Why Do Primary Carers Become The Bad Guys?

The Bottom Of The Family Ladder

My eldest sister and I were Mum's main carers, and we had an ongoing joke about where we sat on the family ladder.

Usually, we were at the bottom.

Our brothers and one of our sisters were mostly at the top. We called them the golden children. My sister is quiet by nature, kind and doesn't like conflict, so she rarely gave Mum much reason to be annoyed with her.

Mum always protested she didn't have favourites. We all knew that wasn't entirely true.

Next came my sister who lived interstate. She only held onto that position because she visited about once a year. Any more than that and she'd have been relegated to the bottom with us. She knew it too.

My brothers, whom I love dearly, visited Mum infrequently, some despite living within thirty minutes of her. But when they did visit, they got the royal treatment.

I remember turning up at Mum's one day and mentioning I was hungry. She was sitting at the kitchen table doing her crossword and barely looked up.

"Help yourself," she said, nodding towards the kitchen.

Fair enough. I knew where everything was.

About ten minutes later, one of my brothers arrived.

Mum was suddenly out of her chair. She greeted him at the door with a big hug and asked if he was hungry. Within two minutes she was in the kitchen defrosting him a steak.

A steak.

I couldn't even get her to put down the crossword.

Even between my sister and me, our positions could shift depending on who'd annoyed Mum most recently. Ask too many questions, challenge her about something or make a suggestion she didn't want to hear, and you'd go straight to the bottom. If one of us did something Mum appreciated, the other would joke, "you've moved up off the bottom." No official scoring system, but somehow, we always knew where we stood.

We laughed about it. We often said if we didn't laugh, we'd cry.

Having my sister beside me made a huge difference. She understood exactly what was going on. If I'd had a difficult visit with Mum, I didn't need to explain why I was upset. She knew. She was living it too.

But underneath the family joke was something not quite so funny.

The two daughters doing most of the caring often seemed to frustrate Mum the most, and looking back now, it's not hard to understand why.

We were the ones asking the questions.

"Have you eaten today?"

"How much water have you had?"

"Have you taken your medication?"

"Did you do your exercises?"

We noticed when something didn't look right. We raised concerns, followed things up, encouraged Mum to do things she didn't want to do and questioned things she didn't want questioned.

We would have much rather walked through the door, given Mum a hug, sat down and simply enjoyed her company. But we were her primary carers, and with that came responsibility. The more involved we became, the more chances there were to annoy her, disagree with her or say something she didn't want to hear.

And that was how the two daughters doing most of the caring could somehow find themselves constantly battling it out for the bottom rung of the family ladder.

When You're The One Who Notices

When you're the primary carer, you notice things other people might not.

You notice your loved one says they've been eating, but nothing in the fridge has been touched. They're wearing the same clothes as last visit. The house isn't as clean as it used to be. They seem thinner. A little more forgetful.

Something doesn't seem quite right. So, you ask.

"Have you eaten?"

"Yes."

"What did you have?"

"I can't remember."

"How much water have you had today?"

"Plenty."

But sometimes what Mum told me didn't match what I could see. I knew what happened when she didn't eat or drink enough. I'd seen the weight loss, the dizziness, the dehydration. I knew it could mean another fall, another health problem, another trip to hospital.

So, I kept asking, and Mum became increasingly irritated by it.

I understand why. She was an adult who'd spent her whole life making her own decisions, and now her daughter was asking what she'd had for lunch. I wouldn't have enjoyed it either. But ignoring what I was seeing wasn't really an option.

This is where the relationship starts to shift. You're still their daughter or son, but increasingly you're also the person asking questions, checking things, reminding them what the doctor said. And nobody enjoys being checked up on.

When Helping Starts To Feel Like Interfering

My mum had been a caterer and was a beautiful cook. Family dinners at Mum's were something I always looked forward to. My kids grew up on their favourite Nanny meals, and even after we'd all left home, some of our friends would still pop in because they knew Mrs D would have something delicious waiting.

Cooking was Mum's love language. It was how she nurtured the people she loved.

It was also the source of plenty of family jokes. Even as adults, my siblings and I would compete over who could find the oldest out-of-date item in Mum's pantry. Mum never thought we were funny.

"I'm going to use that."

"There's nothing wrong with that."

"The use-by date is just a suggestion."

