Young caregivers: Balancing the stress, developing empathy
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SINGAPORE – Gen Z caregivers, in their 20s or younger, face challenges – like learning how to adult or managing fledgling careers – that may differ from other caregivers, who are more often in their 60s and older, and tending to their spouse or elderly parent. Experts say that younger caregivers may become more common in an ageing society with falling birthrates, as in the much-watched Netflix movie How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies.
When the child becomes the parent: Number of young caregivers set to rise
Full-time national serviceman William Koh is the main caregiver for his mum Margaret Laird, who has dementia.
ST PHOTO: NG SOR LUAN
When Mr William Koh was 16, he ran into difficulties while caring for his then 59-year-old mother, who has dementia.
Then in his first year of junior college, he was not sure what to do when his mum Margaret Laird had problems with her credit card.
He asked a favourite teacher, who taught him General Paper: “Unrelated to GP, can you tell me how to get a replacement credit card? Do I have to take my mum to the bank or can I collect it myself?”
He proceeded to open up to his teacher, who was initially taken aback at his query, about his family situation. He had become the main caregiver of Ms Laird several months earlier, after his O-level examinations.
Speech and drama teacher was a teen when she learnt of mum’s young-onset dementia diagnosis
Ms Jamie Lynn Buitelaar, a speech and drama teacher, with her mother Alison Lim.
ST PHOTO: MARK CHEONG
In 2016, when Ms Alison Lim learnt from her doctor that she had young-onset dementia at the age of 58, she felt a sense of relief and understanding.
The retired manager and consultant from the hotel industry recalls: “I was so relieved because it had been so confusing.”
Starting in 2012, she and her family noticed she had been mixing up words. At a Mexican restaurant that year, she asked for Guatemala instead of guacamole. She would later say things like “put the table on the plate” or “put the car in the key”.
“It was funny, but it was also very scary. I knew something was not right with my brain,” says Ms Lim, adding that it had been a hard-won diagnosis, as several neurologists had insisted she was fit and fine after a battery of tests.
Cut from the same cloth: Drag artist Opera Tang takes after seamstress grandmother
Drag artist Opera Tang learnt to sew, cook and speak Teochew from her grandmother Martha Lau.
ST PHOTO: CHONG JUN LIANG
For Singaporean drag artist Opera Tang, 29, a seven-decades-old Singer sewing machine handed down from her 93-year-old grandmother stitched a precious bond between them.
“She likes seeing me continue with the skills she practised when she was younger,” says Tang, whose preferred pronoun is she/her. She grew closer to her maternal grandmother about five years ago, after she picked up sewing from the former seamstress.
Madam Martha Lau, a small but spritely Teochew Peranakan woman, has cared for Tang and her four siblings under one roof since they were born. They still live together.
Shawn Hoo: How to make a million memories with grandma while she’s alive
The writer and his younger brother with his grandmother and great-grandmother.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF SHAWN HOO
Unlike many of my peers from the 20-something generation, I was raised by a gaggle of mothers and grandmothers.
Raised by my paternal grandmother from the day after I was born, I was swaddled in her tangy Hokkien speech. Every night, until I was a teenager, my younger brother and I would lay mattresses on both sides of her bed and go to sleep.
She took us everywhere – including to hang out with her mother, our Teochew-speaking great-grandmother whom we had no common tongue with, but listened and nodded along to. Whenever we visited, which was often, our great-grandmother waited with my brother’s favourite curry bun in hand as an after-school treat.
