Caring Through Life’s Seasons

Where are you in your caring journey?

Do you believe that there is a beginning, middle and end to caring?

What form of caring are you undertaking currently?

How might the caring path evolve for you and your loved ones in the next year?

Caring comes in many forms. Sometimes it looks like faces covered in food, jumping in muddy puddles and sleepless nights. Other times it’s late-night pick up of teens or phone calls to check on an ageing parent. What we often don’t realise when we first step into a caring role is just how much that role will evolve as life moves on. From the moment we become parents or step into any caring role, we’re on a journey that changes with each season of life.

Early years

In the early days, caring can feel all-consuming. You’re needed around the clock, whether it’s nappies, feeds, or getting a wriggling toddler into their car seat. It’s exhausting, but there’s a simplicity here too. You’re their whole world and, even when it’s hard, you know your place in it.

If you are currently navigating this season, focus on building routines and predictable rhythms to your days. Children thrive on boundaries, and at this age, it is our role to create them.

• For example, focus on nurturing a bedtime routine: start with wind-down time when toys are packed away, then follow with any of these suggestions: bath time, massage, pjs, stories, or bottle. Do them all or only a couple, whatever your decision or time allows for, make it consistent, doing things in the same order allows predictability and comfort for your little one.

School days

Then come the school years, we often feel that in these years things become easier, and they might as your child is not so reliant on you for every aspect of their day. However, you’re juggling school runs, term dates and commitments, forgotten PE kits, homework battles, class WhatsApp groups and playdates, to name but a few. Your child begins to develop their own friendships, opinions and ideas, which is a pivotal point as a parent where you might question why you encouraged them to talk in the first place! Jokes aside, it is wonderful to see the person that they are growing into and their personalities developing. You’re still central, but they’re taking those first steps towards independence. At this stage, you become part cheerleader, part taxi driver, part emotions coach and full-time finder of lost water bottles.

During this season, focus on connection, streamlining your systems to help reduce the daily stress that can come with caring, such as batch cooking, visual timetables or shared calendars and getting your son or daughter to pack their bags the night before, as well as laying out their own uniform.

• Connection can come through: car rides, carving out time to chat over family meals or at bedtime. Tune into what your child wants to talk about or do, listen to their cues and follow their lead.

Teen years

And just like that, they’re teenagers, it can feel like a whole new choppy chapter in your caring role. Caring now involves more emotionally heavy lifting than physical. You’re holding space for big feelings, navigating starting secondary school, GCSEs or A levels, talking (or trying to) about relationships, identity and mental health. It is a time when they feel they don’t need you as much as their friends, as their friends mean more to them than anything, but they really do need you. Sometimes they push you away even when they need you close. It’s a bit like living your life on a seesaw; you take the highs with the lows, knowing it will even out for periods of time.

It can feel tough to be the carer of a teen, but it’s also a privilege to be their anchor through the stormy seas of adolescence. Being emotionally available and staying calm (even when they’re not) is a key focus of this season of caring. Trust is key here.

• Look for how you can build in touch points with your teen over the day or week. Are you able to be present and around when they come in from school or to introduce tech-free mealtimes? Use open-ended questions to encourage conversations, starting with Who, What, When, Where or How. Rather than closed questions, which only require a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. Avoid where possible, ‘Why’ questions, as they can come across in a quite judgmental and accusational way.

• Start to think about what you want caring to look like when they leave home, who are you when you are not a full-time carer? Redefining your role and exploring what this new chapter means for you takes time to think through and develop. Start now.

Role Reversal

At the same time as caring for our children, we can often find ourselves caring for our own parents, call it a caring sandwich. It’s a strange role reversal. The people who once looked after us may now need our support with appointments, sorting medication, technology, being checked in on more often or helping them to remember to do simple tasks. It’s a delicate balance, offering help without taking away their independence. This season can come quietly, then all at once. There’s tenderness in this season, but it can be emotionally draining too.

Do what you can in this caring role to plan ahead where possible, and accept that you can’t do everything alone. Keep a shared calendar for appointments, explore local support services and don’t be afraid to ask siblings or others to share the load.

When they’re all grown up

And then there are adult children. You think the parenting bit is over, but the truth is, it never really stops. It just changes shape. You’re still there with advice, a cuppa, a shoulder to cry on or a place to crash when life feels overwhelming. Sometimes you’re also helping practically, especially as the cost of living continues to bite. Caring for adult children is about being their constant, even when they’ve flown the nest.

What’s clear is this. Caring isn’t a fixed role. It’s a lifelong commitment that weaves itself into every stage of life. It’s not always easy, and it can feel like you’re spinning plates, but it’s also deeply meaningful.

So, wherever you are in your own caring journey, know this: it’s OK to ask for help, to take a break, to admit that you’re tired. Because while caring for others is part of life’s seasons, so is caring for yourself.

This was originally written for Aviva