Small Steps

Taking care of your parents is a huge job, but it doesn't have to start that way.

At the beginning of the year, I was mindlessly skimming a typical January health hacks article in The New York Times, one in which a variety of health experts offer one small tip to make you healthier in the new year. From “meditate instead of looking at your phone at night” to “avoid processed foods,” the list was a total nothingburger. But one tip caught my eye, from Becky Kennedy, the millennial parenting whisperer:

“My second-grade teacher, Ms. Edson, told us: If something feels too hard to do, it just means that the first step isn’t small enough. So often when we’re struggling, we tell ourselves that it’s a sign that we’re broken or that something is our fault, and then we freeze. But when something is too hard in the moment, tell yourself Ms. Edson’s advice.”

If something feels too hard to do, it just means the first step isn’t small enough.

If you haven’t been thrust into the role of caregiver yet, starting down the path of taking care of your parents probably feels hard and scary, so you just ignore it or put it off. They seem fine, so why worry about it?

If the idea of taking care of them seems hard and scary, your first step just isn’t small enough. There are plenty of small things you can do right now that can help you avoid (or at least prepare for) taking bigger steps down the road.

A mistake I made with my dad was seeing all the small things as too small to worry about. I avoided seeing the bigger picture. I didn’t taking stock of how he was doing in a systematic way.

When I saw that he was buying foods like bottled coffees and hard-boiled eggs (instead of just making coffee or boiling eggs), I rolled my eyes, didn’t take note of when that started, and didn’t connect it to the fatigue he felt when standing in the kitchen to prepare meals. When he started avoiding dinners with his friends, I chalked it up to general laziness, not to how winded he felt trying to shower, get dressed, and walk to the parking lot. And when he constantly asked me to pick up a prescription or to take the trash downstairs, I let myself feel annoyed, rather than thinking proactively about what it all meant for his health or my role as a caregiver. I wasn’t seeing how it added up, and I wasn’t being generous in my interpretation of his behaviors.

By just taking a few small steps, you can avoid those mistakes. Below are a few that can move you onto the path of helping your parents, no matter how well they’re currently doing.

1. Begin to notice things about your parent’s health. How does your parent walk? Do they hold onto furniture? Do they have good posture? How is their breathing? Do they avoid stairs? Do they take a lot of meds? How do they keep them straight? Taking stock of these things will alert you to problems as they develop and might lead you to new questions or tasks. For example, if you notice them avoiding stairs, maybe there’s something you can do to make the stairs safer like adding tread, buying new house shoes, or having a railing added. You won’t see how you can help if you haven’t noticed that your parent is having trouble (or if you’re spiraling into thinking about having to move them out of their house). But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Don’t think about tasks just yet; right now, you’re just noticing.

2. Ride in the car with your parent driving. You can feign a headache or say you have low gas in your car, but find a reason for your parent to drive you somewhere and then ask yourself: Do you feel comfortable with them behind the wheel? Are they using the car’s safety features? Do they know where they’re going? Do they avoid driving at night? Again, you’re just noticing at this point, not ripping the keys from their hands. That would be a big step and we’re focused on small ones.

3. Have a conversation about aging. In a way that feels natural to you, bring up seeing one of their older friends or one of your friend’s parents, and see where the conversation goes. Or ask about what your parent was doing when they were your age. Ask what their parents were like at that time. This is just exploratory. You’re seeing how your parent reacts to a conversation that gets close to the topic of aging. If they seem to avoid talking about it, you’ll keep that in mind for the future. My dad was prone to making declarations like “I’ll die before I go into a nursing home,” and “I’ll be dead by then, so you won’t have to worry about it,” which was never helpful. But noticing this pattern allowed me to prepare for these comments and steel myself against them so we could still talk about what we needed to, without me overreacting to his attitude or defensiveness.

You might want to use a Google doc or the Notes app or an old-fashioned notebook to jot down dates and observations. It may feel odd to write down “Dad bailed on Emma’s birthday dinner” or “Mom ordered in 3x this week,” but stick with it as much as you can. Whenever you notice something new, write it on that same page. Eventually, you’ll be glad you have a record of these things and when you began to notice them.

I had to learn a lot about caring for an aging parent suddenly, when my dad had a health crisis. After that, I had to take big steps. If that hasn’t happened to your parent yet, you can still take small steps to prepare for the future. Everyone wants a future in which their parent is around for a long time, so you might as well prepare for that version of reality, even if all you can do at this point is take the smallest of steps.