Additional Resources Mentioned
Takeaways
Tip 1: C — Choose Your Role as a Caregiver
The first step in successfully navigating the sandwich generation is making a conscious choice to embrace your caregiving role. Many people say “I didn’t choose this.” or “I had no choice.” We always have a choice. Even not making a choice is still a choice.
Tip 2: A — Address the ‘Elephants’ in the Room
Successful sandwich generation caregiving requires having difficult conversations early and often. These are the ‘elephants’ dancing in every family room that everyone sees — but no one wants to discuss.
Tip 3: R — Recharge Through Ruthless Self-Care
Recharging takes on critical importance when you’re caring for multiple generations. Self-care isn’t selfish — it’s essential for everyone you’re caring for.
Tip 4: E — Enlist Your Support Team
You’re not meant to journey alone, and this is especially true for sandwich generation caregivers who face multiple competing demands. Building a comprehensive support team is essential for sustainable caregiving.
Tip 5: S — Surrender Control and Embrace Grace
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of sandwich generation caregiving is accepting that you cannot control everything, even though you desperately want to. If everyone could just do things your way, life would be so much easier — but that’s not reality.
Read More in This Blog here
Full Episode Transcript
Sue Ryan
Think about the twilight zone of handing your teenagers the car keys while at the same time trying to wrestle them away from your aging parents who should not drive. You’re sandwiched in the middle of that time of someone gaining independence and those losing independence and you’re navigating it all.
In this episode, I’m talking with my dear friend, Kristy Byrne. Great. In this episode, I’m talking with my dear friend, Kristy Byrne Yates. She’s a licensed educational psychologist, author of Building a Legacy of Love, Thriving in the Sandwich Generation.
We’re sharing 5 tips.
Christy, introduce to us what the sandwich generation means.
Christy Byrne Yates, M.S. LEP
Sure. So typically the sandwich generation has meant someone raising children under the age of 18 in their home. So typical family, but they’re also now caring for aging parents. And it was a term that was coined back in 1981 by a social worker who found this in her practice. But really the sandwich generation is anyone who’s kind of squeezed between different constituencies that they’re caring for.
Sue Ryan
And the issues that the people are facing are somewhat different with the different kinds of dynamics. And it’s important that we understand that there are a variety of them. And one of the fastest growing ones, because our fastest growing demographic is people 85 and older, that has created an additional level of strain on that sandwich because you, historically somebody’s looked at, we’re taking care of ourselves or we’re taking care of our children then now there’s kind of more pressure with potentially their family, their parents in the family, and now the grandparents. So you’re going up multiple generations. So when we look at it, we’re talking about being squeezed or sandwiched in the middle of a variety of different ones. S
We’ve come up with five tips. And the first one is talking about choosing. Talk a little bit more about what you mean by that.
Christy Byrne Yates, M.S. LEP
Sure. I really tried to pull a framework together, I used the acronym CARES. And so C is ‘choose’. And what do I mean by that? A lot of times I hear people say, I didn’t choose this. I had no choice. I had to do this. But we always have a choice. Even not making a choice is a choice, right?
You know, we can say, I have, I have no, I don’t know what to do. And then boom, we’re, we’re swept along and we’re doing a whole lot of things. I really think what makes a difference in a caregiver’s journey is to really take time to, and not a lot of time. I’m not talking days, right? But a little soul searching and really committing, really choosing. I am now a caregiver for these people or this person.
And when you can do that, then you can start setting up some strategies. You can set up some boundaries. You can figure out what you’re willing to do. And it’s, there’s also a little bit of value. Values work you need to look at. Like what’s my North star so that when I feel really overwhelmed, what can I come back to and say, this is what I need in my life right now to keep me on track. You know, for me, it was, I saw myself as a mother first, not that I wasn’t going to do everything I could for my parents. I did. But I always knew I wanted to make sure my kids were growing up in a way that they felt seen, heard, and valued, and involved. And so that was an important North Star for me. So I think it’s just, it’s just, yeah, taking time to really, you know, commit and consciously choose it. You know, Susan, we, you and I both know a lot of people don’t even identify themselves as caregivers.
And so when we don’t even do that, we don’t have any agency. So I think it’s important to have agency.
Sue Ryan
And that does lead into the number one reason why people wouldn’t do it, which is address. And you talk about addressing the elephants in the room.
Christy Byrne Yates, M.S. LEP
Yeah, absolutely. I do feel like we have to have conversations early and often. So addressing either before you have to make this decision to be a caregiver. And I want to also say that in that choice of being a caregiver, if you have siblings, those are conversations you need to have. And that gets into that addressing thing. You have to address those elephants in the room. It’s things like financial status understanding Where are your parents financially a lot of families don’t talk about money. It’s important to talk about money. It’s important to talk about medical issues. It’s important to talk about sibling relationships if you have them.
