A question we (my husband and I) seem to ask oursleves a lot as carers is, are our expectations of our son (who has bipolar) reasonable? Should we expect him to be able to pick up after himself, to put away dirty dishes, to remember simple tasks that we feel he's capable of?
I feel he often uses his illness as an excuse for not doing the boring, menial, day-to-day tasks. And it makes be really frustrated and angry at times! But asking him to do things usually goes south. So we find ourselves tip-toeing around him a little too much.
A classic example was today. When he's 'good' and his mental illness isn't affecting him, I find it harder to NOT get frustrated by what I see as a lack of thoughtfulness and just being lazy.
So my questions are:
Do I need to reassess my expectations or are they reasonable?
Should I accept that his illness isn't allowing him to "get his sh*t together" as he puts it?
Should we try to enforce rules and boundaries, like "Pick up your clothes" so that he knows he does have rules and boundaries?
