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Being sick in bed is no time for sympathy in our house.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n I\u2019d like to think I was the caregiving type of 6-year-old when I was a child, but I\u2019m pretty sure I was more like my kids. Most of us as kids are too wrapped up in our own Fisher Price worlds to think about our parents and whether they\u2019re feeling okay. When we\u2019re teenagers, we might begin to notice our parents\u2019 struggles but only in terms of how they affect us. Eventually, as adults, we have that first moment where we glimpse our parents\u2019 mortality. It\u2019s when we officially cross the line from childhood to adulthood\u2014when we realize these parents who we never really thought about in terms of being human show us they\u2019re not the super people we always thought they were.<\/p>\n That moment sometimes hits us head on when something catastrophic like a stroke or a fall happens. Or it can be something smaller, as it was for me, when I noticed how worn out my parents seemed after a weekend of babysitting our two boys (something I\u2019d never noticed when we had only one kid).<\/p>\n Not everybody comes to this realization easily or peacefully\u2014we see our parents\u2019 mortality but we deny it. \u201cShe should still be able to care for my kids every day\u2014she\u2019s their grandmother after all.\u201d \u201cHe shouldn\u2019t be sleeping in the middle of the morning.\u201d \u201cShe can\u2019t be too tired for our annual family picnic!\u201d<\/p>\n When it comes to peacefully accepting age, there\u2019s a quote I like: \u201cBlessed is he who expects nothing, for he will never be disappointed.\u201d We live in a culture that\u2019s pretty high on expectations\u2014we see low expectations as failure. But lowering our expectations for our aging loved ones doesn\u2019t mean we give up on them. It just means we dial back.<\/p>\n When we visit with our three children\u2014their beloved but raucous grandchildren\u2014we shorten the visit if they seem tired (and we put their house back together when we leave). If we have a family party planned, we give them the opportunity to come for just an hour\u2014or not at all if they\u2019re not up to it. We tell Mom she doesn\u2019t have to cook her famous meatballs every time we visit, because we know she\u2019s consumed with taking care of Dad. We keep our loved ones moving and socializing and engaging because we know cognitive and physical activities offset the symptoms of many aging-related illnesses, but we don\u2019t overshoot. \u201cExercise\u201d may mean just walking to the elevator of their assisted-living facility. Mental stimulation may be looking at a photo album or listening to music.<\/p>\n In our business, we see a lot of amazing family caregivers like my friend\u2019s daughter\u2014those who are ceaselessly patient and caring, who just sense when their loved one is tired or out of sorts. But there are a lot more of us who are like my children\u2014figuratively pillow-fighting around our sick parents. Dialing back our expectations may be one of the hardest things for us to learn as we transition from child to adult to adult caregiver with our parents, but it\u2019s also one of the most important.<\/p>\n Molly Rowe owns FirstLight Home Care with her husband, Steve Rowe, and lives in Swampscott with their two sons. FirstLight provides non-medical in-home care to adults in Swampscott, Marblehead, Nahant, Lynn, Salem, Peabody, Danvers, Beverly, and Lynnfield. For more information and help caring for your loved ones in the comfort of their own homes, please visit FirstLight\u2019s website at <\/em>www.salem.firstlighthomecare.com<\/em><\/a> or contact Molly at <\/em>781-691-5755\/mrowe@firstlighthomecare.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A friend of mine has a six-year-old daughter who is a born caregiver. She\u2019s that rare child, who at an early age, is able to sense pain or sadness in others. She notices when friends don\u2019t feel good or when her sister is sad. She\u2019s at my son\u2019s side with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}