For family caregivers, respite care is crucial. We’ve come across situations where families wait until they burn out to find relief. What happens is one family member takes on the majority of the “work” while the other sibling(s) wait until called. This only keeps pressure on and sooner than later, resentment begins to build. It takes away the quality of life for everyone involved, especially the one being cared for.
Elderly people risk feeling like a burden as it is. They can sense when someone caring for them is feeling overwhelmed and ready to throw in the towel. Nothing about that is healthy or helpful. It’s surprising that this needs to be mentioned, but you and your siblings need to come up with a schedule that is 80% finite and 20% flexible. Below is a recommendation we’ve given to a family going through this with home care atlanta ga support groups.
The Two-Week Care Plan
It’s not complicated, but it is very effective. One sibling cares for two weeks, and then another cares for two weeks, and so on.
There will be times when you need to be flexible. For instance, if one sibling decides to take a vacation for some time, say, to take a month off to visit family members farther away, then the two-week plan won’t make sense. In this situation, you can do two things:
- Take the amount of time for the vacation (one month) and split it equally. So, if one sibling takes four weeks off caregiving, that means once they return from vacation, they now care for the senior of concern for four weeks – giving the other sibling a month break.
- Disregard the time the vacation took and go back to the two-week plan.
We recommend option B because it takes away that mindset that caregiving is a “burden” to the point that breaks need to be equal. The senior will pick up on this and feel more like a chore than a part of the family.
Be fair to each other and respect one another. Don’t take a month’s vacation every other month and expect to not put forth your care, but, if that is the situation, then you and your siblings may need to focus on a one-month plan rather than a two-week plan. Still, in many cases, every two weeks of care for each sibling works.
The entire idea is to actually have a system that works for everyone involved. If you catch yourself where any of you experience this:
- The senior feels like a burden and starts to get anxious or depressed to the point that they want to spend time with the other sibling
- The caregiver sibling gets fed up and tired and wants to send their senior away to the other sibling
- Vice versa, where the cycle continues… the other sibling then gets tired, or the senior gets tired and wants to return
We see this happen a lot within families or any relationship. Sometimes when we get into an argument or heated discussion with someone we love, we tend to ghost them and let the tension settle before we miss them and want to return to them like everything was normal.
Avoid this. Don’t wait until tension begins and don’t pass on your senior to one another until you miss them. It serves no one. You’re better off mentally preparing for the break that is coming in two weeks (or one month) than not having a set date. If you don’t set that date, you’re going to rely on your anxiety and stress levels to send you the signal.