Anger was not an emotion I expected to feel while providing elder care. As I wrote in the previous post I got along well with my father-in-law .

In other families providing eldercare, anger can arise when there are ambiguous feelings about the parent. Maybe the parent wasn’t there when the child was younger. Or maybe there were issues when they were growing up. These feelings get magnified under the daily burden of eldercare.

Our care giving started out slowly and the irritations in melding his care into our life were minor at first.

It began when he/she read his New York Times. My father-in-law had the habit of watching TV until 11:30 and then reading the paper until 1:00am. He would sit in the living room recliner while watching and reading. Unfortunately for us our bedroom is across the hall from the living room and the light would shine directly into our bedroom. As we never slept with the door closed this became a problem. We ultimately resolved the reading problem by getting my father-in-law a TV and recliner for his room.

There will always be issues in any relationship, of course and eldercare is no exception. What began to be bother me was that all our efforts were taken for granted by my father-in-law and by other relatives. It was assumed that we would just do everything. I expected that we could integrate eldercare into our lives without effort, and more tellingly,  without clearly establishing what I needed from other relatives. I felt they should have known what to do and take a greater part in the care giving

I did not  realize the cost of elder care in terms of time, effort, money, and frustration because those costs came upon us slowly. I didn’t negotiate with others for their support. That was my fault and the beginning of years of building anger.

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