About Us
We are a family who lived through serious caregiving and learned firsthand that when a family is in it, the adults are not the only ones carrying it. The kids are living it too, often in ways nobody names, tracks, or takes seriously.
When caregiving hits a home, most parents are just trying to survive the day. They know their kids are being affected, but there is rarely time, energy, or clear support to understand what it is doing to them or explain it to a school. And schools are rarely set up to recognize caregiving as a real factor in a student’s stress, attendance, performance, and daily life.
We cared for our grandmother at home during the final years of her Alzheimer’s. Our boys were living with disrupted sleep, stress, responsibility, grief, and a home life that was anything but normal. They attended both a Catholic school and a public school, and neither school had any real guidance or support in place for what they were living through. A little understanding would have gone a long way.
Our experience was Alzheimer’s, but the diagnoses and circumstances are endless: cancer, disability, dementia, mental illness, traumatic brain injury, ALS, diabetes, age-related decline. Kids may be helping a parent, sibling, grandparent, or more than one person at once. The level and type of care may vary, from emotional support and constant supervision to direct help with activities of daily living, but the responsibility is real either way. When serious caregiving enters a home, kids are part of it. There is no real way not to be.
Caregiving as a kid should open doors, not close them.
When caregiving hits a home, most parents are just trying to survive the day. They know their kids are being affected, but there is rarely time, energy, or clear support to understand what it is doing to them or explain it to a school. And schools are rarely set up to recognize caregiving as a real factor in a student’s stress, attendance, performance, and daily life.
We cared for our grandmother at home during the final years of her Alzheimer’s. Our boys were living with disrupted sleep, stress, responsibility, grief, and a home life that was anything but normal. They attended both a Catholic school and a public school, and neither school had any real guidance or support in place for what they were living through. A little understanding would have gone a long way.
Our experience was Alzheimer’s, but the diagnoses and circumstances are endless: cancer, disability, dementia, mental illness, traumatic brain injury, ALS, diabetes, age-related decline. Kids may be helping a parent, sibling, grandparent, or more than one person at once. The level and type of care may vary, from emotional support and constant supervision to direct help with activities of daily living, but the responsibility is real either way. When serious caregiving enters a home, kids are part of it. There is no real way not to be.
Caregiving as a kid should open doors, not close them.
How We Got Our Name
After their grandmother passed away, Charlie said there was “a little bit of happy” in it, because during the last months of her life, she was no longer really living. She was suffering.
We chose the name A Little Bit of Happy because we wanted to find ways to bring a little bit of happiness to kids who are caregiving through recognition, service hours, and connection to resources and support.
We later added the name Kids Are Caregivers Too, so people would immediately understand the larger issue we were trying to address in the United States.
We chose the name A Little Bit of Happy because we wanted to find ways to bring a little bit of happiness to kids who are caregiving through recognition, service hours, and connection to resources and support.
We later added the name Kids Are Caregivers Too, so people would immediately understand the larger issue we were trying to address in the United States.
How We Got Here
After my mom died, what our family had lived through during Alzheimer’s caregiving changed us, and I knew I wanted to do something positive with it.
We built this website to show what caregiving had really looked like in our home and to connect with others living through something similar. We chose the photos together and started reaching out to people who had researched or written about children helping care for family members.
At first, we were focused on Alzheimer’s because that was the world we knew. I started reaching out wherever I could. Every article I found on the subject, I contacted the author. Every organization I found, I introduced myself. I wanted to understand who was doing this work and where our story fit into it.
One of the first people I spoke with was Melinda Kavanaugh, PhD, LCSW, Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Founder of Global Neuro YCare.
Through Dr. Kavanaugh, I was introduced to Connie Siskowski, RN, PhD, Founder of the American Association of Caregiving Youth, and later to Elizabeth Olson, PhD, Professor of Geography and Global Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Feylyn Lewis, PhD.
Then I started looking at what was happening in the young carers movement in the United Kingdom, especially through Carers Trust and the work of Saul Becker. Kids there were being identified, recognized, and supported as caregivers. In the United States, that was barely happening at all. That was when it hit me that kids like ours could be identified and helped in real ways. We just were not doing it here in the United States.
What started as an Alzheimer’s story became something bigger. It became a chance to help amplify the people and organizations already doing this work and use what I knew to help make Caregiving Youth more widely recognized and better understood in the United States. I was all in on opening doors, connecting the dots, and helping push this issue forward.
We built this website to show what caregiving had really looked like in our home and to connect with others living through something similar. We chose the photos together and started reaching out to people who had researched or written about children helping care for family members.
At first, we were focused on Alzheimer’s because that was the world we knew. I started reaching out wherever I could. Every article I found on the subject, I contacted the author. Every organization I found, I introduced myself. I wanted to understand who was doing this work and where our story fit into it.
One of the first people I spoke with was Melinda Kavanaugh, PhD, LCSW, Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Founder of Global Neuro YCare.
Through Dr. Kavanaugh, I was introduced to Connie Siskowski, RN, PhD, Founder of the American Association of Caregiving Youth, and later to Elizabeth Olson, PhD, Professor of Geography and Global Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Feylyn Lewis, PhD.
Then I started looking at what was happening in the young carers movement in the United Kingdom, especially through Carers Trust and the work of Saul Becker. Kids there were being identified, recognized, and supported as caregivers. In the United States, that was barely happening at all. That was when it hit me that kids like ours could be identified and helped in real ways. We just were not doing it here in the United States.
What started as an Alzheimer’s story became something bigger. It became a chance to help amplify the people and organizations already doing this work and use what I knew to help make Caregiving Youth more widely recognized and better understood in the United States. I was all in on opening doors, connecting the dots, and helping push this issue forward.
Telling Our Story
Once we connected with people working in the Caregiving Youth field, Dr. Connie Siskowski, through the American Association of Caregiving Youth (AACY), began giving the boys opportunities to share their story. She first connected them with an interview for the Catholic Health Association and later invited them to speak about their caregiving experience at the Caregiving Youth Institute Conference in Boca Raton, Florida.
We pushed the boys to take that first speech seriously, and to their credit, they did. We found a coach to help them. They worked hard and made it happen. Going to Florida and getting beach time out of the deal definitely helped.
We pushed the boys to take that first speech seriously, and to their credit, they did. We found a coach to help them. They worked hard and made it happen. Going to Florida and getting beach time out of the deal definitely helped.
Our Story in Pictures
| Visiting Grandma in Champaign
Life With Caregiving
| When Grandma Moved In With Us
Life After Caregiving
| Closing One Chapter and Opening Another
AACY Conference Keynote 2017
Charlie Poole, age 14 | A.J. Poole, age 13
Brain Bowl Speech 2020
Charlie Poole, age 17 | A.J. Poole, age 15