The physical aspect of elder care, bathing, dressing, feeding, transportation can be made routine. You can find shortcuts or get help to make it easier on yourself.

The negative emotional aspects of anger, frustration, isolation, and guilt are more difficult to deal with. These emotions creep up on you, complicate your life and your care giving efforts, last long after the care giving is over, add to your physical stress, and can shatter families and lead to law suits.

This series of blog posts will try to address these negative emotions and how to deal with them.

Of course, there are positive emotions in elder care. Compassion, responsibility, gratitude, and competence are part of caring for an elderly parent. Some seniors have planned for their care so as not to be a burden on their children. Some families come together to support the primary care giver. Some cultures value older people and family members vie for the honor to care for their seniors. Elder care in these circumstances is a different, rewarding experience.

The positive emotions make care giving a wonderful family building experience. That was the expectations Jill and I had when we started caring for her father.

I loved my father-in-law. I met him the same day I met Jill. In the 35 years up to that day in 2001 when we began caring for him I never had a harsh word with him. He gave us the down payment for our home, the home we were now welcoming him into.

Our home has four bedrooms and our four children were living at home with us. My father-in-law spent the winter of 2001-2002 in California with his son and moved in with us in March 2002. Our son, Eric, gave up his room so my father-in-law had easy access to both the kitchen and the bathroom. In the beginning, he was able to bathe himself, dress himself, make his own meals, and could safely go for walks.

What could cause anger and frustration?

I’ll cover that in the next post.

For a free DVD on elder care go to HomeCareSurvival.com.