Many people assume travel is something you must forego if you are the full-time caregiver for another person. Not so! With a little creativity and willingness to reach out, not only can you take an occasional trip – you must. (If it helps, get your doctor to write a prescription for one!)

Travel has scientifically-proven health benefits for our bodies and brains. Some of these demonstrated health benefits include:

• reduced stress
• reduced risk of heart disease
• increased happiness
• improved creativity
• an actual boost in immunity!

For a full-time caregiver, travel can be just what the doctor ordered before, during, and after the trip.

Before

One study showed that just planning a trip boosts happiness, before even embarking on the trip itself. Planning a trip involves daydreaming and happy thoughts of what could be. This aspect is invaluable for caregivers, giving them something to look forward to when days seem long or difficult.

During

The trip provides a break from caregiving responsibilities, a change of scenery, and new experiences. Individuals are typically more active when on vacation, which is also good for our overall health.

After

The study on stress showed that as much as several weeks after returning home, individuals felt more relaxed, more invigorated, and better able to handle daily stresses. How important is that for a caregiver? 

One Leads to More

Another benefit is that a successful trip shows that it can be done, making it easier to consider planning another trip. Success breeds success! After a while, you might find that planning and taking a trip becomes a regular part of your self-care program.

Now Add the Benefits of Traveling with a Grandchild

One of the losses frequently experienced by a grandparent serving as a full-time caregiver is free time to enjoy grandchildren.

As a grandparent, you may know what you would gain from spending quality time with grandchildren, but research shows that children who have a close relationship with a grandparent are less depressed and more resilient as adults. It may be that your grandchildren need you as much as the loved one for whom you are caregiving!

All well and good, you may be thinking, but how do you pull this off when caregiving responsibilities are so demanding?

First of All, Ask

With enough advance notice, it is often possible for family members to arrange their schedules to cover for you. Often they are happy to do so – they just have to know what you need. (Don’t be afraid of being a “burden”!) 

Hire Help

It is also possible to hire a caregiver to stay with your loved one. In this case, it might be wise to hire them for several shorter stints in advance of the trip so they and your loved one become more familiar with each other. 

Adult Day Centers

Many families find the use of Adult Day Centers to be invaluable. Many have begun to re-open now that vaccinations have increased and numbers have decreased. Check if this resource is available in your community.

Family + Outside Help

Most likely a combination – an adult day center during the day, family help in the evenings and/or on weekends, supplemented by hired help – will provide the coverage necessary to make the trip a reality. Contact your local Area Agency on Agency, Commission on Aging, or similar organization. Sometimes they have certificates or scholarships available to cover care. 

Road Scholar is back in business after taking a break during Covid. They offer several hundred travel options planned specifically for grandparents traveling with grandchildren. They take care of all the details so you are not burdened with researching and making travel arrangements.

Their travel programs are well-vetted and reviewed. Your grandchildren have other children to interact with, while you can socialize with other grandparents (relieving you of having to entertain your grandchild/ren the whole time).

Their categories include STEM, Animals & Wildlife, City Discoveries, National Parks, and International Adventures. Best of all, they have caregiver scholarships available that can cover some or even most of the cost of your trip (some restrictions apply).

Group Trips

Riffing off the Road Scholar model, you could plan a trip with a friend and their grandchild of a similar age, splitting your time between activities with each other and peer time. It makes for a nice balance! Don’t forget: your trip doesn’t have to involve any exotic destination. Just spending time together, away from regular routines and demands, will create wonderful opportunities for making memories.

So don’t deprive yourself – and your grandchild! – of all the benefits of traveling together, even if you are a full-time caregiver. Can you make it happen? Yes, you can!

If you are a full-time caregiver for a loved one, how often do you get away for that much needed respite time? How have you been able to make the arrangements? Have you ever traveled with a grandchild, before or during your time of caregiving? If so, where did you go and what did you do? Please share some of the memories you collected!

I work a few days a week as a professional chef and, at 66, I am the same age as many of my young co-workers’ grandmothers. It’s challenging sometimes, but mostly it’s fun, invigorating and keeps me feeling and acting younger than I really am.

One of the servers shared with me that she had enrolled in a month-long backpack trip as part of her first semester of college and, knowing I hike often, asked for training recommendations before her trip. I offered to show her some of my favorite hikes and she enthusiastically accepted. She’s 19.

