The life of a caregiver would be very easy if he had only to do the chores and paperwork for the elderly parents. This would not be an issue if the caregiver’s role was limited to this aspect. The job of taking care of the elderly is stressful to say the least. It brings about an emotional drain on the caregiver as well as the aged parent. It is assumed by both the sides that the care giving relationship is based on offering a large favor. Under the circumstances, guilt plays an important role in every element of care giving.
The senior citizen feels guilty for asking you to help out with their daily needs. In most cases, the care giver volunteered help, even though they did not ask for it. You as the caregiver, watching the situation may have intervened once you saw your parents need help in getting their life back on track. The elderly parents therefore, feel that you are spending vast amounts of your time tending to them instead of spending it with your family, or going to work. They feel guilty for imposing on your time.
The changes that the older adults face in terms of role reversals, dependency on their children or the loss of a spouse can be very difficult to cope. They feel guilty that they have ceased to be useful to anyone in any way and this increases their feeling of worthlessness. Their pillars of existence and the ideas of life in general begin to disappear. Simple things like driving around or even walking become an ordeal. They then begin to feel that had they not grown old, this would not have happened, a manifestation of guilt.
Guilt pangs are an issue with the care giver too. The constant thought of not doing enough, that certain things could have been done better is always creating these feelings of guilt. To worsen the situation the elders themselves may inflict guilt on you by complaining about their lives and not being satisfied or getting angry.
Guilt does not help improve the relationship nor does it improve the quality of life. So what does one do about this guilt running high in everyone’s emotions? To stop feeling guilty is a positive step for every body. The best option would be to sit down and talk about it. Convince your parent that they need not feel guilty for taking your help, and it is not their fault that they are getting old. They too had their share of sacrifices to make when you were a child needing support.
By confronting the issue of guilt, you can avoid it affecting your relationship with the elderly parent. You should learn to avoid the guilty feelings and thus pave the way to a healthy care giver and elder relationship. Feeling guilty about things helps no one and hence these feelings are best avoided.
Tags: Avoiding, Dealing, Elderly, Elders, Emotional, Guilt, Pangs
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In our effort to balance very full and hectic lives with our families and our jobs, we may have been neglecting an all-important facet of our child’s life:
Tags: Child's, Development, Emotional
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So often do we get caught up in the rigmarole of our hectic and busy lives with our jobs and our families, that we easily forget one of the most important aspects of our child’s life – his or her emotional well-being. The most critical times in a child’s life are the first three years. In this critical phase, constantly switching providers of childcare or having a ‘part time’ parent come irregularly in their lives can be extremely destabilizing and traumatic for the child. Just as the child’s physical needs are met, it is equally important to meet his or her emotional needs and it is the duty of the involved adults like parents, educators and care providers to make a joint effort towards achieving this on a daily basis. If a child’s emotional requirements are not satisfied, especially up till the age of three, it can have devastating effects on him or her. It can result in disruptive, defiant and violent behavior.
There are a number of reasons why the first three years of the child’s life are so important. This is the period when emotional separation and bonding takes place. Misbehavior on the child’s part can result if either one of these processes is interrupted. This can have far reaching consequences in their relationships in life and can hinder the development of healthy relationships when they become adolescents and adults.
The brain undergoes extremely rapid development up till the age of three; a kind of development which never repeats again in life. By the age of three, the child’s brain has already cemented from what they have experienced up till that point. Therefore, it becomes necessary that these experiences should be supportive, loving, positive and safe, so that the brain can be conditioned to function positively. If they have had hurtful, frightening, dangerous or abusive experiences, then without doubt the brain will be conditioned to expect negativity.
For all these reasons, it is imperative that the caregivers, parents and all involved adults should try hard to ensure that emotionally, the child’s needs are always met positively and in a manner that is healthy and constructive. Parents should make sure that the care providers of the child are consistent and stable and see to it that the care provider is not changed too many times. The child will feel secure and safe only if it is given a consistent and structured routine and schedule. During this period, you must try to spend a lot of quality time with your child regardless of how busy and stressed you may be. Sensing stress is a frightful situation for children and you must ensure this doesn’t take place. Therefore you need to constantly remind him or her that you are not too busy to take him or her out.
You must never forget that a child’s emotional need is as important as its physical needs and you need to do your part in order to ensure that your child knows he or she is secure, safe, loved and treasured.
Tags: Being, Child's, Emotional, Ensure, Well
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A caregiver’s role involves many emotions and striking a balance between these emotions is a challenge for the caregiver. However, if you separate the emotions from the tasks involved in care giving, much of the things like doing grocery shopping, or the laundry, paying the bills or handling the paperwork are pretty routine. Looking after your aging parents’ household chores is not caring. It is the emotional support you can provide to them in their twilight years that makes the difference.
If you are helping your elderly parent through the trial of coping with a terminal illness, they will need all the emotional support you can provide them. Although they may put up a brave front, they may be experiencing emotional turmoil due to the realization of the approaching end of their lives. As a caregiver your personal emotions at dealing with this reality, is grief. You have to try to cope with the grief together, as best as you can. At the funeral of an elderly person who has passed away due to a terminal illness, you often find that the primary caregiver is not grieving as much as the others. This is because he or she has been trying to cope with the idea for some time and has usually got used to it by then.
The two emotions associated with eldercare are compassion and pity. Your emotions as a care giver in the final months of the terminally ill elder have a direct effect on how you carry out the task of care giving. The emotion of pity involves feeling sorry for your parent’s suffering whereas the emotion of compassion will make you understand the need of your parent, apart from feeling the pain, and try to help in any manner possible.
As a care giver, you have to manage your emotions and influence your reaction to the elderly parent’s illness. A compassionate caregiver is most successful in his endeavor to make the elder’s life comfortable. There are three important factors to keep in mind to help manage your emotions and control your reactions to the difficult times that lie ahead, and these are:
? Focus your energies and attention on the person you are caring for and not on yourself. Focusing on them builds a bond between the two of you whereas focusing on yourself will breed resentment and self pity.
? Do not dwell on the problem, but instead try to find a solution to it. Focus on the solution to a problem and not on its effects. A good doctor will cure the disease, not the symptoms.
? Focus on the joyful moments and not on the grief and sadness. Take one day at a time and try to find moments of joy when your parents can share a good laugh with you or enjoy a meal or a good film. Being together and sharing the joys and also the pain is the core of the caregiver’s role.
Keeping these three facts in mind will help to keep your emotions under control. It will also help you to function out of compassion and not pity. This will help you to keep your perspective ease the pain and grief to some extent.
Tags: Balance, Caring, Elders, Emotional, Illness, Keep, Simple, Terminal, Ways
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