Three afternoons a week, he flexes his mom’s legs and arms to keep muscles from deteriorating and blood clots from forming. He does about 20 repetitions of each exercise. When her hands shake, he helps her eat and brushes her teeth.
“It is my normal,” says Leo, a tall, lanky 15-year-old high-school freshman.
There are an estimated 5.4 million children under the age of 18 providing care to parents, grandparents or siblings with chronic medical conditions or functional decline, up from about 1.3 million nearly 20 years ago, according to two reports from the National Alliance for Caregiving and others.
These middle-schoolers and high-schoolers help with feeding and dressing, and take over cooking and cleaning for family members who have cancer, debilitating diseases and dementia. Some parents have been in accidents or injured in war.