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Caregiving and Connection: Tips for Strengthening Relationships with Aging Adults

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Cover photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

Written by Emma Smith
Many of us have heard the sarcastic phrase “ok, boomer” uttered in reference to advice given by a member of the baby boomer generation. Babies born between 1946 and 1964 as part of this baby boomer generation were plentiful, especially when compared to present day. Below, we see a population pyramid from 1960 and below that, we see a pyramid from 2019. The population boom that occurred with the baby boomers is evidenced by the bulge in the number of people age 0-14 in the 1960 pyramid. Now, in the 2019 pyramid, we see no such distribution. In fact, we see the opposite. There is a tapering in the population, with the number of children being less than the number of adults, particularly aging adults like our beloved “boomers”. 

1960 Pop Pyramid

2019 Pop PyramidCaregiving to Aging Parents

The question many may ask is, “so what?” What does an aging population mean for those of us who are not yet in that stage of life? For a percentage of the population it means that their parents are aging and approaching, if not already in, the stage of life that requires more care and attention. For about 25% of the population, having aging parents also means caring for aging parents (Hyer, Mullen & Jackson, 2017). That was 25% of the U.S. population in 2017; as the baby boomer generation reaches the age that caregiving is needed the percentage will only increase.
Caregiving for an aging parent can be both difficult and rewarding. It was found that the role of caregiving for an aging parent became a real emotional strain only when the role of caregiving became all-consuming (Dautzenberg et al., 1999). In other words, caregiving became the only role of the adult child. Singer, Lena Horne put it this way; “It is not the load that breaks you down. It’s the way you carry it.” If an adult child were to take the full load of caregiving upon their shoulders without having an outlet or a moment to step away, the load could break the caregiver down. The need to take a break can cause some guilt in caretakers and even the most devoted caregivers can feel resentful, depressed, or even angry about their role (Hyer, Mullen & Jackson, 2017). These effects can be lessened or even eliminated by allowing breaks in the caretakers’ lives.
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Photo by Matthias Zomer from Pexels
Caring for adult parents can also be a financial hardship. The level of care needed may require an adult child to retire from work to provide full-time care for an aging parent. That’s if the aging parent is able to remain at home and in the family’s care; the average annual cost of a family member in a nursing home is between $89,297 and $100,375 annually, and unfortunately, these rates are expected to rise (Witt & Hoyt, 2019). This stage of life may often coincide with the children of the caregiver attending and needing financial help in college, all of which create a great financial strain.
Caring for aging parents is not without rewards. Many adult children report caregiving as a rewarding opportunity to reconnect with parents and feel as though they are giving back (Miller et al., 2008). In addition, the presence of grandparents as a result of caregiving fosters emotional closeness with their grandchildren. Emotional closeness to grandparents is associated with an increase in empathy and kind acts towards others in adolescents (Attar-Schwartz & Khoury-Kassabri, 2016). Aging adults needing care in the home are an opportunity to nurture relationships that can be a blessing to your family. Older adults often have so much that they want to teach and share with their families. Theorist Erik Erikson suggested this desire to share and concern for the next generations is innate in middle age and older adults (Erikson, 1982). Older adults have so much to offer.
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Photo by Christian Bowen on Unsplash

Coming Closer through Caregiving

Now, if I could get personal for a moment. I’ve got a soft spot for the elderly, my grandparents in particular, and they are amazing. However, it’s fairly common for younger people to feel uncomfortable around older adults. Is bingo the only thing they like to do? Here are a few tips for strengthening your connections with the older people in your life:
  1. Get them talking!
It’s totally normal to not really be sure what to say around someone who is significantly older than you are. What do they even like to talk about? Honestly, anything. My grandparents will talk about anything and everything, and as it turns out, we have plenty to discuss because they were young once too! My Oma (grandma) remembers what it was like to have a boyfriend and what her wedding day was like. My Opa (grandpa) remembers amazing stories from his life emigrating to the US from Germany and enlisting in the army. Talk to them about anything in your life and ask them about what their lives have been like – they probably have a LOT of wisdom, stories, and memories to share. 
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Photo by Rene Asmussen from Pexels
  1. Find out common likes and dislikes
As for the bingo, while that might be something they enjoy, I can guarantee that it’s not the only thing. Just because a person gets older doesn’t mean they lose interest in their favorite hobbies! Do they like movies? Cooking? Cycling? Stand-up comedy? Find out what they love and do it with them. You may even find out that you have a lot in common! As for my grandparents, they both still love swimming, going to the beach, making dinners, and playing Rummikub. 
  1. See what you can teach each other
It is very likely that the older people in your life have learned a thing or two over their lifetime. It is also likely that you may know a few things that they haven’t yet had the chance to learn about. Look for opportunities to teach and learn from each other. My Opa tinkered with car engines until he couldn’t crawl under a car anymore and he still tells us all what to do with our cars when we go to him for his expertise.
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Photo by Edu Carvalho from Pexels
Now is the time to evaluate our interactions with others, particularly the “boomers”. Rather than responding tiredly with “ok, boomer” we can respond compassionately and conversationally and create connections and relationships that we all long for. Leo Buscaglia put it this way, “Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” Let us all seek to fulfill our potential to touch the lives of others, particularly those in the aging portion of the population. Spending these parcels of time with them is more precious than you know.
Personal Practice 1Test out one of the tips for connecting with one of the elderly people in your life!

