{"id":653,"date":"2015-08-27T12:18:20","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T12:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/blog\/?p=145"},"modified":"2026-02-02T15:02:37","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T15:02:37","slug":"caring-for-the-hardest-to-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/2015\/08\/27\/caring-for-the-hardest-to-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Caring for the Hardest to Love"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"tantrum\"

My second son had a tantrum or two, too.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

When our oldest son hit age two, it was terrible like I\u2019d never seen. This wasn\u2019t the fake crying, foot stomping, public-scene-making spectacle I\u2019d seen in other kids (or that I now see in my 3-year-old son). It seemed to go deeper than that. It was angry. It was long-lasting. And sometimes it was violent when he\u2019d explode into a fit of rage over something as simple as buckling his car seat.<\/p>\n

During this time, my mother would call almost daily and remind me, \u201cThe hardest people to love are the ones who need it the most.\u201d And I\u2019d attempt to regain my patience and go back to modeling the behavior I wanted rather than following his lead of screaming and foot-stomping (even though that often came more naturally). Somehow we survived, but I\u2019m not going to say it was easy.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve learned my mom\u2019s \u201chardest people to love\u201d saying relates to the aging process, too, but it\u2019s usually more difficult to apply. We all like to think we\u2019ll age gracefully and with a sense of humor, but pain, loneliness, fear, depression, medications, dementia, and a million other things can affect how we behave in our final years. Some of us yell, some of us cry, some of us develop strange habits, some of us act out sexually. Some people completely change, and some just remain what they\u2019ve always been but magnified.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very hard to be a caregiver to the hard to loves. The urge to respond with harsh words and impatience can be great. I\u2019ve written before about the frustration I sometimes felt with my father-in-law as we attempted to care for him in the last years of his life. The empathy I felt for him\u2014for his debilitating arthritis, the loss of his wife much too early, the loneliness from so much time alone\u2014was often overshadowed by resentment for his stubbornnesss or for not taking care of himself so he\u2019d have more quality time with his grandchildren. We\u2019d try to reason with him\u2014usually argue\u2014and walk away frustrated.<\/p>\n

The more I do this work I\u2019m learning the best thing to do on the days a loved one is hardest to love is the same approach that worked with my son: surrender. Don\u2019t argue, don\u2019t fight, don\u2019t reason. Sit down, rub his back, look him in the eye, make sure he\u2019s hearing me, and tell him that I\u2019m there. Ask him what he needs and what frightens him. Tell him he\u2019s not alone. (And really mean it\u2014because the truth is in your eyes.)<\/p>\n

No matter how loving we all set out to be on this journey of life, there are days we fail. Sometimes there are months we fail. It\u2019s easy as caregivers to lose our empathy\u2014to see so much pain and illness that we no longer think, \u201cWhat if that were me? How would I want to be taken care of?\u201d Or we think, \u201cIf that were me, I\u2019d do it differently.\u201d The sad reality is we have no idea how we\u2019ll age. And as corny as it sounds, love\u2014even on days when it\u2019s the hardest\u2014is the best prescription of all.<\/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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When our oldest son hit age two, it was terrible like I\u2019d never seen. This wasn\u2019t the fake crying, foot stomping, public-scene-making spectacle I\u2019d seen in other kids (or that I now see in my 3-year-old son). It seemed to go deeper than that. It was angry. It was long-lasting….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-caring-for-aging-parents"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653","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=653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstlighthomecare.com\/home-healthcare-salem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}