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Carers in your house!
Hi all,
We’re finding ourselves in the very lucky, but unknown, time of being offered personal care assistance with our son Jack, 12, DMD.
I’m just wondering how others have found the experience of having ‘strangers’ in the house, and, did you feel ‘lazy’ because you’re there, but someone else is doing the caring?!
We’re meeting with the care team leader here at home on Thursday evening. Is there anything you know that’s useful to ask?
I am so grateful that we’ve been offered it and I’m going to ask for help for a couple of evenings to shower Jack and hopefully weekend mornings to get him up/ showered/ dressed.
Just all seems very, very strange though!
I’m hoping that starting now will give us all some breathing space and distance- especially with stroppy teen years kicking in!
That, and the fact that we all get quite frustrated when we’re tired and there’s nothing worse than the understandable ” mum/ dad will you just leave me alone” demands that unfortunately cannot be met by anyone. The reality being that Jack requires assistance with everything personal-care wise and that if he was to be left alone Social Services/ Police would
eventually be alerted when he didn’t show for school (and was still on loo/ on shower chair/ in bed etc!).
Any wise words of experience would be appreciated!
Cheers
JuliaRe: Carers in your house!That’s excellent that you’re getting the support you want. From experience I’d say that make sure the carers dont do everything for Jack because it’s easier/quicker for them to do it. It allows him to keep an element of independence as long as possible but there’s someone there keeping an eye on him in case it crosses the line in being too difficult. There are ‘tricks’ I have for getting around certain things that I cant do ‘normally’. Might look weird but it achieves the same effect but I could only figure them out if I was given the space to do so.
That’s my one piece of advice from but that’s not from a parent’s perspective. I’m sure mine have very different views.
What about second breakfast?
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Re: Carers in your house!Julia – it is perfectly natural and understandable to feel that by having ‘strangers’ come into the house to do the caring that you are doing so ably yourself would make you feel lazy or worse that you don’t care or should care. But both you and your boy will benefit from the separation, you get the brain break, he gets someone new to interact with. moan to, make a friendship with.
I can imagine it will feel quite peculiar to begin with, but this person is someone you can get to know too, become friends with, voice a fear to, ask to keep an eye on or ask your boy about without him getting all “Arrgg Muuuum!”
You will both be fine and before long you will be wondering why you did not make the step sooner.
I'm always the animal, my body's the cage
I blog about nothingness www.amgroves.com
Re: Carers in your house!It can be a little strange at first, but you will soon get used to it. I agree with AM and her points in her post, it will give Jack someone new to talk and interact with.
I have a team of 8 carers who all do different shifts with me which is great as its gives me different people to talk to.
Re: Carers in your house!I too thought it would feel very strange having carers come in but at the time I was in no position to have a choice. At the end of last year I had a muscle spasm in my thigh that literally flattened me for several weeks so I needed bed baths, help with bedpans etc. The carers were lovely and I quickly got used to them coming in to do things for me. I missed them when I didn’t need them any more.
I am sure you and Jack will be glad to have the carers around.
best wishes,
Sybylla
Re: Carers in your house!Hello, I have two PA’s (I employ them but wherever they come from it’s pretty similar in terms of having people in the house). When I got married, my husband felt ‘odd’ having strangers come into the house. I think if you have a good person you can relax. At first it was a bit ‘have to tidy the house because people are working here now’ when the point of them being there was also to do some cleaning and tidying up after me!
We don’t worry about how the house looks or anything now – as they are here to help me be ‘me’ and ‘a wife’ so now my PA irons and washes my husbands clothes on behalf of me and I don’t think twice about it! That is strange. Lots of things my PAs do benefit both of us and we have to learn not to feel guilty when they do the washing up or something as it leaves more quality time for just the two of us – we otherwise wouldn’t get that.
If your son starts doing things with other people now – that’s a great step to managing and directing his support as he grow up :-) I wish I’d have had someone other than my parents and grandparents helping me when I was his age!!
One thing I would say is you will both hopefully get to know them well and trust them/ relax with them – but we have stuck with a rule of ‘you can never be too careful’ no matter how great they seem to be. So we always make sure money and personal data is not left lying around and we don’t give out lots of personal info to new people straight away which is tempting!
Also, it’s good to do a good induction or demo/shadowing – making sure they know all the fine detail and that your son can explain exactly how he likes to be washed/dressed etc. Daft things can frustrate – like PAs will wash me and move bottles in the bathroom – so they put them back on the left and we always keep them on the right! Sounds silly but PAs putting things back in a place you don’t put them can drive you mad!! Also you end up looking for things that have been moved and can start to feel out of control of your own belongings! My PAs put clothes back in different places so nobody knows where to look first lol.
Good luck when you get started – :-) hope you get a nice person who ‘clicks’ with your family as that makes all the difference.
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