DOUBLE CARE DUTY – WHEN YOU ARE A PARENT AND YOUR PARENT NEEDS CARE

Caring for kids is hard enough, but the dynamic entirely shifts when you have kids, and elderly relatives to look after. In fact, both can be time-consuming and patience-testing. And make the burden on your shoulders all the heavier. Luckily, there are some tactics you can use to cope with this double care duty. Read about them below.

Division of labor

Traditionally, the division of labor refers to what the man and woman do around the home in terms of chores. However, in this case, it can be applied to more of a divide and conquer type strategy for dealing with the home tasks, and the care that everyone living in your household needs.

For example, you may choose to assign the washing, feeding, and care duties of the kids to mom and the same responsibilities for an elderly parent that cannot look after themselves to dad. Of course, it could be vice versa, or you could take alternate days, so you both get to spend time with everyone and make the family unit more balanced while sharing the load. 

Home help

Next, don’t forget that if things become too much, you can always recruit some help in from the outside. You may choose to do this regarding caring for the children by employing a nanny, or childminders. Alternatively, it may be better to get some home help assistance that focuses on the needs of your elderly relative instead.

You may even prefer to get help with the more mundane household chores such as cleaning, grocery shopping, and laundry. Something that can help free up more of your time for caring for the families needs.

Alternative arrangements

While it may be awkward to consider or talk about there is also another option that is working thinking about here, and it’s looking at alternative arrangements that would cut the level of care you have to provide down.

One way of doing this is to send your kids to a nursery so they will be taken care of in the day, leaving you free to attend to the needs or your elderly relative.

Alternatively, you may wish to choose an assisted living facility for your own aged parents to live in. A place that they will still feel independent, but get that little bit of extra help they need with chores and tasks in the day.

Some time for you 

Lastly, if you are spending all of your time looking after others, you are running a genuine risk of burning yourself out.

Sadly, this something that you will not want to do, as not only will it be unpleasant for you, and can affect your mental health, but it can be problematic for all the people that rely on your for car as well.

To that end, it is crucial that you make some time in your busy schedule for self-care on a daily basis if possible. Such self-care should include periods of relaxation, fun, and some time alone too. Then so you can recharge those batteries, as well as ensuring that everyone else in the family gets the care they need.

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