Question 

My daughter and her three children are coming for a weeklong visit. I love seeing them and yet when they come I and exhausted by the end of the first day. Maybe it is just too much for an 80-year-old. 

The cooking, the cleaning, the noise, and toys everywhere simply wears me out. I live a relatively quiet life now that my husband is gone. I have my little routines and my house is tidy. It takes me a week to get it back in order after my daughter leaves. 

When my daughter is here with the kids, all I do is cook, clean, and start it all over again. It is almost impossible for me to keep up. Maybe it is because of my age, after all I had four children and I worked. I was always very busy. I am used to hard work. 

What I am wondering, is there a way to make this visit palatable for me? I really need these visits to be less tiring. 

Answer 

Visits from the children can be quite taxing for elderly parents. You go from cooking, cleaning, and picking up for one, to a house full. Anyone would be under stress in that situation. It is not just your age. 

This is such a common dilemma that it bears some discussion. It is possible to lighten your load with a few adjustments in your usual patterns? Doing everything that you normally would do is not a healthy option for you anymore. 

Dreading your daughter’s visits is a call for change. Here are some of the changes that I believe you should consider: 

• Do the meal preparation ahead of time over a few weeks, and freeze some meals. Make easy, simple recipes. They may not be the family favorites, but does that really matter? 

• Obtain takeout menus from local restaurants and send your daughter and her credit card out to get food some of the nights. 

• Have your daughter prepare breakfast and lunch for herself and her children. 

• Require that everyone participates in cleanup. 

• If the children are old enough, assign each one of them a task for the week. One could empty the dishwasher, one could set and clear the table, another could be in charge of trash.   

• Require that toys are picked up and put away before bedtime. That way, you can start each day with an organized house. 

• Require that all sheets, towels, and clothing items that your daughter and her children use be washed, dried, and put away by your daughter, just like she would do at home.

• Ask your daughter to plan an outing or two without you. Have her take the children to the park, an outing to the zoo, or maybe a roller rink. This will give you a much-needed break during the week that she is with you. 

As I have suggested, a less stressful visit starts with changing the expectations. Do not expect yourself to be the ultimate host, making everyone’s favorites, cooking every meal, picking up after everyone, and working non-stop during the visit. It is very tiring to do that for a week, age aside. A good house guest would not want that from you, though children may be used to you in that mode. It is time to establish a new pattern for their visits. The first visit may be a tad rocky simply because things are different, but by the second visit, no one will notice. 

You can make the visits less stressful than you describe them being. It takes a bit of planning and changing expectations.