{"id":368916,"date":"2026-04-08T03:48:31","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T03:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/368916\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T03:48:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T03:48:31","slug":"i-love-my-sons-dearly-but-im-under-awful-stress-says-84-year-old-carer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/368916\/","title":{"rendered":"I love my sons dearly, but I’m under awful stress, says 84-year-old carer"},"content":{"rendered":"

The family live in Loughgilly, a rural part of County Armagh.<\/p>\n

Ronan’s part of the care package ended in March 2024, leading to a reduction in the time carers spent in the home.<\/p>\n

Donall, who is also autistic and has obsessive compulsive disorder, currently has a carer come in for an hour each day to get him up and dressed.<\/p>\n

Alphie told The Nolan Show<\/a> that Donall brushes his teeth three times and checks his laces six times before he is ready for the day.<\/p>\n

Donall and Ronan attend some day centres in nearby towns during the daytime, but at home Alphie is the sole carer.<\/p>\n

“Donall doesn’t get up until the carer arrives – you can’t lift a boy in his 40s out of bed and get him up on his feet who doesn’t want to do it,” he added.<\/p>\n

“I feel awful talking about them, they’re two great lads.<\/p>\n

“I love them dearly.<\/p>\n

“The last words my wife said: ‘I’m sorry about this Alphie, look after the children.’<\/p>\n

“And that’s something I’ll definitely do.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The family live in Loughgilly, a rural part of County Armagh. Ronan’s part of the care package ended…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-368916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}