Sandwich generation - how do you cope?

[Lovetotravel123]

I have an elderly father who lives on his own and has a terminal illness. I also have a child and a demanding full time job. I feel constantly anxious that I am going to have to drop everything and attend an emergency with my father and no matter what I do, I feel guilty about letting my father/ child/ husband/ employer down.

How do others deal with the anxiety and guilt?

I have a sibling who lives abroad and won’t help with anything. My father wants to stay in his own home.

I agree, everyone should make a plan, but many people don’t like to think of their health failing or their own mortality, so they don’t. One of my friends is currently trying to untangle a nightmare legal situation, because her Dad, who was a successful businessman, hand wrote wrote his will on a piece of paper instead of getting legal advice! It’s incorrectly written, of course, and he’s unintentionally left her Mum, who suffers from dementia, in a tricky financial position. You have to wonder why someone who negotiated many business deals, had contracts drawn up, etc., didn’t consult a solicitor for this most important document? People are strange.

I'm going through similar at the moment although I'm fortunate that my dc are adults.

I still have other commitments/a job/a life that I'm trying to juggle and I find the guilt the worst part.

In all honesty, I don't want to be my dad's carer full stop. I have siblings but it tends to fall to me due to being the eldest and because I wfh so it's more flexible.

I'd be happy to help out with certain things but maybe selfishly, I was looking forward to freedom when my dc left home. Instead I find myself running round after my DF and resenting it (it doesn't help that he's quite hard work and isn't in the best mental health) I'm not sure what the answer is really.

Urgh. This is why the NHS, social care/local councils are in such trouble. Old people need to have a word with themselves. It is not everyone else’s responsibility to care for them. They must spend their own money.

The under 40s really need to rise up and say enough. Property rich old people need to pay their way.

Your Dad sounds similar to mine, @subtoprem, often difficult and sadly, he doesn't have the best MH (has always had problems, this isn't new). It's very draining, isn't it? You love them and want the best for them, but they don't seem to realize that you also have needs/commitments, and you're not their emotional punchbag nor a full-time carer!

What are your fathers plans for coping? How does he plan to manage? He may well want to stay at home but surely wouldn't persevere with that if it negatively impacted your own life and mental health would he?!

I take it you haven’t read the stately homes thread…

Or Cockroach Cafe, more relevantly

I live 3000 miles away. I send things they need and provide financial support however I can, but I don't get involved in the day-to-day dramas.

It helps that my DM has always been difficult. She had a stroke 18 months ago and refused to do the OT or finish the course of physio and sent the carers away in favour of relying on my equally elderly dad to wait on her. He won't push back on her and just goes along with it, but I know the stress of it will kill him sooner rather than later. I'm angry with both of them. That helps.

If my experience is typical - It's the under 40s who are guilting the elderly to leave them money - that's how most people today get security and get to own their housing - all these schemes to sign over their homes for example

The elderly are being encouraged by their children to sign their homes over to avoid care charges - I wonder what happens to them if they actually need care - would those children actually pay up or would they be forced to take the minimum the council offers

Under 40s tend to have parents in their 60s. I don’t know anyone in their 60s who has signed their house over to their kids. A few over 80s but that tends to be instigated by the parent paranoid about ‘the state not getting my money’.

Guess we have had different experiences

There'll always be some grabby people, @midgetastic . I'm late 40's and most of my friends (mid-40's-mid-50's age range) whose parents need support are trying to provide it and balance this with their family life/careers - many of us have teenagers who need us too. I know a couple of people who might be financially grabby (not my family members so I don't know for sure, it's just their general behaviour), but most aren't like that.

Glad to hear it - a close relative tried it on but fortunately the elderly person asked me about it before signing anything

Maybe I should have said 'any decent parent' wouldn't persevere.....

What I've noticed re different generations caring is that my parents' generation retired at 50 or 55, on a reasonable pension because final salary, and/or a generous spousal final salary pension after working part-time for years. And caring involved elderly relatives living nearby, doing their shopping alongside your own and taking them out for Sunday lunch once a month. That’s a gross generalisation. Most people didn’t get final salary pensions, most people didn’t retire at 50 or 55. Many people were relocated during the war and their elderly relatives weren’t nearby.

The big difference is that high blood pressure wasn’t usually detected, there were limited treatments for heart treatments, and early detection of cancer was more difficult, so fewer people survived to get dementia. That’s why, for most people, caring was less of a burden. Not because everyone retired early on a generous pension.

Property rich old people need to pay their way. Property rich people of my father’s generation would see it as their children paying, it’s their inheritance which is being used.

It's certainly true for my working class family though. Nobody relocated because of the war. The few that went off to fight returned to where they'd grown up. The ones that lived in council accommodation stayed there for the rest of their lives, yes, retiring at 50 or 55 with a local council final salary pension as they'd worked there all their lives. The wives tended not to work but still got a very good spousal pension. A few of them went to teacher training college or did nursing but then came back and taught where they'd grown up, but were able to buy a house. Again, took retirement usually at 55 from teaching or NHS jobs on final salary pension. None of them worked past 55 and frequently expressed horror at the idea of working longer than this!