It did occur to me that I may be asking too much from my body to keep up with someone so young, strong and fit, but I decided to give it a try and see if I could. We enjoyed our first hike together very much, and discovered we have a similar pace and stamina.

We’ve now completed eight weeks of fairly ambitious hikes and she is off to her adventure, and I find myself enthusiastically hiking more on my own and feeling encouraged to seek out more challenging trails.

I’ve been thinking about what it takes to stay vital and relevant to those who are much younger, and I have come up with a few ideas about how we can engage the company of young people despite the age difference.

Look for Commonality

Ask about their interests, talk about your hobbies, seek out what you have in common. For instance, this could be the latest book you’ve both read, favorite foods, travel experiences — anything to begin to form a connection between the two of you.

Save Your Doctor Talk for Your Peers

Don’t talk about your latest surgery or malady. It might be comforting to compare notes and seek support from your peers, but most young people enjoy good health without giving it much thought. So it’s not at all in their frame of reference.

Inquire Gently

Ask about their life, but don’t grill them about school, their life plans, or their relationships. They’ve just started out and they’re already under enough pressure to make those big life decisions.

Listen More – Talk Less

If you want someone to open up to you, give them time and opportunity. Ask open-ended questions and, once they start talking, listen intently and keep your responses neutral and supportive.

Be a Worthy Confidant

Respond positively and with compassion no matter what they confide in you. Don’t judge, it stifles honest communications. Always be honest but coat it with kindness.

Keep in Mind Times Are Supposed to Change

Don’t harp on how much better things were when you were young. Your glory days are treasured memories, but they don’t translate well across the generations. Cultures evolve, and it’s up to each generation to curate their own.

Their Age Is the Digital Age

These young adults grew up as digital natives, it’s as much a part of their life as the telephone was to us. Don’t criticize social media. It’s how they engage. It may seem impersonal and foreign to you, but it works for them.

And finally, understand you are not peers. There will always be years between you, varied perspectives and life experiences. Celebrate the differences, allow them to open you to new ways of seeing the world. Having the courage to join in and be an active participant in a young and modern world isn’t always easy, but if you take the plunge, your life will be significantly enriched by the experience.

How old is your youngest friend? How did you get acquainted? What hobbies do you share? Do you do any of them together? Have you shown this young person that one can be a vital and active woman beyond 60? Let’s have a conversation!

When you were younger but already adult, your parents most likely helped you in every way they could. Not everyone has such help, but a huge number of us do. And perhaps your grandparents did the same.

Maybe it was financial help. They gave you a down payment for a mortgage or helped with all those extras, like music lessons and school trips. Or college expenses for older children.

Or perhaps they offered a lot of useful advice about coping with different aspects of life. We all need that from time to time.

Or maybe they offered help looking after your children when you were at work, either on a regular basis or on occasion. Grandparents have always done a lot of such childcare.

They gave what they could – their financial resources their wisdom, their time.

Now you find yourself helping your children or grandchildren in much the same way.

What is going on?

Serial Reciprocity

Years ago, I carried out research on the nature of patient support groups, then often called ‘self-help’ groups. These are sometimes very small local groups of people with a common condition, such as breast cancer or being widowed young.

Or they might be branches of much larger national organisations, such as for people with disabled children or people suffering from arthritis.

I carried out a survey of members of some groups about how much people participated in their activities and why. I also visited a lot of groups and met their committee members. Most of all, I was interested in what people gained from them and what made the groups work.

It seemed to me that members of such support groups were essentially involved in a form of reciprocity, but not of the normal kind. When you ask a neighbour if you can borrow a cup of sugar, she may well have already borrowed some milk from you on an earlier occasion. This is direct reciprocation – you helped her and she now helps you.

But when you, as a long-standing member of a support group, give a new member advice about how to cope with a problem, it is unlikely that she has already helped you. She is new and bewildered and in need of help.

But another member of that group may well have helped you on an earlier occasion, when you were equally in need. You are grateful and want to give back to others in response.

What is going on here is what I called ‘serial reciprocity’. You give back to a new person because you have already been helped. Your motivation is to reciprocate or give back to others in thanks for the help you received.

Neither of you may think about it in this way, but it is often an underlying motivation.

It can go on and on, as members come and go. The eagerness to reciprocate goes on in a serial fashion. Help begets help.

