I love my Mom. So why do I dislike helping her with everyday chores. Any advice?

1. Because it is sad that she needs the help now, and 2. because that is a LOT of work and you have so much less "me time"!

Sounds normal to me. And getting some outside help frees you up to take better care of yourself and have the time you spend with mom be more rewarding than just chore after chore.

olegrumpy, make a list of every single thing you do for your Mom.... ok, now cross off half of those items.... and cross off some more. Now you will only do what is left on your list.

Oh how I wished I would have done that with my parents, who are in their 90's and refuse to move to a retirement village. What I was doing was enabling them to continue to live in that big house. Heck, why should they move, I was doing THEIR work, yet it was THEIR choice to continue to live there.

I am a senior myself and I still have my career where I can set my own hours. When I come home in early afternoon, I sit down and the next thing I have dozed off. I look around my own house and see there is a lot of things I have to do but what would I do, drive down to my parents house and drive them here, there, and everywhere...

Run to the post office to pick up their mail because they don't like using the mailbox in front of their house, afraid someone might steal their mail..... run them to the grocery store where instead of being in and out in 30 minutes, 30 minutes means we are only in aisle 5 of 30.... eventually signed up with Peapod for grocery pick-up.... doctor appointments every other week it seemed like, etc. No wonder I was exhausted and I still hadn't vacuumed my own rug in weeks :P

It's very very hard to care for your parent. I take care of my Dad (Stage 6 Alzheimers) and love him to the moon and back, but it is extremely typical to be annoyed with our loved ones, especially a parent. Subconsciously, I think we are resentful because they are supposed to take care of us, not the other way around. I would see if you could get a break from your family, or your church or her church, local senior center, someone to come and sit and talk with her, bring her lunch, etc. You clearly need a break my friend. And I know it seems that there is no way for that to happen and I thought the same thing but I thought, "What would I do if I had to go to the hospital, what would happen to Dad?" And I decided to look for caregivers to stay with him during the day, fix his breakfast and lunch, showers etc. and I take care of him in the evenings, fix his dinner, get him into bed etc. It helps a LOT. I use his money to pay the caregivers and at first it was just a couple of days a week, but as he has advanced to stage 6, he has care all day everyday. So, to recap: Yes you will feel resentful and grouchy, I think most family member caregivers do. You need to stop feeling guilty about it, and it will help you to put it in perspective. You need to get some help with Mom and get some 'me' time back. Evaluate her doctor's visits, does she really, really need to go as often? It drove me crazy with my parent's doctors, they wanted them every month or three months. I put a stop to it, I started taking them when they needed to go, not because the doctors needed to put their kids through college. And half the time they would get sick BECAUSE they had been at the doctors office.Reducing visits helped a LOT. Okay, my friend, I hope this helps you a little. You are a blessing!

This is really a complex issue and I've noticed it in myself. I am thinking a certain way like a good caregiver would. But I am acting in another way quite a bit after six years of caregiving. It's like my personality has split. It could be that one is how I think I should feel and the other is how I really feel. Since you've noticed it, also, it may be common.

Our elder parents do need help. I think we want to provide it. Maybe we have to come to terms with the side of us that resents doing it.

How long have you been helping your mother?

Do you work? I find that when I get home ( I'm 62) I need down time to decompress, to close my eyes and re-group. I couldn't possibly do another part time job right afterwards, if it involved being congenial and cooperative and responsive. Perhaps that's why you're grumpy.

It's great that mom can live alone at 91.....or is it? She relies on you, it seems, for survival and companionship. Not such a good plan, going forward. Have you made plans for taking a vacation? Or if you slipped and fell, and needed to be housebound for 2 weeks?

Get mom some outside help. Cleaning certainly. Get a teen aged neighbor to do the trash for some pocket money. Arrange meals on wheels.

And if she's got funds, take some tours of Independent Living facilities. One with 3 meals housekeeping and a doctor who calls in once a week or so to see private patients.

I understand how you feel. Many of the tasks you mention are tedious and you probably do them at your house, too. It becomes a burden and a chore to shop, cook, clean, do Dr appointments, and errands for mother. Then we feel guilty for feeling this way! I suggest getting more days away from mom to refresh your spirits. Get a little help as others have suggested.

