence.

There was no help. It was just life. You got on with it. Only looking back as an adult do we see how sad and fucked-up it was. I think this is the reality for a lot of children. People pity you, but no one cares really.

@Artwodeetoo Ah, that sounds like a very difficult situation, your poor friend.

Sometimes people are perfectly healthy when they are pregnant. Disability of some kind can happen later. Would you take the child away in those circumstances?
At what level of disability would you disapprove or even forbid pregnancy?.Blindness? Minus a limb?etc etc
You sound like a eugenicist.

My daughter is a young carer, this doesn't mean she does any of the physical caring, from age 5 she has done things like tell me when the younger one needed changing, fetched me things, made simple foods for them like a sandwich, reminded me of things I'd forgotten. She goes to a young carer group because it allows her to be a normal child, they take them on days out and doing activities, she loves it

I agree, the burdens some children have to carry are enormous. Particularly when they are a carer for a parent with mental health issues.

Sibling is disabled. Was a child carer from a young age. I think it’s awful and shouldn’t be allowed.

My parents basically brainwashed us into thinking that it was totally normal for us to never and I mean never, see friends after school etc because we had to go home and look after the sibling while they “had a break”.

If anyone thinks that their child is ok with taking on such adult responsibility, you’re right they probably are ok as a child because they don’t know any different. Sadly when they get older and realise the burden that was placed on them, they won’t like you for it.

Like others I was a young carer and although I often didn’t enjoy the physical side (ie helping parent to move around, cooking meals, making drinks etc) it was the emotional impact that was much stronger. It was simple things like hiding my emotions from my parents as I knew they didn’t have capacity for it and feelings like embarrassment or shame when I couldn’t access things in the way others could (parents evening for example, I remember having to ask a teacher to use a different room as my mum couldn’t get a wheelchair in the allocated room).

Although I think the government fails disabled people and their families I think some parents also don’t, or aren’t able to fully meet their child’s needs and that fails the child which can become a systemic family issue. I think this is especially a bigger issue when a parent cannot emotionally meet their child’s needs, or when the physical distress they are in impacts their emotional capacity.

Although a family can put in other adults as support, SO much relies on the very, very early attachments that if the foundations of them not being stable aren’t there it can be hard to build healthy attachments later.

You make this sound as if it's normal...it's not. What type of cater is she? For a sibling or yourself?

I was a child carer, disabled siblings, MH issues, sole mother who struggled mentally. I learnt way to much to soon, given way to much responsibility. I didn't realise any of this till I was an adult in an abusive marriage. I would never put my DC through that. There is a point past which it is abusive to the child, but we don't know enough about the person in the OP to say. She could mean anything by it.

My youngest DC's life has been impacted since he was a year old by his brother's Autism. So you could say he was a child carer at 1. He didn't get to do playgroups and he had to come to therapy sessions with us. Our life is more limited because of my own disabilities, we do less than many families, but we would have to anyway because that's what my Autistic DC need. They're all ND. It's a very different scenario from my childhood.

I'm not discounting the impact on my DC of my disability or the impacts they have on each other, I know it's impacted them, but I will never put them through what I went through.

They've all at various times impacted each other, their always seems to be one that urgently needs my focus, panic attacks, Autistic burnout, medical issues, the youngest developed a physical disability that's had a big impact on his siblings lives.

If you are blaming a disabled person because he/she has no choice but to take support from their children YABU
If you are blaming a broken welfare system that leaves children vulnerable to being carers then YANBU

People saying it's wrong and put the blame at the family door need to look at what it's like in the real world . A world with no money, disability, no support network, no back up. We don't all have the same 24 hours🙄 some people are just doing the best they can with what they have got. And those judging should try to walk in their shoes for a while.

To be brutally honest I would never knowingly have a child if I was aware I would need a carer. It’s unfair, even if with the best will in the world you try to minimise the impact on them they always have to worry about you. It’s a parents job to worry not a child’s.

Many families don’t see it coming, illness, disability , these things happen and you already have a family and there is no choice.

@SpaceJamtart

I am upset and offended by some of the comments here too. I was a child carer, in the technical sense, and I loved my childhood.

@prepared101 if your 15 year old can’t load a dishwasher, that’s rather a failing on your part. Presumably a proportion of the crockery in it was used by him?

it’s a massive spectrum, and it’s rarely something the parents happily chose. Yes, there may be the occasional parent who wanted it like that- but that’s not the norm.

As a child, from about 6, I would cook dinner when my dad was away. I’d turn the shower on and off and help my mum into her clothes. I’d open the medicine packets, under supervision. I’d do the tidying away after dinner. I would reach and fetch things.

I still had friends over, I did after school activities, my mum taught me to cook, to sew for practicality and pleasure, to paint. She taught me languages, she made up stories with me, we played our own games.

and as for whoever it was who said that they worried that child carers never had independent lives…. You’ll no doubt be glad to know what my mum died when I was just 19. And since I’d learnt all those skills, I transitioned easily into independent life. That’s the thing, isn’t it? My experience is not the same as every other child cater. It’s a huge broad term- some children absolutely are placed in positions that shouldn’t be allowed, many others not so much. Don’t lump us all together and decide our childhoods are ruined.

@lovelychops I'm not implying anything. But people who can't look after a child shouldn't have them, no. If you can't look after yourself, you can't look after a child properly. If you need care after having children, hire carers. UK councils also offer care for people, don't use your children.