I am a 17 year old girl in high school, and my grandmother is dying of cancer. She had helped raise me and my older sister because our mother was a single parent, and now she has little memory of me. My mother and sister tell me I am selfish because I do not want to care for her, but it's just that I never had a death in the family and don't know how to go about this. I just need some opinions... I don't think that I should be caring for my grandmother alone, when she can't even walk. What if she dies in my care? Should a 17 year old really have this responsibility? Am I being selfish? Please, I don't want to feel alone on this.
A large number of children and adolescents are caregivers. They are truly the invisible caregivers. Nationwide, there are approximately 1.3 to 1.4 million child caregivers who are between the ages of 8 and 18. Most of them are not the primary caregiver. Hardly anyone thinks about children when they talk about caregivers. A lot of the children don't realize that they are caregivers. I was one of them. I helped my parents take care of my sick brother. My mother did most of the work but the entire family helped out. I needed to sleep in my brother's room to make sure he didn't stop breathing in the middle of the night. I never felt like I was abused. I just did it to help my family. I didn't know that other children were also helping their families. I wish someone thought about me when I was a child.
Search AgingCare for youth caregivers.
https://www.agingcare.com/articles/13-year-old-caregiver-essay-174237.htm
https://www.agingcare.com/articles/you-dont-know-what-you-dont-know-166638.htm