That was just Mum, and we laughed about it. But as she got older, some of what happened in that kitchen stopped being funny.

More than once we'd arrive to find Mum at the table doing a crossword while a pot on the stove had boiled dry, forgotten, even though she was sitting only metres away.

That worried us. Suddenly we had to question whether it was still safe for Mum to be cooking alone.

Mum hated that.

"Don't tell me what to do."

I heard that a lot, and I understood why. This was a woman who'd cooked professionally and fed her family for decades, and now her own children were questioning whether she could safely cook for herself.

But I had seen the saucepan. I couldn't unsee it. I wasn't questioning the capable woman my mother had always been. I was responding to what was happening now.

I don't think it felt that way to Mum, though. From her perspective, her daughter was telling her what she could and couldn't do in her own kitchen. From mine, I was looking at a boiled-dry saucepan and wondering what might happen next time.

Neither of us wanted that conversation. But because I was one of Mum's primary carers, I was often the one who had to have it, and once again I became the person saying something Mum didn't want to hear.

We Wanted The "Lovely Time" Too

My eldest sister and I often talked about what we called the "lovely time".

How nice would it be, we'd say, to arrive at Mum's and simply visit? Walk through the door without wondering whether she'd eaten, whether she'd had enough water, whether she'd taken her medication. Sit down, make a coffee, share a meal, have a laugh and just enjoy Mum's company.

If Mum said she'd been feeling dizzy or hadn't eaten much, you could listen without immediately wondering what needed to happen next. You wouldn't have to investigate or fix it. You could leave knowing someone else had it handled. Give Mum a kiss, get in the car, go home. See you next month.

That was the "lovely time".

Some of my siblings could visit Mum and simply be her children. My sister and I found that harder. We knew too much. We knew what had been happening with her health, what the doctors had said, what we were supposed to be watching. So if Mum said she felt dizzy, we couldn't just hear it as conversation. Had she eaten? How much water had she had? Did we need to do something?

And there we were again. Asking questions.

Quite often one of our siblings would visit Mum and then, after they left, ring my sister or me.

"Mum didn't look well today."

"She said she felt sick."

"She didn't drink anything while I was there."

"Mum said she 'took a turn'."

I was never entirely sure what "took a turn" meant, but somehow my sister or I were expected to find out. There was often an unspoken message in those calls: there's something wrong with Mum, you sort it out. I often wondered why something couldn't have been done while they were actually there. Get her a glass of water. Make her something to eat. Ask a few more questions. Instead, the problem was handed over, and one of us would ring Mum and start asking about something we hadn't even witnessed. Sometimes we weren't even the ones who'd noticed the problem, but we still ended up being the ones Mum got annoyed with while we tried to sort it out.

That was the part my sister and I sometimes resented. We loved our mum. We wanted to laugh with her, share a coffee, get some fish and chips and simply enjoy being her daughters. We had beautiful moments with Mum too, of course we did. But caring had woven itself into so many of our interactions that it was hard to leave the responsibility at the door.

We wanted the "lovely time" too.

When Frustration Got The Better of Me

There were times when all the worrying, questioning and trying to help Mum got the better of me.

One afternoon, when my kids were about eleven and thirteen, the three of us went to visit Mum. She adored all her grandchildren but had a particularly close bond with my son. When he was little and I went back to work, Mum and Dad looked after him, and as he grew older, he reminded her so much of my dad.

We hadn't been there long before Mum and I started arguing. She hadn't been eating properly, and I suspected she was dehydrated. I started asking the usual questions, and Mum made a flippant comment about not caring.

I got angry.

"Well, why am I even bothering to do everything I'm doing if you don't care? I'd love not to care, but unfortunately, I do. You don't think I have better things to do with my time than constantly checking up on you?"

I told the kids we were leaving and walked out. We got in the car and sat there for a couple of minutes.

Then I burst into tears.

From the back seat, my son said, "Mum, you were mean to Nanny. You need to go and apologise. She's old and lonely."

Ouch. He was thirteen, and he was right.

I felt terrible. Everything I was doing came from wanting to help Mum.

Before Dad died, I'd promised him I'd look out for her, and I took that promise seriously. But I was frustrated. I could make the meals, buy them, store them, serve them. I couldn't make Mum eat them. We tried everything to get her to drink more, different drinks, special drinks, water bottles, you name it. I couldn't make her drink either.