Since when did loving someone make their everyday chores fun? This happy-clappy notion that 'doing it as for Thee' gives any task, be it never so mundane, a golden glow is purest tosh.

I found accomplishment of same to the highest possible standards and in the shortest possible time relieved the tedium to an extent. But why do you dislike doing them? Because they *are* tedious and humdrum. What kind of Stepford Caregiver did you want to turn into? :)

olegrumpy - I totally relate to the resentment you feel over helping so much and having nobody to help you in return. I feel that too. The relationships with our parents lose whatever degree of reciprocity they may have had in the past, and helping them becomes an unmitigated drain. For five years I have been providing a critical service to my whole family (in my view) at great cost to myself, yet none of them are there for me. It does cause a lot of resentment. Even if it's just you and your mother, the all-give, no-take nature of the relationship can get very wearing over the long term. Wish I could help, but I can only empathize.

I have a few thoughts about this. I think nobody enjoys doing gruntwork, especially doing someone else's gruntwork, where you receive no direct benefit from it. Especially when you have to do it repeatedly day after day and week after week without respite, and especially when it becomes expected and taken for granted because it is necessary for the other person's wellbeing. Then it becomes an obligation rather than a choice, and that feels lousy. That feels like something being extracted from you by force rather than something you're freely giving.

For me, "freely given" versus "obligatory and expected" makes all the difference in caregiving. When you feel you're giving something freely out of love, you feel good about yourself and the other person. When you feel you're stuck doing x, y and z whether you want to or not, you feel less good about yourself and much less kindly towards the other person. That's my experience, anyway.

I care about my Mom, but I wouldn't say I LOVE her, so that makes it easier for me to feel resentful. Also I had to move to a location that doesn't suit me for a number of reason, and give up other plans and goals in order to help her. So every time I have to show up to take her shopping, run her errands, clean up her kitchen, change her bedding, etc. I feel resentful that she didn't make any other plan for her old age besides turning me into her personal drudge.

My only suggestion is this: accept that keeping your own resentment in check is critical to the ongoing feasibility of this arrangement, and do what it takes to make that happen. Vent here or to friends or in therapy, and limit those activities that create resentment for you. Urge Mom to get other help, especially if she has funds to pay for it. My mother has a housecleaner that comes in every few weeks, and that reduces the housework I have to do when I'm there. I agree with what Babalou said above - try to offload as much of the daily grind to paid helpers as you possibly can.

After that, draw some boundaries around your involvement. Does Mom really need to have her mail brought in and her garbage taken out every day? How about every two days? Our parents are used to having things done a certain way, but maybe they need to accept some changes when it's someone else's time and energy being consumed to make that happen. There comes a time when we have to draw a line and say "You'll live" and "Beggars can't be choosers", just like they told us when we were young.

Hello again from olegrumpy.
I will try to answer some of your questions / comments in this post.
I have been helping with my Mom for 8 years now, but the last 2 have been a lot harder. As she ages, I have to help her more. I think that I resent doing so much, is 2 things are factors here. If I need help with anything, I have no one to help me, and I don't find pleasure in feeling obligated to my Mom so much. Oh, and there is the issue of her not always being very nice to me when she was more independent. NOW that she must depend on me, she is much nicer to me now. Sometimes, I wonder if she is only tolerating me now, because I am her housekeeper, mail lady, trash hauler, chauffeur, and sometimes...cook. I could go on with more details, but this about covers everything. (Oh, and her grocery shopper, too) Mom used to shop until she got too dangerous riding on the "Shopmobile." She would back into people, and not even know it. When she ran over my foot, that is when I decided that I would not get steel toed shoes just to take her on this expedition!
As I have already stated, I love her dearly. I just with someone else would pick up the slack a little. But there is no one. My brother is now very sick, and my sister lives in Tennessee.
Oh, and one more thing to mention. I DID tell my Mom that when the weather gets worse, I will only get her mail for her every other day. (she mostly gets JUNK MAIL anyway) Yes....she does look forward to getting her mail from her mail lady....ME!
I FEEL that she is so nice to me now ... because I am so useful to her. Thank you for all of your comments. I appreciate them all!!