Family members — typically adult children — may need to take on caregiving roles as their parents enter late adulthood. While some senior parents need only a little assistance, others require significant support, including hands-on help with activities of daily living, meal preparation, or finance management. In any case, caregiving comes with stress and responsibility. Ideally, siblings or other available family members share caregiving responsibilities to mitigate some of that stress. If you’re the primary caregiver and need more help from your siblings, we have a few tips for asking them for help caring for an aging parent.
Caring for an aging parent is a group effort
Taking care of Mom or Dad is no easy task: Family caregivers spend on average around 24 hours per week performing caregiving tasks. While everyone in the family can certainly pitch in, the majority of caregiving tasks typically fall to women (about 75% of all family caregivers are women), with the eldest daughter often taking on the lion’s share of caregiving duties and coordination.
Family caregiving is very challenging to take on alone, and attempting it solo can result in caregiver burnout, leaving you physically and mentally unwell. If you are the adult child who has taken on the most caregiving responsibility for your aging parent, it’s important for your own well-being to ensure you have the help you need from siblings and other family members. Here are a few ways to get the help you need in order to better care for your aging parent and yourself.
Understand your parent’s needs
Before you can ask for help, you need to understand what your loved one needs support with at home so you know which tasks you can delegate when your siblings agree to help out.
Sit down with your aging parent and ask what they are struggling with. What tasks around the house stress them out or overwhelm them? Are there any personal care tasks they aren’t completing as often as they would like because they are too difficult, painful, or time-consuming? Are there any tasks or chores they no longer do because of physical limitations or fear of injury? These tasks might include:
- Meal preparation.
- Keeping up with bills and finances.
- Managing subscriptions, including prescription and meal deliveries.
- Grocery shopping.
- Getting around town or scheduling transportation.
- Tidying up the house.
- Laundry.
- Lawn maintenance.
- Showering or bathing.
- Grooming.
- Dressing.
Remember, you want your loved one to independently and safely do as much for themselves as possible. However, if they are, for example, skipping meals or eating unhealthy processed foods because they don’t want to cook or because grocery shopping is too hard, a little extra support with the task could benefit their overall wellness and leave them time to tend to their well-being in other ways.
Determine how much time the tasks require
Now that you understand the tasks your loved one needs support with, you can begin the process of delegating. Before you contact your siblings with a list of tasks they need to do, first consider the timing of each task to make it less overwhelming for everyone.
Separate tasks into lists of what needs to be done daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly. Siblings can select what they can help with based on how frequently the task needs to be completed and their own availability. You can also consider how long each task takes to perform. Your list might look something like this:
- Weekly: Grocery shopping (40 minutes: Additional time for getting there and back and putting away groceries).
- Weekly: Laundry (2 hours: One load each of lights and darks, washed and dried).
- Monthly: Scheduling transportation (30 minutes: Make a calendar of doctor appointments and send calendar invites to siblings based on transportation schedule).
- Monthly: Pay bills (45 minutes: Four online bills, one check payment to lawn maintenance company).
You can better delegate tasks when you understand how long the caregiver needs to complete them. This way, you aren’t delegating tasks to your sister that take 40 hours every month while your brother gets tasks that take 15 minutes a month.
Consider your siblings’ locations
Sometimes, siblings are spread across the country, making the default caregiver the one who lives closest to the aging parent. However, long-distance caregiving is still possible, and family members who live cities or states away can still take on some of the mental load of caring for an aging parent.
If you have siblings or other family members who live far away, consider giving them tasks they can do remotely, such as:
- Setting up prescription deliveries and managing refills.
- Paying bills online.
- Scheduling physician appointments and transportation services; managing the senior’s wellness calendar.
- Researching the answers to questions from the primary caregiver, including learning more about a new diagnosis or finding ways to solve a problem the caregiver notices.
- Scheduling a weekly video chat check-in for companionship purposes.
- Scheduling respite care services to give the primary caregiver a break.
There is more than one right way to care for an aging parent
When you ask siblings for help, be specific about what you need help with and give them directions for how to do it. After this, though, let them take over and do it the way that works best for them. If your sister wants to order groceries every Wednesday instead of every other Sunday like you did, let her do it her way. As long as she gets it done, you don’t have to worry about that task. There are always new ways to approach caregiving, and not everyone has to do it your way.
In addition, don’t be nervous to try something entirely new that suits your family. For example, your brother might offer to move your mom to his California town for three months each year to give you a break. There may be a lot of logistics to handle, but it is worth working together to try it out. You never know what will work (and what won’t) unless you give it a try. You can always adjust the plan if necessary.
It is also wise to consider family counseling, especially if you and your siblings are having disagreements about your loved one’s care. Counseling sessions can help everyone in the family have a say while ensuring everyone is heard and understood. You can often find valuable coping skills and other recommendations after only a few sessions. Counselors often offer virtual appointments, which are the perfect solution for a family who lives far apart.
If you still find it difficult, dangerous, or unreasonable to complete caregiving tasks alone, consider getting outside help. Nonmedical home care provides excellent support to seniors living at home. If your loved one really struggles with living at home, a senior living community may be just what they need for their safety and happiness. Approach these solutions with an open mind and without guilt, as the whole family benefits when both the aging parent and the primary caregiver are physically and emotionally well.
