‘Okay Boomer’ We have all heard this expression from the millennial generation. How do you feel about about millennials as our caregivers?

The millennial generation will design the robots that will care for future generations!

I hope I die before that happens. Millennial's are too apathetic to care for anyone but themselves let alone a stranger.

Caregiver,

I think most of us have regrets in life. I have a few. Wishing you all the peace and joy you desire in your life.

I probably won’t live long enough to face that problem. Anyway, I put off having children too long & missed my opportunity...career goals gave way to my mother needed me more & more. I wish I moved away to California like I wanted to...if my mother didn’t suggest I go to school here in NY. Mistake
Uugghh....what can I say? Can I get a do over?

Beatty, my son prods me in the ribs and says "YOU'RE going in a home."

He started doing that fifteen years ago - I sort of assume he's joking, but I can't say he didn't warn me.

Daughter says she will face time from Scandinavia or wherever she will be (far far away from old parents).

Son says robots will look after us.

I am all for downsizing, JoAnn! I wish my husband would feel the same. He sees no reason to leave a home much larger than we need.

I raised an X generation and a millennial. All I ask of them is to not forget me. I don't expect them to physically care for me. I do expect them to be there to help me when needed. Will is in place. Important paperwork in one place. Next POAs. The Nurse will be our Medical and the youngest will be Financial because she is better with money. Backing each other up.

I am lucky that my oldest has worked in NH/rehab facilities. So she is very aware of the elderly's needs. If not for her, I think both my parents would have passed before they did. My youngest was very good with her Grandmother so hope she is as good with me. Both my girls are compassionate people. But both are single at this point. Both have to work. I plan on being independent as long as I can be. Doing what I can to make their lives easier. We have investments just hope this Virus hasn't effected them.

I have started some downsizing. When the house gets too much, we will sell and move to an apartment. An AL when needed, etc. With my Mom, her house became an Albatross for me. A weight was lifted when I finally sold it. Don't want my girls going thru what I did.

Elaine,

Oh my gosh, yes!

Needhelpwithmom, I would love to be your roommate, lol. Our stories would be endless!!! Not to mention we both know what each other has gone through.

Kat,

Indeed all situations are different. I hope all goes well for you and your family.

Elaine,

I hope I get a roommate like you if I go to a senior facility. I definitely don’t want to burden my children. It changes a relationship. Even in good relationships, it’s just hard.

I would rather die than live as long as your mom and my mom! It’s okay if a person still has relatively good health but otherwise, please let me die with dignity!

Hopefully my parents will be grateful and understanding when I'm caring for them, because my sister and I are all they've got.

I'm currently caring for my grandfather who has dementia, and despite all of the usual caregiving difficulties, he's happy I'm around.

I suppose it depends on the relationship you have with your kids! Please exercise careful thought before making broad generalizations about others.

Somebody better start getting all those facilities built for us!!! There will be a lot of us boomers and we all need someplace to go!!! My kids aren’t taking care of me!! I will go to a facility WILLINGLY!!!

Hahaha, CM

I hear you! I am a city girl. Leave the countryside for weekends away every now and then. I think rural life is a completely different lifestyle. I bet they find urban life hard to deal with. It’s the fish out of water story.

I totally agree about google maps!

Trying to find the place in the dark and the driving rain yesterday evening certainly cured me of any romantic notions! "Wrong, GoogleMaps, just so so wrong. The 'destination on my left' is a barn full of sleepy and now puzzled cows. Where is the farmhouse, please?"

But yes, I think farming families probably do spend less time fretting over first world problems than many of us in the West.

CM,

Yes, isn’t that lovely to see? You mentioned they are living on a farm. I don’t know rural life. I grew up in the city but I would think that living in that atmosphere creates a different attitude in families. It’s refreshing to hear of people working together.

Need - a few hours ago I was with a lady client - home recovering from a fractured hip, lot of pain, but already doing better than she was even yesterday, bless her heart - but the bit you'll like is that she and her equally elderly husband are staying just for now on their daughter's farm. As I was writing up my notes at their big kitchen table, one granddaughter jumped up and ran off calling "granddad, not without your walking frame!" She'd spotted him heading for the bathroom with no proper support (smh...)