So those are all the elephants that I think are all dancing in our room.
Sue Ryan
Those sound like pretty good elephants. So let’s move on to the third tip, which you talk about recharging. Recharging is closely tied to self-care. And this is so especially important in the different types of sandwich generations, because self-care is going to look different. Recharging means different things to different people, but the magnitude of it increases when we’re in roles of caregiving. So walk us through what recharging means for you.
Christy Byrne Yates, M.S. LEP
Sure. I definitely have always leaned into self-care, right? In my book, I have a chapter called Ruthless Self-Care. And I called it that because I think about, again, as a parent, if something happens to your child, we typically are going to do everything. We’ll move heaven and earth to make sure that what they need, they get, and we help them, right? We’re going to do what we have to do. And that’s where Tiger Mama comes out or whatever it might be. But we don’t always do that for ourselves, right? And we run our battery all the way down. And then what happens? Well, if we’re not fully charged or at least optimal charging capacity, right? Energy capacity, then our children are left with, you know, a parent that’s subpar and our parent or person we’re caring for is left with somebody who doesn’t have the energy.
And we don’t make great decisions when we are empty. We just don’t make great decisions that way. So we wanna make sure that we are keeping ourselves charged up. But it’s also a mindset of I do matter, I do count and me taking time away from my children or my parents is going to serve them. It’s not taking away from them, it’s serving them. What I wanna say to everyone too, Sandwich Generation folks is your kids are as worried about you as they are about their grandparent. They may not have a great relationship with a grandparent, may not know, you may be a long distance caregiver, but they’re very worried about you. And even if they don’t say it, they notice it. So it is important to talk about it and to confront it.
Sue Ryan
Tip four, is enlisting. You’re not meant to journey alone. And there are times, especially when you’re in the sandwich generation, and there are times, I’ve talked with people who’ve got their own current and future needs. They’re somewhat supporting their parents, somewhat their grandparents. They’ve got children they’re dealing with. Some of them have adult children, and they’re also providing some levels of support now for grandchildren. So there are a lot of different demands on them. And this is a time where we’re definitely not meant to journey alone. And so you’ve got to build a team to support you. And we talked about, we created a podcast episode 40 about building your own personal care support network. However, when you’re in the sandwich generation, there are some additional dynamics of what that needs to look like. What are some of the specifics of that for people to be able to focus on when they are members of whatever their version of the sandwich generation is?
Christy Byrne Yates, M.S. LEP
So I do feel like one of the first things to understand is we used to live in villages and all of this was something that was community, you know, was communal support. And we’ve kind of moved away from that. But one of the things we have to kind of relearn how to do sometimes is how to ask for help. And I want you to imagine any time somebody’s asked you to help them and you did, how did you feel?
I mean, for me, I felt good. I didn’t feel like a burden. If I couldn’t do it, I said no. But that feeling I got, I need to realize it’s okay for me to give that feeling to somebody else by saying, can you help me with this? And be specific about what you need because it is important. People do want to help you. The other thing that I would say too is with your children is lean into, when I say enlist, you know, you’re going to have certain people on your list already. It’s going to be any family members that are around you, could be neighbors. It could be, you know, if you’ve got children involved in different activities, you might want to get on some parent lists so that any carpooling you can on a day when you maybe have an emergency and can’t take your child to soccer, someone else can take them and pick them up. And, you know, those are the kinds of ways that people can help out. But it’s also if your child is enrolled in school you know, talk to the school, talk to your child’s teacher or their team, or find out if there’s a counselor available, because there are, I know, I worked in schools and it’s important to let schools know what’s going on because what happens at home comes to school with kids. So when they’re stressed out because you’re stressed out, that’s gonna show up at school. So letting the staff know, here’s what’s going on. I had this happen a lot of times where a parent would say, my dad just moved in with us and he’s got stage four colon cancer and we’re all frantic. Well, okay, that tells me why this child is a little upset during the day and maybe tired and different things. And so what strategies can the school do to support? And the school will, they want to help your student. So lean into those kinds of things.
Sue Ryan
What I’ve learned with the sandwich generations is we’re not hiring a team for one part of it. We may have three or four different teams. For example, we’ve got the team for when we need support. We’ve got the team for when our care receiver needs support. And we’ve got the team for when our children need support. And perhaps there’s the grandparents.
When we’re enlisting support, we’re identifying people who have capacity. So it’s putting together some pretty significant lists when you are sandwiched in the middle because you’ve got a variety of different needs and a variety of different people who would be providing the support for them.
Let’s get, Christy, into this last tip, tip five, which is surrender. And that’s coming to terms with the fact that, know, hello.
We’re not in charge of everything and things are continuously changing and we may wanna be.
