As a child caregiver today, what would I do differently?

Growing up in today’s world is quite different than the world I grew up in, let’s just say 30 plus years ago. We didn’t have social media and we did not have immediate access to our friends. Many times, if I had something to share with a friend, I would have to wait until I went to school the next day to see them because I didn’t have everyone’s phone number to call them using the house phone. The instant world we live in is quite different today than it was back then.

Someone recently asked me to speculate how I would have managed as a child caregiver in today’s world. That really got me thinking. Things are so different today in both a positive and a not so positive way.

First off, the resources and knowledge available immediately at our fingertips today are truly incredible! We can literally Google anything we want to learn about in seconds. So as a lifelong seeker of information, I think I would have learned more about my mom’s illness via the web. So, most likely I would have Googled bipolar disorder the very first time I heard the words. Then, I would have checked out Netflix for some documentaries like Steven Fry’s – Secret Life of the Manic Depressive to help me understand the illness better. Steven Fry’s documentary provided me with such rich information along with a glimpse into what life might have been like for my mom living with bipolar disorder. I know that having that information would have helped understand the illness and care for her better affording me to be more compassionate as a child. Back then, I was way too consumed with the impact her behavior had on me.

The thing I think I would have really been challenged with was keeping the secret of my sick mother to myself. While it is a little better today, we still have a way to go for people to feel safe talking about mental illness without fear or shame. We aren’t there yet in having mental illness be more understood and more accepted. In many ways, back then the inability to communicate so rapidly via mobile devices and the internet was a blessing for me. When I was pulled from school to care for mom, there was no online exchange with my teachers. It was safe for me to be out without anyone really knowing why so long as I returned to class with my parents’ excuse note in hand. I think it would have been much harder to keep that secret today than it was back then. When you combine this with the challenges schools are facing with cyber bullying, it makes me realize that child caregivers today really do have a much harder road to travel than I did.

I can only hope that with more conversation and deeper understanding and compassion, we will reach a place where mental illness is well understood and much more accepted for everyone. With more open conversations and by humanizing mental illness by story telling, I know that we will get there!