Healthy Living Month – Take Care of YOU!

Yes! You ARE a Caregiver!

August is healthy living month on The Road and as we focus on ways to keep our loved ones active and healthy, we can’t forget that we also need to take care of ourselves.

As parents, we tend to think of what we do as natural or no big deal. We’ve been conditioned to think that by placing a caregiver label on ourselves we somehow diminish our child. We don’t want to admit that our adult children could cause us stress. We love them! We’re used to taking care of them and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

A recent New York Times article talked about the facts of caring for an adult child with an intellectual / developmental disability:

“Other 21-year-olds move out and take jobs, but most of these children stay at home,” said Dr. Dykens, the director of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center. “You have aging parents and aging offspring. You are each other’s for life.”

Our situation is different from other parents.

“Having a child that has a disability, it’s all-encompassing,” he added. “You could see how people would lose themselves.”

By the time our children reach adulthood many of us define ourselves first and foremost as a parent. I’m “Josh’s Mom” above all else. It’s a statement of pride, but it’s also an indication of my position as lifelong caregiver.

Taking Care of You

We have to make sure that we are as healthy as possible …

so that we can provide the best care for our children.

It’s not a flaw to admit you could use some some help or to learn some techniques for dealing with stress.

All parents endure stress, but studies show that parents of children with developmental disabilities, like autism, experience depression and anxiety far more often. Struggling to obtain crucial support services, the financial strain of paying for various therapies, the relentless worry over everything from wandering to the future — all of it can be overwhelming.

Resources

There are lots of resources available for caregivers. During the month of August we’ll be looking for and sharing things that other parents have found helpful.

One place to start is the Caregiver Action Network. They have a resources page that you might find helpful.

BlogTalk Radio also has a category for “Caregiving” if you’d rather listen to discussions than read.

Please feel free to comment on this article if you have any suggestions for other resources. If you’d like to share your story, please email us!

*Remember – the flight attendants always say, put your oxygen on first, before you try to help someone else…