There are two girls still at home, about sixteen and eighteen? (it's so hard to tell nowadays!) Very nice, very helpful, and very busy because they've got cows in calf (one had twins, a heifer and a bull calf - I didn't know that happened to cows) and the ewes are in for lambing, too.

Just the perfect time for your mother to break her hip, now I come to think of it. But at least in that family everyone is definitely pulling her (and his) weight.

I hate those FB posts or such that say "remember the good old days when we could play outside all day and did what we wanted...romanticizing the 50's and 60' which, were NOT stellar times, unless you were a white male.

Every generation has problems, worries, etc. I see my kids raising their kids and they fret over all the same things I fretted over. Am I raising decent people? Kind people? Are they compassionate and kind? Yes, they ALL spend waaaay too much time on their phones and not enough 'eye to eye' time---but all in all, people don't really change much.

I personally see more tolerance and genuine kindness in my 'neighborhood' and for that, I am glad. The world is getting better/worse as it always does. All we can do is be the best person we can be where we stand.

Got a question. Who raised the Generation X and Millenials? Because we sure as bell didn't raise ourselves.

And their kids may have their phones buried in their heads - and it'll be only normal. Shudder!

Imagine when we would have been just about dubious about trains and the electric telegraph.

Many of the millennials probably will have their heads buried in their phones and be oblivious to the needs of their elders.

Minsu,

Ahhh, we can hope. It’s certainly needed. I just wonder what improvements will be available.

Thanks for your response.

CM,

Very interesting posting! I love your answer. I suppose we do want to believe in progression but as I read your post I can see how much has indeed stayed the same. Thanks for this perspective.

Hopefully they will be more educated on the various housing options for seniors and feel less obligation to care for their parents personally.

Need, *nothing* changes.

Look at King Lear. Look at the Canterbury Tales. Look at the Bible!

Mark Twain mused on how when he, Mark, was a very young man his father drove him crazy with his blind, bigoted idiocy, but ten or so years later, he was amazed at how far the old boy had come on.

Here is a satirical description of a young man's lifestyle aspirations: "... exchanges dazzling epigrams until luncheon with others of his own age and brilliance, all about the Hollowness of Life, the Folly of the Old, the Comicality of the War, the Ideas of the Young, the Brilliance of the Young, the novels of D. H. Lawrence, the Intelligence of the Young, the Superiority of Modern Photography over Velazquez, and the Futility of People of Forty." The book in which this appears was published in 1933, but the paragraph popped into my head just before Christmas when I was waiting in a store behind two young men and shamelessly eavesdropping on their conversation about how cruelly difficult they found it to show tolerance towards their older relatives. It was all I could do not to burst out laughing.

And the evolution of traditions - remember how Laura gets bored to tears one Sunday, because it's the Sabbath and Pa can't play his violin, and she's not allowed to work on her doll's clothes, and she can't stand it and starts misbehaving? And after she's been duly reprimanded, Pa tells her about *his* father and uncles and their adventure with Sabbath-breaking when they wanted to finish the sled they were making, and it ended with how *their* father - once the Sabbath was over - "took them into the woodshed, one by one, and he tanned their jackets." Laura asks whether it was as bad for little girls, and Ma explains that it was much worse for little girls in those days because they had to be good and quiet all the time, not just on Sundays.

I have a favourite photograph of my grandmother's family - her two sisters, one brother, the brother's friend, and my great granny and great grandpa. They're at the seaside, in Brighton (that hasn't changed, either!). Great Granny and Grandpa are sitting on a bench, one sister and the friend sitting either side, and my great aunt and great uncle (aged about 18-22) are clowning around behind. Change the clothes and it could have been my parents, or us, or my kids...

And when the prodigal son was wasting his inheritance among the fleshpots, what exactly do you think he was up to? And what do you think he thought of his father's warnings then?

You'd suppose we'd got past the days when it was just assumed that the most suitable daughter of a family (unmarried, or past childcare years) would shoulder all elder care as a matter of course. Yes? Well. There's a lady in a tough spot, and my sympathies to her, who posted yesterday and in passing mentions that she feels her sister-in-law should be the one to step up, not her, because it's her husband's mother who needs the care. She doesn't actually rule out her husband's two brothers, but she definitely thinks it's their sister's job. March 10th 2020, she said that.

Nothing changes.

By the year 2030, all boomers will be seniors will be 65 and older.