Children as Caregivers

Therapy animals and uplift, it's a concept. I've only seen it done once in furry fiction, but that's a story to rip your heart out through your eyeballs.

For people who have the latent potential to adapt to a situation, challenges can be metamorphic. But challenges in an area where someone doesn't have that capacity can be damaging or even fatal.

Me, I had some experiences growing up that other people think were horrible. Where I live, we're low-priority for repairs so sometimes the power or some other vital service would be out for days. When I was a toddler we raised chickens, and at butchering time, I gutted the chickens because I had the smallest hands. For me, these experiences conveniently tapped into memories of other lives and revived skills and perceptions that I find to be very useful. But some people freak out if basic services go down or they're presented with anything other than ready-to-eat food. I've seen most of a roomful of adults nearly paralyzed by facing a (completely cleaned, whole) lamb carcass that needed to be reduced to pieces that would fit into a stove.

So, some people can adapt to a caregiver situation, even if it falls on them quite young, and benefit from it by ramping up skills to an impressive level. Others are just crushed or killed by that environment. That's actually true for adults as well as children, but at least adults usually have some legal options for escape if they choose to use those. Children usually don't, and some are afraid of losing their family (justifiably, since it's more likely for children to be put into care than for care to be provided for the ailing family member).

My guiding principles are that nobody should be forced into things, and don't use a screwdriver to pound nails. Adequate care should be provided by properly trained adults; and if younger family members want to help, there's never a shortage of things that need doing.

>>With my mother's car accident and radical hip surgery, my sister and I filled in as daily caregivers even with the huge roll call of local church women coming in on a daily basis.<<

It's lucky that you had some support.

>>I'm not trying to validate or excuse this at *all* but sometimes one simply does what is necessary simply because it must be done and we were the only ones to do it. How to you not care for your ill/injured mother when she needs the help and you're the only one there?<<

When one has the capacity, one adapts.

When one does not have the capacity:

One may try and fail. Perhaps one makes a mistake that is damaging or fatal.

One may do the work, and accept the stress, until one's own body and/or mind tear apart under the strain, destroying one's own health and perhaps life.

One may see these possibilities, and leave; and in all likelihood everyone around will cast blame and aspersions and the result will be utter misery anyhow.

It is like lifting a weight. Everyone has some weight they can lift and some they cannot; some they might lift once, but a much lower amount that they could lift regularly. Some people's bodies adapt and grow stronger when they lift things. Other people tear muscles and tendons or have a heart attack trying to lift too much. People kill themselves every winter just trying to shovel snow because it needs to be done and there is nobody else to do it.

I happen to believe that trying to force people to do things beyond their ability is wicked. It doesn't work; it doesn't actually get the job done; it just harms people. That's a bad plan on a practical level as well as a moral one. It bothers me that this society doesn't seem to care if things get done adequately, or at all, or how badly people might get damaged trying to meet unreasonable demands.

You were lucky that you had some community support. There's less of that now, and it hasn't all been replaced by other options, so more people get left without what they need to get by. It's very sad.

>>Sometimes there is simply no one else available to do it.<<

That presupposes the person is capable of doing it at all. Not everyone can. So then there's no one, and things don't get done, and that's a whole different kind of disaster.

>>I remember being so heartbroken that there was so little support for my friends. And how little understanding there was at school for the boys.<<

That's really sad. I hate that society abandons people like that.