Christy Byrne Yates, M.S. LEP (41:43.687)
I know, it’s just awful, isn’t it? If we could just be in control, if everybody could just do it my way, it would be so much easier, but that doesn’t work, does it?
Sue Ryan
But it has a specific dynamic in the sandwich generation that’s different when it’s just us. So specifically to the sandwich generations, what does surrender mean?
Christy Byrne Yates, M.S. LEP
Well, for me, I add this in because I think when we are aware that we have to sort of surrender control, we give ourselves so much more grace because we can’t control everything. And we want to, we want to plan that this is going to happen and this is going to happen. And I’ve got everything in place and I’ve done all this work to make sure that this team member is helping my parent here and this person’s helping my child here and I’m going to work over here and then something happens, right? It could be that your child gets sick and you’ve got to stay home with them. And then there you go. All those plans went out the window, but it’s surrendering that we can’t control all the things that are going to happen. I’ll give you a really clear example of a situation that happened to me. This year my son was a senior in high school. Just before his graduation, my father had fallen and broken his hip.
And he was in a rehab facility. And on Friday night, he was graduating on a Saturday, but on Friday night, there was a Baccalaureate mass and we were going to take him to that. And I had tons of family coming in for this. I knew my parents couldn’t attend the graduation, but I had lots of other people coming and I got a call from the nursing home saying, well, Christie, we’re releasing your dad today at four o’clock.
I’m not prepared. I thought he was going to be there another week and I was just, I thought, I don’t know what to do. I’ve got all these people coming in. I’ve got things to do. I don’t have a place for him. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Why can’t they keep him longer? Well, the insurance just told us today he’s got to go. I’m like, my gosh, I don’t know. So see what I’m saying. I had to surrender that I could not control this. I was blessed in that I was able to privately pay for him for another four days.
So we do need plan B, we need plan C, and then we also need to have the grace to say, okay, wow, you know, I am dropping back and I’m punting this because I don’t even know what to do here, you know? So, and realize, because we can get very upset about not, not having it work our way. But that takes away from us. So it’s important to realize that upfront.
Sue Ryan
And have a lot of grace. What I’ve learned in my experiences from the sandwich generation experiences is that when we teach everyone else in our family about that grace so that you don’t feel guilty, it’s, you want to give everything to your child. You want everything to be perfect for them. You want everything to be perfect for your parents. And you also want your own life. And so you want to have everything that could possibly be great for everyone.
And yet it’s a struggle because like you said, when something completely comes out of the blue, when we’re in that sandwich generation and we set the expectations, we have the conversations, we say, these things are gonna happen. How do we wanna address it when they do? How do we wanna feel about it when they do? When something comes up and there’s a major disappointment or there’s a major disruption, let’s talk about it. And if we’re struggling with it, let’s make sure, first of all, when we’ve got our plan that we’ve been enlisting other people and we’ve got our support group. So we’ve got those pieces in there, but there is still, you want to be fully present to your parents. You want to be fully present to your child. And you can’t do that. And you feel like, okay, I’m letting someone down. So a lot of the challenge with the sandwich generation is you feel like you’re continuously letting someone down unless you navigate with them with great clarity. Let’s talk about it.
Christy Byrne Yates, M.S. LEP
Yeah. And what I want to add in there is, the example I gave you about the nursing home calling me and releasing him, my dad, I had to go back to that very first point of ‘choose’. And in that I knew my North star was I, I knew at that time, you know, my dad’s going to be okay if he stays four more days, but my son will only graduate high school one time.And I need to be there for that. That’s important.
Sue Ryan
Chrissy, thank you, thank you, thank you so very much. Please do me a favor. Tell me how our listeners can find you.
Christy Byrne Yates, M.S. LEP
Sure. The best way to find me is on my website and it’s ChristyYates.com and that’s C H R I S T Y Y A T E S. And I say, I spell my name out because there are a million ways to spell Christy, but it’s Chrisye Yates.com and there you can find my book. You can find the offers that I have for coaching and I do a lot of work with employee resource groups. And then I also started to do more work with assisted living and providing some, some, in-house support groups there, online support groups. So I have a lot of different offers, so would love to hear from you and yeah.
Sue Ryan
Let’s summarize, you shared five tips.
Choose, address, recharge, enlist, and surrender.
And those are great ways to work through this temporary season in our lives where we are sandwiched in the middle taking care of ourselves, our aging parents and potentially grandparents, and our growing children and sometimes grandchildren.
If you have tips in addition to these tips, we’d love to hear about them. Please go to our Facebook page or our Instagram page.
Those links are in the show notes and we’re gonna put all of the information that we shared today in the show notes and we’ll put your tips out there also for other people to see.
And as you can tell, this is one of the more comprehensive parts of our caregiving journey. However, what we want everyone to know is we’re all on this journey together.
Christy Byrne Yates, M.S. LEP
Thank you.
