How to Balance Care of Children and Aging Parents

Many families delay childbirth until their late 30's or 40's, while their elderly parents live well into their 80's and 90's. This cultural shift increases the chances that you must care for two sets of people at different ends of the life continuum. If you are a member of the "sandwich generation," you must balance the care giving you provide to your parents and children or risk burnout.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

Take Care of Finances

1. Communicate with your parents about their insurance status. The time to find out that your mother has no long-term care insurance isn't when she's looking for rehab facilities for her broken hip.
2. Save for college early and often. You must make the most of the benefits of compounding interest and that means contributing to a tax-deferred college savings plan in the child's first few years of life.
3. Remember to pay yourself. There aren't any scholarships for retirement. Take advantage of your employer's matching contributions if available.

Meet Your Children's Needs

4. Explain your changing role in your parents' lives to your children. Sometimes children need only a few questions answered to allay their anxiety.
5. Put your children first. Your children are your first obligation and they need reassurance that their basic needs won't be supplanted.
6. Ask children to share the load. Children must do age appropriate chores, but care giving tasks should be limited.

Help Your Parents

7. Discuss the possibility of getting a durable power of attorney so you can legally help your parents pay bills and make medical decisions on their behalf. In an emergency, you can't act on your parents' behalf without legal authority.
8. Find out what local social services can do for you. Many communities offer a Meals on Wheels program to bring hot meals to homebound seniors.
9. Allow parents to help out as much as they can. If your parents move in with you, make them feel like they're part of the household by sharing expectations with them, even if it's just reading to children.