And when she didn't eat or drink enough, my sister and I were the ones dealing with what came next: a fall, a health scare, a trip to hospital.

That's where so much of my frustration came from. I felt responsible for looking after Mum, but I couldn't control the choices she made.

I went back inside that afternoon and gave her a big hug. I apologised. Mum apologised too, and told me she knew I was only trying to help.

But if I'm honest about that period of my life, I had a lot of battles with myself. I'd get frustrated, sometimes angry, then feel guilty for being angry. Sometimes I'd cry, then pick myself up and get on with whatever needed doing. Eventually something else would happen and we'd do it all over again.

I knew Mum wasn't trying to make things difficult. She'd lost Dad, she was living alone, her health and independence were changing. But I was struggling too. I was trying to respect her independence while worrying about her safety, trying not to tell her what to do while knowing I might be the one dealing with the consequences if I didn't. Most of all, I was trying to look after my mum without losing the relationship I'd always had with her.

When The Conversations Get Bigger

As Mum got older, the conversations we needed to have with her got harder. It was no longer just about whether she'd eaten or had some water. We had to look at the bigger picture. Was Mum still managing safely at home? Did she need more help? Could she keep living on her own?

These were conversations Mum didn't want to have. Sometimes she wouldn't have them at all.

For most of my parents' married life, Dad ran the household and made the big decisions. Mum went along with whatever he decided. She also hated conflict, always had. She wouldn't even ask people questions about certain things because she didn't want to be, as she put it, a "sticky beak".

So, after Dad died, my siblings and I were sometimes taken aback by how stubborn Mum could be. Raise the subject of her ongoing care and she'd go quiet or obstinate. Mention whether living at home was still the best option and the conversation could be over before it began. Don't even think about mentioning the family home. Sometimes she'd simply get up and walk away.

We even tried bringing in reinforcements. My eldest brother was Mum's favourite, not officially of course, but strongly suspected. My sister and I asked him to raise the subject of aged care with her, just to get her thinking about her options if the time ever came. We thought coming from him, she might at least entertain it.

Apparently not. He'd barely got the words "aged care" out before Mum shut him down.

"I don't want to discuss it. Absolutely not. No."

End of conversation. Even the golden child couldn't get that one over the line.

I understand more of that now. Mum had already lost Dad. Parts of her life felt less in her control than they used to be, and her home and independence mattered enormously to her. But understanding why she didn't want to talk about these things didn't make the conversations unnecessary. My sister and I weren't raising them over one forgotten meal or one difficult afternoon. There'd been falls, dehydration, weight loss and other changes over time that we couldn't ignore.

At some point, someone had to be willing to raise the subjects nobody wanted to discuss. Quite often, that someone was us. Someone who wasn't in the day-to-day might see Mum on a good day and wonder what we were so concerned about. But we weren't looking at one good day. We were looking at everything that had led us to that point.

Sometimes it would have been easier to say nothing. No argument, no uncomfortable conversation, no risk of upsetting Mum. But saying nothing wouldn't have changed what was happening. We didn't want to take away her independence or make decisions for her, and we certainly didn't enjoy being the bad guys. But being one of Mum's primary carers sometimes meant raising the very subjects she least wanted to talk about.

When You Become the Face of the Schedule

Appointments were another source of frustration. As Mum got older, there seemed to be more of them. A visit to the GP could lead to a blood test, which could lead to another appointment, then a specialist, a scan, a follow-up. One appointment had a habit of creating another.

Mum got tired of it. She didn't want to get up early, get dressed and head off to another surgery. She wanted to be at home, doing her crossword, pottering around, spending her day however she felt like it.

I understood that. The problem was I wasn't the one creating most of these appointments, just the one organising them, reminding her about them, picking her up and getting her there.

"Mum, you've got a doctor's appointment tomorrow."

"What for?"

"The doctor wants to see you again."

"I was only there last week."

"I know."

"Why do I have to go again?"

And suddenly I was defending an appointment I hadn't even asked for, trying to help Mum manage a healthcare schedule neither of us wanted. She was tired and frustrated, and I was the one standing in front of her saying where she needed to be and when. It was easy for her frustration with the situation to become frustration with me.