References

Attar-Schwartz, S., & Khoury-Kassabri, M. (2016). The moderating role of cultural affiliation in the link between emotional closeness to grandparents and adolescent adjustment difficulties and prosocial behavior. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 86(5), 564-572. https://doi.org10.1037/ort0000195
Dautzenberg, M. G. H., Diederiks, J. P. M., Philipsen, H., Tan, F. E. S. (1999). Multigenerational caregiving and well-being: Distress of middle-aged daughters providing assistance to elderly parents. Women & Health, 24(4), 57-74, https://doi.org/10.1300/J013v29n04_04
Erikson, E. H. (1982). The life cycle completed: Review. New York: Norton.
Geriatrics Workforce By the Numbers. (n.d.). Retrieved June 10, 2020, from https://www.americangeriatrics.org/geriatrics-profession/about-geriatrics/geriatrics-workforce-numbers
Hyer, L., Muller, C. M., & Jackson, K. (2017). The unfolding of unique problems in later life families. In G. L. Welch & A. W. Harrist (Eds.) Family resilience and chronic illness: Interdisciplinary and translational perspectives (pp. 197-224). New York: Springer.
Miller, K. I., Shoemaker, M. M., Willyard, J., & Addison, P. (2008). Providing care for elderly parents: A structural approach to family caregiver identity. Journal of Family and Communication, 17, 3-26, https://doi.org10.1080/15267430701389947
Witt, S., & Hoyt, J. (2019, June 22). Nursing Home Costs in 2020 by State and Type of Care. Retrieved June 10, 2020, from https://www.seniorliving.org/nursing-homes/costs/

 

 

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Emma Smith is from San Diego, California. Emma is currently a Family Life major with an emphasis in social work at BYU. She met her best friend and husband Dallin at BYU her first semester home from her mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She enjoys horseback riding, swimming, reading, painting, and anything outdoors. In everything she does, she has one goal: to help others.
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commUNITY, Love, Me

Connect to the Past to Connect to Yourself

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Written by Allie Barnes
For years I had felt a quiet impression that I needed to look into my family history. I’d do a bit here and there, filling in missing gaps and such on the family tree, but not much beyond that. I thought I was doing my part, thinking that as long as the names and dates are there, we’re good. The thing is, family history isn’t just about filling in gaps in a family tree—though that is a part of it.
The real joy for me came when I began reading my ancestors’ stories and really getting to know them. That’s how I first learned about Grace.

Grace is my great-great-grandmother on my mom’s side. She had four children with her husband, an engineer who designed and paved roads both in the United States and abroad. That’s the basic story, and what I had known before. But life is, of course, far more complex and far deeper than two sentences can describe. When I dove deeper into her story, it ended up changing my life.
According to second-hand accounts obtained from user-submitted stories on genealogy websites as well as some information from family members, Grace and her husband met as teenagers and she was smitten. Against her parents’ wishes, they married in 1909 when Grace was 18 years old.
Years later, shortly after their fourth child was born, her husband ended up in Utah, where he designed the roads that went through some of the National Parks in the state. While his family was back at home, her husband fell for a young woman (25 years his junior) who worked as a waitress and played in an orchestra associated with the national park. James left his family and ran off with this young woman, leaving Grace to raise their four children alone.
I immediately saw the connection to my own life and my relationships.
While I have never been married nor raised children alone, my experience with unhealthy relationships and betrayal trauma lead me to believe that Grace surely experienced a degree of both of those. Those are things I understand. And from those things, I can also assume that his betrayal and abandonment didn’t just happen overnight—there were surely red flags that led to them.
Was I continuing to ignore red flags in my own life, perpetuating this cycle of unhealthy relationships?
It was only after learning Grace’s story that I realized this is a generational issue in my family, and I have the power to break that cycle.