Families

And this is exactly what goes on in families. The help you received from an earlier generation makes you want to give help back to the next generation.

Again, this may be financial help (‘the bank of mum and dad’) to help with all sorts of expenses of young couples. Or it may be advice, based on your experience. Or it may be your time, collecting grandchildren from school and the like.

And your children will do the same for their children and grandchildren.

Love

Of course, you can also say it is ‘love’ that makes you want to help your adult children and nothing to do with reciprocity. And that may be so.

But I think people are programmed to try to pay back for help received.

And who better to pay ‘back’ than members of your own family.

It is part of the circle of life.

Do you feel that you are part of a chain of reciprocity? Or do you help your family simply because you love them? Might it be both? Have you shown serial reciprocity to people is specific groups? What is/was your motivation? Please add your thoughts to the conversation!

I hate the term “girl boss.” Shouldn’t it be woman? Or just boss? If there are two female entrepreneurs I’d call bosses, it would be Katie Sturino and Sarah Gibson Tuttle. It makes perfect sense they would team up for the Olive & June x Megababe collection. In one cute-as-hell fanny pack, you get Gibson Tuttle’s Olive & June nail polish and Sturino’s Megababe natural deodorant. Oh, and a lot more.

The two beauty brand founders met back in 2019 and are finally making this epic collab happen. Now that masks are being removed (yay vaccines!) and summer fun is actually happening, chances are your nails need a little bit of TLC. (Just me?) This collection gets you three new Olive & June nail colors: Rosy Tips, Megababe Blue and You’re a 10. You also get the Super Glossy Top Coat.

Our mission at STYLECASTER is to bring style to the people, and we only feature products we think you’ll love as much as we do. Please note that if you purchase something by clicking on a link within this story, we may receive a small commission of the sale.

Olive & June.

Fans of Olive & June’s nail stickers will love these new ones, made in larger sizes to keep inclusivity in mind. The stripes will make people think you hit up some trendy salon. And if you’ve been wanting to try Megababe‘s natural deodorant—or you’re a fan and need a travel-size—know you also get a Rosy Pits Mini Daily Deodorant in a perfect to-go size. Finally, there’s a cute travel fan for those ultra-steamy summer days and the limited-edition fanny back that extends up to 57 inches.

To keep up the inclusive messaging, the duo threw an open casting call in NYC to be a part of the campaign. As a surprise, everyone who showed up got to be involved. How cute are these pictures?

Olive & June/Megababe.

The entire collection has a $54 value but it’s only $44 on the Olive & June and Megababe sites. Hurry and grab it to inspire your #hotvaxsummer plans.

I hate the term “girl boss.” Shouldn’t it be woman? Or just boss? If there are two female entrepreneurs I’d call bosses, it would be Katie Sturino and Sarah Gibson Tuttle. It makes perfect sense they would team up for the Olive & June x Megababe collection. In one cute-as-hell fanny pack, you get Gibson Tuttle’s Olive & June nail polish and Sturino’s Megababe natural deodorant. Oh, and a lot more.

The two beauty brand founders met back in 2019 and are finally making this epic collab happen. Now that masks are being removed (yay vaccines!) and summer fun is actually happening, chances are your nails need a little bit of TLC. (Just me?) This collection gets you three new Olive & June nail colors: Rosy Tips, Megababe Blue and You’re a 10. You also get the Super Glossy Top Coat.

Our mission at STYLECASTER is to bring style to the people, and we only feature products we think you’ll love as much as we do. Please note that if you purchase something by clicking on a link within this story, we may receive a small commission of the sale.

Olive & June.

Fans of Olive & June’s nail stickers will love these new ones, made in larger sizes to keep inclusivity in mind. The stripes will make people think you hit up some trendy salon. And if you’ve been wanting to try Megababe‘s natural deodorant—or you’re a fan and need a travel-size—know you also get a Rosy Pits Mini Daily Deodorant in a perfect to-go size. Finally, there’s a cute travel fan for those ultra-steamy summer days and the limited-edition fanny back that extends up to 57 inches.

To keep up the inclusive messaging, the duo threw an open casting call in NYC to be a part of the campaign. As a surprise, everyone who showed up got to be involved. How cute are these pictures?

Olive & June/Megababe.

The entire collection has a $54 value but it’s only $44 on the Olive & June and Megababe sites. Hurry and grab it to inspire your #hotvaxsummer plans.