When I moved my family of four—husband and two daughters, seven and nine at the time—in with my parents, I knew that I was taking on a lot.
I also knew that I wasn’t alone. In fact, one in four adults in their 40s and 50s are doing “sandwich generation caregiving.” By 2030, all Boomers will be over 65, and even more of us will be taking care of kids and aging parents simultaneously.
But here’s the thing—while it’s true that the time I’ve spent touring memory care facilities for my dad with dementia, driving my mom to orthopedic appointments for her knee replacement, and picking up prescriptions for them at the pharmacy (among so much else) has taken time and attention away from my kids, I honestly believe that caring for elders in this season of life has made me a better parent.
For starters, it’s made me so much less delusional and perfectionist about what I can get done in a day, which makes me a less anxious, hovering parent. Plus, it’s given my kids daily access to their grandparents, which is a win-win for everyone (if only my mom would stop letting the kids watch inappropriate SNL sketches!).
And there are so many overlapping insights and strategies on care for both generations. Here are just a handful I’ve discovered.
1. Less words, more presence
When I first became a parent, I remember hearing that babies and toddlers should optimally hear about 20,000 words a day. I processed that factoid as gospel.
It wasn’t until I started taking care of my dad, who was suffering from advancing dementia and losing so many words every day, that I started to think in a more nuanced way about how my parenting had progressed. My eight- and 12-year-old daughters were far beyond the golden window of early childhood brain development, and while I loved talking with them both about everything under the sun, I think I was clinging to some idealistic notion of what our interactions were supposed to sound like. My 12 year old, in particular, is a more internal person; she has eruptions of sharing, almost like unpredictable geysers, but much of the time she is quieter.
As I learned to sit with my dad, watching the sunset, long minutes of silence and awe stretching easily between us, I realized that I could do the same with my kids, especially my more internal daughter. These days, we sit and make art side by side in silence or bake something in the kitchen while listening to our song, “All Too Well” (10-minute version), without much direct communication, and I know that’s not a sign that our relationship isn’t healthy or I’m not filling her brain with enough vocabulary.
I know its presence. It’s gentle. And it’s attuned. Taking care of my dad, learning how to spend more and more wordless time with him, taught me that.
2. Grace in public is holy
As my dad’s dementia advanced, it became harder and harder to know where I could take him in public. As I would check out the coffee counter, he might grab a day-old muffin and just start unwrapping it without paying for it. He had lost the circuitry that knew how to function in a capitalistic economy where everything was not up for grabs. The cashier might be horrified and I might be forced to explain what was going on. Some were kind, others acted inconvenienced.
And yes, sometimes our neurodiverse family, friends, and neighbors slow things down, surprise us, or get weird. But if I have learned anything from the way people responded to my dad in these moments, it is that there is a special place in heaven for people who have enough grace to know they can’t possibly know what’s going on with the quirky strangers they meet—whether they appear to be a three year old having a tantrum on the bus or an 83 year old stealing a muffin at the cafe.
Caring for my dad has made me want to teach and model for my kids what it looks like to be a compassionate and humble stranger, more concerned with our collective humanity than efficiency and “normal” expectations. When people “yes and…” neurodivergent people in public of any age, they are often rewarded with a delightful surprise, a laugh, a discovery, a great story. Resistance isn’t just futile and unkind, it’s boring.
3. Needing professionals isn’t a failure
When we decided to take my dad to memory care, our hearts broke a little. We really thought we could create a loving, imperfect village that would be able to handle his progressing dementia—if only we did enough pattern-keeping, communicating, and creative problem solving.
But ultimately it turned out to be too much for even our earnest and enterprising crew. My dad seemed to be suffering despite all of our best efforts. So, we found a community with a beautiful garden full of butterflies, an ethos of elder dignity, and a distinctly Buddhist feel—all of which seemed like a perfect fit for who he was. Once he was there, I learned so much from watching professional caregivers take care of him and honoring their labor with a fair wage and their wisdom with our eternal gratitude.
Family caregivers matter! And we often can’t do it alone. That’s not failure; it speaks to the magnitude of some of the diseases we face (like dementia, which neurologist Bruce Miller calls the “blackbelt of caregiving”) and the limitations of loved ones. Each professional caregiver that now works with my dad meets him as he is now, not lugging all the grief alongside like I do.
The same is true for our children when they go to daycare, school, and even sports. We need teachers, daycare providers, coaches, and others who come with their own expertise, but also who see our kids with new eyes, with more fresh energy, and with less projection.
4. Grief is inevitable
My kids were becoming themselves just as my dad was unbecoming himself—such a wild juxtaposition.
But the truth is, there has been grief in both. Of course I grieve the loss of who my dad was, the long conversations we’d have about faith and ethics, the hours we spent in dark movie theaters together watching films or hiking through the New Mexican desert. But I also grieve the tiny baby my daughter once was, who now has my shoe size and never needs me to hang her upside down to blow dry her neck so she doesn’t make breast milk cheese in her abundant folds. I will never wear my daughters in a baby carrier again, or watch them taste their first food, or take a nap where their entire body fits on my torso.
Even though my children’s trajectory is more “hopeful” than my dad’s, more additive, it is still a trajectory characterized by excitement and grief. And, weirdly, my dad’s trajectory isn’t without excitement if I look at it with enough equanimity. My dad is going to die soon—be released from this body that is no longer functioning the way he needs it to. He will be free, as free as one can get, really. I don’t know much, but I know that, and I’m excited for him.
And I will miss him forever and ever, just as I will miss my babies forever and ever. The evolution of our relationship is always both things—excitement and grief.
5. Shared awe is the whole thing
Some of my favorite recent memories with my dad have been moments when he was mystified by the natural world. We’d be walking around our neighborhood and he would point at a random tree and say, “I have no idea how this got here!” I would laugh, but then think, “Well, I don’t either. I mean I know it was a seed, but I don’t know who planted it. Was it intentional? How long ago was that? What kind of tree is it? How big is it now?”
When you see the world through dementia-colored eyes, there’s a season—at least there was for my dad—when its awe is more available. One time my dad looked out at a wildly bright sunset, streaked with orange and pink and black, and said, “Who did this?” Again, I chuckled, but then realized, that was the right question to be asking. Indeed, Dad, who? It was an extension of the conversations about sacred mysteries that he and I had been having my whole life, but in a less academic or cynical form.
These moments all reminded me of similar exchanges I’ve had with my daughters over the years. There is nothing more delightful than a slow walk with a toddler, who is noticing every little thing along the way and trying to fit it into her rapidly expanding schemas. Even more recently, my kids sometimes take my breath away with a random comment, like a recent car ride home from Target when my nine year old told me matter of factly about her religion, in which there are three gods—one male, one female, and one non-binary. Each has a role each day—one controls her body, one controls her language, and one makes sure the other two are making good choices. There is no boss. They switch roles every day, but one of them always makes sure the other two are making good decisions. Talk about check and balances!
The truth is that all of these lessons are really about reverence for how much is inside of those we care about, and how much it just keeps changing. The more we can evolve with them, not try to pin them down with words and egos and expectations, the more we can all enjoy the heartbreaking, heartbursting co-created adventure of it all.
Source: The Surprising Ways Caring for My Dad Made Me a Better Parent