Kids Helping Parents

In a Wall Street Journal article on January 5, 2007 entitled "Daily Chores for Young Caregivers: Parents Turn to Children for Help" by Clare Ansberry, there were these provactive paragraphs:

PAULDING, Ohio -- Every morning, at about 6, Jordan Wilhelm goes into his parents' room to lift his father out of bed.

The 17-year-old high-school senior carries his dad down the hall to the bathroom, his mother following behind. He helps her get him into the shower, and then dressed, slipping pants on his father's legs and coaxing his arms through shirt sleeves.

During the week, if his father falls out of his wheelchair or has to use the bathroom, he calls Paulding High School, saying he needs Jordan home. With the school less than a mile away, Jordan arrives in minutes. He helps his father back onto his green recliner in the family room, draping a plaid blanket over his legs, before returning to class. "It's my life," says Jordan. "Even when I was young, he couldn't do a whole lot."

The fact is, Jordan probably has a cell phone-- every high school kid carries one today, it seems. A monitoring system from Cambridge Care can help families like these, with features such as "No Activity Monitoring." This means if the motion detector(s) do not sense movement for a certain period of time, an SMS text message can be sent to the phone of one or more caregivers, instantly. Thus family and friends can respond and help when there's the appearance of trouble, whether they're in the backyard or across town. The cell phone becomes the essential electronic tether....