Involving children in elder care
Much has been written about involving children in elder care. My situation is such that my parents don’t live with us (but, we live in the same town), so, we have the luxury of involving our children (ages 11, 9, and, 4) in my mother’s care as we see fit. We have never required, or, depended on them to participate in her care, but, we encourage them to interact however they want to as her health declines.
My oldest child is always wanting to stay with my mother (my mother can get around, but, really can’t be by herself) if my dad’s away for work obligations. While I have no doubt that she could care for my mother (seriously) (I should be cited by the parenthetical police for this post, I will do my best to make this the last set of parentheses), she’s only 11, so leaving her there probably isn’t the wisest thing to do.
What has evolved instead, is that my daughter has cultivated a certain set of tasks or chores that she does around my parents house every Sunday. Our whole family goes to visit while my daughter waters the plants, empties the trashcans, fills the ice cube trays, etc. She gets to help out my parents in a meaningful way, and, they get some chores done for them on a weekly basis.
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POSTED IN: Children and Elders
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