The Research

I thought that doing family history work benefited my deceased family members as I sought to remember and record their lives. I had no idea I would find myself in their stories, and that they would influence my own life in such a monumental way.
When interviewed by CNN, author A.J. Jacobs shared the benefits of teaching children (and I’d also add adults) about their family stories: “What children learn when they hear about their past— both the good and the bad… is primarily that they can chart their own course and don’t have to follow the path of what their less-than-stellar ancestors did. They also learn that they are part of something bigger than themselves.”
The article cited research to back this up: a study by Emory University found that “Family stories provide a sense of identity through time, and help children understand who they are in the world.” 

Discovering this family story helped me feel part of something bigger than myself, and gave me a sense of identity greater than I had felt previously. Feeling that connection to my great grandmother through similar traumas helped me see my own strength, both in my trauma recovery and in my ability to change unhealthy relationship patterns in my life.
The Emory University study also found additional unexpected benefits of studying family history: Teens who learned more stories about their extended family showed “higher levels of emotional well-being, and also higher levels of identity achievement, even when controlling for general level of family functioning.”
In Ancestry.com’s 2014 global study of over 6,000 Ancestry users, 67% said that “knowing their family history has made them feel wiser as a person.” Additionally, 72% said it “helped them feel closer to older relatives.” (This study was cited in a blog by the New York Public Library entitled “20 Reasons Why You Should Write Your Family History,” which is also a great read). Learning about ancestors clearly has benefits that reach far beyond basic knowledge of the past.

How to Start

A few months ago, I read an idea on an Instagram account (I’m pretty sure it was on @thelisteningearproject, though I could be mistaken) to specifically ask all living grandparents, “What is something you wish you had done when you were younger?” After recording their answers, you could then go and do those things in their place, sharing your memories with them. I decided to finally ask this question when I was home for the holidays this year. While I may not be able to actually complete the unfulfilled dreams of my grandparents (some answers included to go to nursing school, travel to Israel, and buy a horse and ride into the mountains), the prompt opened up new conversations and understanding of my grandparents’ lives. Even my parents were unaware of these parts of my grandparents’ lives. And hey, maybe someday I’ll go to Israel and share that experience with my grandma!
If you want to start asking family members questions and recording their answers (either by writing it down, or recording their voices, which will be so meaningful in and of itself), here is a great list of questions to start with.
Last year, the New York Times published a beautiful piece (“Why You Should Dig Up Your Family’s History — and How to Do It”) with a practical guide to getting started. Family Search also has a great article, “How Family Stories Shape Our Identities.” Head on over their website to learn more. You can also get a free Family Search account to fill in your family tree, connect it to others’ trees, and read/share family stories.
One of my favorite lines from the New York Times article is one I’d like to end this article with: “[Culture] comes from lived experience, traditions and stories passed down, from actual people who shape our perceptions of the world.” When we get past the names and dates, we can discover our family, and discover ourselves. 
Option #1: Ask a living grandparent the question, “What is something you wish you had done when you were younger?” Record their answer.
Option #2: Create a free account on familysearch.org. Learn something new about your family tree.

References

Clark, B., & Kurylo, B. (2010, March 3). Children Benefit if They Know About Their Relatives, Study Finds. Retrieved from http://shared.web.emory.edu/emory/news/releases/2010/03/children-benefit-if-they-know-about-their-relatives-study-finds.html#.XhASY-jYqtp
Fivush, R., Duke, M., & Bohanek, J. G. (2010). “Do You Know…” The power of family history in adolescent identity and well-being. Journal of Family Life. Retrieved from https://ncph.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/The-power-of-family-history-in-adolescent-identity.pdf
Nigro, C. (2019, January 24). 20 Reasons Why You Should Write Your Family History. Retrieved from https://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/02/09/reasons-to-write-your-family-history
Saxena, J. (2019, February 4). Why You Should Dig Up Your Family’s History – and How to Do It. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/smarter-living/why-you-should-dig-up-your-familys-history-and-how-to-do-it.html
Wallace, K. (2015, June 3). How children benefit from learning their family history. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/03/living/telling-kids-family-history-benefits-feat/index.html

 

 

Allie Barnes graduated from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor of Science in Family Studies, earned a certificate in Substance Use Disorder Counseling from Utah Valley University, and studied writing throughout her undergraduate career. In every professional role she’s filled since then, her focus remains the same: People.

 

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