Kirstin Thomas is an only child. Her mother Sharon has frontotemporal dementia. When Sharon calls thirty times in a day, there is no sibling to text and say "can you take the next few." There is no one to compare notes with at Christmas about whether she seems worse than last year. There is no one to share the 2am emergency, no one to divide the medical decisions with, no one who is carrying any of this alongside her.
If you are in the same position, you already know what this means without needing it explained. But it is worth naming clearly: the weight that lands on an only child caring for a parent with dementia is a different weight from what caregivers with siblings carry. Not worse in every way, but singular in a way that most caregiving support does not fully account for. This page is written for you specifically.
What only children carry that others don't
The calls come to you because there is no one else in the phone. Every single one. The one at work, the one during school pickup, the one at 2am, the ones you missed and the ones you answered forty times in a row. There is no rotation. No taking turns. No calling a sibling after a hard week to say "I need a break."
The decisions land with you alone. Medical decisions, financial decisions, care placement decisions. When the time comes to consider memory care, there is no one to work through it with, no one who shares the history with your parent that makes the weight of that decision so specific. You carry the authority and the grief of it together, alone.
The grief is its own category. There is no sibling who knew your parent before the disease, who remembers the same things you remember, who can sit with you in the loss of who she used to be. Other people can love you through it. But the grief that belongs to a child losing a parent to dementia before they have actually lost them is shared, in the way grief needs to be shared, only with someone who knew that person the same way. When you are an only child, that person does not exist.
And then there is the guilt that belongs specifically to only children. When you cannot answer, there is no one else who might have. It was always going to be you or no one. That is a different kind of guilt for not answering than siblings feel, because siblings can at least tell themselves someone else might have picked up.
The phone calls when you are the only one
For only children, the repetitive calling pattern hits differently. There is no rotation and no relief. Every call that comes to you is a call that was never going to go anywhere else. When your parent calls because they are anxious, afraid, or just reaching for someone they trust, there is only one person their brain is reaching for. You.
That is a profound expression of how much they love you. It is also an unsustainable operational reality. Dementia separation anxiety drives the repetitive calling pattern. The brain reaches for the most trusted anchor it has. For your parent, that anchor is you and only you. The anxiety resets with every memory gap, which is why the calls keep coming even after you just spoke. Answering every call does not stop the calls. It sustains you in the pattern until something breaks.
This is not a reflection of how much your parent loves you, or how much you love them. It is the disease using the phone as its mechanism. And for only children, that mechanism has exactly one target.
Building a structure when you are doing this alone
The answer for only children is not resilience, and it is not better self-care. It is structure. Specifically, three things: a care team that handles physical presence so you are not the only human in your parent's daily life; a community of other caregivers who understand what this actually looks like (the r/dementia community is one of the most honest places on the internet for this); and a solution for the calls that means not every single one has to reach you in real time.
The clinical framework for the repetitive calling pattern is validation therapy combined with simulated presence therapy. Both work on the same principle: the person with dementia needs the familiar voice of someone they love, and a familiar voice answering warmly resolves the anxiety that drove the call. The person with dementia cannot distinguish that voice from a live call the way a healthy adult would. The emotional reassurance is real because the need it meets is real.
For only children, this distinction changes the fundamental equation. If the familiar voice answering the call does not have to be you, live, in real time, then the calls can be answered without you absorbing every one of them. Your parent still reaches you. You are not removed from the relationship. You are just no longer the only mechanism by which that relationship exists in real time.
The research
The most recent randomized controlled trial on simulated presence therapy for dementia, PubMed 38646703, published in the International Journal of Neuroscience, found meaningful reductions in anxiety and agitation when people with dementia received familiar voice support compared to routine care alone. The familiar voice does not have to be live every time to provide genuine reassurance. For only children, that finding changes everything. The call can be answered with love without you having to be the one answering it every single time.
How KindredMind was built by an only child
Kirstin Thomas is an only child. Her mother Sharon has frontotemporal dementia. She built KindredMind with co-founder Patrick Armstrong because she was the only person Sharon would call, and there was no one to share that with. Every call came to her. Every missed call was hers alone to carry. She needed something that could answer in her voice with her warmth, so Sharon could reach Kirstin even when Kirstin could not pick up.
KindredMind is an voice companion for dementia families that answers calls in the family caregiver's voice, using a personalized knowledge base the caregiver builds, following the Alzheimer Society of Canada's published communication guidelines for dementia care. When Kirstin cannot answer, Sharon still hears Kirstin. The calls resolve in about 90% of cases. For a family of two, that is what makes it possible to still have a life while still being completely present for the person who needs you most.
You do not have to be the only mechanism by which your parent reaches the voice they love. You just have to be the person whose voice it is.
Your parent can still reach you. Even when you cannot pick up.
KindredMind answers in your voice, with your warmth and the things only you would know. For only children, it is what makes the calls answerable. Every one of them.
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