One of the highest-scoring posts of all time in the largest perimenopause community, 1,014 with 96 comments, is about something else entirely. The parents turn up in a parenthesis, halfway through, as though there were no room for them anywhere else:
my aging parents (including my dad who is a narcissist with dementia, a winning combo, let me tell you) suddenly had multiple major health and house crises that I’ve had to help them deal with
That is how this load tends to appear. Not as the subject. As the thing in brackets that is happening at the same time as everything else.
How do I do this while raising kids and looking after my parents?
You raise kids and look after your parents in perimenopause by no longer trying to do all of it. The load does not fit, and a better calendar will not make it fit. What works is triage, done once a week, on paper: what gets dropped, what gets handed over to a named person, and what you keep. Then one hour that is yours, before the week can claim it.
Triage is a word from emergency rooms and it is the right word. It does not mean doing everything a bit worse. It means deciding, deliberately, what will not be done, so the things that matter get done properly and the rest stop costing you guilt as well as time.
The post that named the sandwich generation put the pressure in one long sentence, as a list of what she wanted to get away from. It scored 1,219 with 255 comments:
from the people who we love but who need a million things from us every day, from other people's mess and noise, from the sandwich generation chaos, from having to take care of other things and people
She then said she still liked her husband and did not actually want to leave. Both halves matter. Nobody in that thread was asking how to care less. They were asking how to stop being the only one.
Why does the caring always land on me?
The caring lands on one person in a family because nobody decided otherwise, and the person who noticed first became the person who does it. The post about a father needing a caregiver scored 1,089 with 102 comments:
The timing of my hormonal revolution lines up beautifully with my dad’s need for a caregiver and the fact that I have three brothers but yet all the work falls on me.
That is not bad luck with brothers. That is a default, and defaults hold until somebody writes a different one down. In the comments under that post, another woman described a family that had assumed she would be the one, and her answer:
Their favorite children can have the honor of doing all the work.
That comment scored 11. Stepping back entirely is one choice and it is hers to make. The quieter version is to stop being the default without saying so out loud, and that is the version that fails. The fix is to say it out loud, in writing, with names on it.
What do I drop first?
Drop the things whose only consequence is that you would know they had not been done. Then drop the standard on what remains. The household side of this is covered properly in renegotiating the house; this is the part that sits on top of it.
Drop the standard, not the person
Your mother needs a visit. She does not need a visit, a cooked meal, a cleaned kitchen and an hour of you being cheerful. Your child needs a packed lunch. The lunch does not need to be from scratch. For every recurring task, write down the smallest version that still does the job, and do that version for a month.
Batch the parents' admin into one block
Calls to the surgery, the pharmacy, the bank, the council, the insurer. Done whenever they arrive, they fragment every day of the week. Done in one fixed block, one morning or one evening, they fragment one. Keep a single running list for the block so nothing has to be remembered in between.
Stop answering every call as it comes
Agree a fixed call time with a parent who rings often, and keep it. An emergency is still an emergency and you will still answer. The rest can wait until six on Tuesday.
Cut the children's extras for a term
The second club, the elaborate birthday, the costume made rather than bought. Pick one to drop for one term and see who notices.
What do I hand over, and to whom?
Hand each task over whole, to one named person, from one named day. A task that is half handed over, where you still remember it, check it and redo it, is still yours.
Siblings get a written list
Not a conversation about doing more. A list: these tasks, this person, from this date. Put it in the family group message or an email so it exists outside your head. A sibling who lives far away can still own the bills, the online pharmacy orders, the calls to the care agency or the paperwork. Distance is a reason for a different task, not for no task.
The children get whole jobs
A twelve-year-old can own the dishwasher. A sixteen-year-old can own Grandma's Wednesday phone call. A job given whole, with the remembering included, is a real handover; a job you have to remind them about every time is not. What to tell your kids covers how to explain why the jobs are changing.
Ask what help exists before you assume none does
Ask your parent's GP surgery, the hospital discharge team or the local services for older people what support is available where they live. Ask once, write down the answer, and add the follow-up to your admin block.
Let your parent keep what they can still do
A parent who can still pay their own bills or book their own appointments should keep doing it, even slowly. Taking it over because it is quicker adds to your load and takes something away from theirs.
What is the one hour that is mine?
The one hour that is yours is a fixed slot in the week that belongs to nobody else's needs, and it goes in the diary before anything else does. It is not the hour you do the food shop alone and call it a break. It is not the hour you sit in the car outside the care home before going in. It has nothing in it that serves anyone else.
The post about the cottage in the bog was describing a fantasy, and it was the fantasy of a whole life with room in it. One hour is the version that fits into an actual Tuesday. It is small on purpose. Small is what survives a bad week.
In coaching, this is the hour that most often becomes a strength session or a long walk, because it is the hour that is reliably there. It can also be a nap, a book, a bath with the door locked. What matters is that it happens every week and nobody is allowed to borrow it, including you.
Why do I feel differently about my mother now?
Feeling differently about your mother in perimenopause is common enough to have its own thread. This title scored 978 with 193 comments:
Has anyone else started to feel bad for the older women in their lives?
The comments read their mothers' forties and fifties back with new eyes. This one scored 20:
I remember my mom was in her mid 50s and she snapped at a waitress which really surprised me because she was always so sweet and kind. She started getting a little more forgetful and less competent. She was just struggling and I didn't see it.
And this one, from a woman of 50 whose mother is now 74, scored 24:
My mom was impossible to live with in her late 40s. Now I know why. I told her I get it now.
For a woman now driving that mother to appointments, this changes the caring. Sometimes it softens it. Sometimes it makes it harder, because the woman she now understands is also the woman who made her childhood difficult. Both are allowed. Neither has to be resolved before Thursday's visit.
The post from the woman who had just lost her mother was titled "I hate everyone", and scored 853 with 128 comments:
I also lost my mom 6 weeks ago after caring for her for a few years with dementia so there's that.
Notice where she put it. Near the end, after the friends, after the husband, almost as an aside. Grief at the end of years of caring does not always arrive as grief. It can arrive as having no tolerance left for anyone, which is its own article, hating everyone and wanting to be alone.
When it is more than a hard season
Some of this is not a planning problem, and no list fixes it.
- If you have thoughts of not wanting to be here, or of harming yourself, call your local emergency number or a crisis line today.
- If a parent or a child is unsafe right now, because of a fall, wandering, not eating, or anyone being hurt, call for help now. That is not a weekly triage item.
- If your mood is low most days for more than two weeks, book an appointment and say that sentence.
- If the exhaustion does not lift when the load does, raise it with a clinician rather than putting it down to the season. Tiredness has more than one cause, and a heavy load is an easy explanation to stop at.
What triage is not
Triage is not a promise that the week will feel manageable. Some weeks the parent falls, the child is ill and the hour goes. That is what triage is for: on those weeks you already know what can be left undone, so you leave it without deciding again from scratch.
It is also not a judgement on how much you love anyone. The woman in the bog thread liked her husband. The woman whose dad needed a caregiver went on caring. Dropping the from-scratch lunch and handing the pharmacy run to a brother does not mean caring less. It means the caring has a shape, and some of the shape is yours.