Some of the childless women, especially if unmarried, ended up retiring at 50 to care for parents - I remember some of my parents' friends ending up doing this. Which is possibly the biggest difference with now? I couldn't retire at 50 to be a carer even if I wanted to as my pension schemes wouldn't allow it, and I couldn't afford it anyway.

Property rich people of my father’s generation would see it as their children paying, it’s their inheritance which is being used.

An unusual British mindset that needs changing. None of us are ‘owed’ anything from our parents, this isn’t the 18th century where everything is passed down to children if you can accrue the wealth. A lot of the elderly also seem to think past a certain age you shouldn’t have to pay for everything and it should all be free because you’ve ‘done your bit’. This isn’t how it works, especially when many of those who claim they ‘paid their way’ will be retired almost as long as they worked for; and a lot of the women sacked off work when they had kids and never went back properly.

Life isn’t free; everything costs money and if they don’t pay for their own care, somebody else will be.

I would say my grandparents were decent and caring people, but it’s like being elderly tripped something in their brains where although they claimed they wanted to be independent and ‘wouldn’t want to burden family’ they made no other arrangements, so of course it ended up being family going running when they had accidents. Now the first couple of times it’s okay, it’s an accident and unusual. But repeatedly it’s very selfish.

MIL has been dropping hints lately about us looking after her in old age (aka me; as she and FIL are very sexist and query why DH takes it in turns to cook when I’m there to do it). She said the social care issue isn’t down to lack of funding (she’s a rabid Tory) or elderly people not wanting to pay, it’s because younger family members are lazy apparently and don’t want to muck in taking care of their elderly relatives.

I have made it very clear we will be happy to help but not to do any ‘caring’ duties, we both work full time and women have nothing like the time they did in years gone by because most of them now work long hours. She said they should ‘ask employers for the time off’.

She lives in a fantasy world.

My Mum is similar @Cuppasoupmonster always claimed she'd just downsize and then move into a home when the time came, didn't want us running round after her. I think getting old has taken her by surprise (?!) as she's ignored all of our suggestions about things like keysafe (she's had a couple of health scares and ended up in A and E, then admitted), getting POA set up, keeping financial stuff organised and together, having a think about how she's going to shop once she stops driving (she's denying this will ever happen!).

She hates that I work full time and am the family breadwinner. Apparently it isn't my role as a woman and I should be at home as I have a child . I've shown her the actual figures for the differences in my pension and hers but she simply won't take it on board.

Im in a similar position, DF is 89 and DM 85, I have a teen and a pre teen and my DH works long hours and is often away. The never ending hospital appointments and requests for lifts is driving me insane. I’m coming up to menopause and not feeling my best self, my parents think they don’t need any help as I’m always there to call, I am going to have to make myself less available as it’s starting to affect my mental health. I have a sibling who lives 2 hours away, he does nothing and hasn’t even visited or made a phone call for many years. There is no one else except for me and my family, my DH is great and helps where he can but it’s continuous and isn’t going to get any better. They are reluctant to pay for any help even though they can afford it. Similar story to many, you have my sympathy.

Agree with this. I visit a lot of elderly people as part of my job and most absolutely begrudge paying for their care even when they are loaded ! I visited a couple a couple of weeks ago in their nineties, wife struggling and falling and was very frail. When husband was out of the room she told me that he had said he would not pay for any care, won't put the heating on so she sits in her overcoat or stays in bed all day to keep warm and won't pay for a walk in shower so she can only have a wash at the sink despite being incontinent.

I am lucky at the moment as my dad although 86 is very independent apart from not being able to hear so the only help I give is occasionally making phone calls for him and taking him a couple of meals a week. I work full time in an emotionally challenging job supporting older people and have 4 kids in their teens and early twenties who still need support in some ways too. Plus a dh who works long hours and 2 dogs. I know one day though in the not so distant future that my dad is going to need more support. luckily he only lives a few streets away from me but my only siblings lives 100 miles away and cannot drive due to a health condition so is going to be very limited in what support he can give.

I think that humans tend to get stuck in their ways and fixed in their opinions & mindsets as they age, I don't mean to be ageist! I'm not young and I can sort of feel it happening to me.
I don't think it's really the 'fault' of elderly people, they cant help becoming blinkered and focused on their own needs, as we lose physical strength and agility so there is a parallel shift in the mental functions.
It's still not right or fair that the younger generation should have to sacrifice their wellbeing, imo.

I think, based on recent experience with my DMIL (now deceased) that the very geriatric want to think they are 20 years younger than they are biologically or intellectually. DMIL, who was clever and funny and lovely at 70, turned into a miserable selfish attention-seeking sponge who didn't know what time it was at 93. She was unhappy because she outlived her healthy span, her friends were dead, and by Nov 22, after six weeks in an acute NHS ward, she was discharged back to her care home and died five hours later. It was horrible for her and her family.

@EmotionalBlackmail Of course, people who retire at 50 or 55, unless as part of a redundancy package, do so on a reduced pension. Not just reduced till retiring age, but reduced to the end of their life. So in theory they get the same total pension that they’d expect if they stayed till retirement age.

@Soothsayer1 I think you’ve put it quite well.

I don’t see the point of one person destroying their life for the sake of a father. But I do think, as part of a not particularly dysfunctional family, that I have a responsibility to keep an eye out for the rest of the family, including my father.
.